CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR 19 
because the scientific interpretation of organic processes is but 
recent, and in many respects incomplete. People have grown 
so accustomed to the metaphysical assumptions employed by 
physicists and chemists when they speak of the play of 
_ crystalline forces and the selective affinities of atoms, they 
have been wont for so long to accept the “mysteries” of 
crystallization and of chemical union, that these assumptions 
have coalesced with the descriptions and explanations of 
science ; and the joint products are now, through custom, 
cheerfully accepted as natural. Where the phenomena of 
organic behaviour are in question, this coalescence has not yet 
taken place ; the metaphysical element is on the one hand 
proclaimed as inexplicable by natural science, and on the other 
hand denied even by those who talk glibly of physical forces as 
the final cause of the phenomena of the inorganic world. 
So much reference to the problems which underlie the 
problems of science seems necessary. It is here assumed that 
the phenomena of organic behaviour are susceptible of scientific 
discussion and elucidation. But even assuming that an 
adequate explanation in terms of antecedence and sequence 
shall be thus attained by the science of the future, this will 
not then satisfy, any more than our inadequate explanations 
now satisfy, those who seek to know the ultimate meaning and 
reason of it all: What makes organic matter behave as we. see 
it behave ? what drives the wheels of life, as it drives the 
planets in their courses ? what impels the egg to go through its 
series of developmental changes? what guides the cells along 
the divergent course of their life-history ? These are questions 
the ultimate answers to which lie beyond the sphere of science 
—questions which man (who is a metaphysical being) always 
does and always will ask, even if he rests content with the 
answer of agnosticism ; but questions to which natural science 
never will be able, and should never so much as attempt, to 
give an answer. 
Enough has now been said to show that organic behaviour 
is a thing swi generis, carrying its own peculiar marks of dis- 
tinction ; and further, that, for science, this is just part of the 
