INDIVIDUO

INDIVIDUAL. —

I. PHILOSOPHY

The Latin adjective *individuus* corresponds to the Greek ἀτόμoς, and thus etymologically it is equivalent to indivisible; in fact, this was its fundamental sense in the usage of classical Latinity. The first technical use of the noun ἀτόμoς is found in Democritus’ terminology, where it denotes the ultimate indivisible element of the physical world. Plato employed the term ἀτόμoς to signify the idea not further divisible into lower ideas, that is, the lowest species that is realized in the material world; and he used the word ἀτόμoς to signify a singular concrete whole (Soph., XVI, 229 b). Aristotle identified the reality of the ἀτόμoς with the reality of the πρώτη οὐσία and of every other essence, affirming that no other reality can exist except the concrete or singular one (cf. Met., VI, 4, 4, 8). The singular reality is called by Aristotle τὸ δὲ τι or ἐν ταὶ τὸ δὲ τι (which the medievals translated literally as *unum quid et hoc aliquid*), and also, in the plural, τὰ καθ' ἕκαστα ἀτόμoς, that is, singulars. After Boethius the Latin term *individuum* surpassed its etymological meaning to assume the Aristotelian sense of concrete reality, in opposition to every universal reality or abstract concept. According to this foundation, the term has passed into common usage.

The philosophical doctrine of the individual has epistemological, ontological, and logical developments. From the epistemological point of view, the individual is the concrete intelligible object. As such, its content consists of intelligible notes referred to the empirical datum present to the senses with its actual spatio-temporal determinations, as, for example, when one considers “this tree” or “this man.” By virtue of this reference, human intellect is able to attain concrete reality, to distinguish this individual from that, and to formulate judgments of experience (v. JUDGMENT; INTUITION). From the metaphysical point of view, the individual is the concrete being. The commonly accepted Thomistic definition “being undivided in itself and divided from every other” (Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 29, a. 4) is a formula that seeks to take account of etymology in order to highlight how concrete being is essentially one, and as such undivided and distinct from every other. In this sense, the individual is the reality essentially determined, by its nature incommunicable, and, as is now commonly said, unrepeatable and punctual. Although the individual differs from other individuals by its own individual determinations, it remains similar to them in its specific notes, and thus is intrinsically sufficient to ground legitimate common essential concepts, whether analogous or univocal. From the logical point of view, the individual is the concrete subject, that is, the term of which other predicates are affirmed and which is not predicable of any other. It is from this point of view that individual and singular coincide (v. SINGULAR).

The doctrine of the individual finds its completion in the doctrine of the principle of individuation (v.) and of the person (v.). In our own day it has special relevance because it allows one to evaluate certain motifs proper to contemporary existentialism, for example, the claim of the singularity of individual existence in contrast to the transcendental idealistic conception. Such a claim is more than legitimate, provided it is not pushed to the point of denying the specific similarity of individuals; otherwise existential philosophy would logically end up resolving itself into a philosophy devoid of common essential concepts, that is, into a form of ineffable and incommunicable solipsism. The philosophical problem is not resolved by opposition, but by the balancing synthesis of essence and existence. V. INDIVIDUALISM.

II. SCIENCE

The indivisibility inherent in the etymology of the word individual is lacking in cases of the fractionation of the individual unity through fission, gemmation, etc. (v. REPRODUCTION). The products of such processes may become free or remain temporarily or definitively joined to one another in homomorphic or polymorphic colonies, as occurs in numerous protozoa, worms, coelenterates, echinoderms, tunicates, and in plants capable of vegetative multiplication through stolons, scions, layers, etc.; if the division has been performed experimentally, regeneration of the missing parts takes place. Equal perplexity regarding the limits of the individual can arise in the case of the emergence of two or more free units from a single egg (uniovular twins, polyembryony in the insect *Litomastix truncatellus* and in the armadillo *Tatusia hybrida*) or from a single larva (paedogenesis with sporogony in the worm *Fasciola hepatica*; V. also ANIMATION; TWINS). And the difficulties increase if one turns to the field of natural or experimental abnormalities (Siamese twins; grafted plants and animal or plant chimeras in which organs and tissues of different species or races are vitally associated).

