6o8 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



have adhered to the standpoint that they had maintained since the appear- 

 ance of the descent theory. The views of some of the vitalists have arisen 

 in connexion with certain religious or social principles, as in the case of 

 the above-mentioned Jesuit priest Wasmann, who, owing to his ecclesias- 

 tical point of view, was bound to feel attracted to a theory of life that offers 

 the possibility of a spiritualistic explanation of existence. So, too, the Luth- 

 eran conservative botanist and politician J. Reinke, mentioned in the pre- 

 ceding chapter as an opponent of Haeckel and known for his violent polemics 

 against materialism. Greater impartiality has been shown by the physiolo- 

 gists GusTAv BuNGE and R. Neumeister, both of whom have interested 

 themselves in the question of whether the phenomena of life can originate 

 merely in physico-chemical causes. Bunge sustains his arguments especially 

 upon the complicated structure and vital manifestations of the cell, which 

 cannot be explained on a physical or chemical basis; moreover, he takes as 

 his premisses that life as a whole cannot be studied except through self- 

 observation and is therefore a psychical process. Neumeister, on the other 

 hand, maintains against Haeckel and his supporters that the origin of life 

 is a transcendent problem and that the psychical phenomena cannot be de- 

 rived from the material. This criticism of contemporary materialism is in 

 itself certainly justified, but it actually implies a negative attitude; to try 

 to substitute for it an imaginary life-force is only to create a fresh compli- 

 cation of the problem; it militates against our striving after simplicity, as 

 Henle once said. The most pronounced vitalists of our own day have been 

 fully conscious of the fact, but they have deliberately exceeded the bounds 

 of exact research and gone over into the sphere of abstract speculation. 



The ' ' autonomy of life-phenomena 

 The most interesting of these modern philosopher-scientists is undoubtedly 

 the previously mentioned experimental biologist Hans Driesch, inasmuch 

 as his history shows the natural development of the consistent vitalist from 

 biologist to metaphysician. Born in 1867, the son of a wealthy merchant, 

 he was allowed full liberty, regardless of prevalent trends of thought, to 

 devote himself to science. His start as an experimental biologist has already 

 been described above, as also how he interpreted his experiments in a mark- 

 edly epigenetical way, thereby finding himself opposed to Roux and his pre- 

 formation theory. Markedly antagonistic was also his attitude towards 

 Darwinism, which when still a youth he declared to be a thing of the past. 

 Owing to these two facts — the results of his experiments, and his anti- 

 Darwinism — he adopted from the outset an aggressive attitude towards 

 the older biological school, which accounts for his keen insight into its 

 weaknesses. Moreover, his is a pronounced speculative nature, with wide 

 philosophical interests and corresponding erudition, and he has been very 

 deeply attracted by the Aristotelean abstract construction of life-phenomena. 



