160 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



But causality may also be conceived in a very different 

 fashion, which enables thus the foundations of the second 

 so-called principle of energetics to be laid. In this case 

 we may speak of specified causality. We imagine a 

 limited system again, but it is the singular diversity of all 

 sorts of physical and chemical agents concerned in it that 

 we consider. We then find that diversities in the 

 different single parts of the system are the necessary 

 condition that anything may happen in it at all ; that 

 nothing can happen unless there are original diversities. 

 For the sufficient reason of happening would be wanting in 

 a system which was uniform throughout, wanting at least 

 so far as the system was uniform. Only if an element or 

 any part of a system is different from others can something 

 happen on that particular element or part Such, at least, 

 is the most general ontological source of the second principle 

 of energetics : it relates to specificities in causation, just as 

 the first principle related to generalities. 



But we shall postpone all further discussion of the second 

 principle of energetics to its proper time, and shall first try 

 to establish a little more about the principle of conservation 

 and its relation to entelechy. 



OUR THEME 



With this discussion we enter a part of our philosophical 

 studies which, though not final, is to rank among the most 

 important considerations of this whole course of lectures. 



We have shown that there are classes of phenomena in 

 living nature which do not allow of any resolving into 

 elements known from the study of the inorganic world. 



