ON THE PSVCHU-PHYSICAI. VIEW OF NATURE. 467 



iiuithematical formulae, and expand their view through 

 applications : the greatest progress in the natural sciences 

 has been made by those who started with a large and 

 comprehensive view of things natural, and gradually 

 descended into detail. Newton, Lagrange, Fresnel, and 

 Helmholtz are good examples of the former ; Humljoldt, 

 von Baer, Claude Bernard, and Darwin of the latter. 



Now, it is a frequent experience that in the study 

 of things natural, through the unavoidable process of 

 dissection and analysis, the subsequent synthesis or sum- 

 ming up has not carried the student back to the real 

 thing from which he started, but to some artificial pro- 

 duct differing essentially from the natural object. The 

 real essence of the thing seemed lost when its parts were 

 examined by themselves or in their apparent aggrega- 

 tion. A prominent example of this kind is to be found 

 in the living organism. Theories have accordingly been 

 formulated which looked upon life as a special prin- 

 ciple to be superadded to any conceivable aggregation of 

 mechanical processes, in order to raise them from the 

 lifeless into the living order of things. The last chapter 

 dealt with the various biological hypotheses, of which 

 three are conspicuous : the purely mechanical, according 

 to which the living organism is merely a very compli- 

 cated chemical molecule ; the vitalistic, which establishes 

 an essential difference between the action and constitu- 

 tion of a living and a lifeless unit of matter ; and an 

 intermediate view, which looks upon organisms as manu- 

 factured machines built up according to some plan, de- 

 sign, or idea, the nature of which can be further inquired 

 into, but which does not try to throw any additional 



