178 THE INDUCTIONS OF BIOLOGY. 



becomes, the stronger grows the contrast between its activity 

 and the inertness of the objects amid which it moves. 



Thus we may say that the development of an individual 

 organism, is at the same time a differentiation of its parts 

 from each other, and a differentiation of the consolidated 

 whole from the environment; and that in the last as in the 

 first respect, there is a general analogy between the progres- 

 sion of an individual organism and the progression from the 

 lowest orders of organisms to the highest orders. It 



may be remarked that some kinship seems to exist between 

 these generalizations and the doctrine of Schelling, that Life 

 is the tendency to individuation. For evidently, in becoming 

 more distinct from one another and from their environment, 

 organisms acquire more marked individualities. As far as I 

 can gather from outlines of his philosophy, however, Schelling 

 entertained this conception in a general and transcendental 

 sense, rather than in a special and scientific one. 



§ 54. Deductive interpretations of these general facts of 

 development, in so far as they are possible, must be post- 

 poned until we arrive at the fourth and fifth divisions of this 

 work. There are, however, one or two general aspects of 

 these inductions which may be here conveniently dealt with 

 deductively. 



Grant that each organism is at the outset relatively homo- 

 geneous and that when complete it is relatively heterogeneous, 

 and it necessarily follows that development is a change from 

 the homogeneous to the heterogeneous — a change during 

 which there must be gone through all the gradations of 

 heterogeneity that lie between these extremes. If, again, 

 there is at first indefiniteness and at last definiteness, the 

 transition cannot but be from the one to the other of these 

 through all intermediate degrees of definiteness. Further, if 

 the parts, originally incoherent or uncombined, eventually be- 

 come relatively coherent or combined, there must be a con- 

 tinuous increase of coherence or combination. Hence the 



