Life and Energy.
The one and only point on which I think it worth while to express decided dissidence is to be found in the paragraph where Mr M'Cabe makes a statement concerning what he calls "vital force,"—a term I do not remember to have ever used in my life. He claims for Haeckel what is represented by the following extracts from his article (pp. 745, 6, 7):—
"He does not say that life is 'knocked out of existence' when the material organism decays. He says that the vital energy no longer exists as such, but is resolved into the inorganic energies associated with the gases and relics of the decaying body. Thus the matter looks a little different when Sir Oliver comes to 'challenge him to say by what right he gives that answer.' He gives it on this plain right, that science always finds these inorganic energies to reappear on the dissolution of life, and has never in a single instance found the slightest reason to suspect (if we make an exception for the moment of psychical research) that the vital force as such has continued to exist."
The italics are mine. A little further on he continues:—
"There is no serious scientific demur to Haeckel's assumption of a monism of the physical world, and his identification of vital force with ordinary physical and chemical forces.
"Sir Oliver seems to admit, indeed, that the vital force is not in its nature distinct from physical force, but holds that it needs 'guidance.'"
"On all sides we hear the echo of Professor Le Conte's words: 'Vital force may now be regarded as so much force withdrawn from the general fund of chemical and physical forces.'"
Very well then, here is no conflict on a matter of opinion or philosophic speculation, but divergence on a downright question of scientific fact (let it be noted that I do not wish to hold Professor Haeckel responsible for these utterances of his disciple: he must surely know better), and I wish to oppose the fallacy in the strongest terms.
If it were true that vital energy turned into or was anyhow convertible into inorganic energy, if it were true that a dead body had more inorganic energy than a live one, if it were true that "these inorganic energies" always or ever "reappear on the dissolution of life," then undoubtedly cadit quæstio; life would immediately be proved to be a form of energy, and would enter into the scheme of physics. But inasmuch as all this is untrue—the direct contrary of the truth—I maintain that life is not a form of energy, that it is not included in our present physical categories, that its explanation is still to seek. And I have further stated—though there I do not dogmatise—that it appears to me to belong to a separate order of existence, which interacts with this material frame of things, and, while there, exerts guidance and control on the energy which already here exists (cf. p. 24); for, though they alter the quantity of energy no whit, and though they merely utilise available energy like any other machine, live things are able to direct inorganic terrestrial energy along new and special paths, so as to achieve results which without such living agency could not have occurred—e.g. forests, ant-hills, birds' nests, Forth bridge, sonatas, cathedrals.
I have never taught, nor for a moment thought, that "vital force is akin to physical force, but that it needs guidance" (p. 747); the phrase sounds to me nonsense. I perceive, not as a theory, but as a fact, that life is itself a guiding principle, a controlling agency, i.e. that a live animal or plant can and does guide or influence the elements of inorganic nature. The fact of an organism possessing life enables it to build up material particles into many notable forms—oak, eagle, man,—which material aggregates last until they are abandoned by the guiding principle, when they more or less speedily fall into decay, or become resolved into their elements, until utilised by a fresh incarnation; and hence I say that whatever life is or is not, it is certainly this: it is a guiding and controlling entity which interacts with our world according to laws so partially known that we have to say they are practically unknown, and therefore appear in some respects mysterious. If it be thought that I mean by this something superstitious, and for ever inexplicable or unintelligible, I have no such meaning. I believe in the ultimate intelligibility of the universe, though our present brains may require considerable improvement before we can grasp the deepest things by their aid; but this matter of "vitality" is probably not hopelessly beyond us; and it does not follow, because we have no theory of life or death now, that we shall be equally ignorant a century hence.