398 



NATURE 



\Avgust 21, i879> 



sensations which we know to indicate his mistress is associated 

 with pleasure, and its absence with pain. By past experience an 

 association has been formed between this feeling of pain and 

 such movements of the head as tend to recover some part of that 

 group, its recoveiy being again associated with movements which, 

 lie facto, diminish the distance between the dog and his mistress. 

 The doc, therefore, pricks up his ears, raises his head and looks 

 round. His mistress is nowhere to be seen ; but at the corner 

 of the field there is visible a gate at the end of a lane which re- 

 sembles a lane in which she has been used to walk. A phantasm 

 (or image) of that other lane, and of his mistress walking there, 

 presents itself to the imagination of the dog ; he runs to the 

 present lane, but on getting into it she is not there. From the 

 lane, however, he can see a tree at the other side of which she 

 was wont to sit ; the same process is repeated, but she is not to 

 be found. Having arrived at the tree he thence finds his way 

 home." By the action of such feelings, imaginations, and asso. 

 ciations — which we know to be verm causa: — I believe all the 

 apparently intelligent actions of animals may be explained with- 

 out the need of calling in the help of a power, the existence of 

 which is inconsistent with the mass, as a whole, of the pheno- 

 mena they exhibit. 



But if there is a radically distinct intellectual power or force in 

 man, is such a distinction of kind so isolated a fact as many 

 suppose ? May there not exist between the forces which living 

 beings exhibit other differences of kind ? 



Each living being consists of an aggregation of parts and func- 

 tional activities which are evidently knit together into a unity. 

 Each is somehow the seat or theatre of some unifying power or 

 condition which synthesises their varied activities, and is a 

 PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUATION. This seems certainly to have 

 been the opinion of Buffon, and it is to this opinion that I 

 referred in speaking of the fourth cause to which he attributed 

 the changes in organic forms. And to me it seems that we must 

 admit the existence of such a living principle. We may analyse 

 the activities of any animal or plant, and by consideration of 

 them separately find resemblances between them and mere 

 physical forces. But the synihesis of such forces as we find in a 

 living creature is certainly nowhere to be met with in the inor- 

 ganic world. 



To deny this would be to deny the plainest evidence of our 

 senses. To assert that each living body is made up of minute 

 independent organisms, each with its own "principle of indi- 

 viduation," and without subordination or co-ordination, is but to 

 multiply difficulties, while such a doctrine conflicts with the 

 evidence of our own perceptions, which lead each of us to regard 

 himself as one whole — a true unity in multiplicity. 



The existence in each creature of a peculiar, co-ordinating, 

 polar force, seems to be specially pointed to by the phenomena 

 of serial and bilateral symmetry, by the symmetrical character 

 of certain diseases, by the phenomena of monstrous growths and 

 by the symmetrical beauty of such organisms as the Radiolarian 

 Rhizopods. 



It also seems to me to be made evident, by the various 

 activities of each animal, which are, as a fact, grouped in one 

 in mutual interaction — an organism having been described by 

 Kant as a creature, the various parts of which are reciprocally 

 ends and means. 



I think now I hear the exclamation — This is " Vitalism ! " 

 while some of my hearers may deem tliese matters too speculative 

 for our Section. 



But consciously or unconsciously, general conceptions of the 

 kind exist in the minds of all biologists, and influence them in 

 various ways, and their consideration therefore can hardly be 

 out of place here ; while as to " Vitalism," I am convinced I 

 shall not be wasting your time in endeavouring to remove a 

 widespread misconception. 



The "Vitalism" which is so reasonably objected to, is that 

 which supposes the existence in each living creature of some 

 separate entity inhabiting the body— an extra-organic force 

 within the living creature, and acting by and through it, but 

 numerically distinct from it. But the view which I venture to 

 put before you as that which is to my judgment a reasonable one, 

 is that of a peculiar form of force which is intra-or^anic, so that 

 it and the visible living body are one thing, as the impress on 

 stamped wax and the wax itself are one, though we can ideally 

 distinguish between the two. It is, in fact, a mode of regarding 

 living creatures with prime reference to their activities rather 

 than to their material composition, and every creature can of 

 course be regarded either statically or dynamically. It is to 



regard any given animal or plant, not as a piece of complex, 

 matter played upon by physical forces, which are transformed by 

 what they traverse, but rather as a peculiar immanent principle * 

 or form of force (whensoever and howsoever arising), which for 

 a time manifests itself by the activities of a certain mass of com- 

 plex material, with which it is so entirely one that it may be said to 

 constitute and be such animal or plant much rather than tie lump 

 of matter which we can see and handle can be said to constitute 

 such animal or plant. On this vie w a so-called ' ' dead jird "is- 

 no bird at all, save by abuse of language, nor is a "corpse" 

 really a "dead man" — such terms being as self-contradictory as 

 would be the expression " a dead living creature." 



