22 METHODOLOGICAL INTRODUCTION. 



physiology resemble two diverging lines which coincide only in 

 their starting-point, and differ so widely at all other points, that 

 they cannot be united unless to the detriment of true science. 

 The physicist has maintained his stand more firmly and securely 

 than the speculative natural philosopher, who never relaxed in his 

 attempts to force his complex ideas, constructed according to a sub- 

 jective standard, upon the objective experiments of the physicist. 

 On this principle it has been attempted to anticipate intellectually 

 the discoveries and general propositions which the physicist 

 endeavours to attain by practical evidence, and thus science has 

 been confused in a manner that cannot fail to retard its advance. 

 There are now indeed but few remaining followers of the school 

 of speculative natural philosophy, which emanated from the same 

 exaggerated bias of the age, which in poetry gave rise to the 

 romantic school. Men created for themselves an Ideal to which 

 they gave the name of nature. 



Although such a system of metaphysics* completely mistakes 

 its province, it is yet essential that " the chemist should raise 

 himself above the vital, no less than the chemical process, in order 

 to compare them both in their principal properties and results, and 

 to represent them in their co-existence, founded as it is in objective 

 processes." This is, however, a point of view from which no mere 

 chemist should observe the phenomena of nature ; for no exact 

 investigation is compatible with imaginative speculation, which can 

 exhibit only artificial comparisons and obscure reflections of dimly 

 comprehended physical phenomena. We have not hesitated to 

 avow that we have assumed a thoroughly radical point of view, in 

 reference to specific vital phenomena and vital forces ; for we 

 cannot rest satisfied with the mysterious obscurity in wliich 

 they have been artificially enveloped. With the physicist we 

 would uphold the reality of phenomena, and while we admit that 

 the consciousness of the reality of matter is only the result of an 

 abstraction, we must regard this abstraction, by which we recognise 

 the Immaterial, the Spiritual, and the Force, as originating in reality. 

 We therefore believe, with the diffidence beseeming a genuine 

 student of nature, that it would be wiser and more conducive to 

 the spread of true knowledge, to adhere, in the study of vital 

 processes, to matter, and to the laws by which it is determined, 

 than, following the fictitious abstractions of dynamical processes, to 



* Geubel, Grundzuge der wissenschaftlichen Chemie, Frankf. a. M. 1846, and 

 L. Miillcr, Berzelius' Ansichten, Bfeslau, 1846. 



