Annual Address by the President. 
15 
same conclusion. He finds “that the organism is not the sum total of 
the action and interaction of its cells, but has a structure of its own in- 
dependent of the cells.” 
Johannes Reinke, when he declares that dead protoplasm is no longer 
real protoplasm; no more so than a watch ground to powder continues 
to be a watch, he thereby acknowledges the protoplasmic individual 10 
be an indiscerptibly organized whole. And as all organism are proto- 
plasmic individuals, they are therewith all indiscerptible wholes. Every 
biologist, moreover, who admits that the so-called cells of the organism 
are' directly or indirectly connected with one another by protoplasmic 
bridges, virtually acknowledges the unity of the substance composing the 
organism. 
The result of ontogenetic experiments performed by foremost biolo- 
gists forces upon them the recognition of the unity of the organic indi- 
vidual. And considering all more or less positive acknowledgments of 
such unity now current, it is not too much to say, in the words of Pro- 
fessor Vines: “Hence the body can no longer be regarded as an aggre- 
gate of cells,” which means that the organic individual is not an assem- 
blage of elementary units, but is itself one single unitary being. 
The recognition of the unity of the organic individual necessarily leads 
to the rejection of the purely mechanical interpretation of vital phenom- 
ena in favor of Neovitalism. Neovitalism discovers in vital phenomena 
specific hypermechanical modes of activity. It finds that vital phenom- 
ena are actuated by agencies exclusively belonging to themselves, and 
transcending mechanical modes of operation. There exists — as Driesch 
expresses it — an “autonomy of vital phenomena.” The agencies known 
to be operative in inorganic nature prove to be incompetent to produce 
what occurs in organic nature. 
Johannes Reinke admits that the question of Vitalism versus Mechan- 
ism is at present one of the most pressing in biology. Butschli, himself 
a confirmed mechanist, concedes that “the complexly organized form of 
living beings originates in a manner which has no analogy in inorganic 
nature.” A number of pamphlets have lately been written on this highly 
important question. Albrecht, in his “Vorfragen der Biologie,” says: 
“All vital hypotheses mentioned testify by their mere existence, that 
beyond the physico-chemical analysis there must be problems, uncertain- 
ties, which we feel without being able to express them in current mechan- 
ical terms.” He continues: “It seems to me that in all these vitalistic 
attempts a hitherto unsolved question is making itself more or less dis- 
tinctly apprehended; a question which in its full import does not occur, 
and can not occur to rigorous mechanists ; which, however, perhaps con- 
