110 FIRST STEPS TOWARDS A CHEMISTRY OF HEREDITY 



a Moses who must curse the Promised Land*. One later citation 

 may stand for many. When "in the late evening of an eventful 

 life" one of the last, and one of the greatest, of universal scien- 

 tists, Alexander von Humboldt, published his Kosmos, he had 

 sworn off the vitalism of his youth. He wrote in his introduction: 



". . . Die Mythen von imponderablen Stoffen und von eigenen Lebens- 

 kraften in jeglichem Organismus verwickeln und triiben die Ansicht der 

 Natur. Unter so verschiedenartigen Bedingnissen und Formen des Er- 

 kennens bewegt sich trage die schwere Last unseres angehauften und jetzt 

 so schnell anwachsenden empirischen Wissens. Die griibelnde Vernunft 

 versucht muthvoll und mil wechselndem Gliicke die alten Formen zu zer- 

 brechen, durch welche man den widerstrebenden Stoff, wie durch mecha- 

 nische Constructionen und Sinnbilder, zu beherrschen gewohnt ist. 



Wir sind noch weit von dem Zeitpunkte entfernt, wo es moglich sein 

 konnte alle unsere sinnlichen Anschauungen zur Einheit des Naturbe- 

 griffs zu concentrieren. Es darf zweifelhaft genannt werden, ob dieser 

 Zeitpunkt je herannahen wird. Die Complication des Problems und die 

 Unermesslichkeit des Kosmos vereiteln fast die Hoffnung dazu. Wenn 

 uns aber auch das Ganze unerreichbar ist, so bleibt doch die theilweise 

 Losung des Problems, das Streben nach dem Verstehen der Welter- 

 scheinungen, der hochste und ewige Zweck aller Naturforschung . . ." 



A. V. Humboldt, Kosmos, 1 (1845) 67. 



The continuous struggle between vitalists and their adversaries 

 was built on a solid rock of ignorance of what they really were 

 fighting about. The best scientific discussions often take place in 

 a thick mental fog. There can be little doubt: the ever renewed 

 waves of vitahsm have been repelled successfully; but so many 

 victories have left our science short of breath. We shall not be 

 searching here for a quaintly monistic "vital force". But just as 

 much philosophy was necessary to dispose of the "philosopher's 

 stone", much life will still have to flow past us, before we begin 

 to understand what Life is. For have we really come nearer to 

 the solution of the problem if the age-old question "What is 

 life?" is replaced by an inquiry into the meaning of the organi- 

 zation of the cell? And if we no longer accept the God of Laplace, 

 that most International of all Business Machines, are we so much 

 better off babbling of "feedbacks"? We laugh at La Mettrie's 



* See Pascal on the "vanite des sciences" in Pensees (Brunschvicg, No. 67, 

 74, 144, 604). 



