CHAPTER I.EARLY THEORIES.
Animism—Vitalism—The Physico-Chemical Theory—Their Survival and Transformations.
The fundamental theories of science are but the expression of its most general results. What, then, is the most general result of the development of physiology or biology—that is to say, of that department of science which has life as its object? What glimpse do we get of the fruit of all our efforts? The answer is evidently the response to that essential question—What is Life?
There are beings which we call living beings; there are bodies which have never been alive—inanimate bodies; and there are bodies which are no longeralive—dead bodies. The fact that we use these terms implies the idea of a common attribute, of aquid proprium, life, which exists in the first, has never existed in the second, and has ceased to exist in the last. Is this idea correct? Suppose for a moment that this is so, that this implicit supposition has a foundation, and that there really is something which corresponds to the word “life.” Must we then wait for the last days of physiology, and in a measure for its last word before we know what is hidden behind this word, “life”?
Yes, no doubt positive science should be precluded from dealing with questions of this kind, which are far too general. It should be limited to the study of second causes. But, as a matter of fact, scientific men in no age have entirely conformed to this provisional or definitive antagonism. As the human mind cannot rest satisfied with indefinite attempts, or with ignorance pure and simple, it has always asked, and even now asks, from the spirit of system the solution which science refuses. It appeals to philosophical speculation. Now, philosophy, in order to explain life and death, offers us hypotheses. It offers us the hypotheses of thirty, of a hundred, or two thousand years ago. It offers us animism; vitalism in its two forms, unitary vitalism or the doctrine of vital force, and dismembered vitalism or the doctrine of vital properties; and finally, materialism, a mechanical theory, unicism or monism,—to give it all its names—i.e., the physico-chemical doctrine of life. There are, therefore, at the present day, in biology, representatives of these three systems which have never agreed on the explanation of vital phenomena—namely, animists, vitalists, and monists.But it is pretty clear that there must have been some change between yesterday and to-day. Not in vain has general science and biology itself made the progress which we know has been made since the Renaissance, and especially during the course of the nineteenth century. The old theories have been compelled to take new shape, such parts as have become obsolete have been cut away, another language is spoken—in a word, the theories have become rejuvenated. The neo-animists of our day, Chauffard in 1878, von Bunge in 1889, and more recently Rindfleisch, do not hold exactly the same views as Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, or Stahl. Contemporary neo-vitalists, physiologists like Heidenhain, chemists like Armand Gautier, or botanists like Reinke do not between 1880 and 1900 hold the same views as Paracelsus in the fifteenth century and Van Helmont in the seventeenth, as Barthez and Bordeu at the end of the eighteenth, or as Cuvier and Bichat at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Finally, the mechanicians themselves, whether they be disciples of Darwin and Haeckel, as most biologists of our own time, or disciples of Lavoisier, as most physiologists of the present day, have passed far beyond the ideas of Descartes. They would reject the coarse materialism of the celebrated philosopher. They would no longer consider the living organism as a machine, composed of nothing but wheels, springs, levers, presses, sieves, pipes, and valves; or again of matrasses, retorts, or alembics, as the iatro-mechanicians and would-be chemists of other days believed.
All that is changed, at any rate in form. If we look back only thirty or forty years we see that the olddoctrines have undergone more or less profound modifications. The changes of form, which have been made necessary by the acquisitions of contemporary science, enable us to appreciate its progress. They enable us to give an account of the progress of biology, and for this reason they deserve to be examined with some attention. It is into this examination that I ask my readers to accompany me.