V 

 SCIENTIFIC VITALISM 



ALL living bodies, when life leaves them, go 

 back to the earth from whence they came. 

 What was it in the first instance that gathered their 

 elements from the earth and built them up into such 

 wonderful mechanisms? If we say it was nature, do 

 we mean by nature a physical force or an immaterial 

 principle? Did the earth itself bring forth a man, or 

 did something breathe upon the inert clay till it 

 became a living spirit? 



As life is a physical phenomenon, appearing in a 

 concrete physical world, it is, to that extent, within 

 the domain of physical science, and appeals to the 

 scientific mind. Physical science is at home only in 

 the experimental, the verifiable. Its domain ends 

 where that of philosophy begins. 



The question of how life arose in a universe of 

 dead matter is just as baffling a question to the or- 

 dinary mind, as how the universe itself arose. If we 

 assume that the germs of life drifted to us from 

 other spheres, propelled by the rays of the sun, or 

 some other celestial agency, as certain modern sci- 

 entific philosophers have assumed, we have only 

 removed the mystery farther away from us. If we 

 104 



