CHANGES IN SCIENTIFIC OPINION 13 



acquaintance with those subjects which falls to the 

 share of most workers in biology. 



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 an- 

 other, and so, besides neo-Darwinians and n eo- 

 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 it a "genetic energy"; Cope a " growth- or 

 bathmic-force ". Henslow speaks of it as a " pro- 

 perty of self -adaptation," and Eimer as one of " direc- 

 tion ". Professor B. Moore, 1 who is one of the most 

 recent persons we are dealing here only with com- 

 petent persons and not with incompetent expositors 

 to deal with this matter, calls it " biotic energy " 

 and does so, as he says, to " avoid confusion with 

 ancient fallacies ". 



His remarks are so important and so illuminat- 

 ing that they will bear fuller quotation. "It is 

 unfortunate," he says, " that the rebound from the 

 bondage of the old view of a mysterious vital force 

 or vital energy, possessing no connection or cor- 

 relation with the forms of energy exhibited by noa- 

 1 Op. cit., p. 4. 



