66 HEREDITY. 



plex organisms, the fact of co-ordination stands out 

 before us with blazing vividness. We have co-ordi- 

 nation upon co-ordination, wheel within wheel; and 

 the cause of the co-ordination we call life. 



6. The definition does not assert that life causes 

 the movements of the germinal points or bioplasts, 

 but only that it co-ordinates those movements. 



7. It does not deny that chemical and physical 

 forces may act through the bioplasts, but only that 

 these forces can account for the co-ordination of their 

 action, or for the origination and preservation of 

 form in organisms. 



What follows from this definition? 



It is my conviction, that, in discussing the nature 

 of life, our faces are turned toward a land in which, 

 sooner or later, most important discoveries are to 

 be made. My feeling is that the debate between 

 atheists and theists is to be settled in the country 

 of which we now stand on the edges in biology. 

 So far as there is a debate concerning fundamental 

 truth, so far as the great questions concerning neces- 

 sary beliefs are drawn into dispute, they are to 

 be settled here, partly by biological and partly by 

 metaphysical knowledge. The great Scottish-Amer- 

 ican metaphysician, President McCosh of Princeton, 

 has spent a life in opposing the associational school 

 in philosophy. His various defences of the funda- 

 mental truths, intuitions, axioms, and necessary be- 

 liefs, are the best that have been made in the English 

 language, and from the metaphysical side of research, 

 since the death of Sir William Hamilton. (See 



