OBJECT AND LIVING ORGANISM 99 



the future. And, as we do this, we see how the various chains 

 link up with one another to form a network which finaUy 

 draws into its toils everything that happens in the world. 



It is not surprising that physics should attempt to explain 

 all associations in the world by causality alone, rejecting any 

 other way of considering them. And yet physics is wrong, 

 for causality is not the only rule at our disposal for systematise 

 ing the world. 



MATTER 



We call the content of objects, matter. Like the object, 

 matter has properties and capacities. The science concerned 

 with the investigation of matter is chemistry. Matter is not 

 freely exposed anywhere ; in order to get matter, we must 

 always first destroy an object. This is most obvious when 

 we wish to get matter from some implement that we have 

 constructed ourselves. To do so, we must destroy not only 

 the external form, but likewise its internal structure. 



Let us assume, for instance, that we break up an old 

 locomotive to get iron from it. We then discover that, in 

 addition to the conformation of the parts from which the 

 locomotive is built, there is another which belongs, not to the 

 locomotive, but to the iron itself. In order to keep this 

 distinction clear in words, we shall call the "framework " 

 the disposition of the parts in space, in so far as that belongs 

 to the locomotive ; and the arrangement of the iron particles 

 in space we shall call the " structure." 



The confusion of these two essentially different kinds 

 of conformation has led to serious error ; and still at the 

 present day it misleads many scientists so far, that they even 

 derive the framework of the living organism from the structure 

 of matter. 



Since structure really belongs to the field of physical 



