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Among the vitalists of to-day, one of the most frequently cited, perhaps, except Driesch the most frequently cited, is G. Wolff, a Privatdozent, formerly at Würzburg, now at Basle. He has only published short lectures and essays, and these deal not so much with the mechanical theory as with Darwinism.
If those words express more than ignorance, they express the love of it. Even if the vitalists were right in despairing of further scientific discoveries, they would be wrong in offering their verbiage as a substitute.
Samuel Butler was the pioneer of the reaction as far as the casting out was concerned; but the issue was confused by the physiologists, who were divided on the question into Mechanists and Vitalists.
Besides, it would obviate the necessity, on the part of the vitalists, of giving themselves four-fifths away to the materialists, as Professor Beale virtually does in the argument. The too rude touch of a child's hand will rob the canary bird of its life stifle its musical throat, hush its most ecstatic note, still its exquisite song, and render forever mute and silent its voice.
What had been thought secretly and individually by some of the vitalists already mentioned, but had, so to speak, cropped up only as the incidentally revealed reverse side of their negations of mechanism, Schneider attempts definitely to formulate into a theory. The list of critics might be added to, and the number of standpoints in opposition to mechanism greatly increased.
Carmine in ammonia is not the only solution that may aid science in the investigations now being carried forward by the vitalists and non-vitalists with so much bitterness and asperity of feeling between them; and now that Professor Beale has made his happy discovery, it is by no means certain that some other equally persistent worker in this interesting field of inquiry may not hit upon quite as happy a discovery in the same or some equivalent direction one that shall throw the bioplasmic theory as far into the shade as Mr.
Along with Virchow, we must name another of the older generation, the physiologist William Preyer, who combated “vitalism,” “dualism,” and “mechanism” with equal vehemence, and issued a manifesto, already somewhat solemn and official, against “vital force.” And yet he must undoubtedly be regarded as a vitalist by mechanists and vitalists alike.
A steam-engine and a steel-filing might equally well be compared together. Professor Delpino makes a further objection which, however, will only be of weight in the eyes of Vitalists.
Like Professor Loeb, he starts with the vital; how he came by it we get no inkling; he confesses frankly that the biological chemist cannot even face the problem of the origin of life. Is not this conceding to the vitalists all that they claim?
But if we find ourselves unable to set the ultimate particles of matter in action, or so working as to produce the reaction which results in life, without conceiving of some new force or principle operating upon them, then we are in the ranks of the vitalists or idealists.
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