president's address. 833 



It is doubtless true enough, as the vitalist maintains, that it 

 is insufficient as an explanation of living process merely "to 

 trace energy from the surroundings through the organism and 

 out to the surroundings again. If," he continues, "this is to 

 be taken to be a full account of the process it is inadequate, for 

 it ignores the fact, characteristic of life, that the energy spent by 

 the organism on its surroundings is not dissipated at random on 

 those surroundings, but is so directed as to cause them to give 

 back again to the organism, sooner or later, just as much energy 

 as the organism has previously expended. In other words, 

 the distinguishing feature of vital activity is self-preservation or 

 the conservation of the organism in a state of functional activity." 



The criticism is just, and appropriate enough. But from the 

 strictly scientific point of view the fact that there is not an 

 indefinite, but a definite distribution of energy simply suggests a 

 further search for a mechanism to account for this additional 

 fact of distribution along lines which, as a matter of fact, make 

 for self-preservation. It will not do to say that such a mechanism 

 is inconceivable. It was just such a problem with which Science 

 was confronted during the growth of the theory of Evolution. 

 How was the obvious adaptation of evolving organism to 

 environment to be accounted for on the lines of Natural Causa- 

 tion 1 The answer to this was the theory of Natural Selection. 



And just in so far as the Natural Selection theory eliminates 

 the idea of purpose (contained in adaptation between organism 

 and environment) from the notion of Evolution, so far also — and 

 no further — might a possible extension of mechanical hypothesis 

 enable us to dispense with the idea of final cause suggested by 

 the purposive distribution of bodily energy above referred to. 



It will not do to harbour the notion that the current of energy, 

 of which the organism is conceived as the physiological channel, 

 can be either interfered with, or even determined in its direction 

 by, purposive conditions. So to represent it is found to involve 

 the vain attempt "to get at an end or final cause without 

 leaving the point of view of efficient causality." And, just as 

 determinism is within its rights in abolishing the abstract self 



