ORGANISM AND MATTER 81 



to beg the whole question. It was the com 

 plete and hopeless failure of the material 

 conception of a living organism that led to 

 our present inquiry. We cannot admit that 

 the living * substance ' is material. It is the 

 very existence of matter as such that is in ques 

 tion the adequacy of the concept ' matter ' to 

 express the phenomenon we are considering. 

 Let us make no mistake as to what we are 

 really discussing. We have parted company 

 once and for all with the mechanistic 

 philosophy the notion of a real and self- 

 existent material universe; and we must 

 remember where we now are. 



What we have found is that the conception 

 of the living organism is in common and 

 ordinary use, and differs radically from any 

 physical conception. We have also seen 

 that there is no philosophical reason for 

 rejecting this conception. There is no a 

 priori reason why we should not, if it helps 

 us, take it as the fundamental conception for 

 biology, just as the physicist takes the con 

 ceptions of matter and energy as fundamental 

 for physics. 



Before going further we must consider a 



F 



