WITH THE DOMAIN OF THE INORGANIC 55 



it, we are confronted in Nature with closed independent sys- 

 tems with harmonious parts and with capacity for continu- 

 ance. Such are individuals. " Though the closure is never 

 complete, the independence never absolute, the harmony 

 never perfect, yet systems and tendency alike have real exist- 

 ence." The individual is Unity in Diversity in what it is 

 and in what it does, a whole whose diverse parts all work 

 together, ensuring continuance. When it transcends the 

 limits of its substance, Mr. Huxley says, that is personality. 

 But in addition to the abundance of life alike of individ- 

 ualities and of individuals there is the quality of insur- 

 gence. Living creatures press up against all barriers ; they 

 fill every possible niche all the world over; they show that 

 Nature abhors a vacuum. We find animals among the snow 

 on Monte Rosa at a height of over 10,000 feet; we dredge 

 them from the floor of the sea, from those great ' deeps ' of 

 over six miles where Mount Everest would be much more 

 than engulfed. It is hard to say what difficulties living 

 creatures may not conquer or circumvent. You may find 

 insects in hot springs in which you cannot keep your hand im- 

 mersed, or Rotifers and other small fry under fifteen feet 

 of ice in the little lakes of Antarctica; you find a Brine- 

 Shrimp and two or three other animals in the Great Salt 

 Lake; you find a fish climbing a tree, and thoroughly ter- 

 restrial types like spiders with species living under water; 

 there is, as Dr. Shipley has shown, a bustle of life on the dry 

 twigs of the heather. When we consider the filling of every 

 niche, the finding of homes in extraordinary places, the mas- 

 tery of difficult conditions, the plasticity that adjusts to out- 

 of-the-way exigencies, the circumvention of space (as in 

 migration) and the conquest of time (as in hibernation), 

 we begin to get an impression of the insurgence of life. 



