LIFE 331 



the notion of the " eternal and indestructible " character of 

 inorganic " matter " used to demonstrate the " logical 

 necessity " of spontaneous generation. The reader who is 

 in sympathy with the results of our discussion on " matter " 

 and has recognised : (i) that " matter" as a substratum of 

 our sense-impressions is a metaphysical dogma, not a 

 scientific concept (p. 260) ; (2) that eternity is an idle 

 phrase in the field of noumena (pp. 185, 190); and (3) 

 that indestructibility relates to certain groupings of sense- 

 impressions and not to an undefinable something behind 

 them (p. 255), will be inclined to admit that the physicist 

 is not wholly free from responsibility for the intrusion of 

 metaphysics into biology. The physicist is therefore 

 hardly warranted in demanding that the biologist shall 

 accurately define his use of such terms as matter and 

 force, for the physicist himself is not above reproach. At 

 the same time the author is free to confess that the con- 

 cepts of physics as defined, and he believes logically 

 defined, in the present work scarcely lend themselves to 

 the reasoning of the above passage. Nor can he think 

 that, when physics has impressed upon biology that force 

 is only a certain measure of motion, and not an explana- 

 tion of anything whatever, biologists will be so ready to 

 ascribe the phenomena of life to " forces residing in the 

 organism." It is with the intention of suggesting how 

 the view of mechanism, discussed in this work, can be 

 conceived as applying to life rather than of dealing with 

 the elementary principles of biology, that the present 

 chapter has been included in our volume. 



I 2. — MecJianisDi and Life 



In previous chapters we have seen how the phenomenal 

 world is a world of groups of sense- impressions dis- 

 tinguished by the perceptive faculty under the two modes 

 of space and time, or the mixed mode of diange. This 

 change or shifting of sense-impressions occurs in repeated 

 sequences, or what we have characterised as routine. In 

 the sense-impression itself there is nothing to suggest or 



