76 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 864 



a previous letter of mine, upon which Pro- 

 fessor Jennings is kind enough to comment, 

 left room for certain misapprehensions. I 

 venture, therefore, to ask for space both for 

 the correction of those misapprehensions and 

 for an attempt to carry the process of clarifi- 

 cation a degree or two farther. 



1. Professor Jennings is, of course, con- 

 cerned with a question upon which I have 

 touched only incidentally. I endeavored to 

 discriminate and definitely formulate several 

 doctrines which apparently tend to lose their 

 identity under the common name of " vital- 

 ism " ; Jennings points out that only one of the 

 varieties of vitalism has any practical bear- 

 ing upon experimental procedure. He seems, 

 however, to suggest incidentally that this one 

 is perhaps " the only kind worth distinguish- 

 ing." ISTow, I should have supposed that any 

 two or more things are worth distinguishing 

 when they are in fact distinct and yet are 

 likely to be confused. And that, in the use of 

 the term " vitalism " and of its common an- 

 tithesis " mechanism," a good deal of con- 

 fusion has arisen seems to be beyond dispute. 

 Most of the words ending in -ism, the current 

 names of doctrines, need constant redefinition, 

 or rather, constant care that they get and 

 stay defined. "A French statesman," wrote 

 Lord Morley recently, " some years ago told a 

 public audience that if a patient linguist 

 would only give them a rational dictionary of 

 party appellations, such a one would earn a 

 statue of fine gold." Men of science lack the 

 facilities of French politicians for decreeing 

 statues; but an exact and illuminating dic- 

 tionary of party appellations is, if anything, 

 even a greater desideratum in the domain of 

 scientific and philosophical theories. Of the 

 existing uncertainty about the meaning of 

 " vitalism " and " mechanism " — and espe- 

 cially about the question whether the two 

 terms are really to be taken as reciprocally ex- 

 clusive, and as jointly exhaustive of the pos- 

 sible types of theory about organic processes 

 — many examples might be given; I must be 

 content with a few of especial interest in the 

 present connection. Dr. E. G. Spaulding has, 

 in a very interesting article, summarized the 



view of the late Professor Brooks upon the 

 problem raised by Huxley's famous essay on 

 " The Physical Basis of Life," in these words : 

 Huxley's statement [that the properties of the 

 protoplasm result from the nature and disposition 

 of its molecules] can be granted to be valid, but 

 ... it does not mean that there is or ever can be 

 an o priori deduction of the properties of proto- 

 plasm from those of its constituents; but that the 

 connection between these must be bridged by 

 induction. For the properties of the protoplasm, 

 or, indeed, of the organism at any level, are not 

 the additive result of those of the parts, but con- 

 tain something quite new. 



iNow, with this position of his honored 

 predecessor Professor Jennings seems to 

 agree; in his illuminating address at Clark 

 University" he said: 



As matter takes on new arrangements, its 

 activities and reactions become different even 

 though the properties of each constituent remain 

 the same. . . . New methods of action arise when 

 oxygen and hydrogen combine, producing water; 

 new methods of action arise when a mass of brass 

 and iron is arranged in the form of a clock. 

 Plow, then, can it fail to be true in the case of 

 organisms? . . . Hence we can not expect to find 

 in the physics and chemistry of inorganic matter 

 the full explanation of the properties of organisms. 



The conceptions expressed seem to be iden- 

 tical. Now, Spaulding regards the position 

 of Professor Brooks as " indicating the lim- 

 itations of the mechanistic view of life " — 

 though he adds that those limitations " are 

 found as well in the inorganic realm." ° 

 Eadl (as Jennings has noted) expressly ap- 

 plies the name vitalism to this " idea that new 

 methods of action arise when new combina- 

 tions occur, taken in connection with the view 

 that new combinations are found in living 

 things." But Jennings regards this view as 

 " far from a vitalistic one " ; he calls it rather 

 a " physico-chemical " or even " mechanistic 

 standpoint." * Here, then, we find three ex- 

 pert writers on the subject giving two exactly 

 contrary appellations to one and the same 



'American Journal of Psychology, 1910, 349- 

 370. 



^Popular Science Monthly, February, 1911. 



* Op. cit., p. 364. 



