INDIVIDUALITY. 246 



individual or as distinct individuals? If a strawberry-plant 

 sends out runners carrying buds at their ends, which strike 

 root and grow into independent plants that separate from 

 the original one by decay of the runners, must we not say 

 that they possess separate individualities; and yet if we do 

 this, are we not at a loss to say when their separate individu- 

 alities were established, unless we admit that each bud was 

 from the beginning an individual? Commenting on such 

 perplexities Schleiden says — " Much has been written and 

 disputed concerning the conception of the individual, without, 

 however, elucidating the subject, principally owing to the 

 misconception that still exists as to the origin of the concep- 

 tion. ISTow the individual is no conception, but the mere 

 subjective comprehension of an actual object, presented to us 

 under some given specific conception, and on this latter it 

 alone depends whether the object is or is not an individual. 

 Under the specific conception of the solar system, ours is an 

 individual : in relation to the specific conception of a planetary 

 body, it is an aggregate of many individuals." ..." I 

 think, however, that looking at the indubitable facts already 

 mentioned, and the relations treated of in the course of 

 these considerations, it will appear most advantageous and 

 most useful, in a scientific point of view, to consider the 

 vegetable cell as the general type of the plant (simple plant 

 of the first order). Under this conception, Protococcus and 

 other plants consisting of only one cell, and the spore and 

 pollen-granule, will appear as individuals. Such individuals 

 may, however, again, with a partial renunciation of their in- 

 dividual independence, combine under definite laws into 

 definite forms (somewhat as the individual animals do in the 

 globe of the Volvox glohator *). These again appear empiri- 

 cally as individual beings, under a conception of a species 

 (simple plants of the second order) derived from the form of 



* Whether the Volvox is to be classed as animal or vegetal is a matter of 

 dispute ; but its similarity to the blastula stage of many animals warrants the 

 claim of the zoologists. 



