A SURVEY OF THE PROBLEM OF VITALISM 427 



universe with spirits and ghosts which account for all classes ol 

 unexplained events. These spirits play with special energy 

 around the edges of the growing sphere. Time after time, with 

 the advance of knowledge, it has been loudly proclaimed that 

 the next increment to the sphere will disclose the spirits to the 

 view of the most hardened sceptic. Time alter time the incre- 

 ment has been added, and not a single spirit was to be seen. 

 All things happened with the same order and uniformity that we 

 had become accustomed to. At length our ball of light had 

 expanded until it attained the region of living organisms, the 

 neighbourhood in which spirits revelled in their greatest power 

 and intensity. Biology became a science, this teeming world 

 of ghosts was reclaimed for the light ; and behold ! they had 

 vanished away, without leaving so much as a shadow to indicate 

 their former habitats. Again the sphere of light has grown ; 

 it borders now on the most intricate processes of the nervous 

 system. Once more mankind are gazing into a half-lit land, and 

 appear to see the dancing phantoms and spirits which shall soon 

 be illuminated and established by the pale light of science. 

 Yet the philosopher can hold out no hope that they are more 

 substantial than their predecessors ; they are, indeed, but little 

 specks of dust in the eye of the observer. When their territory 

 is engulfed by the rolling tide of science, they will merely recede 

 a little farther. To the scientific historian, the problem of 

 mechanism v. vitalism is no more than an incident in a mighty 

 and world-long struggle ; and its solution is to him a certainty, 

 founded on innumerable cases of the past. 



