The idea that only one or two of these series can represent the “true nature” of the phenomenon “can only be called cheap dogma.” Each series is complete in itself, and every successive phase follows directly and without a break from the antecedent one, which alone explains it. In this lies the relative justification of the ever-recurring reactions to “vitalism.”
This theory of Albrecht’s has all the charms and difficulties, or impossibilities, of parallelistic interpretations in general. Its validity might be discussed with reference to the particular case of psycho-physical parallelism.(104)
To make a sound basis for itself it would require first to clear up the causality problem, and to answer, or at least definitely formulate the great question whether causing (Bewirkung) is to be replaced by mere necessary sequence—for this is where it ends. The conclusion which, with regard to biological methods and ideals, seems to make all concessions to the purely mechanical mode of interpretation, is not sufficiently obvious from the premisses. If the vital series be a “real” one, we should expect that a “vitalistic” mode of interpretation, with methods and aims of its own, would be required, just as a special science of psychology is required. The assumption that each series is complete without a break, and that an all-including analysis of vital processes in terms of mechanical processes must ultimately be possible, is a _petitio principii_, and breaks down before the objections raised by the vitalists. The most central problem in the whole matter, namely, the relation of the causal to the teleological, has not been touched. These two concepts would, of course, not yield “parallels,” but would be different points of view, which could eventually be applied to each series.
K. Camillo Schneider,(105) Privatdozent in Vienna, uses the soul, the psychical in the true sense, as the explanation of the vital. What had been thought secretly and individually by some of the vitalists already mentioned, but had, so to speak, cropped up only as the incidentally revealed reverse side of their negations of mechanism, Schneider attempts definitely to formulate into a theory. The chief merit of his book on “Vitalism” is to be found, in Chapters II. to X., in his thorough discussion of the chemical, physical, and mechanical theories along the special lines of each.