In the second place the vitalist maintains that the processes of metabolism defy, nay more, always will defy, chemical and physical analysis.
In the first place the vitalist asserts that mechanism is inadequate to explain the phenomena of metabolism, of transmission of nervous stimuli, or of development.
One might indeed be a vitalist in biology, out of pure caution and conscientiousness, without sharing those prejudices; and many a speculative philosopher has been free from them who has been a vitalist in metaphysics.
Here we had the New Vitalist only half extricated from the Old Mechanist, objecting to be called either, and unable to give a clear lead in the new direction.
He tries to steer a course midway between the simplicist conceptions of the materialists and the "metaphysics" of the neo-vitalist school, which the experimental study of development and regeneration soon brought into being.
The vitalist writings of the latter, which are devoid of any grasp of historical development, have gained a certain vogue through the extraordinary arrogance of their author and the obscurity of his mystic and contradictory speculations.
Hence we can easily understand how physiologists acquiesced in the vitalist hypothesis up to 1833, and supposed the wonders of life to be enigmatic phenomena that escaped physical explanation.
But even the vitalist had no need to deny this proposition.
And yet he must undoubtedly be regarded as a vitalist by mechanists and vitalists alike.
Belief in the fundamental importance of the Pneuma formed the basis of the teaching of another vitalist school in ancient Greece, that of the Pneumatists.
Our Lord Don Quixote is the prototype of the vitalist whose faith is based upon uncertainty, and Sancho is the prototype of the rationalist who doubts his own reason.
New-born specks of living matter" is language that a vitalist might possibly use by sheer inadvertence; but no avowed materialist, like Professor Bastian, should trip in this definitional way.
As a vitalist it enables us to take a step towards the front--gets us off the "back seat" to which we were summarily ordered at the outset of this inquiry.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "vitalist" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
