THE CONCEPTION OF ORGANISM 77 



with the phenomena of life, a fundamental 

 conception or working hypothesis which is 

 different from the fundamental conceptions 

 of the physical sciences, and cannot be 

 reduced to them. The question, for the 

 moment, is not whether we are justified in 

 using such a conception, but whether we 

 actually do use it. When this question is 

 clearly realised there is, it seems to me, but 

 one answer to it, and that in the affirmative. 

 In dealing with life we not only use a whole ' 

 series of special terms, but these terms appear 

 to belong to a specific general conception 

 which is never made use of in the physical 

 sciences. 



Life manifests itself in two ways as struc 

 ture and as activity. But we also recognise 

 a biologist feels it in his very bones that this 

 is living structure and living activity. Each 

 part of the structure not only bears a more or 

 less definite spatial relation to the other parts, 

 but it is actively maintained in that relation. 

 The structure is thus in itself the expression 

 of the activity, and the ceaseless metabolic 

 activity of which visible structure is the 

 sensuous expression forms one department of 



