128 FUNCTIONAL INERTIA 



in any paper or communication to a learned 

 society. 



I found that nothing short of attributing to proto- 

 plasm a property in addition to affectability would 

 provide for the adequate theoretical explanation 

 of many phenomena both observed in nature and 

 obtained by experiment. 



I found that the results of the possession of such 

 a property had been more or less clearly perceived 

 by many writers beginning with Hobbes and Fara- 

 day, and, nearer our own time, by Professor Adami, 

 Dr. Cattell, Monsieur Guyau, Dr. Charles Mercier, Pro- 

 fessor Mosso, Mr. R. A. Robertson, Professor Ribot, 

 Professor Schafer, Dr. Shark ey, Professor Sherrington, 

 Dr. Stratton and Dr. Waller, by all of whom even 

 the term inertia itself was used as characteristic of 

 living matter under certain conditions. 



I found that certain phenomena could be properly 

 thought of as depending only on the possession by 

 protoplasm of a real or positive property functional 

 inertia and not merely on the diminution or the 

 absence of affectability. 



No one had, however, gone so far as I felt justified 

 in going, viz., to attribute the property of inertia 

 to the biogens or living molecular constituents of 

 protoplasm. I felt that the time had come to get 

 beyond mere analogies between the inertia of masses 

 and the functional inertia of biogens, and to attribute 

 to these biogens a property other than that of the 

 power to respond to a stimulus. 



