ON THE VITALISTIC VIEW OF NATURE. 379 



the purely scientific or exact method to the study of 

 the organism. 



But biology is not only a subject of purely scientific ? 



* Influence of 



interest. There is a second and larger class of students medicine - 

 those who study biology as the basis of the art of 

 healing, the medical profession. To them the question 

 of life and death, of the normal or abnormal co-opera- 

 tion of many processes in the preservation of health 

 or the phenomena of disease, is of prime interest : the 

 knowledge of the mechanical, physical, and chemical 

 properties and reactions of living matter, of the con- 

 struction of the organs and their functions, is only the 

 means to an end. Before the time of Lavoisier, with the 

 solitary exception of Descartes, biology was studied only 

 by medical men ; indeed to them both the existence and 

 the progress of the science were entirely due. For them 

 the paramount questions must always be, " What is life ? 

 What is its origin ? What is death ? What are its 

 causes ? What is disease ? " To this class of students we 

 are indebted for again and again bringing forward and try- 

 ing to answer these fundamental, these central questions. 1 

 By the other, the smaller yet increasing class of purely 

 scientific biologists, we are being continually told that 

 these questions are premature or metaphysical, 2 and 



from what we know, the internal 

 world, to explain what we do not 

 know, the external world " (p. 12). 

 1 See, for example, the two very 

 interesting and suggestive addresses 

 by Prof. Ed. yon Rindfleisch of 

 Wurzburg, ' Arztliche Philoso- 

 phic' (Wiirzburg, 1888), and 'Neo- 

 Vitalismus' (Verhandl. d. ..Ges. 

 deutscher Naturforscher und Arzte 

 zu Liibeck, 1895, vol. i. p. 111). 



2 See Claude Bernard, ' La Science 

 ExpeViinentale,' 3 me ed., p. 211 : 

 " La vie est I'ide'e directrice ou la 

 force evolutive de 1'etre ; . . . mais 

 1'erreur serait de croire que cette 

 force me'taphysique est active a la 

 faon d'une force physique. . . . 

 La force metaphysique Evolutive par 

 laquelle nous pouvons caracteViser 

 la vie est inutile a la science, 

 parce qu'etant en dehors des forces- 



