GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 283 



In a later attempt to analyze the problem of development, Driesch 

 examined it more fully from the point of view of the machine theory. 

 This contribution must be looked upon rather as a tour de force that is 

 intended to show how far this idea can be carried in its application 

 to development. Driesch explains that in his analytical theory he 

 assumed from what is " given " in the egg that the egg can be under- 

 stood causally, as a machine is understood, but what is " given " can 

 be understood only Ideologically. He says : " What I defended was 

 not vitalism, but, so far as the phenomena of life are concerned, 

 exactly the current physico-chemical dogmatism ; but I did not fail to 

 see and to point out the consequences of this dogmatism, which every 

 one (except Lotze) has avoided, viz., that the adaptive basis in which 

 the living phenomena take place is ' given.' " Driesch defines his 

 view as formal-teleological, in contrast to vitalistic. The former may 

 also be called a machine theory of life in which the purpose is given, 

 not explained. 



In later writings Driesch has thrown over some of his earlier con- 

 clusions and adopted a causal-vitalistic philosophy. The basis of this 

 new conception is found in the proportional development of parts ot 

 an original whole, as has been explained in a preceding chapter. 

 This result belongs to a category of phenomena that is in principle 

 not machine-like, but of a specifically different kind. It is something 

 that cannot be explained by the agencies of the outer world, such as 

 light, gravity, salinity, temperature, etc. After examining other 

 hypotheses, Driesch returns to a view that he had previously re- 

 jected, viz. the conception of " position," by which is meant the influ- 

 ence of the location in the whole. This position has certain directions, 

 but nothing in addition that is typical. By the term " location in the 

 whole " is meant that the word "location" (Lage) shall refer not to ge- 

 ometric space, but to the organization of the object that has its own 

 directions. A deformation of the whole may change very little the 

 relative location of the parts. 



In his earlier writings Driesch rejected this idea, because it did 

 not seem to satisfy our etiological need, and also because he thought 

 that he could reach his goal from the standpoint of initiating stimuli 

 (Anslosnngcii). Driesch now assumes that the stem of tubularia and 

 the archenteron of the starfish, for example, have a polar structure. 

 Bilateral forms, as the whole larva of the starfish, have a coordinated 

 system of two axes with unlike poles and one axis with like poles, 

 each of a given length or proportion. The ends of the axes are char- 

 acteristic points of the system. If, in such a system, a typical act of 

 differentiation appears, to which we can assign a cause, so far as the 

 location is concerned, a change will occur as follows : To take the 

 simplest case, that of a system with only one axis having unlike poles, as 



