OBJECT AND LIVING ORGANISM 103 



working by calculation ; and this has been the real aim in 

 view throughout the whole development of chemistry. 



OBJECT AND IMPLEMENT 



If we are to put in the proper light the question at issue 

 between physics and biology, we must use very clear-cut 

 terms. Physics maintains that the things of Nature around 

 us obey causality alone. We have called such causally 

 ordered things, " objects." In contrast to this, biology 

 declares that, in addition to causality, there is a second, 

 subjective rule whereby we systematise objects : this is 

 conformity with plan, and it is necessary if the world-picture 

 is to be complete. 



When the hammer strikes the string of a piano and a note 

 sounds, that is a purely causal series. If this note belongs to 

 a melody, it is interpolated in a sound-series, which also 

 exhibits arrangement, but not of a causal kind. 



When the carpenter's axe chops up the wood into planks 

 and pegs, and when the drill bores through the planks and 

 the hammer drives the pegs into the holes, these are all of 

 them in causal succession. But the structure emerging from 

 this process, the ladder, cannot be interpreted by causality ; 

 it can be understood only from a knowledge of the designed 

 arrangement of the rungs with relation to the main planks, 

 and of all the parts to the whole.^ 



We shall call " implements " those objects the construc- 

 tion of which is not to be explained by mere causaUty, since 

 in them the parts stand in the same relation to the whole 

 as the individual sounds do to the melody. 



Both objects and implements consist of matter ; but in 

 the object there is no arrangement of the parts other than 

 that which the structure of the substance brings with it. In 



