26 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



thing very variable. In some cases we understand the 

 laws and principles of such variability, in others they 

 either do not exist or they escape us by reason of the 

 minuteness of the objects in question. 



Shall we by adopting the " machine-theory ' of life be 

 able to understand all that has been observed regarding 

 the most simple movements ? Most of it, certainly, might 

 be understood in such a manner, at least in principle, and 

 as long as no greater complexity is discovered. But to 

 prove that the fact of so-called " experience " is beyond the 

 limits of such an explanation, will be the object of a 

 special discussion in the future. Of course, as mentioned 

 before, to affirm the possibility of mechanical explanation is 

 not to affirm the impossibility of vitalistic actuality : for 

 methodological reasons we always hold the " machine- 

 theory ' of life as long as possible this theory may be 

 actually wrong even in the apparently most simple 

 phenomena in organisms. 



8. CO-ORDINATED MOTIONS 



We now leave the work of Herbert Jennings and turn 

 to a short survey of the possible classes of so-called co- 

 ordinated motions. 



Much has long been known about the elemental 

 processes that go on in the nervous system of a moving 

 animal, or, rather, much has been attributed to this system 

 in the form of a so-called " property " or " functional state." 

 For it must be well understood that the immediate subject 

 of experimental study always and in every case has been 

 the state of the motor organs as such ; so-called nervous 



