Chapter V: The Individual and the Species 162

_Argument._--The concept of the organic individual is one which
is arbitrary, and is convenient only for purposes of description.
Life on the earth is integrally one. Personality is the intuition of
the conscious organism that it is a centre of action, and that all the
rest of the universe is relative to it. The individual organism,
regarded objectively, is an isolated, autonomous constellation,
capable of indefinite growth by dissociation, differentiation, and
re-integration. This growth is reproduction. The dissociated
part reproduces the form and manner of functioning of the individual
organism from which it has proceeded. The offspring varies
from the parent organism, but it resembles it much more than it
varies from it. There are therefore categories of organisms in
nature the individuals of which resemble each other more than they
resemble the individuals belonging to other categories: these are
the elementary species. Hypotheses of heredity are corpuscular
ones, and are based on the physical analogy of molecules and
atoms. The concept of the species is a logical one. The organism
is a phase in an evolutionary or a developmental flux, and the idea
of the species is attained by arresting this flux.