though that germination may lead to the
production of a perfect adult form. We are entitled to ask him to make
clear to us not only what is happening _within his system_, but--which
is far more important--what that system is, and how it came into
existence. We are entitled to ask why the artificial stimulus, or the
entry of the spermatozoon, produces the effects which it is claimed to
produce instead of any one of some score of other effects which it might
conceivably have produced. Above all we are entitled to ask why there
are any effects, or even why there is any ovum or any spermatozoon or
curious physiological investigator, to give the artificial stimulus.
Until some light is thrown upon these things we are still within the
system, or merely hovering round its confines, and are far away from any
final or philosophical explanation such as would satisfy the mind of
the man who wants to get a real and not a partial knowledge of the
things around him.

We may now turn to the question of Vitalism. It was long the regnant
theory; then temporarily the Cinderella of biology; it is now returning
to its early position, though still denied by those of the older school
of thought who cannot imagine the kitchen wench of yesterday the ruler
of to-day. One of the objections to Vitalism is that this explanation of
living things is thought by ignorant writers to be so inextricably mixed
up with theological considerations as to furnish a case of _stantis aut
cadentis ecclesiae_. That is, of course, absurd; but it creates an
undoubted bias against the theory. Hence it is the fashion amongst its
opponents to write of it as "mystical" or, as Loeb does, as
"supernatural," probably the most illogical term that could possibly be
used. What is Vitalism? It is the theory that there is some other
element--call it entelechy with Driesch, or call it what you like--in
living things than those elements known to chemistry and physics. If it
is _not_ there, _cadit quaestio_; if it _is_ there it is not
"supernatural." It might with reason be called "super-mechanical," or
"super-chemical," or "super-physical"; but if it is in Nature, as it is
held to be, it is not "supernatural" in any true sense of that word--no
dictionary confines the term "Nature" to the operations of chemistry and
physics.

A good deal of the misconception existing on this point comes from pure
ignorance of philosophy, a subject with which writers of this school
seldom have ev