NOTES AND LITERATURE. 
GENERAL BIOLOGY. 
Mechanism and Vitalism. — Under the title of Mechanismus und 
Vitalismus, Prof. O. Bütschli has published in brochure form his 
address before the International Zoólogical Congress which met in 
the summer of 19or in Berlin. Bütschli points out that the modern 
thinkers and investigators who stand for the doctrine of vitalism, and 
who are often referred to as “ Neovitalists," do not in reality uphold 
anything fundamentally new, since there is no important distinction 
between the old and the new vitalism. Both the old and the new 
doctrine rest on the assumption that life and life-processes cannot be 
understood, or at least not entirely understood, except as the outcome 
of a special principle, or force, or of a “peculiar something," which is 
not present in inorganic or rather dead substances. The new doc- 
trine of vitalism goes further, perhaps, in maintaining that the purely 
causal mechanical point of view of living phenomena is also as cor- 
rect as the teleological, but even this is not a real departure from the 
older view, since the latter also expressed itself causally in the sense 
that the postulated vital force, that was supposed to account for the 
phenomena of life, acted according to the causal formula. 
Bütschli begins by defining as briefly as possible his own general 
standpoint in regard to the theory of knowledge. A few pages are 
given up to the discussion of the Ego and the Object. It is not clear 
why the author should introduce his subject by such a thread-worn 
metaphysical discussion, which is likely, in our opinion, to discourage 
and disappoint the reader at the start, but the mantle of metaphysics 
falls on the seventh page, and the author returns to his real theme. 
Bütschli states that by “mechanism,” as applied to the organism, 
he does not mean simply the kind of mechanics that deals with 
motion and with equilibrium, but rather the conception of the organ- 
ism on the bases of regular sequence of cause and effect in the 
same way in which we account for inorganic changes. “A purely 
mechanical ption is impracticable even in inorganic phenomena." 
There follows an explanation of that most evasive of German words, 
“Auslösung,” and its relation to causal phenomena. Bütschli then 

