2 Introductory Remarks 



even a scientific vitalist, would think of treating the 

 process of digestion, metabolism, production of heat, 

 and electricity or even secretion or muscular contrac- 

 tion in any other than a purely chemical or physico- 

 chemical way; nor would anybody think of explaining 

 the functions of the eye or the ear from any other 

 standpoint than that of physics. 



When the actions of the organism as a whole are con- 

 cerned, we find a totally different situation. The same 

 physiologists who in the explanation of the individ- 

 ual processes would follow the strictly physicochemi- 

 cal viewpoint and method would consider the reactions 

 of the organism as a whole as the expression of non- 

 physical agencies. Thus Claude Bernard,^ who in 

 the investigation of the individual life processes was a 

 strict mechanist, declares that the making of a har- 

 monious organism from the egg cannot be explained 

 on a mechanistic basis but only on the assumption of 

 a "directive force." Bernard assumes, as Bichat and 

 others had done before him, that there are two opposite 

 processes going on in the living organism: (i) the pheno- 

 mena of vital creation or organizing synthesis ; (2) the 

 phenomena of death or organic destruction. It is only 

 the destructive processes which give rise to the physical 

 manifestations by which we judge life, such as respira- 

 tion and circulation or the activity of glands, and so on. 



* Bernard C, LejoM J sur les Phenomenes de la Vie. Paris, 1885, i., 

 22-64. 



