mechanically perfect. It is rather an arrangement which
sets effort at work and provides a basis of co-operation
between parts. In the most general terms the organism
is a structure which maintains, reproduces, and develops
itself by co-ordinated conations, the basis of the conations
and their co-ordination being laid by the inherited arrange-
ment of the structure. We shall see that this formula is
applicable to higher and confessedly intelligent as well as
to lower activities, and serves to indicate the connection
between them. Whether it supplies a basis for the
explanation of vital processes, whether these can after all
be referred to some peculiar complication of mechanism,
or whether some wholly distinct agent, neither mechanical
nor teleological, is to be prayed in aid, the future of
physiology must decide. ¹

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