VITALISM. 17 



plan and the universal architect of the organic edifice ; 

 it is now only the architect directing his workmen, 

 and they are physical and chemical agents. It is now 

 reduced to the plan of the work, and even this plan 

 has no objective existence; it is now only an idea. 

 It has only a shadow of reality. To this it has been 

 reduced by certain biologists. For this we may thank 

 Claude Bernard; and he has thereby placed himself 

 outside and beyond the weakest form of vitalism. He 

 did not consider the idea of direction as a real 

 principle. The connection of phenomena, their 

 harmony, their conformity to a plan grasped by the 

 intellect, their fitness for a purpose known to the 

 intellect, are to him but a mental necessity, a meta- 

 physical concept. The plan which is carried out has 

 only a subjective existence; the directing force has no 

 efficient virtue, no executive power; it does not 

 emerge from the intellectual domain in which it took 

 its rise, and does not " react on the phenomena which 

 enabled the mind to create it." 



It is between these two extreme incarnations of the 

 vital principle, on the one hand an executive agent, on 

 the other a simple directing plan, that the motley pro- 

 cession of vitalist doctrines passes on its way. At the 

 point of departure we have a vital force, personified, 

 acting, as we have stated, as if with human hands 

 fashioning obedient matter; this is the pure and 

 primitive form of the theory. At the other extreme we 

 have a vital force which is now only a directing idea, 

 without objective existence, and without an executive 

 role; a mere concept by which the mind gathers 

 together and conceives of a succession of physico- 

 chemical phenomena. On this side we are brought 

 into touch with monism. 



