BERGSOX S PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM. 7 



But in pure speculation the adherence to rigidly 

 intellectual results has left us with the legacy of a 

 notion of universal mechanism. 



Physics, which is a much more complete science than 

 biology, has proceeded to its great achievements by a 

 method of infinitesimal analysis, and then by one of 

 re-integration. What I mean by this statement is that 

 physics has decomposed the universe into an assemblage 

 of material bodies almost incredibly different in proper- 

 ties. Then it has reduced these to molecules, and each 

 molecule to a combination of some of about one hundred 

 different elementary kinds of matter — or chemical atoms. 

 But the atoms themselves have been dissolved, so to 

 speak, into something immaterial. Further, since space 

 is traversed by radiation, both it and the atoms are 

 replaced by an immaterial continuous medium — the 

 ether — so that the universe has become a continuum or 

 rather a continuous flux, and electrons and atoms and 

 radiations are only states of this flux. 



Out of this continuum our perception has carved the 

 images of material bodies, molecules, atoms, electrons, 

 etc. But our perceptions arise only when there is the 

 possibility of deliberate action on the part of the 

 organism. A reflex action, or more generally one which 

 has become so habitual that it is performed automatically , 

 is performed without consciousness, or at least it is not 

 necessarily accompanied by consciousness, and we may 

 think of what we call instinctive acting in the same 

 way. But when we may act in response to some sense- 

 impression or stimulus, and at the same time may refraiu 

 from acting, then that form of consciousness that we call 

 our perception arises ; and pain may even be regarded as 

 that peculiarly vivid state of consciousness which is 

 experienced when we are unable to turn some persistent 



