VII MECHANISM AND HOLISM i6i 



popular associations and accretions. The Vitalistic hypo- 

 thesis moves in the opposite direction; by constituting a 

 life-force on the analogy of physico-chemical forces, it tends 

 to materialise life, to hypostatise it into a definite entity, 

 and in this form to set it over against the material body 

 in which it has its seat. Not only is life constituted into an 

 entity interacting with other material entities, but its 

 non-material, spiritual character is reduced to the level of 

 a force among other forces, different from them indeed, but 

 not so different as not to influence them or to be influenced 

 by them. Life as Vitalism or vital force is considered a 

 real entity, and its relations with the rest of the living 

 organism become the source of serious difficulties and 

 contradictions. 



I have above briefly stated the naturalistic scheme of 

 science and its sharp opposition to and contradictions of 

 the claims of life and mind as ordinarily understood. That 

 opposition and those contradictions arise from fundamental 

 misconceptions which have their origins in the naive dualism 

 of our ordinary views of life and mind. Body-and-soul is 

 the model or scheme on which both thought and science 

 are based. There is an anima dwelling in a corpus, one 

 entity living in close symbiosis with another, and the two 

 profoundly influencing each other. As Descartes formulated 

 it, there is the res cogitans in the res extensa; there are two 

 distinct separate res or entities, and the difficulties and 

 contradictions arise from their mutual assumed interaction. 

 The theory of Vitalism or the vital force seems simply to 

 repeat and to emphasise this dualism. But if we wish to 

 overcome these difficulties and contradictions we have to 

 probe more deeply than these popular views. We must 

 get down to the tap-root from which the two apparent 

 entities or substances must have grown. The subject is 

 most difficult and uncertain; but I may be allowed to put 

 it in the following form. 



"Selectiveness," as was pointed out in Chapter III, 

 seems an inherent and fundamental property of matter. 

 Electro-magnetism is a striking instance of that pheno- 



