368 



CHAPTER X. 



ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



In the foregoing chapters, where I have treated of the 

 several distinct aspects of nature which have become 

 helpful in science, I have always used the word nature 

 in its widest sense as comprising everything which is 

 revealed to us by our external senses, directly or in- 

 directly. 



The title of the present chapter may suggest to some 

 of my readers that I am now narrowing down the mean- 

 ing of the word, — the vitalistic view of nature being 

 possible only where life is present. The astronomer 

 might say. Life is only known to exist in an infini- 

 tesimally small portion of the universe, on the surface 

 of our planet. This infinitesimal area has nevertheless 

 for us the greatest importance, inasmuch as all that 

 we know of the larger outlying world is only won by 

 inference from observations made in this restricted por- 

 tion. Independently of this, the conception of life itself 

 has always fluctuated between the two extremes of con- 

 sidering it as a universal property of all matter, or on 

 the other hand as quite a casual and accidental occur- 

 rence attached to conditions which, from a wider point of 



