ORGANIC MOVEMENTS 77 



I could not imagine any sort of " machine ' so con- 

 structed as to react in the manner the organism does, and I 

 suppose that you also will not be able to do so. Imagine 

 that it is the medium, in the widest meaning of the term, 

 and the medium alone, which makes a child speak English 

 or German or French, that the medium only makes him a 

 reader of the Latin or the Greek, or the Cyrillian or the 

 Arabic alphabet, and you will become convinced still better 

 perhaps than by mere abstraction, what an impossibility it 

 would be to assume a machine to be the foundation and 

 basis of these facts. 



Does it not contradict the very concept of a " machine,'* 

 i.e. a typical arrangement of parts built up for special 

 purposes, to suppose that it originates by contingencies 

 from without ? And, in fact, the " historical basis " of 

 acting originates in its specificity by contingencies from 

 without, and afterwards plays its part in the " individuality 

 of correspondence." The " individuality of correspondence," 

 even in itself, is inconceivable on the basis of something 

 pre-established or prepared, since stimulus and reaction are 

 totalities. But now what might possibly have been prepared 

 a priori, proves to be not prepared but made from without, 

 and made from without in such a manner as to allow of 

 resolution into its elements and transport into another 

 scene of events. 



So-called "Analogies " to Acting 



Mechanistic authors occasionally have brought forward 

 some inorganic " analogies " to " experience " or to " memory ' 

 as the potential ground of experience. I doubt whether 



