336 The Unity of the Organism 



manifestations at such times and at ordinary times is al- 

 most entirely one of degree, rather than of essential nature. 

 The attentive observer will not fail to find personalities as 

 here understood always and everywhere, no matter how sim- 

 ple and lowly the lives, and monochrome the external condi- 

 tions. In little details of intelligent, but still more of reflex, 

 instinctive, and emotional life, all of which compounded to- 

 gether makes what we often call temperament, the keen and 

 sympathetic observer will always see persons in the deep 

 sense here indicated. Not the transcendent genuises merely, 

 the Aristotles, the Shakespeares, the Napoleons, have the 

 right to be called personalities, because of the unique powers 

 with which they are endowed ; but each and every one of civi- 

 lization's humblest-ranked myriads, and each and every 

 nature-tutored denizen of the virgin forest, of the untilled 

 plain, and of the unregenerate desert, have the same right- 

 in-kind. 



Personality and the "Breath of Life" Viewed in the Light 

 of Physical Chemistry of the Organism 



Swinging the discussion back now on the physico-chemical 

 aspect of the organism, I recall first the truth alluded to a 

 little while ago, namely, that it is preeminently the chemical 

 rather the physical attributes of elementary inorganic sub- 

 stances which furnish the distinguishing marks of these sub- 

 stances. Even in the inorganic world we saw that substances 

 are most readily and decisively differentiated from one an- 

 other by the transformation-products resulting from the 

 reaction of the substances upon one another. "Transforma- 

 tion of energy," using a form of expression favored by the 

 disembodying tendencies in recent chemical theory, is the 

 most distinctive thing about all chemistry, inorganic as well 

 as organic. The oxidation and other chemically reactive 

 changes and products of nickel and iron, we noticed, are the 



