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 III. VITALISM: A BRIEF HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL REVIEW (II.). BY DR. CHARLES S. MYERS. A CRITICISM OF VITALISTIC THEORIES. A TRULY scientific theory has been usefully defined as the condensed expression of perceptual knowledge in conceptual formulae. Terms like Atom, Molecule and Ether are not perceptual. Could they even be shown to exist, could mole- cules one day be felt, seen and weighed, inquiries would be merely transferred a step farther back and the argument continued in terms of molecular instead of molar experience. They are pure conceptions based on the evidence of the senses. Scientific theories may be thus regarded as a short- hand in which the entire phenomenal world is expressed (15). Whence it follows that a just appreciation of any particular theory can only be made, by considering it -just as an event of history would be considered in the atmo- sphere wherein it flourished, by calculating the extent of knowledge whereof it was the mere summary, and by esti- mating the worth of such current theories as it had to oppose. Accordingly the following pages will be devoted to the criticism of modern vitalistic theories (which really contain within them all the essentials of earlier speculation), while the more detailed consideration of older theories will be deferred until another opportunity offers itself. It may here be considered why the riddle which Life offers Sphinx-like to mankind has been in turn attacked, now by Metaphysic, now by Natural Science, in the vain hope of a successful solution. For it is not without reason that two such apparently opposite methods have been brought to bear on one and the same perplexity, and that consequently the language and thought of each have been influenced by the other. At the dawn of the objective method, when the resolution of complex phenomena into simpler constituents was com- mencing, an inquiry into the nature of movement proved