VII MECHANISM AND HOLISM 159 



problems of thought. We have really outgrown them; 

 and in a sense they survive as anachronisms and disturbing 

 factors in a world which in most other respects has made 

 the most revolutionary advances in knowledge. They 

 should be reformed and brought into line with the advanced 

 front which is at present held on the battle-field of science. 



The vague, popular, ghost-like concept of life is stereo- 

 typed and rendered definite by the scientific concept of 

 Vitalism; for our purpose we may take the two as 

 equivalent. Now what is Vitalism? It is nothing but a 

 pale copy of physical force. According to the Vitalists or 

 the Vi talis tic hypothesis, a living body is conceived as a 

 material system in which the physico-chemical forces are 

 supplemented by a new force, not of the same character 

 as they, but still sufficiently like them to act on them and 

 to be acted on by them. The Vitalistic hypothesis is right 

 in so far as it considers physico-chemical agencies, con- 

 siderations and categories as insufficient to explain the 

 phenomena of living bodies. But it is wrong when it 

 proceeds to assume the existence and the interaction with 

 them of a new so-called vital force, which may or may not 

 affect their quantitative relations, which may or may not 

 quantitatively add to or subtract from them, but which 

 somehow has the power to control or otherwise affect the 

 manner in which they are working. A living organism 

 appears to have the power to direct its energies to some 

 definite end, and it will make all sorts of experiments, of 

 trial-and-error co-ordinations of its bodily movements, until 

 it successfully achieves that end. The specific power of 

 directing its energies to certain definite ends or objects or 

 with a certain measure of purpose seems to be characteristic 

 of all living things from the lowest to the highest. This 

 capacity of direction may be conscious or unconscious; it 

 may be reflex or instinctive or deliberate and intentional; 

 but as a phenomenon and a fact of universal observation 

 it is beyond dispute. It is the explanation of the phe- 

 nomenon and the fact which is in dispute as well as its rela- 

 tion to the physical-energy system which it seems to influence 



