THE PROGRAMME 17 



about form, about metabolism, and about movements. In 

 fact, it is according to this scheme that we shall arrange 

 the materials of the biological part of our lectures, though^ 

 as we cannot regard the three divisions as equally impor- 

 tant in their bearing on our ultimate purposes, we shall 

 not treat them quite on equal terms. It will appear that, 

 at least in the present state of science, the problems of 

 organic form and of organic movement have come into 

 much closer relation to philosophical analysis than have 

 most of the empirical data on metabolism. 



It is form particularly which can be said to occupy the 

 very centre of biological interest; at least it furnishes the 

 foundation of all biology. Therefore we shall begin our 

 scientific studies with a full and thorough analysis of form. 

 The science of living forms, later on, will afford us a key to- 

 study metabolism proper with the greatest advantage for 

 our philosophical aims, and therefore the physiology of 

 what is usually called the vegetative functions will be to us 

 a sort of appendix to our chapters on form ; only the theory 

 of a problematic " living substance " and of assimilation in 

 the most general meaning of the word will be reserved for 

 the philosophical part ; for very good reasons, as I hope to 

 show. But our chapters on the living forms will have yet 

 another appendix besides the survey of the physiology of 

 metabolism. Biological systematics almost wholly rests on 

 form, on " morphology " ; and what hitherto has been done 

 on the metabolical side of their problems, consists of a few 

 fragments, which are far from being an equivalent to the 

 morphological system ; though, of course it must be granted 

 that, logically, systematics, in our general meaning of the 

 word, as the sum of problems about the typically different 



