358 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



behaviour of that element is a new product determined by 

 the composition of its own forces with those acting upon it. 

 In an organic structure, on the other hand, the union is 

 more intimate. Though every element of the organism has 

 its own character, this character stands as such in relation 

 to the character of the whole to which the element belongs, 

 and if that element is removed from the whole it is modi- 

 fied or destroyed. There is not only a specific interaction 

 of parts, but an interdependence of parts complete in pro- 

 portion as the organic character is developed. In the 

 organisms that we know, and so far as we know them, this 

 completeness is never fully realised. In the living organism 

 the material particles do not owe their mechanical character 

 to the life of the whole. What death destroys is not the 

 weight or the mass of the cells, but the capacity for that 

 combined operation by which, could it begin again, the life 

 of the individual would at once be restored. The elements 

 of the living being, that is, are in part of mechanical char- 

 acter, and so far as they are mechanical they persist 

 unimpaired by the fate of the individual whom they have 

 constituted. But so far as they are truly organic their 

 character depends on the life of the whole. 



3. Whether the living can be evolved from the inanimate 

 is an unsettled question, but, if it can be, the conditions 

 which render it possible emerge from these considerations. 

 We must assume that some or all of the real elements which 

 constitute mechanical systems have capacities of action 

 other than those exhibited in their mechanical behaviour. 

 Then there are two possibilities. It may be that as long as 

 any such element remains bound in a mechanical system 

 this element of its energy is tied, and cancelled by opposing 

 forces. It is, therefore, potential alone. But if by some 

 regrouping of elements the opposing forces are separated, 

 each is set free, and new forms of behaviour arise. It may 

 be again, that two or more centres of energy which while 

 apart operate upon all other things indifferently, i.e. 

 mechanically, are so related that on coming within the 

 sphere of mutual influence they form a whole in which the 

 action of each is so modified by the other as to contribute 



