<p>Nishida Kitarō developed his social ontology under the influence of Tanabe Hajime’s “logic of Species.” This translation offers Nishida’s most systematic elaboration of the concept of Species. We find in this translation a thorough and detailed attempt by Nishida to explain the mutually formative interactions between the environment (in the broad sense) and the individual organism. As was characteristic of Nishida’s writings in the mid-1930’s, this text features a novel view of the individual organism shaping its environment by integrating the environment into itself to continue living, as the environment simultaneously moves the organism in one way or another in accordance to the opportunities it affords the organism. In this schema, the Species stands at the center of these paradoxical motions of history. This is true to the extent that the Species is the <i>paradeigma</i> that gives shape to its individual constituents that play a role in creating the environment around them while also having been shaped through the historical-formative process of this environment itself. The result of this text is something undeniably close to Tanabe’s notion of the Species while still remaining unmistakably Nishidian.</p>