Each of these unities, then, shows itself as insufficient to fix the notion of the individual. Just as insufficient are the external characteristics which are set up here and there as marks, e.g., the origin from a germ or an egg (Gallesio and Huxley). According to that, all the weeping willows of Europe must be an individual, since they can be shown to be historically derived from a single tree introduced into England from Asia by means of offshoots; thus all spring from one germ. According to that, further, all the plant-lice (perhaps several millions) which are produced by parthenogenesis in ten or more generations in the course of a summer, represent collectively a single individual. Just as little as the derivation from a single egg can the typical idea of the race pass as mark of the individual; for the typical generic idea is the idea of the normal individual, which represents the race because it is free from accidental peculiarities; and one gains this idea of the normal individual by allowing the accidental peculiarities to be stripped from all individuals of a species, and only retaining the uniform common element in abstraction. It is here at once evident that one must already possess the mark of the individual in order to be able to compare the several individuals and to single out the normal type; that thus this type cannot possibly hold good regressively as criterion of the individual, since one would thereby only revolve in a circle. But, in addition, we have undoubted individuals, even where the same do not, or imperfectly, represent the generic idea. Thus the root belongs to the idea of the plant, the tentacles to the idea of the polyp; but if I cut off the twig of a plant or a piece of the tube of a polyp, these have no roots or tentacula, and yet continue an independent existence, since they carry about with them all the conditions of the continued existence; we cannot possibly denude them of individuality. Derivation from an egg and the typical generic idea thus appear altogether unsuitable to serve as marks of the individual; let us therefore return to the conception of unity as we formerly conceived it.
It is true the several kinds of unity considered were likewise insufficient, but if each taken singly is too wide for the limits of the concept individual, yet the combination of all these species of unity in a thing afford the necessary limitations. We had, namely, demanded unity for the individual, because it was of its essence that it should be indivisible; but now it is clear that this requirement is only fulfilled, if not merely in this or that relation, but in all possible relations it is essentially inseparable, i.e., if it combines in itself all possible modes of unity. That the five above-mentioned varieties of unity are in fact all possible and alone possible, it is not difficult to see, for they exhaust the three subjective-objective forms: Space, Time, and Causality.
We have, then, gained a satisfactory definition of the individual: the individual is a thing which unites in itself all possible modes of unity: (1) Space unity (of the form); (2) time unity (continuity of action); (3) unity of the (intrinsic) cause; (4) unity of purpose; (5) unity of reciprocal action of the parts (so far as such are present; otherwise, of course, the last disappears).—Where the unity of the form is wanting, as in a beehive, one says notwithstanding that all the other unities are most strikingly present, but not that of the individual. Where the continuity of action is wanting, as in frozen and re-thawed fishes, in dried-up and again softened Rotifers, there exists, it is true, a unity of the thing, but I should consider it an error to speak of unity of the individual; there are in that case just two individuals, which are distinct owing to the pause in their vital activity, as I am different from a man living a thousand years ago. That of the three causal unities none can be wanting to the individual is doubtless self-evident.
It is decidedly of importance for the conception of the individual that no one of these unities is anything absolutely fixed, outwardly rounded off, but all the inferior unities of the same kind can be included and be taken up together with several of their like into a higher unity. It is altogether a vain endeavour to seek for a definite boundary to any kind of unity whatsoever; there are always, again, higher unities conceivable, which include them at the same time, as everything finally is taken up into the unity of the world, and this may again be crowned by a metaphysical unity of different co-ordinated worlds imperceptible to us. If this holds good of the conception of unity, it already shows that it also holds good for the conception of the individual, and that for this, too, the external rounding off and strict separation is only in appearance. This appearance to superficial observation, namely, arises from this, that the individual first comes into being through this composition of all the above-mentioned unities. If, now, several individuals are said to be contained in an individual of a higher order, there appertains to that, both in the individuals of the lower and in that of the higher order, a coincidence of all these kinds of unities; if, on the other hand, any mode of unity is wanting in the former or the latter, there remains, it is true, the subordination of the other unities under the higher ones, but there is then no longer an embracing of several individuals by a higher. Even Spinoza, the monist of purest water, says (Eth. Th. 2, Prop. 7, Post. 1): “The human body consists of several individuals of various nature, each of which is very complex;” and Leibniz carries this idea farther in his Monadology.
Let us first look at the matter in the case of immaterial individuals, where the relations are much simpler. So far, namely, as we have hitherto spoken of individuals, the discussion has only been of material individuals; something quite different to these, and by no means coinciding with them, are the immaterial individuals, which therefore require a quite special investigation. Had a resolution been earlier taken to separate the investigation of spiritual and material individuals, the present terrible confusion would by no means have prevailed with regard to this conception.
