144 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



know, is also to be regarded as the founder of theoretical 

 biology. Moreover, he is the first vitalist in history, for 

 his theoretical biology is throughout vitalism ; and a very 

 conscious vitalism indeed, for it grew up in permanent 

 opposition to the dogmatic mechanism maintained by the 

 school of Democritus. 



Let us then borrow our terminology from Aristotle, and 

 let that factor in life phenomena which we have shown to 

 be a factor of true autonomy be called Entelechy, though 

 without identifying our doctrine with what Aristotle meant 

 by the word eWeXe^eta. We shall use this word only as a 

 sign of our admiration for his great genius ; his word is 

 to be a mould which we have filled and shall fill with new 

 contents. The etymology of the word eWeAe'^eta allows us 

 such liberties, for indeed we have shown that there is at 

 work a something in life phenomena " which bears the end 



i lf>>} A V > f <* \ f^ 



in rtseli, o e^et ev eavrut TO reXo?. 



Our concept of entelechy marks the end of our analysis of 

 individual morphogenesis. Morphogenesis, we have learned^ 

 is " epigenesis " not only in the descriptive but also in the 

 theoretical sense : manifoldness in space is produced where 

 no manifoldness was, real " evolutio " is limited to rather 

 insignificant topics. But was there nothing " manifold ' 

 previous to morphogenesis ? Nothing certainly of an 

 extensive character, but there was something else : there was 

 entelechy, and thus we may provisionally call entelechy an 

 " intensive manifoldness." That then is our result : not 

 evolutio, but epigenesis " epigenesis vitalistica." 



