THE TEXAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
\ 
[annual address by the president.*] 
NEOVITALISM. 
EDMUND MONTGOMERY, PH. D. 
Having been honored with the election to the Presidency of the Texas 
Academy of Science, I gladly conform to the customary practice of de- 
livering an inaugural address. 
Casting about for an appropriate subject, I felt, at first, tempted to 
choose something of general and popular scientific interest, which would 
probably have proved more welcome to an audience mostly composed of 
hearers who are not professional biologists. But falling back in my sur- 
vey on my own special pursuits, it seemed to me, after all, that nothing 
could be of more serious and instructive interest than a concise account 
of the scientific attempt to reach a correct interpretation of the won- 
drous phenomena of vital organization. 
So 1 concluded to select for my theme the principal researches and rea- 
sons which are now forcing biological investigators to substitute — as 
more profound and more explanatory — the theory of Neovitalism in the 
place of the hitherto accepted mechanistic view of vital phenomena. 
After a period of biological interpretation in which purely physical 
theories were held to be adequately applicable also to vital phenomena, 
grave doubts have of late arisen as to the all-sufficiency of this mode of 
explanation. The conviction is gaining ground that no truly vital pro- 
cess takes place in strict accordance with what occurs in lifeless nature. 
Bec-ent researches, and especially those relating to regeneration and onto- 
genetic reproduction, are leading investigators to recognize agencies 
transcending in efficiency those which are actuating physical phenomena. 
Yet, living beings are so thoroughly interlinked with lifeless things, 
their vitality so completely dependent on non-vital agencies, that living 
and non-living bodies have inevitably to be looked upon as forming part 
of one and the same common nature. Living beings are out and out 
*Made before the Texas Academy of Science at Austin, Texas, October 23, 1903. 
