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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1007 



the tides of opinion rise and fall. Here, 

 then, for that very reason, and especially 

 at this very time, new discoveries are likely 

 to be made in especially impressive ways. 

 If you are to compare notes, it will there- 

 fore not be surprising to find that questions 

 about the relations, the contrasts and the 

 connections of life and of mechanism will 

 become prominent in your discussions. 

 My own preliminary remarks on the classi- 

 fication of scientific methods may well be 

 guided, then, by some interest in the scien- 

 tific processes which go on upon this old 

 boundary line — this sea-beach— of opinion 

 and of investigation, where the vast and 

 doubtful seas of inquiry into the phenom- 

 ena of life encounter, as it were, the firm 

 land where the mechanical view of nature 

 finds its best known illustrations. 



IV. THE VITALISM OF ARISTOTLE 



It will help us in our survey of our 

 problems about the contrasting ideas and 

 methods followed by the inorganic sciences 

 on the one hand and the sciences of life on 

 the other hand, if we next say a word about 

 one aspect of Greek vitalism which is fre- 

 quently neglected. 



Life-processes in general resemble our 

 own human voluntary processes, as we have 

 said, in so far as any living organism seems 

 to us as if it were guided by some sort of 

 design, and as if, through a kind of wis- 

 dom or contrivance it adjusted means to 

 ends. To say this, however, and even to 

 believe that this seeming is well founded, 

 and that, in some wise living nature really 

 is planful, and does embody something of 

 the nature of will, or of purpose — to assert 

 all this is not yet to decide how close the 

 real resemblance is between the teleology 

 of nature and the choices and contrivances 

 of a man who is planning and who is exert- 

 ing his will. 



As a fact there have been many vitalists 

 who thought nature, and in particular or- 

 ganic nature, to be purposive, but who did 

 not believe that nature is clearly aware of 

 her own designs. 



There have been many vitalists who con- 

 ceived of nature as in some sense even di- 

 vine in its skill, but who did not accept 

 theism either in its primitive or in its more 

 cultivated forms. The design argument in 

 its later theological formulations is not any 

 classic argument for vitalism. All this be- 

 comes manifest if you look for a moment 

 at Greek vitalism, and, in particular, at the 

 vitalism of Aristotle. 



The Greek vitalists well knew that na- 

 ture, however wise she seems to be, does 

 not show signs of deliberating like an archi- 

 tect before he builds a house, or of piecing 

 together her works as a carpenter devises 

 a chest or a bed. For the Greek vitalist, 

 and, in particular, for Aristotle, nature 

 fashions, but not as a human mechanic 

 fashions — piecemeal and by trial and 

 error. 



Nature's skill is (so such vitalists think) 

 more like that of a creative artist, who does 

 not pause to know how he creates. If ideas 

 inspire the artist, he does not reflect upon 

 what they are. Just so, while the being 

 whom Aristotle calls God, who is conceived 

 to exist quite apart from the world, is in- 

 deed self-knowing and is wisely self-ob- 

 servant, Aristotle's God is not the God of 

 the later design argument. For he neither 

 creates nor fashions the natural world. 

 Nature, in Aristotle's opinion, is not God, 

 and is not God's handiwork, but is, with a 

 certain instinctive and unconscious wisdom, 

 a sort of artistic imitator of God's wisdom. 

 And this natural process of imitating the 

 divine perfection by quickening a material 

 world with a tendency to be fashioned after 



