ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



369 



view, are extremely rare and exceptional. Between these 1. 



The cosmi- 



two views, the cosmieal and the terrestrial, the wider l ^restrlai 6 

 and the narrower views of life, biological theories have views- 

 fluctuated even in our century, and are still fluctuating. 



1 One of the foremost upholders 

 of the wider conception of anima- 

 tion as a universal property of all 

 matter is the celebrated German 

 naturalist, Prof. Ernst Haeckel of 

 Jena. See, inter alia, his Address 

 " Ueber die heutige Entwickelungs- 

 lehre im Verhiiltnisse zur Gesammt- 

 wissenschaft," 1876, reprinted in 

 ' Gesammelte populare Vortrage,' 

 &c., part ii., Bonn, 1879, p. 119 : 

 "The recent controversies regard- 

 ing the properties of the Atoms, 

 which we must accept in some form 

 or other as the ultimate elemen- 

 tary factors of all physical and 

 chemical processes, seem to be most 

 easily settled by the assumption 

 that these smallest particles of mass, 

 as centres of force, possess a per- 

 manent soul, that every atom is 

 endowed with sensation and mo- 

 tion," &c., p. 109 : " Arriving at 

 this extreme psychological con- 

 sequence of our monistic doctrine 

 of development, we attach ourselves 

 to those ancient conceptions as to 

 the animation of all matter which, 

 in the philosophy of Democritus, 

 Spinoza, Bruno, Leibniz, Schopen- 

 hauer, have already found varied 

 expression." The cosmieal origin 

 of life has also been put forward by 

 such authorities as Helrnholtz and 

 Lord Kelvin, as long ago as 1871. 

 (See Helmholtz's lecture " On the 

 Origin of the Planetary System," 

 ' Popul. Vortrage,' &c. , vol. ii. p. 

 91, and Lord Kelvin's celebrated 

 address to the Brit. Assoc. at Edin- 

 burgh in 1871, reprinted in 'Pop. 

 Lects.,' &c., vol. ii. p. 199, &c.) 

 This theory of " Panspermia," of 

 the cosmieal or ubiquitous nature of 

 the germs of life, has also been pro- 

 posed by biologists such as H. E. 



VOL. II. 



Richter (1865), and has been more 

 fully elaborated by Prof. W. Preyer 

 since the year 1880 : it has received 

 further support in the genetir 

 theories of the chemical elements 

 and compounds put forward by 

 him in 1891 (' Die organischen 

 Elemente und ihre Stellung im 

 System,' Wiesbaden), and in 1893 

 ('Das genetische System der chem- 

 ischen Elemente,' Berlin). Of the 

 fourteen elements which are 

 common to organic substances, he 

 says (p. 49) :< that they belong to 

 the oldest elements"; that " they 

 admit of more varied relations," 

 and " agree with the assumption 

 that, before being condensed as at 

 present on the surface of the earth, 

 they formed at higher tempera- 

 tures more stable protoplasms 

 which might be in other places the 

 carriers of life " ; and he has no 

 doubt " that there existed before 

 the present terrestrial phytoplasma 

 and zooplasma another plasma, 

 which ultimately came from the 

 sun " (p. 50). In fact, Prof. Preyer 

 asks whether, instead of living 

 being evolved from dead matter, 

 the latter is not rather a product 

 of the former. See also the refer- 

 ence to organic evolution as a 

 cosmical process in Sir N. Lockyer's 

 ' Inorganic Evolution ' (1900, p. 

 168). In many of the writings of 

 the celebrated German physicist 

 and philosopher, Gustav Theod. 

 Fechuer, the fact is emphasised 

 that we never see the organic de- 

 veloped out of the inorganic, but 

 that everywhere the living gener- 

 ates not only the living but more 

 frequently the inanimate. See 

 Lasswitz, ' G. T. Fechner,' Stutt- 

 gart, 1896, p. 130, &c. 



2 A 



