An outlook and interpretation which Driesch102 maintained for a while, but afterwards abandoned, has been developed in an original and peculiar fashion by Eugen Albrecht, Prosector and Pathologist in Munich.103 It is the theory of different ways of looking at things. Albrecht indeed firmly adheres to the chemical and physical interpretation of vital processes, regards [pg 271] approximate completeness along these lines as the ideal of science, and maintains their essential sufficiency. But he holds that the mechanists have been mistaken and one-sided in that they have upheld this interpretation and mode of considering things as the sole and the “true” one. According to our subjective attitude to things and their changes, they appear to us in quite different series of associations, each of which forms a complete series in itself, running parallel to the others, but not intruding to fill up gaps in them. Microscopic and macroscopic study of things illustrate such separate and complete series. The classical example for the whole theory is the psycho-physical parallelism. Psychical phenomena are not “explained” when the correlated line of material changes and the phenomena of the nervous system have been traced out. Similarly with the series of “vital” phenomena, “vital” interpretation from the point of view of the “living organism,” runs parallel to, but distinct from the chemical and physical analyses of vital processes. But each of these parallel ways of regarding things is “true.” For the current separation of the “appearance” and “nature” of things is false, since it assumes that only one of the possible ways of regarding things, e.g., the mechanical-causal mode of interpretation is essential, and that all the others deal only with associated appearance.

The idea that only one or two of these series can represent the “true nature” of the phenomenon “can [pg 272] 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 [pg 273] 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 [pg 274] 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.

The list of critics might be added to, and the number of standpoints in opposition to mechanism greatly increased. This diversity of standpoint, and the individual way in which each independent thinker reacts from the mechanical theory shows that here, as also in regard to Darwin's theory of selection, we have to do with a dogmatic theory and a forced simplification of phenomena, not with an objective and calm consideration of things as they are. It is a theory where simplex has become sigillum falsi.