Continuity 75 



Professor Gotch, whose recent loss we 

 have to deplore, puts it even more 

 strongly: 



It is essentially unscientific [he says] to say 

 that any physiological phenomenon is caused 

 by vital force. 



I observe that by some critics I have 

 been called a vitalist, and in a sense I am ; 

 but I am not a vitalist if vitalism means 

 an appeal to an undefined ''vital force" 

 (an objectionable term I have never 

 thought of using) as against the laws 

 of Chemistry and Physics. Those laws 

 must be supplemented, but need by no 

 means be superseded. The business of 

 science is to trace out their mode of 

 action everywhere, as far and as fully as 

 possible; and it is a true instinct which 

 resents the mediaeval practice of freely 

 introducing spiritual and unknown causes 

 into working science. In science an 

 appeal to occult qualities must be illegiti- 

 mate, and be a barrier to experiment and 

 research generally; as, when anything is 

 called an Act of God and when no more is 



