Page:Life and death (1911).djvu/29

 CHAPTER III.

Its Extreme Forms—Early Vitalism, and Modern Neo-vitalism—Advantage of distinguishing between Soul and Life—§ 1. The Vitalism of Barthez—Its Extension—The Seat of the Vital Principle—The Vital Knot—The Vital Tripod—Decentralisation of the Vital Principle—§ 2. ''The Doctrine of Vital Properties''—Galen, Van Helmont, Xavier Bichat, and Cuvier—Vital and Physical Properties antagonistic—§ 3. Scientific Neo-vitalism—Heidenhain—§ 4. ''Philosophical Neo-vitalism''—Reinke.

Extreme Forms: Early Vitalism and Modern Neo-vitalism.—Contemporary neo-vitalism has weakened primitive vitalism in some important points. The latter made of the vital fact something quite specific, irreducible either to the phenomena of general physics or to those of thought. It absolutely isolated life, separating it above from the soul, and below from inanimate matter. This sequestration is nowadays much less rigorous. On the psychical side the barrier remains, but it is lowered on the material side. The neo-vitalists of to-day recognize that the laws of physics and chemistry are observed within, as well as without, the living body; the same natural forces intervene in both, only they are "otherwise directed."

The vital principle of early times was a kind of anthromorphic, pagan divinity. To Aristotle, this force, the anima, the Psyche, worked, so to speak, with