§ 4 Philosophical Neo-Vitalism
Contemporary neo-vitalism has assumed another form, more philosophical than scientific, by which it is brought closer to vitalism, properly so called. We should like to mention the experiment of Reinke,2 in Germany. Reinke is a botanist of distinction, who distinguishes the speculative from the positive domain of science, and cultivates both with success.
His ideas are analogous to those of A. Gautier, of Chevreul, and of Claude Bernard himself. He thinks, with these masters, that the mystery of life is not to be found in the nature of the forces that it brings into play, but in the direction that it gives them. All these thinkers are struck by the order and the direction impressed upon the phenomena which take place in the living being, by their interconnection, by their apparent adaptation to an end, by the kind of impression that they give of a plan which is being carried out. All these reflections lead Reinke to attach great weight to the idea of a “directing force.”
The physico-chemical energies are no doubt the only ones which are manifested in the organized being, but they are directed as a blind man is by his guide. It seems as if a double accompanies them like a shadow. This intelligent guide of blind, material force is what Reinke calls a dominant. Nothing could be more like the blas and the archeus of Van Helmont. Material energies would thus be paired off with their blas, their dominants, in the living organisms. In them there would therefore be two categories of force: “material forces,” or rather, material energies obeying the laws of universal energetics; and in the second place, intelligent “spiritual forces,” the dominants. When the sculptor is working his marble, in every blow which elicits a spark there is something more than the strong force of the hammer. There is thought, the volition of the artist, which is realizing a plan. In a machine there is more than machinery. Behind the wheels is the object which the author had in view when he adjusted them for a determined end. The energies spent in action are regulated by the adjustment—that is to say, by the dominants due to the intellect of the constructor.
Thus it is in the living machine. The dominants in this case are the guardians of the plan, the agents of the aim in view. Some regulate the functional activity of the living body, and some regulate its development and its construction. Such is the second form, the philosophical form, extreme and teleological, of contemporary neo-vitalism.