OCTOBEE 6, 1911] 



WIENCU 



421 



Descartes, we can trace, if we interpret the 

 language and the spirt of the time, an 

 antithesis that, if not identical, is at least 

 parallel to our alternative between vital- 

 istic and mechanical hypotheses. For in- 

 stance. Father Harper tells us that Suarez 

 maintained, in opposition to St. Thomas, 

 that in generation and development a 

 divine interference is postulated, by reason 

 of the perfection of living beings ; in oppo- 

 sition to St. Thomas, who (while invariably 

 making an exception in the case of the 

 human soul) urged that, since the existence 

 of bodily and natural forms consists solely 

 in their union with matter, the ordinary 

 agencies which operate on matter suffi- 

 ciently account for them.* 



But in the history of modern science, or 

 of modern physiology, it is of course to 

 Descartes that we trace the origin of our 

 mechanical hypotheses — to Descartes, who, 

 imitating Archimedes, said, ' ' Give me mat- 

 ter and motion, and I will construct the 

 universe." In fact, leaving the more 

 shadowy past alone, we may say that it is 

 since Descartes watched the fountains in 

 the garden, and saw the likeness between 

 their machinery of pumps and pipes and 

 reservoirs to the organs of the circulation 

 of the blood, and since Vaucanson's mar- 

 velous automata lent plausibility to the 

 idea of a "living automaton," it is since 

 then that men's minds have been perpetu- 

 ally swayed by one or other of the two con- 

 flicting tendencies, either to seek an ex- 

 planation of the phenomena of living 



• ' ' Cum f ormarum naturalium et corporalium 

 esse non consistat nisi in unions ad materiam; 

 ejusdem agentis esse videtur eas producere, cujus 

 est materiam transmutare. Seeundo, quia cum hu- 

 jusmodi formte non escedant virtutem et ordinem 

 et facultatem prineipiorum agentium in natura, 

 nulla videtur neoessitas eorum originem in prki- 

 cipia redueere altiora. " — Aquinas, "De Pot.," 

 Q. III., a, 11; Cf. Harper, "Metaphysics of the 

 School," III., 1, p. 152. 



things in physical and mechanical consid- 

 erations, or to attribute them to unknown 

 and mysterious causes, alien to physics and 

 peculiarly concomitant with life. And 

 some men's temperame"nts, training, and 

 even avocations, render them more prone 

 to the one side of this unending contro- 

 very, as the minds of other men are nat- 

 urally more open to the other. As Kiihne 

 said a few years ago at Cambridge, the 

 physiologists have been found for several 

 generations leaning on the whole to the 

 mechanical or physico-chemical hypothesis, 

 while the zoologists have been very gen- 

 erally on the side of the vitalists. 



The very fact that the physiologists were 

 trained in the school of physics, and the 

 fact that the zoologists and botanists relied 

 for so many years upon the vague unde- 

 fined force of "heredity" as sufficiently ac- 

 counting for the development of the organ- 

 ism, an intrinsic force whose results could 

 be studied but whose nature seemed remote 

 from possible analysis or explanation, these 

 facts alone go far to illustrate and to jus- 

 tify what Kiihne said. 



Claude Bernard held that mechanical, 

 physical and chemical forces summed up 

 all with which the physiologist has to deal. 

 Verworn defined physiology as "the chem- 

 istry of the proteids"; and I think that 

 another physiologist (but I forget who) 

 has declared that the mystery of life lay 

 hidden in ' ' the chemistry of the enzymes. ' ' 

 But of late, as Dr. Haldane showed in his 

 address a couple of years ago to the Physi- 

 ological Section, it is among the physiolo- 

 gists themselves, together with the embry- 

 ologists, that we find the strongest indica- 

 tions of a desire to pass beyond the horizon 

 of Descartes, and to avow that physical and 

 chemical methods, the methods of Helm- 

 holtz, Ludwig and Claude Bernard, fall 

 short of solving the secrets of physiology. 

 On the other hand, in zoology, resort to the 



