GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS 285 



sites of the phenomena, but in themselves do not bring about the 

 result." 



Driesch finds in this argument a demonstration of the vitalistic 

 doctrine, but vitalism, of course, of a very special kind. Without a 

 more elaborate presentation of his view it is not possible to give a 

 detailed criticism of his conclusions ; but a few of the more obvious 

 objections that may be brought against this view may be discussed. 

 The assumption of "action at a distance" does not, I think, in any 

 way help to make the phenomenon clearer. The formation of a 

 typical larva of normal proportions from a piece of an egg is just as 

 mysterious after the assumption of an "action at a distance" of a 

 proportionate sort as it was before. Driesch has introduced into the 

 argument to establish a vitalistic standpoint one of the most obscure 

 ideas of physical science. There is, so far as I can see, no necessity 

 for such an assumption, since there is present in every case a contin- 

 uous medium of protoplasm, which would seem to make this idea at 

 least superfluous. Moreover, the additional element that Driesch has 

 added to his conception of the process, namely, an action in propor- 

 tion to the size of the piece, is objectionable if for no other reason 

 than that it attributes to the unknown principle of " action at a dis- 

 tance " a quality that is the very thing that ought itself to be 

 explained. This assumption, it seems to me, begs the entire ques- 

 tion, and we can give no better explanation why it should belong to 

 the principle of " action at a distance " than to anything else. Far 

 from having given a demonstration of vitalism, Driesch has, I think, 

 in his analysis simply set up an entirely imaginary principle, which, 

 taken in connection with other undemonstrable qualities, is called 

 vitalism. 



If we cannot accept Driesch's demonstration of vitalism, from 

 what point of view can we deal with the phenomenon of the produc- 

 tion of a typical form from each kind of living material ? Can we 

 find a physico-chemical explanation of the phenomenon ? Enough 

 has been said to show that this property is one of the fundamen- 

 tal characteristics of living things and is, in all probability, a phe- 

 nomenon which we certainly cannot at present hope to explain. 

 Yet the question raised by Driesch is, at bottom, not so much 

 whether we can give a physico-chemical explanation, but whether 

 the phenomenon belongs to an entirely different class of phenom- 

 ena from that considered by the physicist and by the chemist. Let 

 us examine the results and see if we are really forced to conclude 

 that there is no other physico-causal point of view possible. 



In many cases in which a response to an external stimulus takes 

 place, we must assume a physico-causal connection between the 

 stimulus and the effect. The action of poisons, for instance, is an 



