It holds, first, that in every living organism there is an entity that is not exhaustively composed of inanimate parts and, second, that the activities characteristic of living organisms are due, in some sense, to the activities of this entity.
The Vital Entity
The vital entity that animates an organism may, for brevity, be termed its "Life"—a usage that is in fact supported by vitalistic writings. The first thesis of vitalism may be stated as: The Life of an organism is substantial, but it is not—or at least not totally—made up of nonliving substance.
To say that the Life is substantial is to indicate that it has always been conceived more or less closely in accordance with an available doctrine concerning the nature of substance. All vitalists have, for example, held that the Life of an organism is a particular, not a universal; that it is the subject of predicates and not only a predicate; and that it is an agent possessing some degree of autonomy with respect to the body it animates. Most, but not all, vitalists have also maintained that Life, or at least an aspect of it, is capable of existence apart from its organism.
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