12 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



Now, we have considered material objects generally. 

 Are there not some objects privileged? The bodies we 

 perpeive are, so to speak, cut out of the stuff of nature 

 by our perception, and the scissors follow, in some way, 

 the marking of lines along which action might be taken. 

 But the body which is to perform this action, the body 

 which marks out upon matter the design of its eventual 

 actions even before they are actual, the body that has 

 only to point its sensory organs on the flow of the real 

 in order to make that flow crystallize into definite forms 

 and thus to create all the other bodies — in short, the living 

 body — is this a body as others are? 



Doubtless it, also, consists in a portion of extension 

 bound up with the rest of extension, an intimate part of 

 the Whole, subject to the same physical and chemical 

 laws that govern any and every portion of matter. But, 

 while the subdivision of matter into separate bodies is 

 relative to our perception, while the building up of closed- 

 off systems of material points is relative to our science, 

 the living body has been separated and closed off by nature 

 herself. It is composed of unlike parts that complete 

 each other. It performs diverse functions that involve 

 each other. It is an individual, and of no other object, 

 not even of the crystal, can this be said, for a crystal has 

 neither difference of parts nor diversity of functions. 

 No doubt, it is hard to decide, even in the organized world, 

 what is individual and what is not. The difficulty is 

 great, even in the animal kingdom; with plants it is almost 

 insurmountable. This difficulty is, moreover, due to 

 profound causes, on which we shall dwell later. We shall 

 see that individuality admits of any number of degrees, 

 and that it is not fully realized anywhere, even in man. 

 But that is no reason for thinking it is not a character- 

 istic property of life. The biologist who proceeds as a 