Thus the real essence, the substantial constituent of every living 

 thing is something which escapes our senses, though its existence 

 and nature reveal themselves to the intellect. 



For of course our senses can detect nothing in an aiimal or 

 plant beyond the qualities of its material component parts. But 

 neither is the function of an organ to be detected save in and by 

 the actions of such organ, and yet we do not deny it its function 

 or consider that function to be a mere blending and mixture of 

 the properties of the tissues which compose it. Similarly it would 

 seem to be unreasonable to deny the existence of a living principle 

 of individuation because we can neither see nor feel it, but only 

 infer it. This power or polar force, which is imminent in each 

 living body, or rather which is that body living, is of coijr.se 

 unimaginable by us, since we cannot by imagination transcend 

 experience, and since we have no experience of this force, save 

 as a body living and acting in definite «ays. 



It may be objected that its existence cannot be verified. Bat 

 what ?> verification? We often hear of "verification by sensa- 

 tion," and yet even in such verification the ultimate appeal is not 

 really to the senses, but to the intellect, which may doabt and 

 which criticises and judges the actions and suggestions of 

 the senses and imagination. Though no knowledge is possible 

 for us which is not genetically traceable to sensatioi, yet the 

 ground of all our developed knowledge is not sensalional, but 

 intellectual, and its final justification depends, and mvst depend, 

 not on "feelings," but on "thoughts." I must apologise to 

 such an audience as that I have the honour of addressing for 

 expressing truths, which, to some of my hearers, may appear 

 obvious. I would gladly suppress them as superfluous did not 

 my own experience convince me that they are not superfluous. 

 To proceed : " Certainty " does not exist at all \a feelings axty 

 more than doubt. Both belong to thought only. "Feelings" 

 are but the materials of certainty, and though 'vre can be per- 

 fectly certain about our feelings, that certainty belongs to thought 

 and to thought only. " Thought," therefore, is our absolute 

 criterion. It is by self-conscious thought only that we know we 

 have any feelings at all. Without thought, indeed, we might 

 feel, but we could not know that we felt cr know ourselves as 

 feeling. If, then, we have rational grounds for the acceptance 

 of such a purely intellectual conception a'; that of an immanent 

 principle as the essence of each living creature, the poverty of 

 our powers of imagination should be no bar to its accept- 

 ance. We are continually employing terms and conceptions — 

 such, ^._5-., as "being," "substance,' " cause," &c. — which are 

 intelligible to the intellect (since they can be discussed), though 

 they transcend the powers of the ir.iagination to picture. 



It seems to me that the spirit which would deny such realities 

 is the same spirit which would deny our real knowledge of an 

 external world at all, and represent any material object as " state 

 of consciousness," and at the very same time represent "a state 

 of consciousness " as the accompaniment of a peculiar state of 

 a material object — the body.^ This mode of representation may 



* The word " principle '* has been used to denote that activity which, 

 together with material substance, constitutes a Uving creature, because that 

 word calls up a less sensuous, and therefore less misleading, phantasm than 

 any other. The old term V-i'X'/) or soul, has in modern times come to be asso- 

 ciated with the idea of a substance numerically distinct from the living body, 

 and capable of surviving the destruction of the latter. But as structure and 

 function ever varj' together (as do the convexities and concavities of a curved 

 line), so " the principle of individuation " or soul of an animal or plant and 

 its material organisation must necessarily arise, vary, and be destroyed 

 simultaneously, unless some special character, as in the case of man, may 

 lead us to consider it exceptional in nature. Even in man, however, there 

 seems no adequate reason for believing in the existence of any principle of 

 individuation, save that which exerts its energy in all his functions, the 

 humblest as well as the most exalted. 



^ Those who deny that we have a real power of perceiving objects, refute 

 themselves when they speak of '* purely physical changes," or of anything 

 " physical" of which feelings are but the " accompaniment " or "subjects." 

 For according to them "matter " is but a term for certain " states of con- 

 sciousness," while they represent each state of consciousness as a functioa 

 of matter. According to this, let a represent a " state of conscicusness, and 



