THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1542, 11 September 1912, Page 4

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

PROPHETS OF VITALISM. • The foHoiwing interesting letter appeared in. the Christchurch "Press" -ofSeptember 9:— Sir,—There is always a certain amount of danger in basing any sort of criticism" en a cabled report; but if thero is 'any truth in the slight account we havo received of Professor, Schacfcr's address befor tho British Association, and Professor Osborne's comment on the same, we have one more instance :of the desperate shifts, to •which a high-bound orthodoxy is driven in (he face of new knowledge and thought. Wc have repeated onco again ] before our eye 3, with almost all the samo dismal phenomena, the old struggle between tho orthodox or the original Darwinian evolutionists. It should be remembered that orthodoxy is a word which has not necessarily a theological connotation. It was not only the bishops of the mid-Victorian period who opposed themselves to Huxley and Darwin, but the latter had arrayed against them the serried ranks of orthodox science, and there is. no obscurantist like the t-cieu-tific dogmatist, e.g.,, Haeckel. ' It is possible that, as Professor Osborne says, the greatest of living thinkers, M. Henri Bergson, has entered the physicological field without adequate equipment or training; but it is difficult for one who has read "L'Kvolution. Crentrice" to grant this. Possibly, Professor Osborne may not have read that revolutionary work. However; M. Bergson does not stand alone as the prophet of vitalism. Professor Driesch, the noted embryologist, ■ recently delivered tho Gilford lectures on "The Science and Philosophy of tho Organism." In these lectures he maintained that scientific study of the embryo alone, without regard to philosophical considerations, has. satisfied him that life cannot be brought within tho range of any physiological category. He even goes so far as to say; "Wc must bo cautious in admitting that any organic feature has been explained, even in the most general way, by the action of physical forces." In an article in the Decennial number of the "Hibbcrt Journal," Professor Arthur Thomson, the eminent Scotch biologist, has declared his adhesion to the: rieo-yitalislic views of Professor Driesch. Ho says: "There is surely significance in the fact that'increased knowledge of physiological chemistry and physiological • physics hns brought the distinctively vital into stronger relief. It has not mado it more intelligible; that is, has not shown it to be a particular instance of something more general. Some have indeed maintained that what thero is left of biology, aftor organic chemistry has had its fair shore, may be referred to hydro-dynamics, but tho number of students who can be gulled with this sort of bluff is happily decreasing." Tho net-vitalistic approach to tho nuestion of the origin of life should attract tho special attention of New Zealand, smce.it is a restatement of tho essential, thought of Samuel Butler, whoso views were so derided by .the "orthodox" of a former- generation. 1 To describe' Professor Schaefer's views as a reaction asainst Bergsonian vitalism is supremely ridiculous. M. Bergson has still to come to his own and the time ?V*5 ctlon „ IS , not s" fit - The utterances of Professor Schaefer, Ray Lankcster, and the ike, are merely the first wrathful, growl •« outraged orthodoxy. The hand ! s 'f Mild of tho evolutionary materialist, but the voice is the voice of the midvictonan ecclesiastic—Yours, etc. J.L.M. Christchurch, September 7, 1912]