12 LIFE: ITS NATUEE, OKIGIN AND MAINTENANCE 



and the resulting formation of cells, and ultimately of all the tissues and 

 organs in short, to bring about the development of the whole body if 



a simple chemical reagent is substituted for the male 



v?tli^m S and vital element in the process of fertilisation. Indeed, even 

 force. a mechanical or electrical stimulus may suffice to start 



development. Kurz und gut, as the Germans say, 

 vitalism as a working hypothesis has not only had its foundations under- 

 mined, but most of the superstructure has toppled over, and if any diffi- 

 culties of explanation still persist, we are justified in assuming that the 

 cause is to be found in our imperfect knowledge of the constitution and 

 working of living material. At the best vitalism explains nothing, and 

 the term ' vital force ' is an expression of ignorance which can bring us 

 no further along the path of knowledge. Nor is the problem in any 

 way advanced by substituting for the term 'vitalism' ' neo-vitalism,' 

 and for ' vital force ' ' biotic energy.' ' New presbyter is but old priest 

 writ large.' 



Further, in its chemical composition we are no longer compelled to 

 consider living substance as possessing infinite complexity, as was thought 

 The possibility of the ^ oe the case when chemists first began to break up 

 synthesis of living the proteins of the body into their simpler con- 

 stituents. The researches of Miescher, which have 

 been continued and elaborated by Kossel and his pupils, have acquainted 

 us with the fact that a body so important for the nutritive and repro- 

 ductive functions of the cell as the nucleus which may be said indeed to 

 represent the quintessence of cell-life possesses a chemical constitution 

 of no very great complexity ; so that we may even hope some day to see 

 the material which composes it prepared synthetically. And when we 

 consider that the nucleus is not only itself formed of living substance, but 

 is capable of causing other living substance to be built up ; is, in fact, the 

 directing agent in all the principal chemical changes which take place 

 within the living cell, it must be admitted that we are a long step forward 

 in our knowledge of the chemical basis of life. That it is the form of 

 nuclear matter rather than its chemical and molecular structure which is 

 the important factor in nuclear activity cannot be supposed. The form of 

 nuclei, as every microscopist knows, varies infinitely, and there are 

 numerous living organisms in which the nuclear matter is without form, 

 appearing simply as granules distributed in the protoplasm. Not that the 

 form assumed and the transformations undergone by the nucleus are with- 

 out importance ; but it is none the less true that even in an amorphous 

 condition the material which in the ordinary cell takes the form of a 

 ' nucleus ' may, in simpler organisms which have not in the process of 



* B. Moore, in Recent Advances in Physiology, 1906 ; Moore and Roaf, ibid. ; and 

 Further Advances in Physiology, 1909. Moore lays especial stress on the trans- 

 formations of energy which occur in protoplasm. See on the question of vitalism 

 Gley (Revue Scientifique, 1911) and D'Arcy Thompson (Address to Section D at 

 Portsmouth, 1911). 



