Preyer’s ideas have been revived of late, especially in the romantic form, as, for instance, in Willy Pastor’s “Lebensgeschichte der Erde” (“Leben und Wissen,” Vol. I., Leipzig, 1903). And in certain circles, characterised by a simultaneous veneration for and combination of modern natural science—Haeckel, Romanticism, Novalis and other antitheses—Fechner appears to have come to life again. The type of this group is W. Bölsche. Naturally enough, Pastor has turned his attention also to the recent views of Schroen in regard to crystallisation. The fact, _omne crystallum e crystallo_, like the corresponding fact, _omne vivum e vivo_, was long a barrier against mechanistic derivation. But Schroen draws a parallel between crystallisation and organic processes, so that the alleged clearness and obviousness of the inorganic can no longer be carried over—in the old fashion—into the realm of life, but, conversely, the mystery of life must be extended downwards, and continued into the inorganic.
81 Worthy of note and much cited is a somewhat indefinite essay on “Neovitalism,” by the Wurzburg pathologist, E. von Rindfleisch (in “Deutsche Medizinische Wochensehrift,” 1895, No. 38).
82 Already given in detail in his “Lehrbuch der phys. und pathol. Chemie” (Second Edition, 1889), in the first chapter, “Vitalism and Mechanism.” In the meantime a fifth revised and enlarged edition of Bunge’s book has appeared as a “Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen” (Leipzig, 1901), The relevant early essays appear here again under the title “Idealism and Mechanism.” The arguments are the same. It is often supposed that it is merely a question of time, and that in the long run we must succeed in finding proofs that the whole process of life is only a complex process of movement; but the history of physiology shows that the contrary is the case. All the processes which can be explained mechanically are those which are not vital phenomena at all. It is in activity that the riddle of life lies. The solution of this riddle is looked for, more decidedly than before but still somewhat vaguely, in the “idealism” of self-consciousness and its implications, “_Physiologus nemo nisi psychologus_.” These views have been also stated in a separate lecture: G. Bunge, “Vitalismus und Mechanismus,” (Leipzig, 1886).