194 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



the workman is building a small house with the bricks. It 

 is clear, without any deeper consideration, that the system 

 represented by the bricks is passing from a state of almost 

 equal distribution into a state of distribution showing a 

 very marked degree of diversity. But you answer me that 

 each single brick is brought to its place by a single external 

 factor, namely, by a single act of moving, on the part of the 

 workman. That is true, certainly. But if you consider 

 the workman plus the heap of bricks, and, of course, plus 

 the medium, as the " system' 1 to be studied, the whole 

 problem acquires a very different aspect. Certainly there 

 were many diversities in one part of the system, that is, in 

 the man, at the beginning of the process ; but at the end of 

 it there is a very much higher degree of diversity in the 

 whole system, as regards the distribution of elements at 

 least : for the heap of bricks has greatly augmented its 

 amount of diversity, and the man has lost none of his. Thus 

 we see that the " system " has enlarged its amount of 

 diversity of distribution by factors which lay exclusively in 

 itself. 1 It is the same result as we got from the study of 

 the harmonious morphogenetical systems, regarding this very 

 point of the " diversity of distribution." 



There is only a difference in so far as in morphogenesis 

 the " suspending " act of entelechy relates to the material 

 elements of the body exclusively, while in action it relates 

 immediately to the material elements of the brain, and 



1 The energetical factors of the medium, of course, can only claim to 

 be necessary for becoming in general, but have nothing to do with the 

 originating of diversities in our system. By the aid of one and the same 

 amount of oxygen, food, etc., the workman may either transform the original 

 homogeneous heap of bricks into another homogeneous heap, or construct 

 any kind<of small. house he likes. 