We have here again to distinguish between consciously-spiritual and unconsciously-spiritual individuals, and speak provisionally only of the former. Locke asserted that the identity of a person exclusively depends on the identity of consciousness, and this truth has been readily admitted by all later philosophers. The unity which may not be divided, constituting the individual, is accordingly here the unity of consciousness, which we have considered in C. Chap. iii. pp. 113–118. For only by this, that the consciousnesses of two ideas temporally or spatially separate in the brain are taken up into the common consciousness of the comparison, i.e., find in this their higher unity, only hereby does it become possible that the subject or the instinctively supposed cause of the one and the other idea is recognised as one and the same, and accordingly both referred to a common internal cause (Ego). Only so far as the unity of consciousness extend; does the unity of the mental processes by causal reference to a common subject extend, only so far extends the consciously-mental individual.
Now we know that in the subordinate nervous centres of men and animals conscious mental processes go on, which, owing to the excellence of the communications, are united into an intimate unity; we shall then be necessarily obliged to recognise in these unities spiritual individuals. It cannot be objected that these other centres are mentally too low to attain to self-consciousness, to the Me. This Me is only instinctively presumed, i.e., it does not at all need to emerge as self-consciousness; but all goes on as if self-consciousness existed, and referred all actions to the Ego. This we still see, indeed, in the lowest animals and plants, and call it zoopsychological sensibility. There is, therefore, nothing in the way of comprehending the lower nerve-centres as supporters of conscious mental individuals; but when we further see that sensations of different nerve-centres can be taken up into one consciousness under particular circumstances, which more or less occurs in common feeling, one cannot avoid acknowledging this unity of consciousness as a higher spiritual individual, which comprehends the lower individuals in itself. Further, if we consider that the properly active parts of the white nerve-fibres merely destined for conduction, namely, their axis cylinders, are quite the same as the grey matter, and that the white appearance is merely produced by the medullary matter destined fo
r the isolation of the fibres deposited between axis cylinder and fibrous membrane, one cannot avoid the conclusion that the active parts even of the white nerve-matter have a consciousness of their own of some sort or other of the vibrations, which they are certainly only destined to transmit as their share in the general economy. In like manner, the contracting muscular fibres, or the secreting glands responding to nerve-stimulation, beyond a doubt possess a certain sensation of these events, since they are, indeed, adapted to propagate the nervous vibrations exciting them beyond the limits of the nerve-fibres to the neighbouring parts. (Thus, according to Engelmann, the peristaltic movements of the ureter are spontaneous functions of its unstriped muscular walls.)
If we further remember the results of C. Chap. iv., where we came upon cell-consciousness in plants, the supposition is very plausible that even the animal cells, in part still more highly organised than the vegetable cells, have their separate consciousness; an assumption which later on in this chapter will receive yet further confirmation. This much is certain, that the animal cells in great part live, grow, increase, and pay their specific contribution to the preservation of the whole, just as independently as the vegetable cells. Why, if they lead just as independent a life, should they not have just as independent a sensation? Virchow says (“Cellulorpathologie,” 3d edit., p. 105): “Only when we conceive the absorption of nutritive material as a consequence of the activity (attraction) of the tissue-elements themselves, do we comprehend why the several districts are not every moment flooded with blood, that rather the offered material is only taken up into the parts according to the real need, and carried to the several districts in such proportion that, in general at least, as long as there exists any possibility of conservation, the one part cannot be essentially injured by the others.” If this proper activity of the cell holds good for the reception of the nutritive materials, how much more for their chemical and formal conversion! There are, indeed, large districts of the animal body which are entirely devoid of nerves and vessels, e.g., the substance of the epidermis, tendons, bones, teeth, fibrous cartilage; and yet a circulation of moisture through the cells takes place as in plants, and a life and an increase of cells without stimulation of nerves. If the animal cells are capable of performances so individual, just as in the plant, must they not be, like those, supporters of an individual consciousness? The difference is only this: in the animal the importance of the individual consciousness of the cells is evanescent in comparison with the individual consciousness of higher orders, but in the plant the cellular consciousness is the principal thing, because it is altogether only in certain sensitive and privileged parts, as flowers, &c., that there can be any individual consciousness of a higher order worth speaking of.
Lastly, should ever the question with regard to the consciousness of the atoms come to be affirmatively decided, the atoms would, in fine, be the conscious individuals of lowest order. Thus for conscious-spiritual individuals we have found the superposition of individuals of higher and lower orders to be a correct representation; we have now to consider the case of material individuals.
