i6o HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



or direct. And Vitalism is a theory which attributes this 

 power of inner direction or control to a new sort of force 

 which distinguishes living from non-living bodies. It is, 

 of course, true that with many of the older biologists Vitalism 

 was more a standpoint than a theory; more an attitude of 

 protest against the supposed adequacy and sufficiency of 

 mechanistic or physico-chemical explanation of living 

 bodies, than a definite assumption of a new vital force. 

 They realised that there was something more in the living 

 organism than what could be accounted for on the action 

 of purely physical and chemical forces. In this standpoint 

 they were no doubt right; and in this vague negative 

 sense there is not only no harm, but positive value in the 

 Vitalistic standpoint. But with some of the more recent 

 biologists the Vitalistic standpoint has crystallised into a defi- 

 nite hypothesis which assumes a specific life-force. And it is 

 against this hypothesis that our argument will be directed. 

 It follows from what has already been said that the very 

 conception of such a ''force" is an anachronism, an assimi- 

 lation of the concept of life to ideas and view-points which 

 are or should be obsolete. It is a question whether the 

 concept of force has any validity at all in physics; whether 

 the dynamical notion of force is more than a mere mathe- 

 matical notation or terminology with nothing in physical 

 reality behind it. There is a tendency among physicists to 

 discard the idea of force as unnecessary and misleading and 

 to restrict themselves to the concept of energy. Whether 

 they are right or not, it is at any rate clear that the idea 

 of force can only have an application, if it has any at all, 

 in the material physico-chemical order. When it is extended 

 to the province of life, it becomes illegitimate and only 

 serves to materialise what is in its essence non-material 

 and spiritual. The concept of life is already deeply tainted 

 in this and other ways; and that is one of the reasons why 

 I have proposed for purposes of scientific thought and 

 reasoning to discard this vague and abused term, and to 

 substitute instead the notion of Holism, which can at any 

 rate be made clear and definite, and is not vitiated by 



