MODERN BIOLOGY 35I 



maintained this difference was certainly well justified as a reaction against 

 those clumsy mechanical theories of life which were then being propounded 

 by Lamarck and others. Nor indeed can it be said that Bichat prostituted his 

 contractility idea to metaphysical or mystical speculations. His mind was, 

 in fact, trained through studying the sceptical philosophers of the eighteenth 

 century — he quotes both Condillac and Cabanis — and their criticism 

 formed a sound counterbalance to the bold ideas which he learnt from Stahl 

 and his school. Bichat knew to a fair degree how to retain the best of what 

 he learnt from his predecessors and how to establish on the basis of the 

 knowledge thus gained a consummate field of research of his own. 



