the higher, but shapes the latter from a favourably constituted germ of the lower kind.

(3.) It takes as small steps as possible, and forms the larger differences by adding together a number of small individual differences.

(4.) It makes use of the individual variations casually arising in generation, so far as such are present, in those directions which answer to its own end.

(5.) For maintaining the variations arising, no matter how, it makes use of natural selection in the struggle for existence, so far as they are of greater service to the organism.

(6.) The Unconscious must (apart from its continuous interposition in every organic formation, thus also in all generation) display a direct activity in the progressive development of the organisation: on the one hand, in order with new germs to call forth the variations that do not accidentally arise; and, on the other hand, to preserve from being again obliterated by crossing the variations that have arisen, which belong to its plan, but do not aid the competition of the organism in the struggle for existence.

Lastly, it may be remarked that, for the same reason that no spontaneous generation takes place after sexual reproduction has been rendered possible, the development of a new species from a lower one only takes place if the species does not yet, or at least not at this locality, exist. The development of a new species would thus have to be conceived as a process occurring only once, or at least only a few times, at different localities, under similar circumstances, which is empirically confirmed by the favourable results of the most recent investigations concerning the places of origin or centres of diffusion of the species of plants and animals; whilst, on the other hand, after a new species has once arisen, the similar, or but slightly modified reproduction of the same, is the normal and ever-repeated process, till the possible destruction of

the species. (According to Darwin, the process of formation of certain higher species from their lower primitive forms must be repeated as long or as often as the external conditions which called it forth the first time last or occur afresh; but this requirement can hardly be brought into harmony with the facts of experience, since it must have recourse for the purpose to the further improbable single appearance of shortly enduring and never recurring circumstances.) However long, then, one may imagine the process of developing a new species to take (hundreds or thousands of years), it will still be an inconsiderably small part of the space of the essentially similar continuation of the formed species (some hundreds of thousands to ten millions of years).

This is a second reason, in addition to those already mentioned above, why so many more similar fossil specimens with distinct specific characters are found than those, which exhibit the transitional stages between closely allied species.

XI.

INDIVIDUATION.

1. Possibility and Manner of Effecting Individuation.— If the Essential Being that manifests itself in the world. is sole and indivisible, whence comes the plurality of appearing individuals? whence the singularity of each of the same? what is its object? how is it possible?

The answer to these questions has always been a cardinal difficulty for every explicitly monistic philosophy. It was, in particular, the rejection or insufficient answering of the same that always paved the way to the relapse of Monism into a realistic polyism or pluralism (e.g., Leibnitz after Spinoza, Herbart after Schelling and Hegel, Bahnsen after Schopenhauer). Spinoza ignores the above questions as much as the ancients; he dogmatically declares individuals to be modi of the One substance, but the development of the modus from substance, or the demonstration why each modus is distinguished from another and forms a unique existence, he altogether fails to supply. Subjective idealism (Kant, Fichte, Schopenhauer) imagines it has done enough when it declares. plurality in the world to be subjective appearance, arising through the forms of subjective intuition-space and time

unconcerned that, in the first place, the difficulty is only transferred from the objective to the subjective sphere, but remains just as unsolved here as it was there; and that, secondly, the question remains unanswered how this unique percipient individual, which discriminates itself from every similar individual, is possible according

to monistic principles, since either, if it is conceived as one among many, the incomprehensible real plurality is again inconsistently introduced, or however in the other case, on the hypothesis of Solipism, again the limitation of this whole and sole perceiving subject remains incomprehensible.

The latter side of the question was certainly seen by Schelling (Werke, i. 3, p. 683): “But now the problem is just this, How from an action of the absolute Ego the absolute Intelligence, and how again from an action of the absolute Intelligence the whole system of limitation, which constitutes every individuality, may be explained." The answer follows on the next page: "If now the intelligence remained one with the absolute synthesis, there would indeed be a universe, but there would be no intelligence. If there is to be an intelligence, it must emerge from that synthesis in order to produce it again. with consciousness; but this again is impossible without the addition of a special or second to that first limitation, which now no longer can consist in this, that the intelligence in general perceives a universe, but that it perceives the universe precisely from this fixed point."

I confess that I should envy that man who was able to pick out the truth from this passage and its connections, if he did not already possess it.

As for the Hegelian system, our question unmasks one of its weakest points. According to Hegel, the concept is the sole substance; it is nothing but the concept, and the process of Nature is an objective notional dialectic. On the other side, he himself confesses that the Notion just as little as the word is able to grasp the simple This in its singleness-this individual, which as such one can only show, but not describe. Individual singleness stands outside the range of the concept, and there with outside that of the Hegelian system, if this will be consistent with itself. Plurality as real phenomenon cannot explain the same, for one can see no reason why, on the dismission of the absolute Idea into Nature, every phase of

development of the logical process should have more than a corresponding phase of development of the process of Nature. The dialectical self-splitting of the one into the many yields indeed plurality as pure concept, but not plurality as accident of real phenomena; for Hegel would never have maintained the self-disintegration of a halfcrown into many half-crowns or sixpences, and as little as in this real instance would the self-division of the one be applicable to a self-splitting of a world-soul into many real individuals. Real plurality is more than the idea of plurality; it is a sum of individuals, none of which resembles the others, each of which is a This, nameless, sole (as I am nameless, sole), each of which is attainable by no conception, but only by perception.

Whoever has not felt the need and the difficulty of comprehending individuation from the point of view of Monism may securely pass over the first half of this chapter; he would find no interest in it. For him, on the other hand, who hitherto has kept aloof from Monism precisely on account of this more or less distinctly conscious difficulty, and has put up with the pluralism of the real phenomenal world as an ultimate, for him lies in this chapter, taken in conjunction with Chap. vii. C., the centre of gravity of the present book. In fact, pluralism and individualism have a warrant which cannot be under-estimated with impunity; as every improperly neglected moment always revenges itself by a reaction exceeding a justifiable limit. With Fichte the conscious individual still occupies the foreground, but its significance is not that of a characteristic sui generis, but that of the type of a limited absolute intelligence, which is revealed still more distinctly in Schelling; whilst with Hegel even this type is volatilised into the abstract category of the subjective spirit. As concerns the other side of individuality as separate natural existence, with Fichte there is no mention of it at all, since Nature is to him only subjective illusion; with Schelling and Hegel, however,