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VITALISM : A BRIEF HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL REVIEW. 219 perience. She has endeavoured generally to solve the problem of the external world from the inner knowledge of the Ego. It is sufficiently correct to say that the progress of Natural Science as witnessed, for example, in physiological psycho- logy -depends on the pursuit of a diametrically opposite course. History shows how often Theology, Metaphysic and Natural Science have in turn overstepped their boundaries, carrying a war of the fiercest controversy into the territories of their respective neighbours. While Theology necessarily remains to some extent isolated as the voice of Authority, in the relation between Metaphysic and Natural Science a new era seems clearly dawning. The once hard line of demarcation between the vaunted simplicity of scientific empiricism and the transcendentalism of metaphysical specu- lation is fast fading. The shallow one-sided views afforded by either, unaided by the other, are giving way before their far more suggestive combination in a picture of truly stereo- scopic solidity. How Metaphysic has influenced Natural Science is well seen in the modern conceptions of potential energy, action at a distance, atoms and ether. How Natural Science has reacted on Metaphysic, the present position of Psychology sufficiently testifies. Hereafter it appears that the search after the nature of vital phenomena is yet another of the many paths wherein the interests of Metaphysic and of Natural Science intersect. PART I. A HISTORY OF VITALISTIC THEORIES. 1 In ancient Greece lies the starting-point of the earliest philosophy from which the principles of Natural Science can be derived ; where the conditions, alike of climate externally and internally of society, tended rapidly to develop the inde- pendent spirit of rational inquiry. 2 Eager to step beyond religion and to explain all external phenomena by the aid 1 By Mechanism is understood the description of the phenomena of life in terms of processes already revealed by the study of lifeless nature. When the aid of some hyper-mechanical process is invoked, Vitalism replaces Mechanism. Vitalism includes Animism and Vitalism proper : the former implying the direction of an anima or soul, the latter that of numerous hyper-mechanical forces or principles. 2 Zeller (1) seems to have effectively opposed the contention of Both and Gladisch that this early Grecian thought was in the main a product of Hebraic, Egyptian and other Oriental influences.