80 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



stating that the word "element," in its relation to the 

 principle of the " historical basis," is throughout relative. 

 " Elements ' : may be words, but may be the mere letters 

 also, or whole phrases, or the mere lines of the written 

 characters just as you like. We understand how 

 restricted the role of " association ' : in acting is : it is 

 important, no doubt, but only as a means of acting ; or, to 

 speak psychologically, association offers the material for 

 judging, but is not judging ; and judging enters into all 

 psychical acts that are more than association. 



But as all so - called analogies of inorganic facts to 

 experience are not really analogies, so, on the other hand, 

 all endeavour to transfer the elemental organic or vital 

 facts to the inorganic world are extremely misleading also. 

 It is nonsense to speak about the stone " liking " to reach 

 the ground, even if " liking ' is only a psychological word 

 for a natural process. There is nothing at all in the 

 inorganic world even in the least comparable with the 

 " individuality of correspondence." Modern monism, so- 

 called, is unfortunately almost always a monism of mere 

 phrases but not of ideas. 



Conclusions 



Let us then try to formulate in a definite manner 

 our third proof of the autonomy of life, founded upon the 

 analysis of acting as a phenomenon in objectified nature. 



All acting is correspondence between individualised 

 stimuli and individualised effects occurring on a basis of 

 reaction that has been created historically from without. 



Acting defies explanation of any kind on the basis of 



