198 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI BULLETIN 



to show that the inheritance of sex, for of course sex is one 

 of the things which the organism inherits, is in accordance 

 with the laws of Mendel. 



RELATION TO OTHER SCIENCES 



One important thing which the experimental method has 

 brought about is a return to the study of problems involving 

 the properties common to all living matter, and so to the study 

 of animals and plants by the same investigator. It had almost 

 seemed that such "biological" studies, an example of which 

 is found in the work of Darwin, had come to an end with 

 the increase of botanical and zoological knowledge, since no 

 one really could live long enough to make himself a master in 

 both fields. While this last is of course true, we find today 

 that the study of general phenomena like growth, regeneration, 

 heredity and the like often leads to the examination of both 

 plants and animals and thus brings botanists and zoologists 

 to a common meeting ground in their study of living things. 

 There has been prevented an unfortunate separation which for 

 a time seemed inevitable. 



Another approachment is being effected with physics and 

 chemistry by the attempt to discover the exact nature of the 

 chemical and physical processes which take place within a 

 living body — a subject which has long engaged the attention 

 of the physiologists. The attempt has been to reduce life 

 activities, so far as possible, to the terms of chemistry and 

 physics, to obtain a causo-mechanical explanation. At the 

 present time, I think it may be fairly said that a majority are 

 in the attitude of suspended judgment, holding not that life 

 activities are reducible to a chemical and physical basis, but 

 that, so long as the attempts to analyze them in terms of 

 chemistry and physics is productive of substantial results, and 

 such is still the case, we do not need to call to our aid forces 

 distinct from those of inanimate matter. The conception of 

 a "vital force" characteristic of living matter seems a thing 



