Vitalism
The Future of Life : A Theory of Vitalism. By C. E. M. Joad. (Putnams. 6s.) EVERY theory of the universe has its own price. Mr. Joad, in his persuasive exposition of Vitalism, wages war, to begin with, on Materialism and Idealism. Now Materialism, which still has its champions, possesses all the advantages of a rounded system. Mind is merely a by-product of Matter, and Evolution, the changes in species which we certainly perceive, apparently so inconsistent with a purely mechanistic,
theory, are responses to, and conditioned by, Environment. But the price of the theory is obvious enough. If we are to live any true life of the will or the spirit, we must call in our old friend, " the working hypothesis," and even then a sentence such as Blake's " A tear is an intellectual thing " is disconcerting. Moreover, Evolution is not an even and orderly process,- and does not always seem to have anything particular to do with environment. Witness the recent " sport " of the evening primrose.
But is Idealism—that Matter is only a quality of Mind— in any better case ? Mr. Joad thinks not. Putting aside Dr. Johnson's appeal to the test of a personal collision with a post (founded on an exaggerated notion of Berkeleyism), endless sub-division, with its baffled quest of the Thing-as-It-is, puts us in a quandary.
He states his solution thus : There is a Life-Force, which uses the individual, with its powers, fancied isolation, and will-to-live, just so far as the well-being and progress of the Whole are concerned, and then drops that individual, or rather reabsorbs it into the _impersonal current of Being. That we live under a delusion would, we conceive, not trouble him ; has not a mystic said, "He whom God deludes is well deluded " ? Anyhow, this Life-Force may be described as Vitalism. A main feature of the theory, set forth with great attractiveness as accounting for the riddle of existence and change better than any other conception, is the doctrine of Emergence. That is to say, you combine two elements such as oxygen and hydrogen, in a certain proportion and an absolutely new result is attained—Water. Absolutely new ; that is the point. No possible imagination could have fore- seen it. Now Vitalism uses both Mind and Matter, and creates, or pro-creates, a something Other, and more essential towards the quality of life than either taken by itself. It is very easy to see how at first, though Mr. Joad does not touch on this point, Vitalism was impulsively welcomed by certain theologians as a powerful ally to the Christian Creed. With its insistence on Evolution by often unaccountable " jumps," why not the Incarnation itself ? But the emergence doctrine, with its factors " absolutely new," opened the eyes of theolog- ical science to perceive that here was .a path heading straight for semi-Arianism. We must not pursue the subject further, nor follow Mr. Joad into certain by-ways of investigation, very fairly explored, such as the phenomena of Spiritism. We have to thank him for an excellent exposition, terse yet illuminating, of a theory that must be reckoned with. Its price ? The sacrifice of that assumed certainty in nature to which the Victorians clung—" the army of unalterable law." Such a sacrifice seems of the spirit of our age. But, while we think the last word has not been said for Idealism, we are grateful for the persistent search for truth for its own sake which the volume evinces.
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