CHANGES IN SCIENTIFIC OPINION 5 



term " soul " signified that principle of life which, 

 as vitalists hold, is the factor the elusive but none 

 the less certainly existent factor which distin- 

 guishes living from not-living matter, which places 

 the meanest drop of living protoplasm, the micro- 

 scopic Amoeba, in a position separated by a gulf 

 of immeasurable width from the most complicated 

 product or substance of the inorganic world. Such 

 in essence was the view at the period in question, 

 and it is a theory which, unlike that of the al- 

 chemists, has never ceased to have its adherents. 



But, with the great outburst of scientific inves- 

 tigation and scientific knowledge which took place 

 in the nineteenth century the vitalistic theory came 

 to have its strenuous opponents. There were those 

 who maintained that it was a mere piece of mysti- 

 cism and even at the present day, as we shall shortly 

 see, there are many who would as soon confess 

 their belief in the existence of a vital factor in living 

 things as they would admit the existence of an 

 Almighty Creator of all things. Both these ancient 

 views would to them seem to savour of super- 

 stition and to belong to a dark age of science. 

 Perhaps in the beginning of the scientific outburst 

 such a point of view was comprehensible if not 

 legitimate. There were as there still are an ex- 

 traordinary number of scientific facts lying around 

 waiting to be picked up. The very number, variety 



