146 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



in rather numerous forms during the last fifteen years, 

 especially in Germany though in very strong contrast to 

 the so-called official German biology but I can only admit 

 that one of all the arguments of " neo-vitalism " has proved 

 its statements. I refer to the theory of " morphaesthesia " as 

 developed by Noll, which we shall study briefly in the next 

 lecture. I cannot concede that Keinke or Schneider or 

 Pauly have really proved what they believe, and I can- 

 not even allow to the most original thinker in this field, 

 Gustav Wolff, that he has given a real demonstration of his 

 views. He states that the existence of so-called " primary 

 purposefulness," that is, the existence of adaptive processes, 

 which cannot be imagined to have arisen on Darwinian 

 principles, is able to prove vitalism ; but I say that it only 

 proves teleology, which is a broader concept than vitalism. 

 The possibility of a machine at the root of the phenomena 

 in question always has to be excluded in order that vitalism 

 may be proved, and I cannot grant that the necessity of 

 such an exclusion has been actually shown by any of my 

 fellow-combatants against so-called mechanism, except Xoll. 1 



The Logic of our First Proof of Vitalism 



Let us devote the end of our present lecture to an 

 account of the logical means by which it has been possible 

 to develop what we hope will be regarded as a true proof 

 of life autonomy. 



Firstly, we have looked upon the phenomena of 



We are dealing here with morphogenesis and so-called vegetative 

 physiology only ; to certain psychologists, who have refuted the theory of 

 psycho -physical parallelism, I must grant that they also have proved 

 vitalism. (See Volume II.) 



