410 THE VITAL FORCE. 



appears to be self-determining." (Henle, Allgemeine Anatomic, 

 1841, s. 216-219.) The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the 

 vital phenomena of organic life to physical and chemical laws con- 

 sists chiefly (almost as in the question of predicting meteorological 

 processes in the atmosphere), in the complication of the phenomena, 

 and in the multiplicity of simultaneously acting forces and of the 

 conditions of their activity. 



I have remained faithful, in " Cosmos/' to the same mode of view- 

 ing and representing what are called " Lebenskrafte," vital forces, 

 and vital affinities (Pulteney, in the Transact, of the Royal Soc. of 

 Edinburgh, vol. xvi. p. 305), the formation-impulse, and the active 

 principle in organization. I have said, in Cosmos, bd. i. s. 67 

 (English ed. vol. i. p. 62), "The myths of imponderable matter 

 and of vital forces peculiar to each organism have complicated and 

 perplexed the view of nature. Under different conditions and forms 

 of recognition, the prodigious mass of our experimental knowledge 

 has progressively accumulated, and is now enlarging with increased 

 rapidity. Investigating reason essays from time to time with vary- 

 ing success to break through ancient forms and symbols, invented to 

 effect the subjection of rebellious matter, as it were, to mechanical 

 constructions." Farther on, in the same volume (p. 339 English, 

 and 367 of the original), I have said, " In a physical description of 

 the universe, it should still be noticed that the same substances which 

 compose the organic forms of plants and animals are also found in the 

 inorganic crust of the globe; and that the same forces or powers which 

 govern inorganic matter are seen to prevail in organic beings like- 

 wise, combining and decomposing the various substances, regulating 

 the forms and properties of organic tissues, but acting in these cases 

 under complicated conditions yet unexplained, to which the very 

 vague terms of < vital phenomena/ l operations of vital forces/ have 

 been assigned, and which have been systematically grouped, accord- 

 ing to analogies more or less happily imagined." (Compare also the 

 critical notices on the assumption of proper or peculiar vital forces 

 in Schleiden's Botanik als inductive Wissenchaft (Botany as an 

 Inductive Science), th. i. s. 60, and in the recently published ex- 

 cellent Untersuchungen iiber thierische Elektricitat (Researches on 

 Animal Electricity), by Eniil du Bois-Reymond, bd. i. s. xxxiv.-l.) 



