336 The Vital Phenomenon: Assimilation 



plasmic movements of expansion and contraction would 

 correspond. 253 



Now it is evident that this endeavor not to attribute 

 to vital energy any specific nature of its own, and con- 

 sequently to explain even the most characteristic phe- 

 nomena of life by means of only those energies which 

 physics and chemistry afford us to-day, can have no 

 more success than as if one should attempt to explain 

 chemical phenomena by means of physical phenomena 

 only. For the conception that the form of energy on 

 which vital phenomena are based is different from all 

 forms of energy which have hitherto been observed in 

 non-living bodies, has absolutely nothing unscientific in 

 it, any more than the conception, for example, that electri- 

 city may also be a form of energy different from all 

 others. 



Vital energy, nervous energy, we admit at once, will 

 certainly be a particular case of the more general physico- 

 chemical forms of energy already known or yet to be 

 known, and as such it must necessarily be subject to 

 the laws which control these latter; and also, a fortiori, 

 to the laws which control all energy in general. But even 

 as such, that is as a particular case of more general, 

 physico-chemical forms of energy, it will have besides 

 further special laws of its own which are only experi- 

 mentally to be determined and cannot be deduced from 

 the more general laws even though it must always be 

 subjected to them. And it is just these laws of its 

 own which, out of a physico-chemical energy, make it 

 vital energy. This conception has led us to attribute 

 to nervous energy, set forth as the basis of life, special 



253 Verworn: Die Biogenhypothese. Jena, Fischer, 1903; and 

 Die Bewegung der lebendigen Substanz, especially P. 100 103. 



