BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 69 



derived from parents of like nature. But, even 

 should " spontaneous generation " be discovered at 

 some future time, the gap would yawn as wide as 

 ever. We should still have to explain why matter 

 contained such tremendous potentialities that, in ap- 

 propriate conditions and under appropriate stimuli, 

 it should be capable of giving rise to the phenomena 

 of life. Even if that were explained, a yet wider 

 gap lies ahead, beyond which alone we touch the 

 still more tremendous fact of consciousness. If 

 dead matter could be made to live or simulate the 

 phenomena of life, there is no certainty that it would 

 think and feel. Here we are once more on a differ- 

 ent plane of being ; the phenomena on each side of 

 the gap are incommeasurable. 



It is an appreciation of such logical chasms as 

 these that retains the conception of vitalism in modern 

 thought. After a period of discredit, due to a natural 

 exaggeration of the newly discovered power of re- 

 solving the processes of living cells into the physics 

 of colloids and the chemistry of the proteids, vitalism 

 is again in the ascendant. As long as it is not made 

 the excuse for ceasing to search for a physical or 

 chemical explanation in any possible case, its re- 

 surrection may be welcomed as a recognition of the 

 fact that first in life and then in consciousness we 

 have new phenomena, on a different scientific plane 

 to those of inorganic processes. 



Thus vitalism does not depend on the difficulty 



