The idea of the truly individually one-ness-ary [ Die Ahnung des echt individuell einheitlichen] has always been there, and it is surprising that the atomistic era of research has not led investigators to apply the basic tenet of atomism (that is, the individuism characterized, as the word expresses, by true qualitative indivisibility) also ascendingly synthetically to the whole of life [i.e. to the whole living organism : the latter being then seen as to be qualitatively indivisible, a-tomos] and not only [apply] to its "parts" which in fact are merely fortuitous and in a certain sense arbitrary conspicuous fragments. Today's consequent defence of system-life [the organism as a system of parts and particles] too much still reflects the physiologically analytical method of research, which [analytical residues] one has allowed to remain in it, as in the case of an absent-minded anatomist leaving his scalpel behind, which, like the "parts" of the organism, is in fact also an extrinsic body.