EXPERIMENTAL MORPHOGENESIS 147 



morphogenesis without any prepossessions ; we may say 

 that we have fully surrendered ourselves to them; we have 

 not attacked them with any sort of dogmatism except the 

 inherent dogmatism of all reasoning. But this dogmatism, 

 if it may be called so, does not postulate that the results of 

 the inorganic doctrines must hold for the organic world, but 

 only that both the inorganic and the organic must be 

 subject to certain most general principles. 



By studying life as a given phenomenon, by fully 

 devoting ourselves to our problem, we not only have 

 analysed into its last elements what was given to us as 

 our subject, but we also, more actively, have created new 

 combinations out of those elements : and it was from the 

 discussion of these positive constructions that our argument 

 for vitalism was derived. 



We have analysed morphogenesis into elementary pro- 

 cesses, means, potency, formative stimulus, just as the 

 physicist analyses mechanics into time, velocity, mass, and 

 force ; we have then rearranged our elements into " systems >: 

 the equipotential systems, the harmonious - equi - 

 potential system iujparticular, just as the physicist composes 

 his elements into the concepts of momentum or of kinetic 

 energy or of work. And finally, we have discussed our 

 compositions and have obtained our result, just as the 

 physicist gets his ultimate results by discussing work and 

 kinetic energy and momentum. 



Of course the comparison is by no means intended to 

 show that mechanics and biology are sciences of the same 

 kind. In my opinion, they are not so at all ; but neverthe- 

 less there do exist similarities of a logical kind between them. 



And it is not the formal, logical character alone which 



