Scientific Lectures. ' 231 



disjoining art of man can present in a separate state ingredients which 

 ye would vainly seek in the interior of the earth or in the moving 

 oceans of air and water. Different, however, is the blending of the 

 same substances in animal and vegetable bodies. Here vital force 

 imperatively asserts its rights, and heedless of the affinity and antago- 

 nism of the atoms, unites substances which in inanimate nature ever 

 flee from each other, and separates that which is incessantly striving 

 to unite. Recognize, therefore, in the Rhodian, Genius, in the expres- 

 sion of his youthful vigor, in the butterfly on his slioulder, in the 

 commanding glance of his eye, the symbol of vital force as it animates 

 every gerin of organic creation. The earthly elements at his feet 

 are striving to gratifiy their own desires and to mingle with one 

 another. Imperiously the Genius threatens them with upraised and 

 high-flaming torch, and compels them, regardless of their ancient 

 rights, to obey his laws. Look now on the new work of art ; turn 

 from life to death. The butterfly has soared upward, the extinguished 

 torch is reversed, and the head of the youth is drooping ; the spirit 

 has fled to other spheres, and the vital force is extinct. Now the youths 

 and maidens join their hands in joyous accord. Earthly matter 

 again resumes its rights. Released from all bonds, they impetuously 

 follow their natural instincts, and the day of his death is to them a 

 day of nuptials.* 



The view here put by Humboldt into the mouth of Epicharmus 

 may be taken as a fair representation of the current opinion of all 

 ages concerning vital force. To-day, as trul}'^ as seventy-flve years 

 ago when Humboldt wrote, the mysterious and awful phenomena of 

 life are commonly attributed to some controlling agent residing in 

 the organism ; to some independent presiding deity, holding it in 

 absolute subjection. Such a notion it was which prompted Heracli- 

 tus to talk of a universal fire. Van Helinont to propose his Archteus, 

 Hofmann his vital fluid, Hunter his materia vitoe diffusa, and Hum- 

 boldt his vital force.f All these names assume the existence of a 



* Humboldt, Views of Nature, Bohu's ed., London, 1850, p. 383. This allegory did not appear in 

 the first edition of the Views of Nature. In the preface to the second edition the author gives the 

 foUowiu:^ account of its origin: "Schiller," he says, "in remembrance of his youthful medical 

 studies, loved to converse with me, during my long stay at Jena, on physiological subjects." * * 

 * * "It was at this period that I wrote the little allegory on vital force, called The Rhodian 

 Genius. The predilection which Schiller entertained for this piece, which he admitted into his 

 periodical. Die Horen, gave me courage to introduce it here," It was published in Die Iloren in 1795. 



+ Humboldt, op. cit., p. 3S(i In his Aphori-imi ex doctrina Physiologic^ chemical. Plantarvtn, 

 appended to his i^tom /^rJ6«rg'«!m ,«Mi/:«rranea, published in 1793, Humboldt had said "Vim inter- 

 nam, quae chymicie aflinitatis vincula resolvit. atque obatat, quominus elementa corporara libere 

 coDJungautur, vitalem vocaraus." "That internal force, which dissolves the bonds of chemical 



