METHODS OP PHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCH 47 



scious of it now, when the brilliant discoveries of the great 

 physiologists of the present century have been followed to their 

 ultimate consequences, when the mechanics of the grosser actions 

 of the body are essentially known, when research is engaged in 

 extending into their details the results obtained in the old direc- 

 tion, and when by the old methods nothing essentially new and 

 pre-eminent is being discovered. There is also another favouring 

 circumstance. The science of to-day is in great part still under 

 the ban of that potent spell with which du Bois-Reymond 

 benumbed and discouraged ambitious minds, when by pro- 

 claiming his " ignorabimus " he placed research in an attitude ot 

 eternal renunciation, the necessity of which is acknowledged the 

 more willingly since it was urged by such an authority and in so 

 convincing a form. This renunciation, combined with the fact that 

 great difficulties stand in the way of solving certain problems of 

 life by the methods hitherto in use, is sufficient to explain 

 psychologically an inclination toward coquetting with vitalism, 

 whether the latter appears in its ancient or in its modern attire. 



Nevertheless, eternal renunciation falls heavily upon the human 

 mind, and even du Bois-Reymond did not accept it easily. From 

 this natural aversion to such a conclusion we may suppose that 

 the standpoint of renunciation toward vital problems is not in- 

 herent in the human mind and is not justified. The above 

 considerations vindicate this supposition, and, moreover, the 

 standpoint is denied in practice by most investigators. If, 

 therefore, it is not the correct one, and if, nevertheless, the 

 physical phenomena of life are based upon mechanical processes, 

 it only remains to adopt another course. 



We have arrived at a turning-point in physiology, a turning- 

 point that was never more apparent. The appearance of 

 neovitalism is a sign of it. The old spirit of vital force is 

 reappearing to many men of science to-day, just as in history, 

 previous to great changes, significant spirits have appeared to 

 clairvoyants. 



It is not difficult to see what characterises this turning-point. 

 When we inquire what we have attained in physiology, we find 

 that we have become acquainted chiefly with the gross chemical 

 and physical phenomena of the body — thanks to the ingenious 

 methods of investigation and the weighty discoveries of the 

 investigators of our time, which are often characterised by an 

 exactness such as is found elsewhere onl}^ in the discoveries of 

 physics. We know the laws of the activity of the heart, the 

 movement of the blood, the exchange of air in the lungs, the 

 contraction of muscle, the conduction of nerves ; we know the 

 actions of the sense-organs, how the digestive juices act upon the 

 food, and the special anatomical basis of many psychical phenomena. 

 But all these are only the mass-effects of large parts of the body. 



