PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. < 



preclude the necessity for an interpretation of tlie phenomena of 

 life from the point of view of a philosophically more adequate 

 synthetic principle than the elementary and abstract category 

 of causality. 



And there can be no doubt that this limitation of the concep- 

 tion of cause as a principle of synthetic interpretation becomes 

 specially evident in the effort to apply it to the phenomena of life. 

 In other words, the conception of mechanism fails to satisfy the 

 demand of the intelligence for an explanation of the co-ordinate 

 differentiation of living parts, and the co-ordinate and purposive 

 adaptation to ends, which seem everywhere to be such character- 

 istic features of organisation. 



It was further insisted that the notion generated by the con- 

 sideration of these features is one which is undeniably and 

 radically distinct from that of mechanical causation, involving as 

 it does the idea of determination by " consequent " rather than 

 by " antecedent," which is the differential characteristic in all 

 operations of mechanism. 



Reason was also given for the conviction that the teleological 

 notion of purpose — i.e., of determination by end, or consequent — 

 may not be " put aside as a mere preliminary illusion of the 

 intelligence — as a fiction that we accustom ourselves to suppose,'' 

 but on the contrary that it embodies for us a true and genuine 

 asjDect of reality. 



The ultimate interpretation of organism in terms of purpose 

 brings us, indeed, closer to reality than any merely mechanical 

 one can ever do. For the conception of purpose does not negate 

 mechanism; it includes, while it re-interprets it. The idea of 

 determination by ends involves that of the means whereby the 

 ends ai*e realised. And in living organisms these means are 

 necessarily chemical and physical, i.e., in the broad sense 

 mechanical. From this point of view, physical and chemical 

 events themselves can no longer be regarded merely as causally 

 determined links in an endless chain of transformations of energy. 

 Such a view of them is partial, abstract, and schematic, and is 

 thus in the strictest sense umral. 



