VITALISM. 25 



object, from their demanding an explanation of vital 

 phenomena from a principle external to living, 

 immaterial, and unsubstantial matter. Here this 

 defect is less marked. The pluri-vitalists will in turn 

 appeal to the vital properties as modes of activity, 

 inherent in the living substance in which and by which 

 they are manifested, and derived from the arrangement 

 of the molecules of this substance that is to say, from 

 its organization. This is almost the conception of 

 the present day. 



But this progress will only be realized at the end of 

 the evolution of the pluri-vitalist theory. At the outset 

 this theory seems an exaggeration of its predecessor, 

 and a still more exaggerated form of the mythological 

 paganism with which it was reproached. The archeus, 

 the bias, the properties, the spirits all have at first 

 the effect of the genii or of the gods imagined by the 

 ancients to preside over natural phenomena, of 

 Neptune stirring up the waters of the sea, and of 

 Eolus unchaining the winds. These divinities of the 

 ancient world, the nymphs, the dryads, and the sylvan 

 gods, seem to be transported to the Middle Ages, to 

 that age of argument, that philosophical period of the 

 history of humanity, and there metamorphosed into 

 occult causes, immaterial powers, and personified 

 forces. 



Galen. The first of the pluri-vitalists was Galen, 

 the physician of Marcus Aurelius, the celebrated 

 author of an Encyclopaedia of which the greater part 

 has been lost, and of which the one book preserved 

 held its own as the anatomical oracle and breviary 

 throughout the Middle Ages. According to Galen 

 the human machine is guided by three kinds of 

 spirits: animal spirits, presiding over the activity of 



