62 CRITICISM OF MECHANISTIC THEORY 



matter, and yet as not acted on itself. Its 

 presence could only be verified through the 

 failure of physical and chemical explanation 

 of certain very striking phenomena, namely 

 the development and maintenance of a certain 

 specific structure and certain specific activities. 

 In so far as any fact connected with life could 

 be explained on physical and chemical grounds 

 the vitalists were at one with the mechanists. 

 I In so far as physico-chemical explanation 

 \> failed they attributed the phenomena to the 

 x4 intervention of the * vital force/ Thus their 

 dualistic working hypothesis fitted the facts 

 in whatever way they turned out, so that the 

 stimulus afforded by one definite hypothesis, 

 which could be either verified or disproved, 

 was absent. But as they admitted the 

 hypotheses of physics and chemistry with 

 regard to the material and atomic constitu 

 tion of the universe, and based all their 

 observations and methods on these assump 

 tions, the natural consequence was that in 

 matters of experimental detail they always 

 found themselves dealing either with what 

 appeared to be physical and chemical 

 phenomena or with something unintelligible. 



