CHAPTER XIII 



SEGMENTAL INDIVIDUALS 



The highest types of living organism are constructed on a 

 segmental plan. They ought not, however, as is commonly 

 done, to be regarded or talked of as having been " divided 

 into segments " ; in reality, they have been built up in 

 segments. Their evolution has been based on the one 

 fundamental principle ruling all Evolution, namely, The 

 Intensification of Continuity. 



We have seen that, as far as we have gone, Life can be 

 classified in an ascending scale according to the species of 

 Continuity it manifests, and that living evolution has been 

 fundamentally the evolution of Continuity by a process of 

 repeated multiplication. Up to the Continuously Mega- 

 zooidal Individual the process is wonderfully reflected in 

 existing organic types as one of alternation of serial and 

 lateral Continuity-intensification. Thus it is that when we 

 pass on from the Megazooidal we might expect to find a 

 Discontinuously and then a Continuously " Hyper-mega- 

 zooidal " Individual type, in both of which the " hyper- 

 megazooid " would be equivalent to series of megazooids 

 compressed in lateral Continuity, during development, to 

 form a very complex species of growth-unit. 



We do not actually find this, yet we do find a form of 

 multiplication of megazooidal Continuity. It is what we 

 might call " serial multiplication," or the " fusion " of the 

 megazooids of a continuous series to form an organism 

 which has nothing colonial in its structure. There is loss 

 of megazooidal identity in the evolution of a higher form 

 of growth, and we might roughly liken what happens to 

 the fusion of a row of beads on a string to form a single rod 

 (or several rods) in which the original beads could still be 

 traced by external indentations. Apparently, evolutionary 

 environmental forces, having evolved the megazooid, were 



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