Equally problematic is the definition of autonomy. Between patent dependence on other organisms and more or less accentuated self-sufficiency, numerous intermediate cases can be found, which justify disparities of judgment. Thus, a certain autonomy can be discerned in the hectocotylus, the copulatory arm of the male argonaut, in the leucocytes of the blood, in tissues and organs cultivable *in vitro*, and finally in the individual cells of multicellular organisms. On the other hand, physiological autonomy can be denied, despite morphological autonomy, to parasites, symbionts, and the components of an insect society. Finally, the presence of peculiar characteristics is also subject to controversy in evaluation. Indeed, apart from the frequent difficulty in practice of distinguishing such characteristics from the collective ones proper to the group of belonging (race or species) and of distinguishing transient environmental influences from the action of intrinsic factors, it must be noted that individual characteristics mostly vary temporally to a greater or lesser extent: the modifications are considerable during embryogenesis, and, in cases of metamorphosis, even after birth; but strictly speaking, no individual remains unaltered in successive instants of its life. On the other hand, characteristics can be very similar in individuals that share the same genetic patrimony (uniovular twins, pure lines, clones). Finally, exclusive peculiarities can be found in symbiotic associations: thus in lichens the alga and the fungus, although capable of living separately, acquire, when associated, a functional individuality marked by characteristics that are lacking in the individual components.

From these observations there have arisen the divergences of views in the definitions of individual that have historically succeeded one another, on which have also exerted influence the knowledge acquired and the theoretical conceptions current from time to time.

As long as the fixist-discontinuous doctrine prevailed, the individuality of the organism (i.), as a component of the species and other systematic entities, was accepted without question in its empirical sense. Its unitary value was initially emphasized by continuous evolutionism, which, following the example of Lamarck, regarded organisms as the only natural realities and taxonomic complexes as transitory appearances (v. CLASSIFICATION). Yet precisely from this reevaluation came the fragmentation of the concept of the organism when an attempt was made to define its meaning rationally. Indeed, on the one hand, the cellular theory pushed to its microscopic extreme, and on the other, advances in knowledge about generation and forms of associated life, under the influence of materialism and mechanism, led to the assertion that the organism could be divided into increasingly subordinate units, down to the most minute and hypothetical vital units (biomonads, biofores, biomolecules). Hierarchies of organisms of different orders or degrees were thus established, each considered the result of the association of lower-degree organisms. In his "scale of morphants," Haeckel arranged in ascending order the cell or plastid, the animal person or plant shoot, and the colony or corm. While on one side separate-element societies and even entire metagenetic cycles were considered organisms, on the other, all multicellular beings were deemed colonial, with the vestiges of ancient linear colonies discernible in their more or less apparent structure.

Subsequent discoveries concerning vital phenomena affecting the organism as a whole (neuro-endocrine processes, totipotency of the ovum, directive action of organizers, phenomena of vicariance and self-regulation, relationships between somatic cells and germ cells) and the recognition of psychological elements—and, for humans, spiritual ones—rejected by materialism or interpreted by it in mechanistic terms, discredited the mosaic tendency and replaced it with the opposing view that considered the organism, in its usual sense, as a unitary whole in the complexity of its manifestations, independent of its morpho-anatomical structure. Among certain expressions, albeit debated, of this tendency, modern holistic conceptions may be counted, some tracing them back to W. Goethe, according to which the organism is an indivisible whole, not identifiable with the simple sum of its parts but rather governing those parts themselves. Within the same framework, current biotypological and constitutionalist conceptions concerning the human person in its indivisible somato-psychic and spiritual unity may also be included.

