274 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP 



are born of the association of organisms barely differ 

 entiated and elementary. 1 In this extreme form, the 

 theory is open to grave objections : more and more the 

 idea seems to be gaining ground, that polyzoism is an 

 exceptional and abnormal fact. 2 But it is none the less 

 true that things happen as if every higher organism 

 was born of an association of cells that have subdivided 

 the work between them. Very probably it is not the 

 cells that have made the individual by means of 

 association ; it is rather the individual that has made 

 the cells by means of dissociation. 3 But this itself 

 reveals to us, in the genesis of the individual, a haunting 

 of the social form, as if the individual could only 

 develop on the condition that its substance should be 

 split up into elements having themselves an appearance 

 of individuality and united among themselves by an 

 appearance of sociality. There are numerous cases in 

 which Nature seems to hesitate between the two forms, 

 and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an 

 individual. The slightest push is enough, then, to make 

 the balance weigh on one side or the other. If we take 

 an infusorian sufficiently large, such as the Stentor, and 

 cut it into two halves each containing a part of the 

 nucleus, each of the two halves will generate an inde 

 pendent Stentor ; but if we divide it incompletely, so 

 that a protoplasmic communication is left between the 

 two halves, we shall see them execute, each from its 

 side, corresponding movements : so that in this case it 



1 Ed. Perrier, Les Colonies animates, Paris, 1897 (znd edition) 



2 Delage, L HfrtditS, 2nd edition, Paris, 1903, p. 97. Cf. by the same 

 author, &quot; La Conception polyzolque des etres &quot; (Revue sdentifique, 1896, pp. 

 641-653). 



* This is the theory maintained by Kunstler, Delage, Sedgwick, Labbe&quot;, 

 etc. Its development, with bibliographical references, will be found in 

 the work of Busquet, Les Sires e vi c van(s, Paris, 1899. 



