VITALISM. 27 



proposed to blend into one, calling it neurility. These 

 are mere names, serving as a kind of shorthand; but 

 to those who believe that there is something real in it, 

 this something is not very far from the bias of Van 

 Helmont Vufcans, hidden in the muscle or the nerve, 

 are here detected by attraction, there by the pro- 

 duction and the propagation of the nervous influx; 

 that is to say, by phenomena of which we as yet 

 know no analogues in the physical world, but of 

 which we cannot say that they do not exist 



X. BicJtat and G. Cuvier: Vital and Physical 

 Properties Antagonistic. The archeus and the bias of 

 Van Helmont were but a first rough outline of 

 vital properties. Xavier Bichat, the founder of general 

 anatomy, wearied of all these incorporeal entities, of 

 these unsubstantial principles with which biology was 

 encumbered, undertook to get rid of them by the 

 methods of the physicist and the chemist The physics 

 and the chemistry of his day referred phenomenal 

 manifestations to the properties of matter, gravity, 

 capillarity, magnetism, etc. Bichat did the same- 

 He referred vital manifestations to the properties of 

 living tissues, if not, indeed, of living matter. Of 

 these properties as yet but very few were known : 

 the irritability described by Glisson, which is the 

 excitability of current physiology ; and the irritability 

 of Haller, which is nothing but muscular contrac- 

 tility. Others had to be discovered. 



There is no need to recall the mistake made by 

 Bichat and followed by most scientific men of his 

 time, such as Cuvier in France, and J. Miiller in 

 Germany, for the story has been told by Claude 

 Bernard. His mistake was in considering the vital 

 properties not only as distinct from physical properties 



