time: the refreshing river 



these rocks of ages are all rules of conduct founded, and now 

 that we have dug down to these foundations, what an entirely 

 changed fabric of life shall we build upon them. Right and 

 wrong, I say again, are entirely misleading terms, and the 

 superstition that sees an unfathomable gulf yawning between 

 them is the greater bar to all health and progress.' 



''Laurence (intended apparently to be Mallock himself): 



'And I say, on the contrary, that it is on the recognition of 

 this mysterious and unfathomable gulf that all the higher 

 pleasures of life depend. . . .'" 



The vitalists, in fact, were concerned, perhaps because of some 

 misplaced sense of the numinous, to retain at all costs a measure of 

 animistic mystery in the nature and behaviour of living organisms. 

 The neo-vitalists, as they called themselves, centred this mystery in 

 the very organisation of life itself, regarding organising relations as in 

 principle inscrutable and axiomatic, rather than a subject for investi- 

 gation. 



The atmosphere surrounding these controversies was always 

 somewhat polemical. As W. T. Marvin said in 191 8, compare Driesch 

 and Loeb — nobody could call them unimpassioned neutrals examining 

 a body of evidence. He went on to suggest a psychological difference; 

 the vitalist hoped that the scientific method as applied to life and 

 mind would fail, the mechanist hoped it would succeed. 



"If science wins, the world will prove to be one in which man 

 is thrown entirely on his own resources, skill, and self-control, 

 his courage and his strength, perhaps on his ability to be happy 

 in adjusting himself to pitiless fact. If science fails, there is room 

 for childlike hopes that unseen powers may come to the aid of 

 human weakness. If science wins, the world is the necessary 

 consequence of logically related facts, and man's enterprise the 

 playing of a game of chess against an opponent who never errs 

 and never overlooks our errors. If science fails, the world 

 resembles fairyland, and man's enterprise no longer a test of 

 skill and knowledge, but conditioned by the goodness of his 

 will or the possibility of luck."^ 



Vitalists and neo-vitalists were found rather among the philosophers 

 than among the biologists themselves. Certainly during the present 



1 W. T. Marvin, Philos. Rev., 1918, 27, 616. 



180 



