From Latin 'vitalitas' (vital force), from 'vita' (life) — the energy and life-force animating living things.
The state of being strong, active, and full of energy. The power giving continuance of life, present in all living things.
From Latin 'vītālitās' (vital force, the quality of life), formed from 'vītālis' (of life, vital) with the abstract suffix '-itās' (English '-ity,' denoting a quality or state). 'Vītālis' comes from 'vīta' (life), from 'vīvere' (to live), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷeyh₃- (to live). The PIE root connects Latin to Greek 'bios' (life), Sanskrit 'jīva' (alive), and Old
Henri Bergson won the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature partly for his concept of 'élan vital' (vital impulse) — the idea that evolution is driven not by mechanical natural selection alone but by a creative life-force that pushes living things toward greater complexity and consciousness. Bergson's 'élan vital' was tremendously influential in philosophy, literature, and even politics (Georges Sorel applied it to revolutionary theory). The concept has fallen out of scientific favor — modern biology explains evolution without invoking