Annual Address by the President. 
17 
of breaking with the purely mechanical interpretation of vital phenom- 
ena, by introducing what would now be called neovitalistic principles. 
This hypermechanical, neovitalistic view I expressed perhaps more 
tersely than on other occasions in a paper on muscular contraction pub- 
lished in 1881 in Pfliiger’s Archive. There I said: “The power of re- 
generation is in all cases the mechanically unaccountable energy of proto- 
plasm to chemically reintegrate itself. Consequently its actuating ener- 
gies, and even the mechanical capacity for work on the part of animal 
organisms, transcends the application of exact physical methods. We 
have here before us, as source of energy, an explosive substance which 
is ever restituting itself, and whose power of reintegration, grounded 
in endless phyletic elaboration, stands therefore in no direct relation 
to its environment. Neither the complement al restitution, nor the effects 
of stimulation are here mechanically transparent. They are, on the con- 
trary, to be looked upon as processes in sharp contrast to modes of me- 
chanical energy — concatenations.” At that time the introduction in 
the explanation of natural phenomena of other than purely mechanical 
modes, of energy, and especially the introduction of hypermechanical 
vitalistic modes, was considered scientific • heresy, not meriting serious 
attention. Now, principally through the influence of Ernst Mach, non- 
mechanical modes of energy are admitted as operative even in the inor- 
ganic world. 
The intrinsic power of the protoplasmic individual to reintegrate its 
identity as a whole, when externally encroached upon, is evidently the 
real formative efficiency in the functional life of organic beings, and 
in their regeneration from fragments of their substance. The organic 
individual is, in fact, a wondrously complex chemical whole, whose small 1 
est portions are integrant, and nowise mere aggregated parts. And its 
identity as a whole can be maintained only by means of complete chem- 
ical reintegration, following whatever deterioration it may suffer, normal 
or abnormal, functional or otherwise. Without this constant comple- 
mental restoration of our organic identity, all would be for us senseless 
incoherency in the surrounding world, and we ourselves raving maniacs. 
The living substance, of which all organisms consist, is in a philosoph- 
ical sense the only real substance in our world, for it alone renders pos- 
sible that a body can undergo changes, and display sundry active mani- 
festations, properties, or attributes and yet remain identical. This iden- 
tity under change is logically incomprehensible, and constitutes the most 
profound philosophical puzzle. 
The power of functional integration, or so-called regeneration, on the 
part of living beings constitutes evidently a mode of energy not operative 
