76 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



something, the brain, through which that correspondence 

 passes, and the real nature of which whether machine or 

 not is in question. The brain, or rather the reacting some- 

 thing, has been created in its specificity, has been made 

 such as it is ty its history. The first half of our argument, 

 therefore, though able itself, it seems to me, to prove 

 vitalism, requires to be completed by another half, and this 

 second half will be gained by a minute analysis of the 

 " historical basis of reacting." Both our principles of 

 action, we know, are united inseparably. 



That which acts in action is, as we know, determined in 

 its potential specificity by its individual history. All the 

 stimuli it has received in the past, and all the effects of 

 these stimuli, determine how stimuli may be answered in 

 the future, in agreement with the principle of the in- 

 dividuality of correspondence. 



Here, now, we are faced by the very strange fact that 

 a something, from which reactions are to start, is determined 

 in the specificity of its faculty of reacting almost completely 

 from without ; but not in the sense of a mere giving back 

 of what had been received. We know, firstly, that it is 

 solely the elements of the typical combinations received that 

 form the basis of all reacting in the future, and secondly, 

 that specificities are received in a very different field from 

 that in which they are given off in reacting. So-called 

 sensations, or rather typical constellations of centrifugal 

 irritations of the central nervous system, are received ; 

 movements, or rather typical constellations of irritations 

 of centripetal nerves, are given off. It is the latter point, 

 as we know, that distinguishes our reacting "something' 

 from the phonograph. 



