32 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



refers, opponents of Vitalism who are mostly 

 strangers to all the courts of science, of whom 

 he speaks as " dilettanti who have strolled as 

 far as the portals of scientific research, and then 

 claim the right to discourse to an ignorant and 

 credulous public how the world of life really 

 arose and how far we have got in the solution 

 of the deeper problems." Fifty years since 

 this was written, and how true it is to-day ! 



To return, however, to the point with which 

 we were dealing, it must be admitted that the 

 upholders of a vitalistic view do not always 

 describe themselves as vitalists. But neither 

 do the supporters of the electron view of matter 

 call themselves alchemists. It is the fashion 

 now to be neo-something or another, and so, 

 besides neo-Darwinians and neo-Lamarckians, 

 we have " neo-vitalists," who describe the 

 entity which it would be superstitious to call 

 a " vital principle " under some other name. 

 Williams calls is a " genetic energy " ; Cope 

 a " growth- or bathmic-force." Henslow 

 speaks of it as a " property of self-adaptation," 

 and Eimer as one of " direction." Professor 

 B. Moore,* who is one of the most recent 

 persons we are dealing here only with com- 

 petent persons and not with incompetent 



* Op. ctt., p. 4. 



