ORGANIC REGULATION 107 
matter and energy as independent entities this igno- 
rance is unavoidable. Clear enough indications exist, 
however, that the progress of pure physical and chemi- 
cal investigation is pointing towards truer and more 
adequate conceptions. The discoveries of the periodic 
law and of the transmutations of chemical elements 
in connection with radio-activity indicate an underlying 
connection between different forms of matter. With 
Faraday’s discovery that in electrolytic dissociation 
the ions have each a definite electrical charge, and the 
more recent discoveries of the energy locked up in 
atoms, and liberated as radio-activity in their decompo- 
sition, an underlying connection between matter and 
the energy associated with it has become no less ap- 
parent. Thus even if we look only at the evidence 
afforded by the investigation of the inorganic world it 
seems clear enough that our present conceptions are 
only working hypotheses:—the pictures which our 
own generation has formed of it; but only imperfect 
pictures not adequately representing reality. 
In the organic world we meet with something in 
the face of which these working hypotheses are far 
more definitely inadequate; and the very existence of 
biology is a direct challenge to them. We can never- 
theless see how they can, up to a certain point, be used 
successfully in interpreting biological phenomena. For 
we can take the structure of the living body, not as 
living structure, but as something given and independ- 
ent of its environment; and having once made this 
fundamentally false assumption we can proceed with 
the investigation of the supposed physical structure 
