262 THE VITAL FOKCE. 



sition to lifeless or inorganic, organic nature appears to 

 be self-determining." (Henle, Allgemeine Anatomic, 1841, 

 S. 216-219). The difficulty of satisfactorily referring the 

 vital phenomena of organic life to physical and chemical 

 laws, consists chiefly (almost as in the question of pre- 

 dicting meteorological processes in the atmosphere), in the 

 complication of the phenomena, and in the multiplicity of 

 simultaneously acting forces and of the conditions of their 

 activity. 



I have remained faithful in " Kosmos" to the same 

 mode of viewing and representing what are called " Lebens- 

 krafte," vital forces, and vital affinities, (Pulteney, in the 

 Transact, of the Royal Soc. of Edinburgh, vol. xvi. p. 305), 

 the formation-impulse, and the active principle in organisa- 

 tion. I have said, in Kosmos, Bd. i. S. 67, (English Ed. 

 vol. i. p. 62), " The myths of imponderable matter and of 

 vital forces peculiar to each organism have complicated and 

 perplexed the view of nature. Under different conditions 

 and forms of recognition the prodigious mass of our expe- 

 rimental knowledge has progressively accumulated, and is 

 now enlarging with increased rapidity. Investigating reason 

 essays from time to time with varying success to break 

 through ancient forms and symbols, invented to effect the 

 subjection of rebellious matter, as it were, to mechanical 

 constructions." Farther on in the same volume, (p. 339 

 English, and 367 of the original,) I have said, " In a phy- 

 sical description of the universe, it should still be noticed 

 that the same substances which compose the organic forms 

 of plants and animals are also found in the inorganic crust 



