112 THE NEW PHYSIOLOGY. 



deals with life we mean that it deals with phenomena 

 which possess the characteristics just mentioned, and 

 which are just those which our ordinary observation 

 and language attribute to life as distinguished from 

 mechanism. For biology the conception of life is 

 fundamental, just as the conception of atoms is 

 fundamental in chemistry. 



I have condensed this reasoning into a few words. 

 But for those who wish to follow it in further detail I 

 may perhaps refer to my recently published book on 

 Organism and Environment, containing a series of 

 lectures delivered last autumn at Yale University 

 under the Silliman Foundation. 



The objection will at once occur that the conception 

 of life just outlined contradicts the fundamental and 

 thoroughly established laws of physics and chemistry. 

 Chemical and physical research show that living 

 organisms, like other material, are made up of atoms 

 and molecules ; and exact experiments prove that the 

 law of conservation of energy holds no less rigorously for 

 living organisms than for the rest of the visible universe. 

 Hence the phenomena of life must, in ultimate analysis, 

 be reducible to those of the interaction of atoms and 

 molecules. 



The question thus raised is fundamental, and I wish 

 to face it fully and squarely. One way of answering it 

 would be simply to point out that biology, no less than 

 the physical sciences, is concerned with facts. The facts 

 are the primary things ; and if physical and chemical 

 facts will not square with those of biology, we cannot 

 for the present help it : biology has at least as good 

 a right to appeal to biological facts as physics and 



