ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 407 



In order to enable my readers to comprehend clearly 

 the great change which has come over biological thought 

 through Darwin's writings and reasonings, I musfc now 

 introduce an idea which I have so far intentionally 

 avoided in discussing the various scientific views of 

 nature. This is the idea of final causes, the apparent 

 existence of a purpose (in German Zweck), or an end 

 (in German Ziel) in all processes of nature, but pre- 

 eminently in those of the living portion of creation. In 

 all writings prior to Darwin a great deal is made of 

 final causes in nature, of the teleology of living processes. 

 The phenomena of life seemed safely intrenched in the 

 citadel of final causes : no mechanism could explain 

 them away. The very fact that organisms were com- 

 pared with machines, admitted the existence of a definite 

 end and purpose ; for it is the peculiarity of every 

 humanly constructed machine or instrument that it 

 serves a definite purpose which, in the mind of the 

 inventor or maker, suggested the peculiar arrangement or 

 organisation which we behold. The criticisms of Lotze * 



ches,' &c. : " Les esprits se"veres et say that Lotze, though ceasing to 



amis des progres des sciences ... be a vitalist, remained an animist. 



ont regrette' que 1'auteur opposat Discarding vital force, he retained 



sans cesse la vie aux lois physiques, the conception of a soul in a 



comme si les etres vivans n'e'taient manner which drew upon him the 



pas de corps, avant d'etre des vege"- i ridicule of those whom, like Carl 



taux ou des animaux" ("avertisse- Vogt, he had converted to pure 



ment " to the 4th ed. of Bichat's materialism. This has had the 



' Recherches,' &c., 1822). I consequence, that in more recent 



1 The lengthy discussions of Lotze i ' times his whole philosophy has 



contained in the writings quoted been stigmatised as dualistic, and 



above are not easy to understand, that he has been accused of having 



and it is not surprising that, be- i halted halfway. His real meaning 



yond the elimination of the con- 

 ception of vital force as useless to 

 the purely scientific student, his 

 real meaning was at the time not 



can be gathered more easily from 

 his later and more mature writ- 

 ings : for his contemporaries it 

 must have remained to a great 



grasped at all. In fact, we may ' extent enigmatical. See Kauf- 



