12 WHAT IS LIFE 



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 head-way in America and in 

 Germany than they have done in England, and this 

 has been explained by the undoubted fact that the 

 biologists of the two former countries have devoted 

 their attention much more largely to ontogenetic 

 questions, that is, to matters relating to the life- 

 histories of living things, whilst English attention, 

 thanks no doubt to the stimulus given by Darwin, 

 has been more directed to phylogenetic inquiries, 

 that is, to the consideration of relationships between 

 different living things. 



It is also a curious point that physicists and 

 chemists are far more chary of agreeing to the 

 chemico-physical explanation of life than are bio- 

 logists, and this fact is no doubt explained by the 

 greater knowledge of the limitations and possi- 

 bilities of their subjects which is possessed by 

 chemists and by physicists as compared with the 



