296 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



there might one day be found a principle to account 

 for the totality of possible l forms, a principle based upon 

 the analysis of entelechy. 2 As we have allowed that 

 Lamarckism hypothetically explains congenital adaptedness 

 in histology, and that Darwinism explains a few differences 

 in quantity, and as such properties, of course, would both 

 be of a contingent character, it follows that our future 

 rational system would be combined with certain accidental 

 diversities. And so it might be said to be one of the 

 principal tasks of systematic biological science in the 

 future to discover the really rational system among a given 

 totality of diversities which cannot appear rational at the first 

 glance, one sort of differences, so to speak, being super- 

 imposed upon the other. 



1 The word "possible " relating to originating, of course, not to surviving. 

 It is here that natural selection may acquire its logical importance alluded 

 to above (see page 264). 



2 The discussions in the second volume of this book will show the possible 

 significance of such an analysis. "We at present are dealing with entelechy 

 in a quasi-popular manner. 



