_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. CHAPTER VI TRANSFORMISM 208 _Argument._--A reasoned classification of organisms suggests that a process of evolution has taken place. It suggests logical relation- ships between organisms, while the results of embryology and palæontology suggest chronological relationships. Yet this kinship of organisms might only be a logical, and not a material one. Evolution may have occurred somewhere, but it might be argued that the ideas of species have generated each other in a Creative Thought. But transformism may be produced experimentally, and so science has adopted a mechanistic hypothesis of the nature of the process. Transformism of species depends on the occurrence of variations, but these arise spontaneously and independently of each other, and they must be co-ordinated. This co-ordination of variations cannot be the work of the environ ment. Variations are cumulative, and they exhibit direction, and this direction is either an accidental one, or it is the expression of an impetus or directing agency in the varying organism itself. The problem of the cause of variation is only a pseudo-problem. CHAPTER VII THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 245