138 THE BIOC08MOS CELLULAR. 



tion to become purely associative without the 

 physical counterpart which it has in Nature. 

 This instinct of the cell, as it can be called, 

 we may at this point identify as its psychical 

 portion, which determines it to ever-renewed 

 and higher association, whose culminating 

 point in Nature is the human organism. But 

 this is again individual, which must rise out 

 of its limitation, out of its mere individuality, 

 and seek to be universal which is manifest- 

 ed in association, whereby the one shares in 

 the all. The cell, we repeat, showed that same 

 associative striving in its little framework, 

 which was the Psyche belaboring and unfold- 

 ing the Physis, or the cell-soul in the cell- 

 body. We have already noted theoretically 

 the point at which the Psyche seems to pass 

 from the outside of Nature to the inside, and 

 Life begins perchance in some pre-cellular 

 condition of matter, wherewith the Biocos- 

 mos opens, at least, in thought. Throughout 

 this sphere the cell becomes more and more 

 associative, its Psyche carrying along and 

 evolving its Physis, up the ascending stairway 

 of all organic forms, till at last in human in- 

 stitutions the Psyche gets to be its own self- 

 conscious process and associates itself pure- 

 ly. So we may say that the cell from the be- 

 ginning has the aspiration in Nature to be- 

 come institutional though strictly it cannot 



