386 RECORDS. 



accomplishment impossible. I am fully in accord with the neo- 

 vitalists in their assertion that the phenomena of development 

 and of life generally have not yet been reduced to a mechanical 

 basis, that they can not at present be fully described in physico- 

 chemical terms. It is certain that living beings exhibit struc- 

 tures more complex than any existing in the inorganic world, 

 and different from them in knid. It is possible, probable I 

 believe, that living bodies may be the arena of specific energies 

 that exist nowhere else in nature. I admit fully that the inter- 

 pretation of development I have endeavored to outline does not 

 exclude, but in some ways actually suggests, the existence of 

 such energies. I should, therefore, even admit that the vitalists 

 are wholly right in their contention that the vital processes are 

 not at present explicable as the direct result of such energies as 

 are observed in the non-living world. To prejudge this question 

 would set up a dogmatic barrier to progress, not only in biology 

 but also in chemistry and physics. If this be vitalism there are 

 probably many of us who must be enrolled as ''vitalists," how- 

 ever doubtfully we may regard the honor of bearing such a 

 title. But if the word " vitalism" be used in any other sense 

 than as a convenient phrase, an x by which to designate an 

 unknown quantity, if it be taken in a positive sense to imply in 

 the living organism any negation of the fundamental laws of 

 matter and of motion, the existence of any distinctive entity, or 

 principle that does not fall within the chain of physical causation 

 or that contravenes the general laws of physics, then, I protest, 

 to accept " vitalism " as a principle of interpretation is deliberately 

 to abandon the scientific method in biological study. 



