THE RELATIONS OF PARTS AND WHOLES. 345 



may form part. Nor do the relations of a body to 

 its members realize this ideal. The mutual implic- 

 ation of members of bodies is in all cases more or 

 less transitory and impermanent. The parts of all 

 bodies are more or less capable of existing inde- 

 pendently of their wholes, while all bodies have 

 the power more or less of repairing the loss of 

 their parts. In the lower organisms especially, the 

 mutual independence of whole and parts reaches an 

 astonishing height. To say nothing of leaves and 

 cuttings capable of developing into complete plants, 

 of the grafting of one plant upon another of a totally 

 different order, we find that crabs will repair the 

 loss of their legs, claws and eyes, that a lizard will 

 part with its tail with the greatest equanimity, and 

 that the arms of a male cuttle fish can sever them- 

 selves from their body and embark upon the ro- 

 mance of life on their own account.^ Even in man 

 operations like the transfusion of the blood of one 

 organism into another, and the transplantation of 

 skin from one body to another, are perfectly easy. 

 Hence we cannot from the mere sight of a member 

 infer the existence of the body of which it was a 

 member, although, as knowledge grows, we can 

 define within gradually narrower limits the sort of 

 body it must belong to. But the mere sight of an 

 arm wull not enable us to assert positively whose 

 arm it is, nor even establish its connection with a 

 body ; for it may have been cut off from its body, 

 nor will it tell us whether the body is alive or dead. 

 Everywhere we find wholes which can dispense 

 with their individual members with disgusting facil- 



1 The hectocotylus. It matters not that this independence of 

 the parts endures only for a limited period, for the wholes also 

 which dispense with their parts are equally impermanent. 



