146 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



the other hand, whilst we can conceive though 

 with some difficulty the idea of a machine 

 which was capable of executing a wide and 

 various range of movements, differing from one 

 another in character and practically indepen- 

 dent of one another, it is hard_ to think of a. 

 machine which could execute a wide range of 

 movements and always and on every occasion 

 in a new way. Such a machine is quite incon- 

 ceivable. Yet even the most strenuous sup- 

 porters of the mechanical school are constrained 

 to admit that the living thing constantly varies 

 its method of meeting the various conditions 

 with which it is confronted. " A living being," 

 says M. LeDantec,* " is not like an industrial 

 machine manufactured with the design of 

 accomplishing a certain kind of work and able 

 to do no other. A locomotive can exercise only 

 the locomotive's function. On the contrary, 

 a dog, a duck, a serpent, are able to manifest 

 in a thousand different ways according to 

 circumstances their specific activity as dog or 

 duck or serpent. Now, circumstances so vary 

 around any given animal and +he animal itself 

 changes so quickly that we may say without 

 exaggeration an animal never does twice the 

 same thing in the whole course of its existence." 

 The argument in the book from which this 



* Op. cit., p. 67. 



