80 These ideas are not fully worked out, and they are disguised in poetic form—for instance, when even the play of flames is compared to vital processes. But if they be stripped of their poetic garb, they lead to the same conclusions to which one is always led when one approaches the problem unprejudiced by naturalistic or anthropomorphic preconceptions of the relation of the infinite to the finite, or the divine to the natural. If we exclude the materialistic or semi-materialistic position which regards teleological phenomena, vital processes, and even states of sensation and consciousness as the function of a “substance” or of matter, we can quite well speak of them as general “cosmo-organic” functions of universal being, meaning that they occur of necessity wherever the proper conditions exist. According to the doctrine of potentiality and actuality, this is to say that all possible stages of the higher and highest phenomena are _semper et ubique_ potentially present in universal being, and that they become actual wherever the physical processes are far enough advanced to afford the necessary conditions. 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).