72 Death and Individuality. [February, 
individuals, whose capacity for development is called into 
activity by certain external stimuli, they die off just as do 
the working plastides. 
Upon all the latter external stimuli react more feebly 
when often repeated. They become weary, and their weari- 
ness terminates finally in non-irritability and in death. 
The psychic centre or soul exerts a conservative action 
upon the body, which becomes fainter as the individual ages, 
because stimuli evoke feebler and feebler feelings of satis- 
faction, and elicit therefore fainter reactions. 
It will be seen that, whilst Dr. Mobius has in many 
respects enriched our knowledge of the subject, he has not 
succeeded in showing in the Protozoa any phenomenon 
fairly comparable with death in the Metazoa. 
IV. DEATH AND INDIVIDUALITY. 
By C. S. Minot. 
[We insert the subjoined memoir, taken from our American 
contemporary “ Science,” as throwing new light on a 
subject previously raised in our pages.J 
HE current conceptions of death as a biological pheno- 
menon are very confused and unscientific. In this 
essay I shall endeavour to analyse the problem, and, 
by placing the factors concerned in a clearer light, to dimi- 
nish the obscurity in which the subject is still involved. 
This appears to me the more desirable because the recent 
publications of Weismann and Goette upon this general 
topic have increased rather than lessened the existing con- 
fusion. In fact these authors fail to make the necessary 
distinctions between the different kinds of death, the different 
orders of individuality, and the different forms of reproduc- 
tion. This assertion is, I believe, justified by the following 
paragraphs : — 
First, as regards individuality. Individuality, as it is 
generally understood ( i.e ., as something always equivalent 
