one, the denial of qualities, the
reduction of all cosmic developments to the "mechanics of the atom" (even
to attractions and repulsions, thus setting aside the "energies"), the
inevitable necessity of these mechanical sequences, indeed at bottom even
the conviction of the "constancy of the sum of matter and energy." (For,
as he says, "nothing comes out of nothing.") And although he makes the
"soul" the principle of the phenomena of life, that is in no way
contradictory to his general mechanical theory, but is quite congruent
with it. For the "soul" is to him only an aggregation of thinner,
smoother, and rounder atoms, which as such are more mobile, and can, as it
were, quarter themselves in the body, but nevertheless stand in a purely
mechanical relation to it.

Aristotle, who was well aware of the diametrical opposition, represents,
as compared with Democritus, the Socratic-Platonic teleological
interpretation of nature, and in regard to the question of living
organisms his point of view may quite well be designated by the modern
name of "vitalism." Especially in his theory of the vegetable soul, the
essence of vitalism is already contained. It is the {~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} (logos
enhylos), the idea immanent in the matter, the conceptual essence of the
organism, or its ideal whole, which is inherent in it from its beginnings
in the germ, and determines, like a directing law, all its vegetative
processes, and so raises it from a state of "possibility" to one of
"reality." All that we meet with later as "nisus formativus," as
"life-force" (vis vitalis), as "endeavour after an end" (Zielstrebigkeit),
is included in the scope of Aristotelian thought. And he has the advantage
over many of his successors of being very much clearer.(57)

The present state of the problem of life may be regarded as due to a
reaction of biological investigation and opinion from the "vitalistic"
theories which prevailed in the first half of last century, and which were
in turn at once the root and the fruit of the German Nature-philosophy of
that time.

Lotze in his oft-quoted article, "Leben, Lebenskraft" (Life, Vital Force),