236 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



though partially and usefully true, in the 

 theory of machines, if heat were unknown or 

 ignored." 



We may feel perfectly clear from what we 

 know best ourselves from our intimate and 

 everyday experience, namely, conscious human 

 life, and from the processes which take place in 

 living matter, that life or the vital principle 

 does modify the forces, energies, and movements 

 of _ matter. Is it not perfectly obvious that the 

 war-fever, religious revivals, electoral excite- 

 ments are all ideas, yet all exercise potent in- 

 fluences over the energies and movements of 

 matter, in the shape of human beings, not to 

 speak of all the material activities which they 

 control ? 



If the arguments in favour of the existence 

 of an energy in living matter which is not to 

 be found amongst the known energies of chemis- 

 try or physics are conclusive, as they appear to 

 be to the present writer, and, as he has tried 

 to show, to many men of science whose claims 

 to be heard on this point are far greater than 

 any which he can put forward, then it is quite 

 clear either that the Law of Conservation of 

 Energy is incorrectly formulated and will re- 

 quire modification when the state of our know- 

 ledge is more advanced, or that the form of 

 energy in question stands to the Law in some 



