THE DYNAMIC ELEMENT IN LIFE. 115 



body for its purposes, is, with the advance of intelligence, 

 still further divested of its definite characters; and, coming 

 in mediaeval days to be spoken of as " animal spirits," ends in 

 later days in being called a vital principle. 



Entirely without assignable attributes, this something 

 occurs in thought not as an idea but as a pseud-idea {First 

 Principles, Chap. II ) . It is assumed to be representable while 

 really unrepresentable. We need only insist on answers to 

 certain questions to see that it is simply a name for an 

 alleged existence which has not been conceived and cannot 

 be conceived. 



1. Is there one kind of vital principle for all kinds of 

 organisms, or is there a separate kind for each? To affirm 

 the first alternative is to say that there is the same vital 

 principle for a microbe as for a whale, for a tape-worm as for 

 the person it inhabits, for a protococcus as for an oak; nay 

 more — is to assert community of vital principle in the think- 

 ing man and the unthinking plant. Moreover, asserting 

 unity of the vital principle for all organisms, is reducing it 

 to a force having the same unindividualized character as one 

 of the physical forces. If, on the other hand, different kinds 

 of organisms have different kinds of vital principles, these 

 must be in some way distinguished from one another. How 

 distinguished? Manifestly by attributes. Do they differ in 

 extension? Evidently; since otherwise that which animates 

 the vast Sequoia can be no larger than that which animates a 

 yeast-plant, and to carry on the life of an elephant requires a 

 quantity of vital principle no greater than that required for 

 a microscopic monad. Do they differ otherwise than in 

 amount? Certainly; since otherwise we revert to the pre- 

 ceding alternative, which implies that the same quality of 

 vital principle serves for all organisms, simple and complex: 

 the vital principle is a uniform force like heat or electricity. 

 Hence, then, we have to suppose that every species of animal 

 and plant has a vital principle peculiar to itself — a principle 

 adapted to use the particular set of structures in which it is 