In defining the organism, then, difficulties arise similar to those encountered in defining taxonomic complexes, summarized in the impossibility of drawing exact, natural, and universally valid limits. However, it must be kept in mind that individuality, as a synthesis of peculiar traits, is not necessarily exclusive to the single organism but can also manifest in collectivities when their isolated members lack certain attributes recognizable in the whole: thus, an insect society has its own individuality, even though it is composed of numerous organisms. On the other hand, individuality may become evident or diminish in successive stages of development: the first case is found in phenomena such as polyembryony, paedogenesis, and vegetative multiplication; the second in parasitism or late symbiosis. This leads to the necessity of considering the organism not only statically in space as a harmonious and distinct whole of parts but also in its temporal dynamism as a whole of all its developmental and activity phases: in this sense, an egg or a larva are rather transitory states of the organism. Moreover, the organism exhibits not only exclusive traits but also all the traits proper to the systematic group to which it belongs (race, species, etc.), and thus its value cannot be fully understood when considered in isolation, detached from the complex to which it belongs. Finally, it may be observed that uncertainties about the limits of the organism diminish as one moves from the germ to the adult and from lower to higher organisms, i.e., with the progression of morpho-physiological differentiation. In humans, the organism attains the completeness that earns it the title of "person."

In conclusion, it may be said that modern views have reaffirmed the natural concept of the organism, while the question of its precise delimitation is no longer considered relevant, as it is unnecessary for asserting its objectivity and practical graspability.

III. ETHNOLOGY

There have been, especially in the second half of the last century, and there still are today, scholars of ethnology, history of religions, and related sciences who, in the life of peoples, have denied and still deny any value to the individual (i.) in relation to society. Only a few of the many testimonies that could be adduced in support of this theory, so grave in its consequences for the aforementioned sciences, are reported here. Bastian maintained that the thought of the individual is sterile; only social thought is fruitful, producing the psychic creations that the spirit can contemplate and study. Indeed, he added, it would be better to say that the thought of the individual does not receive the possibility of its existence except after and within social thought. When man, as a social being, has cast his reflections into the ethnic horizon—that is, into the social products of customs, usages, myths, legends, languages, etc.—then he will be able to observe himself, and through a good method of analysis, every individuality will reemerge. For in reality, man exists only as a social being: the individual exists only in abstraction. This psychology of the thought of peoples would be ethnology (*Der Völkergedanke im Aufbau einer Wissenschaft vom Menschen*, Berlin 1886, pp. 6-20).

The Austrian sociologist Gumplowicz, even more forcefully than Bastian, maintained that "the greatest error

of individual psychology is the support that man thinks. From this error arise the perpetual inquiries into the source of the intellectual activity of the individual, into the causes that make him think in one way rather than another, from which theologians and naïve philosophers take occasion to make considerations and, indeed, to give advice on how man ought to think. For primarily what thinks in man is not he himself, but the society that surrounds him; the source of his intellectual activity is not within him, but in the social environment in which he lives, in the social atmosphere that he breathes, and he cannot think otherwise than as the influences of the social environment dictate, which are concentrated in his brain» (*Grundriss der Soziologie*, Vienna 1885, p. 167).

Post, founder of legal ethnology, held that individual psychology cannot serve as the basis for science, because only a small part of psychic life reaches the knowledge of the individual; the greater part escapes him everywhere. Noting that individual psychology had remained stationary from the time of the Greeks down to our own day, he added: «But immense progress will be possible when, instead of individual psychology, social psychology is placed in its stead, when, basing itself on the customs and social ideas of all the peoples of the earth, a history of the evolution of human consciousness is written. The great idea of the social science of our times is that it strives to know the nature of the human spirit from its influences in every field of the life of peoples» (*Die Grundlage des Rechts und Grundzüge seiner Entwicklungsgeschichte. Leitgedanken für den Aufbau einer allgemeinen Rechtswissenschaft auf soziologischer Basis*, Oldenburg 1884, p. 478; id., *Einleitung in das Studium der ethnologischen Jurisprudenz*, 1886, p. 10). In short, reading these authors one has the clear impression that society is regarded as a living being that thinks, wills, acts, and achieves; that is, qualities proper to the individual are attributed to it; hence a true reversal of values.

