368 report — 1879. 



I come now to the hearing of these remarks on the science of Biology generally. 



Animals and plants may, as I have hefore said, he regarded either statically, hy 

 anatomy, or dynamically, hy physiology. 



Physiology, as usually understood, regards the properties of the ultimate mor- 

 phological components of organisms, the powers of the various aggregations of 

 such components, i.e. of the various ' tissues ' and the functions of the different 

 special aggregations and arrangements of tissues which constitute ' organs.' 



But as each living creature is a highly complex unity — both a unity of body 

 and also a unity of force, or a synthesis of activities — it seems to me that we require 

 a distinct kind of physiology to be devoted to the investigation of such syntheses 

 of activities as exist in each kind of living creature. I mean to say that just as 

 we have a physiology devoted to the several activities of the several organs, which 

 activities are the functions of those organs, so we need a physiology specially 

 directed to the physiology of the living body considered as one whole, that is, 

 to the power which is the function, so to speak, of that whole, and of which the 

 whole body, in its totality, is the organ. 



In a word, we need a physiology of the individual. This science, however, 

 needs a distinct appellation. I think an adequate one is not far to seek. 



Such a line ef inquiry may be followed up, whatever view be accepted 

 as to the nature of those forces or activities which living creatures exhibit. 

 But if we recognise, as I myself think our reason calls on us to recognise, the 

 existence in each living being of such a ' principle of individuation ' as I have advo- 

 cated the recognition of, then an inquiry into the total activity of any living 

 being, considered as one whole, is tantamount to an inquiry into the nature of 

 its principle of individuation. Such an inquiry becomes ' Psychology ' in the widest 

 and in the original signification of that term — it is the Psychology of Aristotle. 



Mr. Herbert Spencer has already made a great step towards reverting to this 

 orioinal use of the term, for he has made his ' Pyschology ' conterminous with the 

 animal kingdom, having made it a history of the psychoses of animals. Bat the 

 activities of plants must not be ignored. A science which should include the 

 impressionability and reactions of a Rhizopod, and exclude the far more striking 

 impressionability and reactions of Venus's Fly-trap, and of other insectivorous 

 plants, the recognised number of which is greatly on the increase, must be a very 

 partial and incomplete science. If Psychology is to be extended (as I think Mr. 

 Spencer is most rational in extending it) to the whole animal kingdom, it must 

 be made to include the vegetable kingdom also. Psychology, thus understood, will 

 be conterminous with the whole of Biology, and will embrace one aspect of organic 

 dynamics, while physiology will embrace the other. 



Physiology will be devoted (as it is now) to the study of the activities of 

 tissues, of organs and of functions, per se, such, e.g., as the function of nutrition, 

 as exhibited in all organism from the lowest plants to man, the functions of 

 respiration, reproduction, irritability, sensation, locomotion, &c, similarly con- 

 sidered, as manifested in the whole series of organic forms in which such powers 

 may show themselves. 



Psychology will be devoted (according to its original conception) to the study 

 of the activities of each living creature considered as one whole— to the form, modes, 

 and conditions of nutrition and reproduction as they may coexist in any one plant ; to 

 these as they may coexist with sensibility and motility in any kind of animal, and 

 finally to the coexistence of all these with rationality as in man, and to the inter- 

 actions and conditions of action, of all these as existing in him, and here the science 



absent from animals. Such facts imply differences in elementary composition; 

 and this result is further enforced by the fact that when the two seem to resemble, 

 they are still different. The plant protoplasms form various cells, but never form a 

 cartilage cell, or a nerve cell ; fibres, but never a fibre of elastic tissue ; tubes, but 

 never a nerve tube ; vessels, but never a vessel with muscular coatings ; solid 

 " skeletons," but always from an organic substance {cellulose'), not from phosphates 

 and carbonates. In no one character can we say that the plant and the animal are 

 identical ; we can only point throughout the two kingdoms to a great similarity 

 accompanying a radical diversity.'— (The Physical Basis of Mind, p. 129.) 



