- pendent existence; it lives and works for itself.
No doubt it shares in the activity of the whole, but it may be separated therefrom without being thereby placed in the category of dead substances. For each aliquot part of the organism there is a partial life and a partial death.
This decentralization of the vital activity is finally extended in complex beings from the organs to the tissues, and from the tissues to the anatomical elements—the cells. The idea of decentralization has given birth to the second form of vitalism, a softened down and weakened form—namely, pluri-vitalism, or the theory of vital properties.
§ 2. The Theory of Vital Properties.
The advocates of the theory of vital properties have cut up into fragments the monistic and indivisible guiding principle of Bordeu and Barthez. They have given it new currency—pluri-vitalism. This theory maintains the existence of spiritual powers of a lower order, which control phenomena more intimately than the vital principle did. These powers, less lofty in their dignity than the rational soul of the animists, or the soul of secondary majesty of the unitarian vitalists, are eventually incorporated in the living matter of which they will then be no longer more than the properties. Brought into closer connection therefore with the sensible world, they will be more in harmony with the spirit of research and with scientific progress.
The defect of the earlier conceptions, their common illusion, rose from their seeking the cause outside the
