PREFACE ix 



prediction, which surely goes with determinism if we cannot 

 predict, why say that events are determined) ? For mind and 

 memory and feeling and perception are certainly not measur- 

 able in terms of space and time (despite the Weber-Fechner 

 " psycho-physical law "). So the problems of free-will and 

 necessity and determinism are meaningless when they are con- 

 sidered with reference to the mind, for the very essence of these 

 notions is measurement, and we cannot measure mind. 



Such, then, are the lines on which the phenomena of life 

 are discussed in this book, and the reader is asked to take the 

 arguments " on their merits," and without conscious clinging 

 to either mechanism or vitalism. 



Vitalism holds that there is something in the living organism 

 which is not present in an inorganic thing. This may be " spirit," 

 or " soul," or perhaps some hitherto unrecognised " biotic energy- 

 form," or some factor which is not energetic in nature, but which 

 confers direction upon the energy-transformations that occur 

 in the living organism. Most people take one or other of these 

 attitudes; thus some may confess to sympathy with those 

 who would " remove organisms from the domain which includes 

 the stars and precious stones," but may not think that mechanism 

 " exhausts the reality of earth and heavens, still less that of the 

 flower in the crannied wall " ; others like to think that " the sun 

 and moon and all the little stars are a glorious mechanism." 

 Either feeling is, of course, permissible, provided it does not 

 influence our judgment. 



Also, no one can think about these questions without becom- 

 ing " metaphysical," even if he does not know it. There is no 

 harm in that either, provided that one does it nicely. So I have 

 taken care that anything " transcendental," or otherwise objec- 

 tionable, has been discreetly relegated to the Appendices. 



J. J. 



LIVERPOOL, 

 1921. 