Yet it suffices to reflect for a moment on the fact that all modern progress in the sciences and their applications is chiefly the fruit of individual efforts, and the colossal error of this position immediately becomes apparent—namely, that the value of the individual is admitted in the case of peoples of high civilization but denied in the case of those of inferior civilization.

Vierkandt, for example, though vigorously combating this mentality, initially admitted it with regard to primitive peoples. «The difference in the position of the individual,» he says, «in relation to the totality of barbarian peoples and civilized peoples consists generally in this: that in the former it rises less above the others than in the latter. We may apply to this difference the two terms of bound individual and free individual, inasmuch as the former is characterized by the subjection of his will, feeling, and thought to the corresponding characteristics of the community, while the latter is distinguished by a relative independence from these characteristics. The free individual is possible only in full civilization; among savage and semicivilized peoples, even great individuals who have important practical and political activity do not rise above the mass except in their dynamic qualities, not from a theoretical standpoint. The herd instinct of man is so manifest in this period of time that the individual is nothing more than a «herd-living animal» (*Herdengeschöpfe*: A. Vierkandt, *Naturvölker und Kulturvölker*, Berlin 1896, p. 171).

Spencer, in his work *Principles of Sociology* (London 1876; Italian trans., Padua 1922), in treating the external and internal original factors of social phenomena, recognized the necessity of historical study. He did this by showing what primitive man is like today in physical, emotional, and intellectual respects, because he considered him the most faithful representative of prehistoric man. He is an individual lacking abstract ideas and principles, lacking inventive imagination, a credulous being who has neither the idea nor the feeling of religion, nor moral sentiments. In conclusion, Spencer expresses how he conceived the entire individual in function of society. «The reader,» he says, «will have seen that the intellectual characteristics of the savage are found in civilized children. As a last slave, it remains indifferent whether the development of intellectual faculty, which can avoid hope for one who cannot proceed, as cause and, at the same time, as consequence. The progress of primitive man is retarded by the absence of capacities that progress alone can engender» (*Principles of Sociology*, Italian trans., p. 17). Even Th.-W. Danzel said in more recent times that «the individual of a primitive group or community is almost entirely lost in the life of his community. The thought and conduct of the primitive are collective, etc.» (*Kultur und Religion des primitiven Menschen*, Stuttgart 1924, p. 5). Great has been the importance of this theory when one reflects that from it have arisen various theories on the origin of society, of the family, of the state, of morals, and of religion, such as the school of Durkheim and Lévy-Bruhl, Tylor’s animism, and the various opinions on the origin of religion from different forms of magic, that is, from the irrational.

Great merit is due to Fr. Schmidt, as recognized by Lowie, Koppers, and Mühlmann, for having strongly reacted against this false evaluation of the individual, as well as against the methodological errors that have resulted from it, and for having practically encouraged research on the individual among primitive peoples. In his important work *L’ethnologie moderne*, in which he set forth the program of the vigorous international review of ethnology and linguistics *Anthropos*, which he founded in 1906, he clearly pointed out the false path along which ethnology had set out. «Modern ethnology,» he said, «is entirely dominated by collective principles; there can be no doubt of the wide diffusion of these ideas. We must add that in practice these principles govern ethnological studies far more dominantly than can be imagined from the theoretical assertions we have cited. It can simply be said that studies other than those of the group are unknown to the ethnology of our time. Modest beginnings in other directions, which appear here and there, cannot be regarded as substantial changes, because they have often been inspired by very different motives, although in certain tendencies we note with satisfaction that they contribute to breaking the empire of collectivism» (p. 617).

