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 CHAPTER IV.

THE MONISTIC THEORY.

Physico-chemical Theory of Life.—Iatro-mechanism.—Descartes, Borelli.—Iatro-chemistry.—Sylvius le Boë.—The Physico-chemical Theory of Life.—Matter and Energy.—Heterogeneity is merely the result of the arrangement or combination of homogeneous bodies.—Reservation relative to the world of thought.—The Kinetic Theory.

The unicist or monistic doctrine gives us a third way of conceiving the functional activity of the living being, by levelling and blending its three forms of activity—spiritual, vital, and material. It was expressed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in "iatro-mechanism" and "iatro-chemistry," conceptions to which have more recently succeeded the physico-chemical doctrine of life, and finally "current materialism."

Materialism is not only a biological interpretation; it is a universal interpretation applicable to the whole of nature, because it is based on a determinate conception of matter. Here we find ourselves confronted by the eternal enigma discussed by philosophers relative to this fundamental problem of force and matter. We know what answers were given to the problem by the Ionic philosophers—Thales, Democritus, Heraclitus, and Anaxagoras, who discarded the agency of every spiritual power external