In this lecture I move up a level in the living hierarchy, from organisms to the lineages that they compose. Following a famous thesis due to Michael Ghiselin and David Hull, that species are individuals, I argue that lineages are individuals, but individual processes. As such, we should focus not, as is often the case, on the causes of their changes, but on the causes of their stability. This perspective suggests that natural 2 selection should be seen much more as a source of stability and less as a creative force in evolution. It also provides a lens with which to explore debates about the so-called extended evolutionary synthesis. Some of these themes will be illustrated with attention to the special case of evolving viruses.