INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 29 
they do in ordinary chemical action, but are obliged to 
_ refer the cause to their inherent specific properties, why 
should we expect to explain the very special action of 
the very peculiar and complex compound protoplasm? To 
invoke the hypothesis of a spiritual vital principle which 
multiples without limit apparently out of nothing on all 
growth of protoplasm and vanishes into nothingness on 
its death, and of whose existence we have no proof except 
the phenomena which it is called upon to explain, is 
merely to shut out biology from the true sciences. ‘To 
refer vitality to a special form of force belonging to 
the correlated circle of the physical forces, shows a 
complete misunderstanding of the meaning of the word 
force. Probably all that shall ever be accomplished in 
the way of explanation of the possession of vitality by a 
mere material compound is the tracing back in a complete 
chain, the steps whereby new properties are developed by 
complexity of chemical composition and molecular group- 
ing. In the end, however, the potentiality of all these 
must have lain in the specific, inherent, primary properties 
of matter which can never be explained. 
As examples of the confusion induced by want of 
sufficient precision in our definition of terms, I may notice 
the expression ‘‘ life without organisation,’ applied by 
Huxley to the Rhizopoda. If we carefully restrict the 
word organisation, as proposed by Fletcher, to the process 
of organising, and the word organism to the result of that 
process, and at the same time fix exactly what we mean 
under the last word, we shall escape the ambiguity and 
confusion into which many have fallen in respect to the 
above expressions, and from the futile ‘strife whether life 
is the result of organisation, or organisation the result 
of life. On the protoplasmic theory the expression life 
without organisation cannot possibly be correct, for vitality 
