NOTES AND REFERENCES. 



1 HUMBOLDT, Views of Nature, Bohn's ed., London, 1850, p. 380. 

 This allegory did not appear in the first edition of the Views of 

 Nature. In the preface to the second edition the author gives the 

 following account of its origin : " Schiller," he says, " in remem- 

 brance of his youthful medical studies, loved to converse with me, 

 during my long stay at Jena, on physiological subjects." * * * 

 " It was at this period that I wrote the little allegory on Vital Force, 

 called The Rhodian Genius. The predilection which Schiller en- 

 tertained for this piece, which he admitted into his periodical, Die 

 Horen, gave me courage to introduce it here." It was published in 

 Die Horen in 1 795. 



2 HUMBOLDT, op. cit., p. 386. In his Aphorism* ex doctrina Phys- 

 iologies chemica Plantarum, appended to his Flora Fribergensis sub- 

 terranea, published in 1793., Humboldt had said "Vim internam, 

 quae chymicae affinitatis vincula resolvit, atque obstat, quominus 

 elementa corporum libere conjungantur, vitalem vocamus." " That 

 internal force, which dissolves the bonds of chemical affinity, and 

 prevents the elements of bodies from freely uniting, we call vital." 

 But in a note to the allegory above mentioned, added to the third edi- 

 tion of the Views of Nature in 1849, he says : "Reflection and pro- 

 longed study in the departments of physiology and chemistry have 

 deeply shaken my earlier belief in peculiar so-called vital forces. In 

 the year 1 797, * * * I already declared that I by no means re - 

 garded the existence of these peculiar vital forces as established." 

 And again: "The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the vital phe- 



