THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 11 
forced into a physical mould, the position will in future be reversed. 
Physics will look to biology and even to psychology for hints, clues, and 
suggestions. In biology and psychology it will see principles at work in 
their full maturity which can only be faintly and fitfully recognised in 
physics. In this way the exchanges of physics, biology and psychology 
will become fruitful for the science of the future, and lay the basis for a 
new scientific monism. 
A living individual is a physiological whole, in which the parts or 
organs are but differentiations of this whole for purposes of greater 
efficiency, and remain in organic continuity throughout. They are parts 
of the individual, and not independent or self-contained units which 
compose the individual. It is only this conception of the individual as a 
dynamic organic whole which will make intelligible the extraordinary 
unity which characterises the multiplicity of functions in an organism, 
the mobile, ever-changing balance and interdependence of the numerous 
regulatory processes in it, as well as the operation of all the mechanisms 
by which organic evolution is brought about. This conception applies 
not only to individuals, but also to organic societies, such as a beehive 
or an apts’ nest, and even to social organisations on the human level. 
As the concept of space-time destroys the purely spatial character of 
things, so the concept of the organic whole must also be extended beyond 
the spatial limits of the organism so as to include its interaction with its 
environment. The stimuli and responses which render them mutually 
interdependent constitute them one whole which thus transcends purely 
spatial aspects. It is this overflow of organic wholes beyond their apparent 
spatial limits which binds all nature together and prevents it from being 
a mere assemblage of separate interacting units. 
It is time, however, that we pass on to the world of mind. From 
matter, as now transformed by space-time and the quantum, we pass 
step by step through organic nature to conscious mind. Gone is the time 
when Descartes could divide the world into only two substances : extended 
substance or matter, and thinking substance or mind. There is a whole 
world of gradations between these two limits. On Descartes’ false 
dichotomy the separate provinces of modern science and philosophy were 
demarcated. But it is as dead as the epicycles of Ptolemy, and ultimately 
the Cartesian frontiers between physics and philosophy must largely dis- 
appear, and philosophy once more become metaphysic in the original sense. 
In the meantime, under its harmful influence, the paths of matter and mind, 
of science and philosophy, were made to diverge farther and farther, so that 
