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I must strongly urge the need of an increased membership. We 
want more of the professional scientific workers of the State to join 
those who are already members. We want also more of the keen 
amateurs, for it must not be forgotten that much of the advance in 
science has been due to hard-working amateurs. 
One other point, we want much more suitable rooms. This is 
largely a question of funds, and it adds more force to the duty of 
every member to find additional support, and new members. 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF VITALISM IN MODLRN BIOLOGY. 
I may be criticised for attempting, in the short time allotted for 
the reading of a paper, to add still more in the way of a discussion 
of Neovitalism. For excuse, I must plead that the investigation of 
life and the phenomena which distinguish living from lifeless matter 
is the fundamental problem of the biologist. 
Looking around us, we recognise certain bodies as living; others 
we say are lifeless. Some of these lifeless bodies may once have 
been living, or at least may consist of substances which once formed 
part of living bodies — others never at any time have had any close 
relations whatever with living bodies. We speak of living bodies as 
organisms and classify them as animals and plants. There are, how- 
ever, cases where we find it extremely difficult to draw a line between 
the state of living and that of non-living, and, as a matter of fact, 
it is only with difficulty that we can put into words our conception 
of life. 
Leaving aside these problematic cases, we may study the sub- 
stance of living organisms by — 
(1.) A chemical examination, in order to determine the ele- 
ments of which it is composed. 
(2.) A microscopic examination, in order to discover its 
structure. 
(3.) An investigation of its manifestations, which we recog- 
nise collectively as indicative of life. 
We can then attempt to correlate composition, structure, and life 
phenomena. 
The chemist has shown us that the elementary substances of 
which protoplasm is built exist and are quite common in non-living 
bodies around us. The microscope has its limits, but the wonderful 
advance in microscope technique during the last ten years has taken 
us far into the minute structure of living things. The phenomena 
of life have been observed under normal and also abnormal experi- 
mental conditions. The question that follows quite naturally may be 
put in the following words : — “Are the manifestations of life and the 
phenomena associated with living beings to be explained entirely by 
physico-chemical phenomena as now understood by us, or must we 
conclude that there is some non-material vital principle, or some new 
