154 THE EVOLUTION OF CONTINUITY 



the main road on which Continuity has been repeatedly 

 multiplied. On all hands there is the process of Give and 

 Take, of self-sacrifice and self-preservation ; and as the 

 cycle-career of the somatic cell has been sacrificed for the 

 successful evolution of certain cell-lines towards sexual- 

 element formation, so have the arrested forms of living 

 Continuity been sacrificed in order that the remainder 

 might advance on the main road of evolutionary destiny. 

 This has been the inevitable result of Nature's efforts towards 

 equilibrium, themselves inevitable ; remembering which, 

 we may say it has been necessary for Nature's equilibrium. 



Environment in the special aspect of evolutionary forces 

 has worked to produce, maintain, and multiply Continuity, 

 and even when, as in the Discontinuously Zooidal Individual, 

 the built-up units composing the Individual remain separate 

 and free, the matter is one of definite accomplishment rather 

 than of defeat. For the Continuity is an advance on that 

 of the preceding type and is a monument to definite results 

 obtained. It is a matter of arrest on a side-path. Environ- 

 ment, it is true, still continues to work for discontinuity, 

 but it is a losing game. With the death of the Individual 

 she shatters a given personality, but only to see it reproduced 

 again. Force of Attraction inevitably dominates force of 

 Repulsion. The manner in which Environment appears 

 to have acted as a uniter and compressor will be suggested 

 in the next chapter, and also when dealing with Symmetry. 



While new species of plants and animals have doubtless 

 still to appear in this world, it does not seem probable that 

 any existing types of Continuity are destined to be multiplied 

 into higher ones. In any case it is difficult to see how the 

 highest form, segmental, could be multiplied ; it might be 

 further intensified, traces of segmentation might disappear, 

 but this would almost certainly involve, in man at any rate, 

 loss of function, and be a matter of devolution. We have 

 families and multiples of families of human beings respec- 

 tively developing in relative continuity, but a " super- 

 Individual " equivalent to several Individuals united together 

 is inconceivable. 



No doubt there have been cases of degeneration during 

 the process of living evolution, and it may be that a given 

 form of Continuity has at times been reduced to a lower 



