ORGANIC MOVEMENTS 81 



physico-chemical tectonics of any sort, for the following 

 reasons. 



It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to imagine 

 a machine in the widest sense of the word such as to 

 allow of even the individuality of correspondence in acting, 

 taken alone. For it can be shown that it is not the single 

 constituents of the stimulus on which the single constituents 

 of the effect depend, but one whole depends on the other 

 whole, both " wholes " being conceivable in a logical sense 

 exclusively. 



But to this first general impossibility is added a second, 

 still more important, by an analysis of the character of the 

 historical basis. That the individualised correspondence 

 in acting takes place upon a historical basis, that its basis 

 is made from without, is a very strange feature in itself 

 but here we have the phonograph as an analogue. The 

 historical basis of acting the " prospective potency " for 

 acting, if you care to say so by analogy differs in two 

 fundamental respects from the phonograph, or from any 

 sort of machine imaginable in physics and chemistry. 

 Firstly, the effects that are given off in acting occur in a 

 field of natural events very different from that of the 

 stimuli received historically : sensations belong to one, 

 movements to another field. Secondly, the historical basis 

 serves only as a general reservoir of faculties, the specific 

 combinations of the stimuli received historically being 

 preserved by no means in their specificity, but being 

 resolvable into elements ; these elements then transferred, 

 however, to another sphere of happening are rearranged 

 into other specificities, according to the individuality of the 



actual stimulus in question. 



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