88 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



false, as far as the adult is concerned, though it is perhaps 

 quite false for the child. 1 We soon shall enter once more 

 into these questions. 



At this stage of our analysis the most important point 

 for ourselves strange to say is not the question about the 

 adequacy or inadequacy of the theory of " specific energies," 

 but the simple fact that this whole problem does not touch at all 

 our principle of the " individuality of correspondence" It was 

 only to make this clear that our short remarks about the 

 present state of the problem of specific energy have been 

 made here. 



In fact, if any kind of equipotentiality of the brain 

 were positively established, a new and independent proof 

 of vitalism might be gained from that fact alone. But even 

 if Mueller's law held good, nothing would be affected in our 

 previous discussion. For the principle of the " individuality 

 of correspondence," one of the two foundations of our third 

 proof of life -autonomy, only deals with the unity and 

 individuality of a totality which is constituted by single 

 elements, without asking in any way l>y what sort of 

 processes the elements of the external " individualised " stimulus 

 may be offered to the "something" that is reacting. That this 

 something cannot be a machine remains equally true both 

 if different processes of conduction may occur in the same 

 nerve fibre, and if it is different localities of the brain which, 

 when irritated, represent the different elements of the 



1 In refuting the principle of a " specific energy," in the sense of Johannes 

 Mueller, we, of course, do not intend to deny what may be called the 

 specificity of sensation and its incompatibility with everything like move- 

 ment or energy. Whenever to speak in the language of naive realism 

 sensation occurs, there always occurs something absolutely alien to that 

 which "caused " sensation. But to cause specific sensation is not the innate 

 specific potential property of specific parts of the nervous system as such. 



