ON THK VITALISTIC VIKW OF NATrilK. 



423 



ami in no sense determining their initial develup- 

 ment. ^ 



It seems, iht-n, that we can date back to Schwann's 

 ' Kesearches ' the ori;_i;in ni two distinct courses of Thought 

 which in tlie second half of our century obtain in 

 biological science. The first we may call the morpho- 

 logical or structural school of biology. It is based on 

 the theory of the cell or some modified conception, ami analysis of 

 attempts to explain ihe fundamental processes which I,°|:',^^J,ts. 



34. 

 StniPtural 



go on m 



liying organisms from the structure of the 



elementary parts. As the UKJst minute particles of 



' See Sir Michael Foster's excel- 

 lent article on " General Physiologj- " 

 in the 19th vol. of the ' Eucy. Brit.,' 

 9th ed., p. ['2. In this connection 

 a passage from an early review of 

 Hu.sley's, "On the CeU Tlieory," 

 has been frequently quoted, ac- 

 cording to which cells maj' be 

 " no more the producers of the 

 vital phenomena than the shells 

 scattered in rjrderly lines along tiie 

 sea beach are the instruments by 

 which the gravitative force of the 

 moon acts upon the ocean. Like 

 these the cells mark only where the 

 vital tides have been and iiow tliey 

 have acted" (IS.'iS, in the 'Brit, 

 and Fit. .Med. Chirurg. Review,' 

 reprinted in the first volume of 

 'Scientific Memoirs,' p. 277). Ac- 

 cording to this view, which has 

 been further developed in more 

 recent times, the cells would be 

 " imlications," not instruments, of 

 the vital phenomena, which "are not 

 necessarily preceded bj' organisa- 

 tion, nor are in any way the result 

 or efi'ect of formed parts, the 

 faculty of manifesting them re- 

 siding in the matter of which living 

 bodies are com|)osed, as such— or, 

 to use the language of tiie day, 

 the ' vital forces ' are molecular 



forces." It is interesting to quote 

 together witii this i)assage fi'ora 

 Huxley, what was said forty years 

 later by an eminent living jihysio- 

 logist. Prof. Max \'erwoi-n of Jena : 

 '■ Tlie fact has been established that 

 a fundamental contrast between 

 living organisms and inorganic 

 bodies does not exist. In contra- 

 distinction to all inorganic nature, 

 however, organ i.-^ms are character- 

 ised solely by the possession of 

 certain highly complex chemical 

 compounds, especially proteids " 

 (' General Phvsiologv,' tran.-,!. by 

 F. S. Lee, 1899, i." li'ti). "'We 

 can summarise our con.--i<lei'atii>ns 

 and give simple expression to the 

 problem of all physiology. The life- 

 process consints in the metabolism 

 of proteids. If this Ise true, all 

 physiological research is an experi- 

 ment in this field : it consists in 

 following the metabolism of proteids 

 into its details, and recognising the 

 various vital phenomena as an ex- 

 pression of this metabolism which 

 must result from it with the same 

 inevitable necessity as the pheno- 

 mena of itioi'ganic nature result 

 from the chemical and physical 

 changes of inorganic bodies" (ibid., 

 p. 136). 



