BIOPSYCHOLOGICAL 659 



science of life. He thus agrees with Dr. Haldane, and reinforces his 

 lines of criticism and reconstruction; and rightly insists that 

 "materialistic physiology goes to the opposite extreme from mor- 

 phology: for while the morphologist studies form and structure in 

 almost complete isolation from its environment, the physiologist 

 merges it completely into its surroundings, and robs it of all inde- 

 pendence". He ably continues these criticisms: yet also brings out 

 the weaknesses of vitalistic endeavours, those of Driesch for choice. 

 Yet passing to the frankly psychological point of view, he conceives 

 of other living things as subjects, each an experiencing, perceiving, 

 striving, and active individual ; and reacting to its perceived world 

 in such a way as to satisfy its own needs and desires: i.e. with its 

 own view-point, not ours. Such behaviour may, of course, be psy- 

 chical without being self-conscious. They are thus to be conceived as 

 psycho-physical individuals, neither purely physical, nor yet with 

 action on their bodies of any soul or entelechy, for both matter and 

 soul are conceptual figments belonging to another philosophy. 



Biological vitalism is philosophically derivable from idealism, 

 so the biological method implies essential elements derived from 

 the psychological conception, and rejects the materialistic philosophy 

 completely. Development and functional adaptation are subject to 

 laws of their own, which appear neither physical nor psychological, 

 but functional or biological. Cuvier and Lamarck, Darwin and 

 Roux, despite all their differences, are claimed as following this 

 functional tradition: for biologists thus best study the living thing 

 itself, leaving aside theories as to its ultimate nature. This functional 

 biology starts with the individuality of the living thing and not 

 with its material analysis; and our ultimate biological concept is 

 not matter, nor even energy, since these are physical, but activity, 

 and this not simply self-maintaining, but ever urging towards 

 achievement, in self-development and race-continuance. By per- 

 ception (or at simplest reception) life becomes individualised, and 

 further its response implies continuance or duration of hormic 

 impulse, and is varied to the environment as sensed. In terms of 

 mere physico-chemical interaction these insignia of individuality 

 are necessarily ignored. Yet the living being is not a mechanism 

 actuated by a psyche, but modelling itself, in short, in creative 

 evolution. The perceptive and responsive relations between organism 

 and environment are thus an intimate psychological unity, as in 

 our own experience, and are similarly discernible in behaviour, and 

 thus in synthetic terms of the real life and activity of the organism 

 with its changes of form in relation to environment, and not simply 

 in tropisms isolated from these. 



Dr. Russell next inquires how the psycho-biological method can 

 be applied in practical research, and points out that organic response 

 surpasses its merely mechanical and physico-chemical processes, 



