ABSTRACT
In the immediately preceding section of this work one chapter (chapter v) was devoted to giving an account of the two mutually opposed ideas as to the nature of life that were prevalent during the early part of the eighteenth century: the mechanistic, which conceived the phenomena of life from the purely mechanical point of view, and the vitalistic, which, represented by Stahl and his pupils, saw in the soul the real entity of life and regarded the body as existing for and through the soul. Curiously enough, Stahl's doctrine, the most markedly vitalistic of them all, won support particularly in France, where it was preserved and further developed by the medical faculty at Montpellier. It was especially Stahl's idea of the complex chemical composition of the body and the easy decomposability of its constituent parts, and the peculiar structure of them characteristic of different beings, that was developed by the Montpellier school. On the other hand, these scientists paid less attention to Stahl's speculations on the soul itself; rather, it was life, the life-force, that was believed to be the binding force that prevents the chemical components of the body from disintegrating. We have seen Stahl's theory recur in this form both in Humboldt and in Cuvier. In actual fact the sharp distinction between mechanism and vitalism was to a certain extent removed towards the close of the eighteenth century; the progress of chemistry made it necessary to consider other functions in the body besides the purely motive phenomena — a fact that even the most convinced mechanists eventually had to realize; while, on the other hand, a number of active natural forces were discovered — primarily the electric and the magnetic — of which earlier ages knew nothing and in face of which biology — whether vitalistic or mechanistic — was bound to adopt a definite attitude. As examples of the influence of these new discoveries may be mentioned, on one hand, Galvani's experiments with electrical phenomena in the organism, which were continued by Humboldt and others, and on the other Mesmer's investigations into "animal magnetism," or what we should nowadays call hypnotic phenomena. As a result of all these complications, that age's conception of life-phenomena became a mere groping in the dark; it was only after the discovery of the law of the indestructibility of energy that biology also gained a fresh basis on which to build, as a result of which it became possible to form a fresh mechanical conception of life-phenomena.
