Excerpt from Philosophical Currents of the Present Day, Vol. 2 Hartmann. From this point the best view can be Obtained of his philosophy, especially, his nee-realism. The mechanical theory of life which sought to refer absolutely all phenomena of life to physico-chemical processes and thus to resolve all biology finally into mechanics, had so ruled unchecked a whole generation that all vitalism, as we have already seen, was placed under a ban. At the Gottingen Conference of scientists of the year 18545 life-force stood in the centre of the great debate which divided all science into two camps. The religious disputes of the Middle Ages and the religious congresses of to-day are not more heated or passionate than the disputes among scien tists in those days. No doubt shortly before this (1852) Rudolf Wagner's Physiologische Briefe had appeared. Jakob Moleschott's Kreislanf des Lebens and Karl Vogt's Bilder ans dem Tierleben expressed the scientific tendency of the day. The two fiery works on the dispute regarding materialism, Karl Vogt's Kohleiglaabe and ii issenschaft and Biichner's Kraft and Stof appeared first afte1 the scientific conference which'ought to be regarded as of great importance for the question of life-force. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.