ORGANIC MOVEMENTS 5 



takes time, that it is accompanied by electric changes, and 

 that it is probably of a chemical nature. 



Now we should hardly gain very much for our philo- 

 sophical purposes, if in our analysis of movement we were 

 to follow the lines of ordinary physiology, which we have 

 shortly sketched here. Moreover, there is wanting some- 

 thing very important in our sketch, and when looking back 

 to it we may be reminded of the words of Goethe : " Dann 

 hat er die Teile in seiner Hand, fehlt leider nur das geistige 

 Band." Ordinary physiology indeed does not offer us much 

 more than " die Teile." But is there anything besides 

 them ; is a specific motor act of an organism as such any- 

 thing in itself, is it not merely a sum or aggregate ? It 

 seems to me that this is the central problem of motor 

 physiology ; in other words, it seems to me that the 

 question about the " wholeness " of the act of moving must 

 come up at the beginning of the analysis. It certainly is 

 impossible to neglect this question from the very beginning. 



We therefore shall not follow the lines of ordinary 

 physiology in our analytical studies, but shall turn the 

 questions into a somewhat different shape. And, indeed, 

 we know already from our previous researches how we may 

 turn them in order to be successful : let the concept of 

 " regulation " again be made the centre of our discussion, 

 though in a slightly different and more complicated sense 

 than when we were speaking of the physiology of morpho- 

 genesis and metabolism. There is indeed no properly 

 " normal " state of organisation or function that could be 

 said to be restored or regulated by organic movements. 

 But in spite of that, there is something in these movements 

 that bears the character of a correspondence to a change or 



