Science and philosophy of the organism

This work is not a text-book of theoretical biology; it is a systematic presentment of those biological topics which bear upon the true philosophy of nature. The book is written in a decidedly subjective manner, and it seems to me that this is just what ?Gifford Lectures? ought to be. They ought never to lose, or even try to lose, their decidedly personal character. My appointment as Gifford Lecturer, the news of which reached me in February 1906, came just at the right moment in the progress of my theoretical studies. I had always tried to improve my previous books by adding notes or altering the arrangement; I also had left a good deal of things unpublished, and thus I often hoped that I might have occasion to arrange for a new, improved, and enlarged edition of those books. This work then is the realisation of my hopes; it is, in its way, a definitive statement of all that I have to say about the Organic. The first volume of this work, containing the lectures for 1907?though the division into ?lectures? has not been preserved?consists of Parts I. and II. of Section A, ?The Chief Results of Analytical Biology.? It gives in Part I. a shortened, revised, and, as I hope, improved account of what was published in my Analytische Theorie der organischen Entwickelung (1894), Die Localisation morphogenetischer Vorgänge; ein Beweis Vitalistischen Geschehens (1899), and Die organischen Regulationen (1901), though for the professed biologist the two last-named books are by no means superseded by the new work. Part II. has never been published in any systematic form before, though there are many remarks on Systematics, Darwinism, etc., in my previous papers. The second volume?to be published in the autumn, after the delivery of the 1908 lectures?will begin with the third and concluding part of the scientific section, which is a very carefully revised and rearranged second edition of my book, Die ?Seele? als elementarer Naturfactor (1903). The greater part of this volume, however, will be devoted to the ?Philosophy of the Organism,? i.e. Section B, which, in my opinion, includes the most important parts of the work. Some apology is needed for my presuming to write in English. I was led to do so by the conviction, mistaken perhaps, that the process of translation would rob the lectures of that individual and personal character which, as I said before, seems to me so much to be desired. I wished nothing to come between me and my audience. I accordingly wrote my manuscript in English, and then submitted it to linguistic revision by such skilled aid as I was able to procure at Heidelberg. My reviser tells me that if the result of his labours leaves much to be desired, it is not to be wondered at, but that, being neither a biologist nor a philosopher, he has done his best to make me presentable to the English reader. If he has failed in his troublesome task, I know that it is not for want of care and attention, and I desire here to record my sense of indebtedness to him. He wishes to remain anonymous, but I am permitted to say that, though resident in a foreign university, he is of Scottish name and English birth. My gratitude to my friends at Aberdeen, in particular to Professor and Mrs. J. A. Thomson, for their hospitality and great kindness towards me cannot be expressed here; they all know that they succeeded in making me feel quite at home with them. I am very much obliged to my publishers, Messrs. A. and C. Black, for their readiness to fulfil all my wishes with respect to publication. The lectures contained in this book were written in English by a German and delivered at a Scottish university. Almost all of the ideas discussed in it were first conceived during the author?s long residence in Southern Italy. Thus this book may be witness to the truth which, I hope, will be universally recognised in the near future?that all culture, moral and intellectual and aesthetic, is not limited by the bounds of nationality. HANS DRIESCH.   Heidelberg, 2nd January 1908.