VITALISM. 29 



researches. He had asserted, apropos of animal heat 

 and respiration, the identity of the action of physical 

 agents in the living body and in the external world. 

 On the other hand, Bichat, by a flash of genius, de- 

 centralized life, dispersing the vital properties in the 

 tissues, or, as we should now say, in the living matter. 

 It was from the comparison between the constitution 

 and the properties of living matter and those of in- 

 animate matter that light was to come. 



§ 3. Scientific Neo-Vitalism. 



We can now understand the nature of modern 

 neo-vitalism. It borrows from its predecessor its 

 fundamental principle — namely, the specificity of the 

 vital fact. But this specificity is no longer essential, 

 it is or\\y formal. The difference between it and the 

 physical fact grows less and almost vanishes. It con- 

 sists of a diversity of mechanisms or executive agents. 

 For example, digestion transforms the alimentary 

 starch in the intestines into sugar; the chemist does 

 the same in his laboratory, only he employs acids, 

 while the organism employs special agents, ferments, 

 in this case a diastase. It is a particular form of 

 chemistry, but still it is a chemistry. That is how 

 Claude Bernard looked at it. The vital fact was not 

 fundamentally distinguished from the physico-chemi- 

 cal fact, but only in form. 



This expurgated and accommodated vitalism 

 (Claude Bernard pushed his concessions so far as to 

 call his doctrine " physico-chemical vitalism ") was re- 

 vived a few years ago by Chr. Bohr and Heidenhain. 



Other biologists, instead of attributing the difference 



