20 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



and decayed, are for a time unable to with- 

 stand the assault." Such, he thinks, was the 

 case with the older Vitalism, and such indeed, 

 according to the learned de Wulf, seems to 

 have been more or less the history of the later 

 scholasticism * in its day of decadence. Neither 

 Scholasticism nor Vitalism was dead, however 

 much they may have had that appearance. 

 Both have come to the front in full vigour, and 

 have done so by firmly facing every new dis- 

 covery of science and welding it, where possible, 

 into their system. Moreover, as will more fully 

 appear in later pages, these new facts of science 

 even the most startling of them have been 

 singularly favourable to the progress of both 

 the schools of thought to which we have 

 alluded. 



The second half of the nineteenth century 



was emphatically a period of revolt, and 



amongst the doctrines attacked none received 



a severer handling than that of Vitalism. Two 



of these attacks, both belonging to the middle 



part of the century, were really good, and, 



Lotze and according to Driesch, were "first-rate." The 



Bernard first of these was Lotze ? s article in Wagner's 



Dictionary of Physiology (1842), which he calls 



" the most solid of all attacks upon Vitalism." 



* See the account in his Scholastic Philosophy, trans. 

 Coffey: Dublin, Gill, 1907. 