Father Schmidt has always maintained that ethnology is the science of the group, the science of peoples; indeed, he has recognized for it an extremely broad specific field, defining it as the science whose object is the development of the spirit and of the external activity of man, guided by the spirit, in the life of peoples. At the same time, however, he has seen the necessity of studying the variations and differing evaluations of a people’s civilization that arise from the individual, without which one cannot have an exact knowledge of the present state of civilization from which ethnology sets out to reconstruct history. Therefore, in proposing the study of the individual among primitive peoples, he rightly observed that one must not be content merely to note and study the great agglomerations of peoples and tribes and their universal conceptions, customs, and usages, but must direct attention to the fluctuations and variations within these agglomerations, whether they proceed from small groups, from isolated families, or—above all—from particular individuals. From this last perspective, one must give special importance to individuals who distinguish themselves from their environment by exceptional talents, whether in arts and crafts or in warfare, or in the social, intellectual, and religious order; the entire formation of such individuals, what they have received from the environment around them, and the influence they exert on others must be the object of particular study. In all this, as Father Schmidt rightly notes, there is only the negative side of the problem, inasmuch as one observes how one or more individuals stand out from the community. Yet it is even more important to study when and how

certain individuals can act positively upon society, supplementing, adding, enriching, and perfecting it, either by developing what already exists or by introducing more or less original innovations.

Mühlmann emphasizes the necessity and great importance of biographies of the primitive individual, composed from the psychological perspective of personality, using accounts from relatives, neighbors, friends, and enemies about the life of the individual in question, or even autobiographies, from which one can see the influences that the individual receives from others and exerts on others, and thus better understand the civilization of primitives.

After the alarm raised by Father Schmidt, studies on the primitive individual in relation to society and, in general, have multiplied. Even Vierkandt, who, as we have seen, had paid his tribute to the common current that entirely devalued the primitive individual, changed his mind and published his study on leading individuals among primitive peoples. There have been scholars such as Leroy, Bellon, Krause, Lowie, and Schmidt who have generally criticized the various theories that base religion, morality, and social life on the irrational, rejecting the French sociological school of Durkheim, especially Lévy-Bruhl’s prelapsarianism. Missionaries, explorers, and scholars of every nation have turned their attention to the primitive individual in every part of the world. Among many, we may recall here Father Koppers for the Yamana of Tierra del Fuego, Koch-Grünberg for the primitives of the Amazon River in Brazil, Nordenskiöld for the Ciriguan and Cianc, Sapper for the Quechua, Radin for the Winnebago, Father Schebesta for the Pygmies of the Ituri and the Malay Peninsula, Stephan for the primitives of New Pomerania in Melanesia, Beck, Knabenhans, and Basdevant for those of Australia, etc. With regard to the latter, given the great importance that evolutionist authors and especially the French sociological school have attributed to them, it will be interesting to report here Basdevant’s judgment, who participated in fifteen exploratory expeditions among them. “Among the members of a tribe,” he says, “one finds individuals of differing character and talents in the same way as is observed in a modern society, including orators, warriors, artists, and buffoons.”

Studies on the individual undoubtedly need to be further developed; nonetheless, even half a century ago they had already set out on the right path. Koppers, in concluding one of his studies, could affirm in 1928 that “in the light of new investigations primitives appear ever more rehabilitated. An old injustice has been repaired. I speak of an injustice (he added) because to deny an individual his personality is ultimately nothing other than to deprive him of what belongs to him as specifically human. This has been restored to primitives. The power of facts has surpassed contrary a priori theories, which can now be considered definitively refuted” (*Individualforschung unter den Primitiven* [see bibliography], p. 364). If the study of the individual is necessary for having a correct knowledge of the present civilization of primitives, as stated above, it is even more so for the observation of cultural causality, closely tied to the determination of time. Hitherto, precisely in this regard, ethnology has been inferior to history based on written documents—a deficiency already noted by Grünwedel, who observed that while in history one can observe the action of individuals, in ethnology this cannot yet be observed. The study of tribal myths, especially a methodical investigation of the different figures of culture heroes and ancestors, can, according to Schmidt, provide numerous traces of individual history. A clear case of this is found among the Maidu in the reformer Oankoitupheh, who brought the people back to a higher form of the most ancient religion.

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