6 FORMER VIEWS ON THE CAUSE OF THE VITAL PHENOMENA. 



force in the cells, he declared vital activity to be the result of 

 chemical processess whereby energy is liberated. What caused 

 those chemical processes he could not tell. Heidenhain takes it 

 for granted, that all the vital actions are nothing but peculiar 

 connections of physical and chemical forces exerted from the 

 living cells, l) and similar views were entertained by the well 

 known Chemical Physiologist of Great Britain : Halliburton,^ 

 and by the physiologist F. Hilppe^ in Prague. It will be forever 

 remembered how Da Bois-Reymond undertook to draw bound- 

 aries of knowledge in pronouncing his " ignorabimus" in regard 

 to the more complicated vital actions, at the meeting of the 

 German Association for the advancement of science, in Leipzig, 1872. 

 The learned professor however expressed 30 years earlier a 

 different view: "Those who preach the erroneous doctrine of 

 the vital force, under whatever form and in whatever disguise 

 it may be, such heads have — they may believe it — never 

 reached the boundaries of thinking. 4 ) " 



The " ignorabimus " of Reymond would certainly not have 

 found favor with A. Humboldt, who in the year 1797 stigmatised 

 all exertions to draw boundaries of knowledge as paralysing 

 scientific activity. 3 ) Of the German physiologists it was especially 

 Pflilger who protested against such a thing by declaring : " Who- 

 ever in our time undertakes to draw boundaries for the develop- 

 ment of science thinks his own brain-work worth at least just as 

 much as that of numberless generations to come. 6 ) " We con- 

 clude with citing the view of the great French physiologist 

 Claude Bernard: " Pour comprendre les fonctions de l'organisme 

 il faut connaitre celle de la cellule. La raison des phenomenes 

 vitaux est dans cette fonction elementaire : le moyen de les 

 maitriser, de les modifier, d'agir sur eux, consiste a agir sur 

 l'activite cellulaire. 7 ) " 



1) Handbuch der Physiologie V p. ri. (1880). 



2) Chemical Physiology, Chapt. 14. 



3) On the cause of fermentations etc. Berlin 1893. p. 14. 



4) Preface to the first edition of his work on animal electricity; p 39. 



5) Versuche iiber de gereizte Nerven-und Muskelfaser, Vol. II p. 77. 



6) Die allgemeinen Lebenserscheinungen, Bonn 1889, p. 11. 



7) Lecons sur les phenomenes de la vie communs aux animaux et aux vegetaux. 

 p. 458 (1878). 



