INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSIONS 143 



basis of reacting, i.e. secondary knowing and willing, conies 

 into account, but they feel unable to accept autonomical 

 teleological agents unpossessed of these secondary faculties. 

 Schneider, Pauly, Strecker and many others among modern 

 authors take this view ; Kant, it seems to me, thought 

 similarly, for he left open the question of vitalism proper, 

 and only advocated formal teleology in morphogenesis and 

 metabolism, though he was not opposed to the theory of 

 so-called " psycho-physical " interaction. 1 



But it is my firm conviction that we cannot avoid 

 the admission of vitalistic autonomic agents possessing no 

 experience, i.e. no " secondary ' faculties, and yet endowed 

 with specific knowing and willing : indeed, as far as 

 morphogenesis and physiological adaptation and instinctive 

 reactions are concerned, there must be a something 

 comparable metaphorically with specified knowing and 

 willing, but without experience. Of course, we must be 

 careful about what has to be " known " and " judged " and 

 " willed." This problem seems rather easy to answer in 

 the light of morphological restitutions. Here the end to 

 be attained is the normal organisation ; that " means " 

 towards this end are known and found may seem very 

 strange, but it is a fact ; and it is a fact also, in the case 

 of what we have called " equifinal regulations," that 

 different means leading to one and the same final state 

 may be known and adopted. 



As to the primary faculties concerned in adaptation 

 great theoretical caution seems to be advisable. We have 

 already urged on a former occasion that it is quite 



1 Compare my book, Der Vitalismus als Geschichte und als Lchrc, Leipzig, 

 1905. 



