n8 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



either an independent living thing, in which case the term 

 is loose but applicable to every animal in the monocytial 

 stage, or we mean a thing possessing organisation, and by 

 organisation we mean a certain structural plan, the idea of 

 which is a generalisation from our experience of animal and 

 vegetable structure in general. That this is historically 

 and in fact the connotation of the term organisation is in- 

 dubitable. 1 When we use the term organisation we 

 either use it in this connotation or in some other. If we 

 use it in the same connotation with respect to protoplasmic 

 structure, we are consistent, but, as I have shown, we are 

 applying ideas derived from one set of phenomena to 

 another set of phenomena to which they are not appropriate. 

 But if we use it with another connotation, then we expose 

 ourselves at once to the risk of the well-known fallacy which 

 is inseparable from the use of the same term with different 

 connotations. If the two connotations are clearly defined 

 and generally understood, the fallacy may be avoided, 

 though the inconvenience remains ; but if the one connota- 

 tion is clear and definite whilst the other is vague and 

 ambiguous in the highest degree, no amount of circum- 

 spection will prevent our falling into the fallacy almost at 

 the first opportunity. This is exactly the case with the term 

 organisation. In the one sense we know its connotation 

 exactly, and when authors use it in that sense they have, 

 in the course of their arguments, to adhere strictly to the 

 technical sense of the word. Most of them do this, for 

 they are aware of the absurdities and inconsistencies into 

 which they would fall if they did otherwise. But what 

 of those who use the term with another connotation ? They 

 assure us that it does not denote a plan of structure like in 

 kind to that of the metazoa : what then does it denote ? 

 Something so vague, so unreal and unsubstantial that we 



1 Thus in Worcester's Dictionary of the English Language, 1881 : — 

 Organisation. The condition of an organised body or the totality of 



parts which constitute and the laws which regulate an organised body. 



Organised. Formed with organs : composed of several individual parts 



or organs, each of which has its proper function and conduces to the 



existence of the entire system. 



