Septembee 26, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



421 



Burdon Sanderson he definitely limited it 

 to the study of "ascertainable characters 

 of a chemical and physical type." In his 

 address to the Subsection of Anatomy and 

 Physiology at York in 1881 he spoke as 

 follows : 



It would give you a true idea of the nature of 

 the great advance which took place about the 

 middle of this century if I were to define it as the 

 epoch of the death of "vitalism." Before that 

 time, even the greatest biologists — e. g., J. Miiller 

 — recognized that the knowledge biologists pos- 

 sessed both of vital and physical phenomena was 

 insufficient to refer both to a common measure. 

 The method, therefore, was to study the processes 

 of life in relation to each other only. Since that 

 time it has become fundamental in our science not 

 to regard any vital process as understood at all 

 unless it can be brought into relation with physical 

 standards, and the methods of physiology have 

 been based exclusively on this principle. The most 

 efficient cause [conducing to the change] was the 

 progress which had been made in physics and 

 chemistry, and particularly those investigations 

 which led to the establishment of the doctrine of 

 the conservation of energy. . . . 



Investigators who are now working with such 

 earnestness in all parts of the world for the ad- 

 vance of physiology have before them a definite 

 and well-understood purpose, that purpose being 

 to acquire an exact knowledge of the chemical and 

 physical processes of animal life and of the self- 

 acting machinery by which they are regulated for 

 the general good of the organism. The more 

 singly and straightforwardly we direct our efforts 

 to these ends, the sooner we shall attain to the 

 still higher purpose — the effectual application of 

 our knowledge for the increase of human happi- 

 ness. 



Professor Gotch, whose recent loss we 

 have to deplore, puts it more strongly. 

 He says : 



It is essentially unscientific to say that any 

 physiological phenomenon is caused by vital force. 



I obsemre that by some critics I have 

 been called a vitalist, and in a sense I am ; 

 but I am not a vitalist if vitalism means 

 an appeal to an undefined "vital force" 

 (an objectionable term I have never 



thought of using) as against the laws of 

 chemistry and physics. Those laws must 

 be supplemented, but need by no means 

 be superseded. The business of science is 

 to trace out their mode of action every- 

 where, as far and as fully as possible; and 

 it is a true instinct which resents the 

 medieval practise of freely introducing 

 spiritual and unknown causes into working 

 science. In science an appeal to occult 

 qualities must be illegitimate, and be a 

 barrier to experiment and research gen- 

 erally; as, when anything is called an act 

 of Grod — and when no more is said. The 

 occurrence is left unexplained. As an 

 ultimate statement such a phrase may be 

 not only true, but universal in its applica- 

 tion. But there are always proximate ex- 

 planations which may be looked for and 

 discovered with patience. So, lightning, 

 earthquakes and other portents are reduced 

 to natural causes. No ultimate explana- 

 tion is ever attained by science : proximate 

 explanations only. They are what it exists 

 for ; and it is the business of scientific men 

 to seek them. 



To attribute the rise of sap to vital force 

 would be absurd, it would be giving up the 

 problem and stating nothing at all. The 

 way in which osmosis acts to produce the 

 remarkable and surprising effect is discov- 

 erable and has been discovered. 



So it is always in science, and its prog- 

 ress began when unknown causes were 

 eliminated and treated as non-existent. 

 Those causes, so far as they exist, must 

 establish their footing by direct investiga- 

 tion and research; carried on in the first 

 instance apart from the long-recognized 

 branches of science, until the time when 

 they too have become suiSciently definite to 

 be entitled to be called scientific. Out- 

 landish territories may in time be incor- 

 porated as states, but they must make their 

 claim good and become civilized first. 



