32 LIFE AND DEATH. 



physiological factors. It would therefore seem that 

 the vital force, to use a rather questionable form 

 of language, withdraws in a certain measure the 

 organized being from the realm of physical forces 

 and this conclusion is one form of contemporary 

 neo-vitalism. 



4. PHILOSOPHICAL NEO-VITALISM. 



Contemporary neo-vitalism has assumed another 

 form, more philosophical than scientific, by which it is 

 brought closer to vitalism, properly so called. We 

 should like to mention the experiment of Reinke, 1 

 in Germany. Reinke is a botanist of distinction, who 

 distinguishes the speculative from the positive domain 

 of science, and cultivates both with success. 



His ideas are analogous to those of A. Gautier, of 

 Chevreul, and of Claude Bernard himself. He thinks, 

 with these masters, that the mystery of life is not to be 

 found in the nature of the forces that it brings into 

 play, but in the direction that it gives them. All these 

 thinkers are struck by the order and the direction 

 impressed upon the phenomena which take place 

 in the living being, by their interconnection, by their 

 apparent adaptation to an end, by the kind of im- 

 pression that they give of a plan which is being 

 carried out. All these reflections lead Reinke to 

 attach great weight to the idea of a "directing 

 force." 



The physico-chemical energies are no doubt the 

 only ones which are manifested in the organized 

 being, but they are directed as a blind man is by his 



1 Reinke, Die Welt als That; Berlin, 1899. 



