ANIMAL LIFE GENERATION. 33 ^ 



it is when taken in itself, an institutional or- 

 ganism, the association of many individuals 

 for the purpose of satisfying their basic or- 

 ganic wants. Civilized man does not gratify 

 his bodily needs immediately, but through the 

 association with his fellow-men. Already we 

 have noticed the association of all the organs 

 into the organism, and of the cells into each 

 organ, so that Nature gives not only the hint, 

 but the instinctive propulsion to human asso- 

 ciation. In like manner the fundamental con- 

 cept of Ethics is suggested by the organic ac- 

 tion of 'Assimilation and Generation, though 

 both are to be subordinated in the still higher 

 ethical relation. 



The culminating work of Life as or- 

 ganic is the generative Process of the high- 

 est animal, whereby this reproduces the Form 

 of itself in a new individual. It is thus self- 

 begetting, propagates itself through duration, 

 and in a way eternizes itself. We may say 

 that the Animal now breaks out of its own 

 fixed and otherwise impassable limits of Space 

 and Time its bounded shape and its periodic 

 life and posits itself in new limits of Space 

 and Time. Thus it transcends those primal 

 elemental restraints of Nature (Space a 

 Time) and to a degree determines then, 

 its purpose. We may here conceive the Ani- 

 mal as going back to its first given Form and 



