ANIMAL LIFE GENERATION. 



329 



given species, or more remotely the original 

 Animal-norm itself. That Form seems super- 

 imposed upon every living individual, whence 

 comes it, and what does the act! It is one 

 phase of the total manifestation of Nature as 

 individuated or separative. Yet this individ- 

 ual as Organism insists upon not remaining 

 merely individual but also upon sharing in 

 what created it, that is, in its own creation. 

 So it becomes generative, turning back to its 

 genetic source; what makes it, it must make 

 likewise. Thus it breaks over its individual 

 limits, reaching backward and forward in pro- 

 creation ; it makes itself universal organically 

 (not spiritually). Even our body longs to 

 burst its barrier of Form (in its genetic de- 

 sire) and to re-make its own Form. 



Assimilation, having satisfied one sort of 

 appetite, begets another, its counterpart and 

 complement. The Organism in its assimila- 

 tive stage has reproduced itself as something 

 already given and existent; but now it seeks 

 to reproduce its own reproduction. In As- 

 similation the Organism takes for granted 

 in impulse its own origin, but now it pushes 

 to originate just that origin: it can not stay 

 a part of itself, but must be the whole of its 

 process, must instinctively seek to be univer- 

 sal. Though already born, even the animal 

 Jbody is not content therein, but proceeds to 



