THE SPECTRE OF VITALISM 441 



one finds in books on theology. Happily books on theology 

 are fast giving way to books on science. The sentence is 

 meaningless : and even if it were not, its logical basis of 

 " religious facts " is utterly flimsy. Let us not import into 

 the vitalistic controversy arguments founded in the rapidly 

 passing superstitions that are proper only to the childhood of 

 civilisation. 



Dr. Haldane has given a more complete account of his views 

 in his presidential address to the Physiological Section of the 

 British Association in 1908. But here again, a critic can find 

 little to lay hold of: so elusive are Dr. Haldane's methods. He 

 uses in the main two arguments : (1) the argument from 

 teleology ; (2) the argument from the inadequacy of physico- 

 chemical explanations. With the teleological argument I have 

 dealt elsewhere 1 and need only briefly recapitulate what I then 

 pointed out. Dr. Haldane puts the matter in some such form 

 as this: Physico-chemical laws act blindly in their operation; 

 " purpose " is foreign to them and they are inadequate to express 

 purposefulness in events. But physiology shows a " teleo- 

 logical ordering" of matter and energy. Every function is 

 nicely adapted to the needs of the organism and thus possesses 

 a purposefulness not to be explained by mechanical laws. The 

 argument fails because the premisses are erroneous : teleo- 

 logical events are not incompatible with mechanism ; a truth 

 that ought to be patent since the discovery of Natural Selection. 

 For here we have a teleological event — namely, evolution to- 

 wards increasing complexity of structure and specialisation of 

 function — following as a result of laws wholly mechanical : 

 namely, the extinction of the organisms least fitted to survive. 

 It is true that some biologists consider "natural selection" 

 inadequate to account for evolution. They have suggested 

 other factors ; but all these suggested factors are of a mechanical 

 nature. In short, there is almost universal agreement that 

 evolution is produced by mechanical causes. We must, then, 

 admit either that evolution is a blind, purposeless process; or, if 

 it have a purpose, that that purpose is expressible in mechanical 

 terms. In other words, there are not two kinds of events — the 

 purposeful and the unpurposeful. The " purposiveness " of an 

 event arises solely from our point of view ; it is not an attribute 

 of the object but of the subject. Any natural event may be 



1 Bedrock, October 191 2. 



