of Edinburgh, Session 1885-86. 
911 
{q.v.) have been discussed inductively; while the following paper 
applies the result gained to the deductive interpretation of organ, 
tissue, and cell in their connection with the reproductive function. 
In other words, these two attempts at the treatment of these sub- 
jects, traversing as they do the whole field of morphology and 
physiology, both vegetable and animal, affords a crucial test alike 
of the justice of the above historical outline, and of the practicability 
of its deductive application. In the Britannica articles, the facts 
of outward form and habit, the reproductive organs, tissues, and 
cells, are respectively described in the conventional ( i.e ., inductive 
or empirical) order, and the required rationale of the whole series 
of phenomena (the theory of sex and reproduction) is finally reached 
(see “S ex,” Ency. Brit.) in terms of the metabolism of proto- 
plasm. The following paper attempts the reverse, i.e., unconven- 
tional and deductive, yet rational method, the applicability of 
which has just been argued for ; it postulates merely the simple and 
ordinary conception of protoplasmic metabolism, and successively 
deduces from this the form and essential functions of the repro- 
ductive cells, tissues, and organs, and even the external characters and 
temperament of the sexes. 
7. Theory of Growth, Reproduction, Sex, and Heredity. 
By Patrick Geddes. 
From the synthetic outline of the history of biology contained in 
a previous paper, the practical corollary was deduced, that it was 
now legitimate, if not indeed urgent, for the biologist to reverse the 
usual order of investigation, and instead of merely adding induc- 
tively to the categories (therein enumerated) of accumulated fact, 
boldly to set about interpreting these in terms of their fundamental 
secret,* that of constructive and destructive metabolism — ana- 
bolism and katabolism. Selecting a set of problems at once peculiarly 
comprehensive and peculiarly difficult, which the author has in recent 
* As already noted in the previous paper, the physiologist no longer seeks 
to explain function in terms of organisation, hut rather both in terms of pro- 
toplasm. It is thus necessary to postulate an acquaintance with the modern 
conception of protoplasm, for which reference may be made to M. Foster’s 
Ency. Brit, article on “Physiology,” and the writer’s article on “Proto- 
plasm.” The general theory may be summarised in the accompanying 
