ABSTRACT
The physical results of the vibration of atoms doubtless hold true in living as in non-living tissue; but to explain the nature of life by the laws of motion is like explaining the peculiar disposition of Kant by the fact that he was a vertebrate. Naturally enough the recent romantic reaction against science and its conception of a world determined according to laws, has led to a crusade to redeem biology from the domination of mechanistic ideas. To the extent that vitalists believe in the possibility of a science of biology they assume that there are certain general truths about living organisms and that these truths cannot be reduced to or derived from physico-chemical laws. Biology as a natural science certainly lends no support to the substitution of intuitive duree for objective physical time. The actual progress of biology has so far succeeded in describing in terms of physical law only the most elementary aspects of life.