Recurring to the organic individuals, the difficulty of deciding the question, what is the individual, is still more evident in the case of plants than in that of animals. In the case of the higher plants, the layman especially designates as individual what the botanist calls the stem (cormus). Linnæus, Goethe, Erasmus Darwin, Alexander Braun, and many others sought for the individual in the shoot, which answers to a single axis of the plant. Ernest Meyer and others declared the leaf in its different forms (discovered by Goethe) to be the true individual, and the pedicle as lower part of the leaf. Gaudichaud, Agardh, Engelmann, Steinheil, and others thought they had found the same in the pedicle, as whose upper offshoot they regarded the leaf or the calyx. Schulz-Schultzenstein, on the other hand, tried to find it in the cell groups, called by him anaphytons, as presented in the developing buds. Schleiden and Schwann took the next step, setting up the cell as the sole individual in the life of the plant. Each of these views has important reasons in its favour, and, in fact, each of them is so far right in maintaining this or that to be individual, but wrong in combating the other views; for the question is here not about an either, or, but about a both, and. The whole plant as well as each branch and sprig, and also every leaf and every cell, combines in itself all the unities which are necessary for individuality. This indeed is coming to be perceived more and more; thus Decan-dolle distinguishes five orders of individuals (cell, bud, offshoot, stem, embryo); Schleiden, three (cell, bud, stem); Häckel,1 six (cell, organ, counterpart, afterpart, shoot, stem).
It would be altogether wrong and perfectly untenable if spatial separation and seclusion were asserted to be the condition of individuality, for then twins, only externally connected at some part of the skin (as the Siamese pair, who have lived to upwards of sixty years), would always have to be regarded as only one individual, which would be altogether too absurd. Just as certainly is it erroneous to require in an individual independence2 of existence without the support of other individuals; one has only to think what would become of the infant if the mother did not offer it her breast, or of young beasts of prey if the parents did not take them with them on the chase; and nobody will deny individuality to children and young animals.
In lower organisms that coalescence which in the higher only appears as abnormity of the fœtal life uniformly occurs. A unicellular Alga, Pediastrum rotula, appears in the adult condition only as a complex of cells or a cell-colony of middle cell and peripherally deposited marginal cells. The green protoplasmic content of each of these cells parts for the end of propagation into four, eight, sixteen, thirty - two, or sixty - four globular branch cells, which on emergence possess an independent motion lasting a tolerable time; but then lie beside one another, eight for every surface, in order by growing together with one another to form a new rosette-like colony, which, although consisting of eight unicellular Algæ, yet comports itself entirely as an individual. Similar processes are found in a few other Algæ, e.g., the water-net (Hydro-dictyon). In a polyp-stock, every single animal is as certainly an individual as the whole stock is an individual, since its parts, like the members of a so-called simple animal, are related to one another through the community of the nutritive process, and nevertheless maintain their morphological independence. “Every compound zoophyte springs from a single polyp, and grows (like a plant) by continued gemmation into a tree or a dome. The trunk of an Astræa twelve feet in diameter unites about 100,000 polyps, each of which takes up a square half inch; in a Porites, whose animalcules are hardly a line in breadth, their number would exceed five and a half millions. In it, therefore, there are an equal number of mouths and stomachs to a single zoophyte, contributing together to the nutrition, gemmation, and growth of the whole, and also united laterally to one another” (Dana in Schleiden’s and Fror. Not., 1847, June, No. 48). Whoever ascribes individuality to an oak-tree must grant it also to such a polyp-tree.
The globular animal, Volvox globator, is (although not belonging to the corals) a polyp-stock formed of several animalcules, which, sitting on the circumference of a sphere, are only united by feather-like tubes. “If one puts some red or blue colouring matter into the water under the microscope, a powerful current round the balls is very distinctly perceived. This is a consequence of the collective action of all the single animalcules, which, like herds of animals, flocks of birds, even singing or dancing human beings and crowds, possess a common rhythm and a common direction, often even without the word of command, and without being clearly conscious of a purpose. Thus float all polyp-stocks, and the sympathetic as the more coldly judging naturalist sees herein a social impulse, which consists of force and pliability for common purposes, a condition requiring a mental activity, which one may be betrayed into, but not justified in rating too lightly. One must also never forget that all the single animalcules possess organs of sensation which are comparable to eyes, and that they accordingly do not tur
n themselves blindly about in the water, but, as citizens of a great world very remote from our estimation, share with us the enjoyment of a highly sensitive existence, however proudly we may bear ourselves” (Ehrenberg in his great work on the Infusoria, p. 69). This judgment is so interesting just because it shows how the modest but great naturalist, overpowered by the simple facts, recognises an instinct of the masses and a stirring mental life at those lower animal grades.
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