INTRODUCTION 3 



varieties, it throws a clear and informative light on the 

 simple and complex phenomena involved therein, by which 

 their manners of evolution and working can be more 

 exactly appreciated than is possible on any other lines of 

 research with which we are familiar. 



Molecular, cellular, fibral, vascular, visceral, and neuro- 

 muscular, materio-dynamic methods of working, singly 

 and in combination, become more evident and apparent, 

 and to some extent the complex totality of the human 

 organism stands out in greater relief and better perspective 

 than can be obtained from any other point of view, until, 

 when we arrive at that stage of its evolution where the 

 psychic powers become developed, we have but to add 

 another materio-dynamic circulation of a still higher and 

 more subtle nature than any yet possessed or observed in 

 virtue of mere vitality, and capable of evolution to an 

 altogether marvellous extent beyond what characterises 

 the merely materio-dynamic powers of the highest forms 

 of non-psychic life. Moreover, we have made use of it in 

 threading the lines of pathological manifestations through- 

 out the tortuosities of tissue and organ where they have 

 insinuated themselves into the regions of physiological 

 purity and health, and have wrought out the problems of 

 disease and death with a feeling of greater certainty than 

 we had hitherto felt when guided by more or less haphazard 

 lights. 



Furthermore, we have felt, while thus pursuing our 

 self-imposed explorations into the farthest material regions 

 attainable by us, that we were touching the confines of " a 

 region beyond " biological physics, into which we could 

 not allow the " human disposition" to take glimpses, and 

 these glimpses have, to some extent, been described in an 

 appendix to what we have dealt with in biological physics 

 and physic, under the title of metaphysics. 



Biological physics will be found dealt with at consider- 

 able length under the heads of some of the material and 

 dynamic, as well as the materio-dynamic, divisions or 

 aspects of that very large subject, while physic follows, 

 in less detail, and only a series of disjointed efforts have 

 been made to bridge over the debatable area between the 

 physical and the metaphysical, to show some of the lines 



