PHYSICAL, CHEMICAL, AND VITAL FORCES.
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There is something here which science cannot yet understand. Yet it is just this loss which takes place in death, and before decomposition, which is in the highest sense vital force.
Let no one from the above views, or from similar views expressed by others, draw hasty conclusions in favor of a pure materialism. Force and matter, or spirit and matter, or God and Nature, these are the opposite poles of philosophy—they are the opposite poles of thought. There is no clear thinking without them. Not only religion and virtue, but science and philosophy, cannot even exist without them. The belief in spirit, like the belief in matter, rests on its own basis of phenomena. The true domain of philosophy is to reconcile these with each other.
