ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



409 



that this end or purpose was attained by purely 

 mechanical processes, that no new force, called vital 

 force, need be assumed to exist, tha.t it was the adequate 

 and sole object of science to disclose the mechanism by 

 which the various ends of life were attained. The very 

 idea of life, the vitalistic element or factor, was chased 

 away beyond the region of the 'knowable, and remained 

 merely an idea in the realm of thought, as it was for 

 Descartes and Leibniz, and as it has remained, up to 

 recent times, for von Baer and for Claude Bernard, and 

 for all those who do not accept the Darwinian explana- 

 tion. For Lotze, Du Bois-Reymond, and Claude Bernard l 



25. 



Lotze and 



Claude 



Bernard. 



of final causes ; in one word, of all 

 pre- Darwinian Darwinians" (vol. ii, 

 p. 299). 



1 Du Bois-Reymond (' Reden,' vol. 

 ii. p. 557) claims that the greater 

 part of the progress in modern physi- 

 ology belongs to Germany, in spite 

 of the great talent and originality 

 of Claude Bernard. He thus de- 

 scribes the different position of 

 the three countries : " One branch 

 of physiology especially emanated 

 from Germany general physics 

 of muscle and nerves. Whereas in 

 England experimental physiology 

 lay fallow, while it moved in France 

 in vivisection and zoocheinistry, 

 being held down in both countries 

 by vitalism, German science was 

 the first to advance to the in- 

 vestigation of the surviving organs, 

 especially of the frog, looking 

 upon them as apparatus built up 

 by nature, extremely complicated, 

 yet conceivably only machines." 

 This was spoken in 1880. Since 

 that time a certain change has 

 come over physiological reasoning, 

 notably even in the very centre of 

 the physico - chemical school at 

 Berlin. In 1899 Prof. 0. Hertwig 

 warns us of the other extreme, 



opposed to the older vitalism, 

 "which would lead us to a one- 

 sided and equally inadequate con- 

 ception of the vital process . . . 

 which would see in it merely a 

 chemico - physical and mechanical 

 problem, and would recognise the 

 genuine science of nature only so 

 far as it is possible to reduce 

 phenomena to motions, . . . and' 

 to subject them to mathematical 

 calculation " ( ' Die Lehre vom 

 Organismus,' an Address, Jena, 

 p. 8). How far Du Bois-Reymond 

 in later years modified his earlier 

 notions, we can to some extent 

 see from his published addresses. 

 We know that the French school, 

 with Claude Bernard as its most 

 illustrious representative, never fell 

 into the mistake of looking at the 

 living organism as a physico-chemi- 

 cal machine, and we may be inclined 

 to attribute this to a large extent 

 to those experiments on the living 

 organism which were first institut- 

 ed by Magendie, which, under the 

 hands of Claude Bernard, led to 

 the discovery of the action of the 

 pancreatic juice, of the glycogenic 

 function of the liver, of vaso- motor 

 nerves, and of the effects of poisons : 



