116 THE NEW PHYSIOLOGY. 



then returned to, a certain condition, the total energy 

 which has passed in is balanced by that which has 

 passed out. What this means is that on balance the 

 organism or molecule has not altered at the end of the 

 period of observation. But the specific peculiarities 

 and liberations of energy in either the individual or 

 the average responses of such an organism or molecule 

 to changes in environment are not such as we can 

 predict from knowledge of its separated component 

 parts, any more than we can predict the behaviour of 

 water, or the energy developed in its formation, from 

 isolated study of the hydrogen and oxygen from which 

 the water originates. The mechanistic argument from 

 the principle of conservation of energy is thus sterile. 

 It is impossible to predict on mechanistic principles 

 the energy transformations in a living organism. 



The contention that it must be possible to predict 

 the phenomena of life from isolated study of the material 

 contained in living organisms is on a par with the con- 

 tention that it must be possible to predict all inorganic 

 phenomena from fundamental mechanical principles. 

 But the operation of such principles can nowhere be 

 found or remotely conceived, except in relation to a 

 fictitious ideal world such as that of the gas equation, 

 or such as that assumed by Laplace when he imagined 

 the world-equation of an omniscient mathematical 

 physicist. Even in the inorganic world actual empirical 

 observation is the evidence before the ultimate court 

 of appeal ; and in this court the evidence of biology 

 is just as admissible as any other evidence. 



I have tentatively compared a living organism with 

 a huge unstable chemical molecule. In a suitable 



