ORGANIC REGULATION 115 



garded as biological phenomena. But the higher 

 organisms, at any rate, are also centres of knowledge 

 and volition. It is unmeaning to treat consciousness 

 as a mere accompaniment of life, or to ignore the 

 differences between blind organic activity, and rational 

 behaviour. Conscious personality is far more than 

 mere organism, and the conception of life is just as 

 inadequate in connection with personality as the con- 

 ceptions of matter and energy in connection with life. 



It is not the time and place to recapitulate the rea- 

 soning which leads to this conclusion ; but we may, per- 

 haps, ask why, if the reasoning is correct, there is still 

 a place for human physiology as distinguished from 

 psychology. The practical reason is that although a 

 man is a person and not a mere organism, we cannot 

 trace personality throughout all, or nearly all, of what 

 we observe in a man. To interpret the details as best 

 we can, we have to fall back on the conception of life 

 in the biological sense, just as in details of what we 

 observe in connection w T ith living organisms we have 

 to fall back on ordinary physical and chemical inter- 

 pretations. Though we know that these interpreta- 

 tions on a lower plane of knowledge can only be pro- 

 visional, yet we should be very helpless in practical 

 life without them. Their practical value is unmis- 

 takable, and we cannot dispense with them. On this 

 view the conflicts between materialism and spiritual- 

 ism, realism and idealism, science and philosophy, are 

 only apparent. 



In establishing the Silliman Lectures, the Founders, 

 although they left complete freedom to lecturers to 



