THE ORGANIC AND THE INORGANIC 335 



activities of the animal, are directed and regulated 

 activities. The activity of the organism is not a 

 functional activity in the sense that the activity of a 

 dynamo is a function of the nature of the machine, 

 and of the nature and quantity of the energy supplied 

 to it. The nature of the activity of the organism is 

 regulated autonomously by purposes which it " wills " 

 to carry out. 



The organism is a phase in an evolutionary flux. 



Categories of organisms — varieties, species, genera, 

 etc. — are fictions. They are arbitrary definitions de- 

 signed to facilitate our description of nature. They 

 are types or ideas. In constructing them we follow 

 the method of the intellect, and we represent by im- 

 mobility that which is essentially mobile and flows. 

 Between the fertilised egg and the senile organism 

 there is absolute continuity. Our description of the 

 individual organism is a description of it at a typical 

 moment of its life-history, and this description includes 

 all that has led up to, as well as all that will fall away 

 from, the morphology at this particular typical moment. 



Even then the arbitrarily defined organism is only 

 a phase. In defining it we arrest, not only the 

 individual, but also the racial, evolutionary flux. The 

 specific morphology is that of a typical moment in a 

 racial flux. Leading up to it at this moment are all 

 the variations that have joined it with its ancestry, 

 and leading away from it will be all the variations that 

 will convert it into its descendants. 



The individual and racial developments are true 

 evolutions. They are the unfolding of an organisation 

 which was not expressed in a system of material 

 particles or elements interacting with each other, and 

 with the elements of the environment, but which we 

 must seek in an intensive, non-spatial manifoldness. 



