I] CHEMICAL EMBRYOLOGY 35 



"The dilemma of vitalism is irresolvable", says Lillie, "so long as 

 we regard the units, concepts, and formulae found vaHd in physical 

 science not as abstractions but as primary and self-existent reaUties, 

 by a combination of which all the properties of living beings as of 

 other natural phenomena can be derived." 



In a former discussion I contrasted what might be called the 

 Democritus-Holbach-Huxley attitude in biology with the Driesch- 

 Haldane-Russell-Rignano attitude, and concluded after examining 

 them that both involved insuperable difficulties. Lotze was the 

 philosopher to whom I went for help in the elaboration of a better 

 standpoint. "The true source of the life of science", said he, "is to 

 be found, not indeed in admitting now a fragment of one view and 

 now a fragment of the other, but in showing how absolutely universal 

 is the extent and at the same time how completely subordinate is 

 the significance of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the 

 structure of the world." And in another place, "We granted v^aUdity 

 to the mechanical view in so far as concerns the examination of the 

 relations between finite and finite and the origin and accomplish- 

 ment of any reciprocal action whatever; we as decidedly denied its 

 authority when it claimed acceptance, not as a formal instrument of 

 investigation, but as a final theorv' of things". "Nowhere is me- 

 chanism", says Lotze, "the essence of the matter, but nowhere does 

 being assume another form of finite existence except through it." 



I went on to argue that, although Lotze made everv^ effort to demon- 

 strate how mechanism and teleolog)' could fit together in the universe, 

 he failed to do so convincingly, and that it was more satisfactory to 

 make them necessary results of the a priority of our ways of thought. 

 "We may regard", I said, "the mechanistic view of the world as a 

 legitimate methodological distortion, capable of appHcation to any 

 phenomenon whatever, and possessing no value at all as a meta- 

 physical doctrine." Mechanism, whichever of its forms ^defined by 

 C. D. Broad, M. R. Cohen and Y. H. Krikorian turns out to be 

 the minimum requirement of science, is, in fact, not metaphysical 

 materiahsm. It is necessary to maintain it on methodological grounds, 

 but it is pernicious to allot it any v\ider value. It stands, in fact, 

 as one of the kinds of way in which the human spirit reacts to the 

 universe in which it finds itself, and it springs, as R. G. CoUingwood 

 puts it, directly from the ultimate root of all science, the assertion 

 of the abstract concept. "He who generaUses is an idiot", said 



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