302 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



internal principle of unity, and though we should in the 

 end have to enquire into the origin of this principle, it 

 would not be for the sake of unifying the elements of our 

 arrangement. That unity would now be involved as a 

 characteristic of the several elements themselves. It would 

 be intrinsic or organic. Such a principle constitutes what 

 we call an c organic unity,' and an arrangement where on 

 the surface we appear to find it we speak of as an organism. 

 Whether, indeed, the physical organism which we naturally 

 think of as the type of such a structure does indeed con- 

 form to the conception or is rather to be regarded as a 

 mechanism of exceedingly cunning contrivance, is an em- 

 pirical question on which scientific investigators do not 

 agree. Our business, for the moment, is to clear up the 

 conception of organic unity and to put our finger on the 

 points which distinguish it from that of a machine. 

 Whether the conception that results is a mere figment of 

 the imagination, whether it is realised in plant and animal 

 life, or elsewhere, or nowhere, are further questions. What 

 is certain is that many phenomena of plant and animal life 

 have, rightly or wrongly, gone to generate the conception, 

 and we may freely refer to these without asking in each 

 case whether the interpretation which has led to the organic 

 view is the ultimate truth. On this a word may be said 

 later. Our immediate purpose is not to justify a particular 

 application of an idea, but to explain the idea itself. 



4. The living organism then is, from one point of view, 

 comparable to a machine which, while performing various 

 operations on the external environment has, both in these 

 operations and in its internal changes, the maintenance of 

 its own activity for its object. Whether, indeed, purpose 

 as such is properly to be ascribed to organic activity is one 

 of the questions to be determined, but it may suffice to 

 note for the moment that the more definitely we conceive 

 of the working of the organism as mechanical the more 

 readily we are led to set a purpose outside of the mechanism 

 as the controlling principle of the arrangement of its con- 

 stituent parts and processes. But letting this point pass 

 for the moment, what we have first to observe is the relation 



