ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 375 



it is admittedly as yet unsolved. Biological know- 

 ledge itself has progressed on the same lines as chem- 

 ical, physical, and mechanical knowledge ; it registers 

 the progressive conquest of new regions of phenomena 

 exhibited by living matter through the methods which 

 have been discovered in the abstract sciences : but it has 

 generally been felt that this knowledge does not ex- 

 haust the subject ; that there is some principle involved 

 which we know not ; and that we cannot think about 

 the living portion of creation without consciously or un- 

 consciously admitting the existence of this principle. 

 The unknown nay, possibly, the unknowable element 5. 



The un- 



or factor must be admitted to exist, and it involuntarily known 



* factor. 



governs our reflections on that which we know. To 

 show the difference between reflections on biological and 

 on other phenomena, which, though equally unknown, 

 yet do not contain an admittedly unknown factor, it 

 may be useful to refer to the scientific way of deal- 

 ing with meteorological phenomena. The science of 

 meteorology is probably as young as that of biology, 

 if not younger. Prediction of the weather is probably 

 even more uncertain than the prognosis of a physician 

 at the bedside of a patient suffering from a malignant 

 disease. Yet no one would suggest that there is a 

 special meteorological principle involved, as in the case 

 of the phenomena of life and death there is a special 

 biological principle. We are quite satisfied that purely 

 mechanical and physical and possibly chemical pro- 

 cesses make up the. whole of the weather problem, 

 and that the difficulty of the latter is simply one of 



