INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 3 
of which an individual organised being is composed, we 
are compelled at the outset to face the question how such 
.a being can possess the unity and individuality charac- 
teristic of living beings; and which is supposed to be 
accounted for so easily by the possession of an Anima or 
Vital principle? I must, therefore, state that I agree with 
those who hold the physical rather than the teleological 
view of natural phenomena as applicable to living as well 
as inorganic nature. ‘To illustrate my meaning I quote 
the following passage from J. Muller’s ‘‘ Physiology”’ (by 
Baly, vol. i., p. 19): ‘‘The manner in which the elements 
are combined is not the only difference between organic 
and inorganic bodies; there is in the living organic matter 
a principle constantly in action, the operations of which 
are in accordance with a rational plan, so that the 
individual parts which it creates in the body are adapted 
to the design of the whole; and it is this which dis- 
tinguishes organism. Kant says, ‘The reason of the 
existence of each part of an unorganised being is to be 
found in itself, while in organised beings the reason of 
the existence of each part resides in the whole.’ This 
explains why a mere part separated from an organised 
whole generally does not continue to live; why, in fact, 
an organised body appears to be one and indivisible.” It 
seems to me that Kant means here the final cause, and 
that Muller falls into the error of putting final into the 
place of efficient causes, contrary to the warning of Bacon, 
and therefore the above quotation is merely a mode of 
stating certain facts, but explains nothing. The inter- 
dependence of parts and the whole has its efficient causes 
in the properties inherent in the living matter itself 
which are manifested through the processes of Darwinian 
Evolution. Since J. Miller wrote the discovery of the cell 
theory has shown that vitality is inherent in each cell, and 
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