422 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



flow from mechanistic beliefs, but, on the other hand, that it is 

 found to flow from the intensely spiritualistic systems of 

 various Eastern races; thirdly, that even if both accusations 

 were correct instead of being incorrect, they would still remain 

 altogether irrelevant to the point at issue. A true theory is 

 not falsified by having results which we deplore. A fact is 

 none the less a fact, however much it offends our moral senti- 

 ments. Our wishes in the matter have no relation to the actual 

 character of the facts. This line of argument, if it were correct, 

 could prove no more than that a knowledge of mechanism is 

 injurious : it does not touch the question of the truth of 

 mechanism itself. 



In the second place, past vitalists have cited direct intro- 

 spection as evidence of their theory. This contention is now 

 almost wholly abandoned, and is recognised to be based upon 

 a misunderstanding. When, by an act of will, we move an arm 

 we are conscious of two things, the act of will and the motion 

 of the arm : no flight of introspection can disclose the processes 

 intervening between these events, and it is just these processes 

 that are the subject of discussion. We are simply animated by 

 a desire, or a determination, to raise an arm, and behold ! it is 

 raised. But we could not explain how we did it : and if, in 

 spite of a determination to raise our arm, the limb remained 

 motionless, no amount of introspection would ever induce it 

 to move ; for the mechanism is not a matter known by instinct, 

 but has to be laboriously worked out by the physiologist. 



The third line of argument employed by vitalists is the only 

 one that is seriously advanced at the present day. It proceeds 

 by a recitation of diverse illustrations of the astonishing com- 

 plexity of mental events, and insists upon the impossibility that 

 phenomena of this nature could arise out of any mere mechanism, 

 however complete it might be. Arguments of this character 

 lie at the foundation of the whole criticisms of Driesch, 

 Bergson, McDougall, and even of Dr. Johnstone, whose work 

 on the Philosophy of Biology constitutes the most recent 

 attempt to discredit mechanism. Driesch gave the name of 

 per exclusionem to this argument. His method is to take some 

 particular organic phenomenon, to consider in turn all the 

 possible ways in which it might be explained mechanistically, 

 to refute or exclude each of these ways one after the other, 

 and finally to fall back upon the vitalistic hypothesis as the 



