No. 559] DOCTRINES HELD AS VITALISM 401 



no ground for making a fundamental distinction between 

 them. 



33. A very subordinate additional possible ground for 

 vitalism may be mentioned here. It may be held that 

 combinations which have in fact never been produced 

 before are frequently appearing in living things. This 

 idea seems possibly in part the basis of Bergson's vital- 

 ism. Owing to the almost infinite number of variable 

 factors involved in biological processes, it appears not 

 improbable that this state of affairs actually holds. This 

 might make it quite impossible to predict some of the 

 things that will occur in biology, even with a knowledge 

 of everything that had gone before; since the only test 

 for what a new configuration will produce is experience. 

 Does this constitute a basis for division of science into 

 vitalistic and non-vitalistic? Apparently not. Suppose 

 that a given previously unpredictable thing occurs, as a 

 result of a configuration that had not before been real- 

 ized. Suppose this be therefore accounted a vitalistic 

 process. Now, suppose that after the lapse of time the 

 same configuration recurs, and thus the same thing 

 happens. It would now be no longer vitalistic. But the 

 mere difference between a process that occurs once and 

 the same process if it occurs again can hardly be consid- 

 ered sufficient for separating science into two divisions 

 differing in fundamental principles. Just how many 

 times a thing occurs seems rather irrelevant to the na- 

 ture of the process, or to the nature of the science with 

 which it deals. 



On the other hand, if the same combination later re- 

 curred and did not give the same results, then indeed 

 would we have a new principle involved ; at the same time 

 we should have to follow Bergson into indeterminism. 

 the natural terminus of vitalistic theories. 



34. Psycho-vitalism and Finalistic Vitalism.— These 

 two doctrines differ, but for our present purposes they 

 may be dealt with together. The former holds that the 



