" and "willing," all this is
clearly brought out.(91)

A very fresh and lucid presentation of the whole case is given by Borodin,
Professor of Botany in St. Petersburg, in his essay, "Protoplasm and Vital
Force."(92) He sharply castigates the one-sidedness and impetuosity of the
mechanical theory, as in Haeckel's discovery of Bathybius and of
non-nucleated bacteria. The latter are problematical, and the former has
been proved an illusion. To penetrate farther into the processes of life
is simply to become aware of an ever-deepening series of riddles. There is
no such thing as "protoplasm," or "living proteid," or indeed any unified,
simple "living matter" whatever. Artificial "oil-emulsion amoebae"(93) bear
the same relation to living ones that Vaucanson's mechanical duck bears to
a real one; that is, none at all. Our "protoplasm" is as mystical as the
old "vital force," and both are only camping-grounds for our ignorance.
Neither the mechanical nor the atomic theory were the results of exact
investigations; they were borrowed from philosophy. We do indeed
investigate the typically vital process of irritability by physical
methods. But the response made by the organism to physical coercion may be
called a mockery of physics. The mechanists help themselves out with crude
analogies from the mechanical, conceal the problem with the name
"irritability," and thus get rid of the greatest marvels. If vital force
itself were to call out from its cells, "Here I am," they would probably
see in it only a remarkable case of "irritability." Mechanism is no more
positive knowledge than vitalism is; it is only the dogmatic faith of the
majority of present-day naturalists.

Constructive Criticism.

Those whose protests we have hitherto been considering have not added to
their criticism of the mechanical theory any positive contribution of
their own, or at least they give nothing more than very slight hints
pointing towards a psychical theory. But there are others who have sought
to overcome the mechanical theory by gaining a deeper grasp of the nature
of "force" in general. Their attempts have been of various kinds, but
usually tend in one direction, which can perhaps be most precisely and
briefly indicated through Lloyd Morgan's views, as summed up, for
instance, in his essay on "Vitalism."(94) In the beginning of biological
text-books, we usually find (he says) a chapter on the nature of "force,"
but it is "like grace befor