THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



great number of the wonders of life under the same 

 fixed laws that were recognized in the physics and 

 chemistry of the inorganic world. On the other hand, 

 vitalism met with a powerful opponent in Charles 

 Darwin, who solved, by his theory of selection, one of 

 the most obscure biological problems, the constantly 

 repeated question: How can we give a mechanical ex- 

 planation of the orderly structures of the living being ? 

 How was this ingenious machine of the animal or plant 

 body unconsciously produced by natural means, without 

 supposing that some intelligent artificer or creator had 

 deliberately designed and produced it? 



The further development of Darwin's theory of 

 selection in the last four decades, and the increasing 

 support which has been given to the theory of descent 

 in the great advance of ontogeny, phylogeny, compara- 

 tive anatomy, and physiology, did much to establish the 

 monistic conception of life. It took the shape more and 

 more of a definite anti- vitalism. Hence it is strange to 

 find that in the course of the last twenty years the old 

 vitalism that everybody had thought dead has lifted up 

 its head once more, though in a new and modified form.^ 

 This modern vitalism comprises two essentially different 

 tendencies. 



The partisans of the modern vital force are divided 

 into two groups, which may be designated the sceptical 

 and the dogmatic. Sceptical Neovitalism was first 

 formulated by Bunge,of Basle (1887), in the introduction 

 to his Manual of Physiological Chemistry. While he 



^ This refers almost entirely to Germany. The reader will 

 remember that, when Lord Kelvin endeavored to make the- 

 osophic capital out of this temporary confusion in German 

 science, he was immediately silenced by the leading biologists 

 of this country, Professor E. Ray-Lankester (for zoology), 

 Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer (for botany), and Sir J. Burdon- 

 Sanderson (for physiology), who sharply reiected vitalism. — 

 Trans. 



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