232 FORMULAS OF THE LAW OF EVOLUTION. 



longer conscious and voluntary, but compulsory and 

 physical ; their connection Is no longer trusted to 

 their own action, but forced upon them from without. 

 Sociality Is no longer a moral but a physical necessity. 

 Or If we choose to regard the facts from the opposite 

 point of view, we may say that the coral reef is an 

 Individual In whom the erowine insubordination of 

 the members to the central authority has almost 

 dissolved away the individuality. 



§ 15. But It matters little how we decide, and 

 whether we decide, the question of the individuality 

 of the lower organisms : the essential point is that 

 they are transitional between Individuals and socie- 

 ties in the higher sense, and the form which they 

 take In inanimate nature. 



Thus, In a crystal formed out of crystals, or a drop 

 of water composed of drops of water, the individu- 

 ality of the component parts seems evanescent, and 

 their combination to be purely physical. Yet their 

 combination is as real whether it is that of a system 

 of physical particles or of a society of conscious Indi- 

 viduals. The difference Is that the forces which hold 

 It together are In the one case physical, and In the 

 other psychical/ But they exist as much in the one 

 case as in the other, and Inanimate bodies also are 

 held together by forces of cohesion, surface-tension, 

 etc. 



And if we next descend below the limits of the 

 visible to chemical theory and the question of the 

 composition of substances, we find that the same 

 law still holds. As the individual molecules are 

 hypothetical, we cannot indeed detect any gradations 



^ This does not imply that social combinations are unaffected 

 by physical influences, but that these only act mediately^ by pro- 

 ducing certain states of mind. 



