Related to Material concerned with integration and disintegration (-1906)
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'The processes in fact which result in development are made up of differentiation and integration; differentiation means the making things to be different, integration means the binding them together into a whole; these are applied to the parts of the organism, the organism and surrounding nature, the organism and other organisms. Differentiation of parts is illustrated by the figure on the preceding page. (Spencer's Principles of Biology, vol. ii. p. 187.)

Integration of parts means the connected play of them; so that one being affected the rest are affected. Differentiation from the environment takes place in weight, composition, and temperature. A polype is little else than sea-water, which it inhabits; a fish is several degrees of temperature above it, and made of quite different materials; till at last a mammal is 70° or 80° above the surrounding matter, and made of still more different materials. Integration with the environment means close correspondence with it; actions of the environment are followed by corresponding actions of the animal. Differentiation from other organisms means individuality; integration with them sociality.' (64-65)

 

'The first indication of consciousness is a perception of difference. The child's eyes follow the light. Immediately this colourless, homogeneous universe splits, up into twoparts, the light part and the dark part. A line is drawn across it, it is made heterogeneous, and the first thing that exists is a distinction... But by and by a number of these lines of distinction are found to enclose a definite space ; they assume relations to one another; the lines white, round, light, capable of being thrown at people, include the conception of a ball ; this gains coherence, becomes one, a thing, holding itself together not only separated from the rest of consciousness, but connected in itself into a distinct whole, integrated. Here we have the second process. And throughout our lives the same two processes go hand in hand; whatever we perceive is a line of demarcation between two different things ; we can be conscious of nothing but a separation, a change in passing from one thing to another. And these different lines of demarcation are constantly connecting them- selves together, marking out portions of our consciousness as complete wholes, and making them cohere. Just as a sculptor clears away from a block of marble now this piece and now that, making every time a separation between what is to be kept and what is to be chipped off, till at last all these chippings manifest the connection that ran through them, and the finished statue stands out as a complete whole, a positive thing made up of contradictory negations : so is a conception formed in the mind.

And this conception, when it is thus made into a whole, integrated, by an act of the mind, what does it immediately appear to be? Why, something outside of ourselves, a real thing, different from us. This is the third process, the process of differentiation from the environment.' (65-66)

 

'The action of these two laws taken together does in fact amount to the creation of new senses. Men of science, for example, have to deal with extremely abstract and general conceptions. By constant use and familiarity, these, and the relations between them, become just as real and external as the ordinary objects of experience ; and the perception of new relations among them is so rapid, the correspondence of the mind to external circumstances so great, that a real scientific sense is developed, by which things are perceived as immediately and truly as I see you now. Poets and painters and musicians also are so accustomed to put outside of them the idea of beauty, that it becomes a real external existence, a thing which they see with spiritual eyes, and then describe to you, but by no means create, any more than we seem to create these ideas of table and forms and light, which we put together long ago... here, it would seem, are actually two new senses, the scientific and the artistic, which the mind is now in the process of forming for itself There are two remaining marks of development: differentiation from surrounding minds, which is the growth of individuality; and closer correspondence with them, wider sympathies, more perfect understanding of others. These, you will instantly admit, are precisely the twin characteristics of a man of genius. He is clearly distinct from the people that surround him, that is how you recognise him ; but then this very distinction must be such as to bind him still closer to them, extend and intensify his sympathies, make him want their wants, rejoice over their joys, be cast down by their sorrows.' (67-68)