viii PREFACE 



a number of such (the combinations of bodily characters of the 

 brothers and sisters of the individual), and all of these combina- 

 tions differ from each other though they have the same antece- 

 dents. Sometimes we say that the individual results " ought to 

 be " the same if only we could experiment or observe with suffi- 

 cient accuracy ; but in saying so, are we not simply dogmatising ? 



Further, it is said that " vital phenomena are chemico-physical 

 in the sense that they are the inevitable outcome of the par- 

 ticular material aggregations that we call organisms." But they 

 are not " inevitable," and are they the outcome of " material 

 aggregations " ? It is quite certain that it is not material aggre- 

 gations that our method of science observes in nature, but rather 

 space-time coincidences. We do not know about things, but 

 only about relations — which are differential equations between 

 dx, dy, dz, and dt, which symbols are, after all, " ghosts " of 

 space and time. No doubt it is very difficult to think in this 

 way, and one naturally leans up against a mentally constructed 

 world of atoms — mathematics is so tiresome ! But when we 

 would speculate about the nature of life and so on, we must not 

 lean up against anything, and our analysis should at least be 

 as penetrating as that of the physicists. On the whole, one 

 prefers the conclusions of some of the latter — our knowledge of 

 the world is a knowledge of form and not of content. We know 

 relations only, and the unknown stuff of the world may just as 

 likely be the stuff of our consciousness as something consisting 

 of electrons. 



Anyhow, life is, after all, mainly an affair of organisms acting 

 individually and as entire, undecomposable entities. It is mind, 

 feeling, perception, memory, emotion, pleasure, pain, and so on. 

 To the vast majority of men and women (to say nothing of all 

 the " lower " animals) these states are life, and it would be very 

 stupid not to recognise that in our philosophy. Tropisms and 

 '* concatenated reflexes " and colloids and enzymes, and so on, 

 are all very well in their way, and we have to investigate them 

 if we are to get on in the world, and be comfortable, and live long 

 (quite legitimate objects of scientific research); but are these 

 notions anything else than the terms in our description of how 

 the living (or dead) organism cuts up, so to speak ? Is not this 

 common sense ? 



If we do recognise that mind and intuition of Uving are to 

 count in our speculations, what becomes of determinism (and 



