288 ON LIFE AND ORGANISATION. 



3. The connections between the corporeal and psychical 

 elements of organisation. 



The structure and actions of the living organism, con- 

 sidered as achernico-physical system, have at all times furnished 

 the principal subjects of anatomico-physiological research. 

 The structure or anatomy of this system, and the actions or 

 functions of its constituent parts, form, in fact, the mass of 

 physiology as usually understood.* The progress of this 

 perfectly natural and absolutely necessary line of inquiry 

 has been more or less retarded at different periods by the 

 tendency of physiologists to complicate and divert the investi- 

 gation, by assuming the immediate agency of a presumed 

 principle of vitality. Overlooking the philosophical conditions 

 of the question — that there are at least two series of facts to 

 be determined in the living organism, differing fundamentally 

 in kind, and therefore requiring fundamentally distinct methods 

 of research, f physiologists have been too apt to consider their 

 science as throughout independent of others, and they have, 

 consequently, opposed serious obstacles to its inosculation, in 

 certain of its departments, with the physico-mathematical 

 sciences on the one hand, and with the psychological | on 

 the other. We have now, however, reached an epoch 

 from which we may proceed to investigate the chemico- 

 physical properties of the living organism, with less risk of 

 being misled by false theories of vitality, and without dread 

 of collision with the philosopher or theologian. The chemico- 

 physical properties of the living organism, strictly investigated 

 by the legitimate methods of chemical and physical research, 

 have yielded the principal triumphs of recent physiology. 

 And there is now, at least, an assurance that in addition to 

 the precise processes of modern chemistry, the physiologist 



* Note V. page 303. t Note VI. page 303. 



t Note VII. page 307. 



