116 ORGANISM AND ENVIRONMENT 



treat their subjects as they thought fit, expressed the 

 wish that the courses should have reference to "the 

 presence of God in the natural and moral world." It 

 is with hesitation that I venture to refer to this wish : 

 for I know that in some ways my own conclusions are 

 probably different from those of many who have 

 thought very deeply on this subject. 



In the preceding lectures I have endeavoured to 

 describe the results of investigations on the physiology 

 of breathing, and at the same time to show that these 

 and other investigations lead to a biological concep- 

 tion of life which cannot be reconciled with the 

 mechanistic conceptions handed down to us from the 

 latter half of the last century. I have also argued that 

 in virtue of this biological conception we must claim 

 for biology an independent position as a science deal- 

 ing with the manifestations of an order immanent in 

 the natural world. This order is of a far more inti- 

 mate character than the order hitherto disclosed by 

 study of what we at present call the inorganic world. 



To some men it has seemed that the facts of organic 

 life furnish evidence of the existence of an external 

 creator. The writings of Paley, for example, have 

 popularised this view. If, as Paley tacitly assumed, 

 organisms were machines there would be some basis 

 for this argument: for the formation of the body 

 cannot be explained as a physical and chemical pro- 

 cess. The hypothesis that the body is formed in each 

 individual by an act of miraculous creation would at 

 any rate serve to stop a gap in our knowledge, though 

 a God who did nothing but create machines would be 



