426 APPENDIX 



previously that even the development of male and female 

 forms among the members of the bee community was a case 

 of division of labour. This proposition may be extended to 

 the rest of the organic world, and it may be said that 

 wherever a male and female sex exists there is no real perfect 

 individual. The two parts absolutely belong to one another, 

 and ouly form a whole together, not each for itself. 



But still further. The whole nuiltitude of higher animals 

 are all composed of cells. Only the lowest animals are uni- 

 cellular — in this sense also all higher forms are compound 

 aggregates. AVe might accordingly, in seeking a basis for the 

 idea of the individual, describe the lowest forms which are 

 not sexually separate as individuals, as indivisible wholes. 

 But even this view on more minute investigation proves 

 false, for the multiplication of every such individual and its 

 orig;in from another are found to be the results of the same 

 process as the multiplication even of the highest forms : of 

 the separation of parts from the whole, of a division or 

 budding, as the case may be. 



Yet another point of view. In the process of metabolism 

 there is a constant assimilation of nourishment and excretion 

 of effete material taking place in the body, and therefore a 

 constant change of the constituents of the body. No organ- 

 ism continues the same, and even if we were able to speak of 

 an isolated organic being, we could only do so by speaking of 

 the shortest given moment in the existence of an animal, for 

 at every moment its substance is changing. 



We can, of course, artificially establish individuals in the 

 most various ways ; we can say that by an individual w^e 

 understand this or that, if we define our conception in each 

 case in a particular way. But, as I have shown, in the last 

 result we come to the conclusion that the contemplation 

 of single organisms makes it impossible for us to give a 

 perfectly logical definition of " individual," for the simple 



