182 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



In these spheres there is indeed a sort of " overcoming ' 

 of inorganic nature by the Organic, an overcoming that is 

 no more strange, of course, than is, for instance, the over- 

 coming of gravity by electricity when small balls of elder 

 pith are attracted by a rubbed glass rod though, of course, 

 in the latter case two real " energetical " intensities are in 

 action against each other. 



If spiritualistic facts should prove to be true a matter 

 about which I have no personal experience at all or if it 

 were really true that Indian fakirs are able to overcome 

 gravitation and to rise from the ground, there would be a 

 far larger field of inorganic intensities where becoming, on 

 the basis of diversities of intensity, might be temporarily 

 suspended by entelechy. 



An explanation of the Limits of Regulability and of 



Life in General 



If we understand that the action of entelechy is only 

 an action of suspending that which, but for this, would 

 happen an action of regulating by suspending we 

 at once understand two very important features which 

 appear in all phenomena of life : the dependence of life 

 on the conditions of the medium, and the limits of its 

 reguldbility. 



We know that life is impossible without food and 

 oxygen, without a certain amount of heat and without a 

 specific composition of the medium all within rather 

 narrow limits. We have frequently remarked, moreover, 

 in our purely biological discussions that there exist great 

 differences in the faculty both of restitution and of adapta- 



