PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 707 



entity as a vital chemical element capable of blending with the familiar chemical 

 elements recognised in the material world ; yet the physiological processes of life 

 are iu popular estimation still held to be due to peculiar forces blending with those 

 of the material world, but so essentially different that they can only be described as 

 ' vital.' The neo-vitalistic school of scientists, without adopting this popular view 

 in its entirety, retains the same term for such physiological characteristics of cell 

 processes as, with our present limited knowledge and with our present inadequate 

 methods of investigation, seem to be in disagreement with present chemical and 

 physical conceptions. This disagreement is accentuated by the assumption of 

 directive vital forces, and since these cannot be ranged alongside those of 

 chemistry and physics, transcendental phenomena may be always expected to 

 occur whose orderly array as part of natural science is not merely a futile but on 

 (I priori grounds an absolutely impossible task. In order to justify this description 

 as representing the views of some neo-vitalists, I will quote a few sentences from 

 the presidential address delivered in 1898 by Professor Japp in the Chemical 

 Section of this Association. This address dealt with the formation of the optically 

 active substances found in vegetable and animal tissues or their extracts. It 

 asserts that ' the absolute origin of compounds of one-sided symmetry to be found 

 in the living world is a mystery as profound as the origin of life itself.' In regard 

 to this it may be remarked that the absolute origin of anything, living or non-living, 

 is a mystery which science does not attempt to solve, relative not absolute causa- 

 tion being the object of scientific grouping, hence this assertion does not necessarily 

 imply any fundamental distinction between the two classes of phenomena. But 

 there is more than appears upon the surface, for the whole argument leads up 

 to the sweeping statement that ' no fortuitous concourse of atoms, even with all 

 eternity for them to clash and combine in, could compass this feat of the formation 

 of the first optically active organic compound.' It is thus inferred that because 

 the manner of such formation cannot be accounted for in the present con- 

 dition of scientific knowledge, its scientific causation is from the nature of things 

 unknowable. However, although unknowable in the strictly scientific sense, the 

 intellectual craving for causative explanation of some sort urges Professor Japp to 

 say ' I see no escape from the conclusion that at the moment when life arose a 

 directive force came into play.' There is here introduced a grandiose term for life 

 which is viewed as involving directive forces ; the term, however, adds nothing to 

 our physiological knowledge, is not in itself explanatory, and not only ofiers no 

 new method of physiological investigation but brands as useless all the methods 

 derived from physics and chemistry, past, present, and future. In a recent work 

 Professor Moore has attempted to set forth a conception which shall be vitalistic 

 in_ essence, and yet not so completely out of touch with the principles of natural 

 science.! He regards living cells as transformers of energy and thus leaves them 

 absolutely dependent upon its receipt ; the transformed mode which is achieved 

 by the cells is. however, one which cannot be interpreted in terms of the familiar 

 modes presented in the non-living world. He terms the transformed mode ' biotic 

 energy,' and the distinction betwen this and ' vital directive force ' appears to be its 

 absolute dependence upon the other modes for its appearance. It thus does not 

 run counter to the law of the conservation of energy, and warrants, in the 

 opinion of some, the confident expectation that it will be found capable of precise 

 scientific expresssion. I confess that I am unable to share this confidence. The 

 introduction of the conception entails the same double terminology to which I 

 have referred, and I feel convinced that the assumption, in the case of any given 

 physiological phenomena, of biotic energy as a causative explanation, would be 

 immediately abandoned if the phenomena were subsequently found to be explicable 

 on physical and chemical conceptions. Biotic energy appears to me as only an 

 intellectual compromise, an abortive attempt to clothe the naked form of vitalism 

 in a decent scientific dress; but, although partially clothed, it offers, like neo- 

 vitalism, no new method for physiological investigation, and must, in consequence, 



' See article byJB. Moore in Recent Advances in Physiology and Biochemistrv, 

 Edited by L. Hill, F.R.S. (London : Arnold, 1906.) ^ 



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