viii EDITOR'S PREFACE 



living organism is a mass of matter acting wholly in the 

 causal sequence, they must be reckoned with before they can 

 be pronounced of no avail in the body's conduct. If life is 

 supposed to be a transcendental entity entering into or 

 transacting the chemical processes, causing them in the sense 

 of using energy, then there is no evidence that such an 

 entity exists. But if on the contrary life is supposed to be a 

 transcendental entity that is associated with the body, and 

 in some measure interacts with it and guides it without 

 interference (and that is by no means inconceivable since 

 recent physics has plunged the ultimate nature of matter 

 into such mystery) then there seems nothing in Professor 

 Le Dantec's book to make unreasonable a belief in the 

 supposition. 



ROBERT KENNEDY DUNCAN. 

 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS, 

 1906. 



