vanishes with its individual aspect; its features can no longer be distinguished.
Besides, a whole school of contemporary physicists (Ostwald of Leipzig, Mach of Vienna) is beginning to cast some doubt on the utility of the kinetic hypothesis in the future of physics itself, and is inclined to propose to substitute for it the theory of energetics. We shall see, in every case, that this other conception, as universal as the kinetic theory, the theory of Energy, causes a vivid light to penetrate into the depths of the most difficult problems in physiology.
Such are, with their successive transformations, the three principal theories, the three great currents between which biology has been tossed to and fro. They are sufficiently indicative of the state of positive science in each age, but one is astonished that they are not more so; and this is due to the fact that these conceptions are too general. They soar too high above reality. More characteristic in this respect will be particular theories of the principal manifestations of living matter, of its perpetuity by generation, of the development by which it acquires its individual form, on heredity. It is here that it is of importance to grasp the progressive march of science—that is to say, the design and the plan of the building which is being erected, "blindly, so to speak," by the efforts of an army of workers, an army becoming more numerous day by day.
