It was by no means a question of a general inquiry, deliberately instituted with the object of discovering the part played respectively by physical and physiological factors in the performance of the various functions. Such an investigation would have taken several generations to complete. No; the question had only come up incidentally. Chr. Bohr had studied with the utmost care the gaseous exchanges which take place between the air and the blood in the lungs. The gaseous mixture and the liquid blood are face to face; they are separated by thin membrane formed of living cells. Will this membrane behave as an inert membrane deprived of vitality, and therefore obeying the physical laws of the diffusion of gases? Well! no. It does not so behave. The most careful measurements of pressures and of solubilities leave no doubt in this respect. The living elements of the pulmonary membrane must therefore intervene in order to disturb the physical phenomenon. Things happen as if the exchanged gases were subjected not to a simple diffusion, a physical fact obeying certain rules, but to a real secretion, a physiological or vital phenomenon, obeying laws which are also fixed, but different from the former. On the other hand, Heidenhain was led about the same time to analogous conclusions with respect to the liquid exchanges which take place within the tissues, between the liquids (lymphs) which bathe the blood-vessels externally and the blood which those vessels contain. The phenomenon is very important because it is the prologue of the actions of nutrition and assimilation. Here again, the two factors of exchange are brought into relation through a thin wall, the wall of the blood-vessel. The physical laws of diffusion, of osmosis, and of dialysis, enable us to foretell what would take place if the vitality of the elements of the wall did not intervene. Heidenhain thought he observed that things took place otherwise. The passage of the liquids is disturbed by the fact that the cellular elements are alive. It assumes the characteristics of a physiological act, and no longer those of a physical act. Let us add that the interpretation of these experiments is difficult, and it has given rise to controversies which still persist. These two examples, around which others might be grouped, have led certain physiologists to diminish the importance of the physical factors in the functional activity of the living being to the advantage of the physiological factors. It would therefore seem that the vital force, to use a rather questionable form of language, withdraws in a certain measure the organized being from the realm of physical forces—and this conclusion is one form of contemporary neo-vitalism. § 4. PHILOSOPHICAL NEO-VITALISM.