I02 THEORETICAL BIOLOGY 



one another from the arrangement of the atoms in space. 

 And so, in place of chemistry, we have, in the last instance, 

 micro-physics. The ideal now is to refer all the qualities of 

 substances to the arrangement and movement of atoms or 

 groups of atoms. As a final outcome of this theory, the atom 

 loses every material character whatsoever, and becomes a 

 mathematical point in an eddy of a medium that is con- 

 tinuous and universally circulating, but not further defined. 

 And with that we get back again to pure local signs and 

 direction-signs. # 



From the biological point of view nothing could be said 

 against this reduction, if physics recognised clearly that, in 

 the last instance, it builds its foundations upon purely sub- 

 jective qualities, and that consequently all the structures 

 arising thereon are purely subjective appearances. 



But this is by no means the case, for physics is all the 

 time under the delusion that, through its reduction of all pro- 

 perties and capacities of substances, it is continually getting 

 nearer to the true reality. When, for instance, in considering 

 the increase in warmth of a body, physics neglects the in- 

 creasing intensity of the heat-quality, substituting for it the 

 growing extension of the body in space, and then uses this 

 alone for taking measurements, it has not discovered a reality 

 lying behind the heat-quality, but has merely chosen as the 

 sign thereof a parallel change in another sense-quality, because 

 that happens to be more accessible to calculation. And even 

 if it should become possible to substitute spatial charac- 

 teristics for all the qualities, the subjective nature of the 

 spatial signs would not be altered in the least, and we should 

 not be one step nearer to the reality sought. 



The substitution of local signs and direction-signs for the 

 content-signs does not mean that these disappear from the 

 world. What one has done is to bring in a common 

 denominator, of general application, which alone permits of 



