Address to the British Association 215 



the help of a power, the existence of which is inconsistent 

 with the mass, as a whole, of the phenomena they exhibit. 



But if there is a radically distinct intellectual power or 

 force in man, is such a distinction of kind so isolated a fact 

 as many suppose ? May there not exist between the forces 

 which living beings exhibit other differences of kind ? 



Each living being consists of an aggregation of parts and 

 fimctional activities which are evidently knit together into a 

 unity. Each is somehow the seat or theatre of some unifying 

 power or condition which synthesises their varied activities, 

 and is a principle of individuation. This seems certainly 

 to have been the opinion of BufFon, and it is to this opinion 

 that I referred in speaking of the fourth cause to which he 

 attributed the changes in organic forms. And to me it 

 seems that we must admit the existence of such a hving 

 principle. We may analyse the activities of any animal or 

 plant, and by consideration of them separately find resem- 

 blances between them and mere physical forces. But the 

 synthesis of such forces as we find in a living creature is 

 certainly nowhere to be met with in the inorganic world. 



To deny this would be to deny the plainest evidence of 

 our senses. To assert that each living body is made up of 

 minute independent organisms, each with its own ' principle 

 of individuation,' and without subordination or co-ordina- 

 tion, is but to multiply difficulties, while such a doctrine 

 conflicts with the evidence of our own perceptions, which 

 lead each of us to regard himself as one whole — a true unity 

 in multipUcity. 



The existence in each creature of a peculiar, co-ordinating, 

 polar force seems to be specially pointed to by the pheno- 

 mena of serial and bilateral symmetry, by the symmetrical 

 character of certain diseases, by the phenomena of monstrous 

 growths, and by the symmetrical beauty of such organisms 

 as the Radiolarian Rhizopods.^ 



1 See below, pp. 265-267. 



