30 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



ing it, that the structure peculiar to the 

 organism is developed and maintained." And 

 again : "To any physiologist who candidly 

 reviews the progress of the last fifty years it 

 must be perfectly evident that, so far from 

 having advanced towards a physico-chemical 

 explanation of life, we are in appearance very 

 much farther from one than we were fifty years 

 ago." As an American witness, Professor 

 Wilson, perhaps the most eminent exponent 

 living of the problems of cell-life, may be cited, 

 and he tells us * that " the study of the cell 

 has on the whole seemed to widen rather than 

 to narrow the enormous gap that separates even 

 the lowest forms of life from the inorganic 

 world." 



Well might Von Bunge, the celebrated 

 German organic chemist, declare, as he did in 

 1886, at almost the very date when Huxley 

 and others were ringing the knell of all but 

 mechanical explanations, that " the mechanical 

 theories of the present are urging us surely 

 onwards to the vitalistic theory of the future." 



It is somewhat curious that vitalistic views 

 have made much more headway in America 

 and in Germany than they have done in Eng- 

 land, and this has been explained by the un- 



* The Cell in Development and Inheritance, Macmillan 

 & Co., 2nd ed., 1900, p. 434. 



