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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 778 



during the past fifteen years. The movement 

 is significant chiefly because of the side from 

 which most of the approaching has proceeded. 

 It is a ease of biologists turning to philosophy 

 because of problems arising in their own in- 

 quiries, not the more usual ease of philoso- 

 phers utilizing or criticizing the results of 

 biology. To the student of philosophy the dis- 

 cussions thus arising have something refresh- 

 ing about them because they bring philosoph- 

 ical issues into apparent connection with 

 concrete and contingent matters of fact; 

 whereas the idealistic or the " double entry " 

 systems of the Kathederphilosophen have, for 

 the most part, long since been divorced from 

 any such relation to specific items of reality, 

 and have represented philosophic truth as a 

 fixed, all-inclusive, ornamental frame for the 

 universe, into which any particular that 

 chances empirically to turn up will fit as har- 

 moniously as any other. The disputations of 

 the newer biological philosophies may often be 

 philosophically naive, but they lend to meta- 

 physics an unwonted and pleasing appearance 

 of life and pertinency, through their constant 

 movement back and forth between philosophic 

 principle and empirical fact. The occasion 

 for this awakening of interest in ulterior prob- 

 lems on the part of biologists has been the ap- 

 pearance, among their own ranks, of a large 

 and aggressive school of vitalists. In the case 

 of those who, perhaps, best deserve to be called 

 " neo-vitalists " — ^Driesch and G. Wolff — ^this 

 tendency has been an unexpected and some- 

 what paradoxical outcome of the impulsion 

 given by Eoux to experimental research in 

 morphology and physiology, to the science of 

 Entwichlungsmeclianih ; " all the new facts," 

 says Driesch, " in support of the doctrine have 

 been found in this field of inquiry." But 

 vitalism has found vigorous spokesmen among 

 specialists of high standing in nearly all 

 branches of biological science: Bunge repre- 

 senting physiological chemistry, Hertwig 

 representing morphology and embryology, 

 Pauly representing phyletic zoology, Eeinke 

 representing botany, and, in France, Bergson 

 representing psychology. Besides these lead- 

 ers, a considerable army of vn-iters less well 



known have produced an imposing array of 

 vitalistic books and pamphlets; and one of 

 the wings into which the school is divided has 

 since 1907 had a special periodical organ for 

 the diffusion of its opinions, France's " Zeit- 

 schrift fiir den Ausbau der Entwicklungs- 

 lehre." So great and so rapid has been the 

 progress of the movement that the philosophic 

 thinker who has most influenced it, E. von 

 Hartmann, declared confidently before his 

 death (in his "Das Problem des Lebens," 

 1906) that we are justified " in looking for- 

 ward to a complete triumph of vitalism in the 

 course of the twentieth century." 



However that may turn out, the doctrine 

 has thus far shown itself to be a sort of bio- 

 logical protestantism. Its adherents are 

 united in their negations — they are at one in 

 declaring that vital phenomena can not be 

 described or " explained " in " merely mechan- 

 istic terms." But when it becomes a question 

 of new theoretical construction, they split into 

 warring sects. The ground of quarrel con- 

 cerns the nature of the non-mechanical factor 

 or factors to be recognized by biology, after 

 the inadequacy of mechanistic causation has 

 been admitted. The two principal views held 

 upon this point may be called respectively 

 psychological vitalism (or biological animism) 

 and non-psychological vitalism ; the latter, un- 

 sympathetic interpreters have sometimes been 

 tempted into calling mythological vitalism. 

 The psychological vitalists are those who find 

 in the phenomena of consciousness — and es- 

 pecially in the inunediately felt inner nature 

 of simple awareness and desire and aversion — 

 some clue to the sort of causal process which 

 must be assumed to account for the peculiar 

 unity, the definiteness of form, and the adapt- 

 iveness, of living things and their function- 

 ing. If science finds mere mechanism at one 

 end of the scale of being — and, as is generally 

 assumed, at one end of the evolutionary series 

 • — it just as surely, or more surely, finds sensa- 

 tion, feeling, memory and volition at the 

 other end. And to the psychological vitalists 

 it seems nothing less than an axiom of scien- 

 tific method that our " immediate " knowledge 

 of psychic causation should be used to inter- 



