SCIENTIFIC VITALISM 



assume that it came by spontaneous generation, as 

 Haeckel and others assume, then we are only cutting 

 a knot which we cannot untie. The god of sponta- 

 neous generation is as miraculous as any other god. 

 We cannot break the causal sequence without a mir- 

 acle. If something came from nothing, then there 

 is not only the end of the problem, but also the end 

 of our boasted science. 



Science is at home in discussing all the material 

 manifestations of life — the parts played by col- 

 loids and ferments, by fluids and gases, and all the 

 organic compounds, and by mechanical and chem- 

 ical principles; it may analyze and tabulate all life 

 processes, and show the living body as a most won- 

 derful and complex piece of mechanism, but before 

 the question of the origin of life itself it stands dumb, 

 and, when speaking through such a man as Tyndall, 

 it also stands humble and reverent. After Tyndall 

 had, to his own satisfaction, reduced all like phe- 

 nomena to mechanical attraction and repulsion, he 

 stood with uncovered head before what he called 

 the " mystery and miracle of vitality." The mystery 

 and miracle lie in the fact that in the organic world 

 the same elements combine with results so different 

 from those of the inorganic world. Something seems 

 to have inspired them with a new purpose. In the 

 inorganic world, the primary elements go their 

 ceaseless round from compound to compound, from 

 solid to fluid or gaseous, and back again, forming the 



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