THE CONCEPTION OF LIFE 115 



Ages. They express their opinions with limitless certainty 

 and listen unwillingly if one does not agree with them. We, 

 however, must consider the question more quietly and remain 

 remote from over-eagerness, and this chiefly because there 

 are important vital phenomena known to us which up to 

 the present at least cannot be made comprehensible by the 

 mechanistic theory. 



Of such phenomena I take the privilege of enumerating 

 three : 



1. Organization. 



2. The teleological mechanism. 



3. Consciousness. 



Organization is characteristic of life, but exactly what 

 the organization of living substance is, is by no means clear 

 to us. We have already discussed this. We only know 

 that organization is created by uniting various chemical 

 substances, some of which form small masses which remain 

 separate from one another. We know also that the living 

 substance always contains in solution certain salts. Water 

 is of course indispensable. We possess no knowledge how this 

 mixture arises, or how it is capable of maintaining and increas- 

 ing itself. We may indeed say that we must assume that this 

 organization is to be explained mechanistically, but then we 

 really merely say that we have hit on no better explanation 

 hitherto and that properly speaking we cannot give a real 

 explanation at all. So long as the essence of organization is 

 completely unknown, we must refuse with decision to admit 

 the complete sufficiency of the mechanistic theory. 



One of the most wonderful properties of life is the tele- 

 ology, with which the vital functions are carried out. The 

 changes in a living animal or in a living plant progress as if the 



