430 PHYSIOLOGY 



historians, 1 outside of France, trace the modern revival chiefly 

 to the German school, to the work and the influence of Du Bois 

 Reymond, Ludwig, Helmholtz, Briicke, et al. It. has seemed to 

 me that one reason for the seeming neglect of the equally import- 

 ant work of the French school lies in the fact that the leaders in 

 the German school were animated by a philosophical principle 

 whose influence not only guided their own work, as it did, indeed, 

 that of the French physiologists, but which was so emphasized 

 and displayed before the eyes of men that it kindled enthusiasm 

 and attracted recruits from all lands to the army of investigators 

 in physiology. The flag under which they marched bore the motto 

 of mechanism, and its followers were animated by the hope that 

 physico-chemical and anatomical methods applied to the experimental 

 study of the properties of living matter would soon bring these mys- 

 teries under the control of science. So rapidly indeed were results ac- 

 cumulated in the beginning that the over-sanguine believed the end 

 nearly in sight, and the hope was entertained by not a few that 

 we should soon understand the structure of living matter, and per- 

 haps be able to manufacture it with our own hands. We realize 

 now that this hope was premature. We know much more than 

 our predecessors at the beginning of the nineteenth century; the 

 science has marched onward at a rapid' rate; but what seemed to 

 be the end of the forest is only a small clearing, an open space, 

 and in front of us still lies an apparently pathless wilderness. Na- 

 turally, therefore, the question has arisen as to whether or not we 

 are following the right route; there has been a more or less gen- 

 eral revival of the old discussions regarding mechanism and vital- 

 ism. On the basis of the knowledge and experience obtained by 

 a century of work, there is a disposition to orient the subject anew 

 regarding these guiding principles of investigation. 



Recent writers have recognized various degrees or kinds of 

 vitalism, the mechanical and psychical, the natural and transcend- 

 ental, and the neo-vitalist, as distinguished from the vitalist of the 

 eighteenth century. Leaving aside ultimate views as to idealism 

 or materialism which can scarcely be supposed to exert any direct 

 influence on scientific work, it seems to me that the vitalist in 

 physiology now is what he has always been, one who believes that 

 there is a something peculiar, a quid proprium, to use Bernard's 

 expression, inherent in or indissolubly connected with living matter, 

 a something that is different from matter and energy as understood 

 in physics and chemistry, a something, therefore, that does not neces- 

 sarily manifest itself in accordance with so-called physico-chemical 

 laws. The name that we may give to this something matters but 



1 Tigerstedt, Zur Psychologic der naturwissenschaftlichen Forschung, Helsing- 

 fors, 1902; Burdon-Sanderson, loc. cit. 



