Problems of biology / [George Sandeman].

  • Sandeman, George
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Problems of biology / [George Sandeman]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    101/232 page 89
    CHAPTER III. THE SECOND POSTULATE OF BIOLOGY. The second postulate of biology is, that all the qualities of the organism and all its stages are the manifestation of, and are related to one another only through an agent or system of agents within the known body. The agent is purely self-determining, and is in a relation of pure activity to the body, which, in consequence, is in a relation of pure passivity to the agent. The latter may or may not be associated with particular microscopic appearances in the body, or with particular states of its feeling, but in all cases it is formally supposed to have such a phenomenal existence. It carries the qualities when they are latent, and therefore carries alternative qualities ; and it manifests these when and where they ought to be manifested. If the agent is a “ material vehicle of hereditary qualities” there is a distinct agent to each difference in the organism, but a system may be given to such agents by the hypothesis of a material “ architecture” from which they are unfolded. If the agent is a quasi-psychical principle, there is only one, and its system is a system of ideas dimly apprehended. The fallacy of the second postulate is, that the agent is merely the abstract principle of identity, to which a particular place has been given as one of and as among tbe differences for which it is identity; that as the product of a logical distinction hypostasized into a phenomenal difference, it is in contradiction with the possibility of research ; and that it is essentially unknowable. It is found not to answer the problem, but to assume into its self-contradiction the distinction of categories w'hich gives rise to the problem of
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