THE DIRECT JUSTIFICATION OF ENTELECHY 283 



mology, which studies " Givenness ' without any meta- 

 physical assumptions at all, the phenomenological series of 

 conscious states related to my body is broken by a series of 

 states which cannot be related to that body in any sense. 

 Psychology can fill this gap in the bodily world by the 

 " intra-psychical series " ; science has to restrict itself to 

 saying merely l that there is a natural factor concerned in 

 the events going on in my body, a factor which is an 

 " intensive manifoldness " and may be called " psychoid." 



Thus phenomenological idealism leads by itself straight 

 on into vitalism, at least for one single object of biology 

 my body. 



Other Living Bodies 



It now remains for us to pass beyond the limits between 

 " my body >: as a natural object and other living realities, 

 in order to establish our directly proved vitalism in the 

 most general form ; and this transition is by no means 

 difficult. The first step leads from my body as a pheno- 

 menon objectified into a constituent of Nature to the bodies 

 in Nature which are very similar to mine : to the bodies 

 of other men. We have actually proved that the behaviour 

 of my body in Nature cannot be understood by a mere 



1 Modern authors very often do not appreciate clearly this state of things. 

 Everything we know about is "psychical," they say, and in this way a real 

 " monism " or <c psycho-monism " is the end. That is certainly true, but is 

 at the same time of no use to natural science. Natural science deals with 

 objectified spatial phenomena, and its only aim is to discover the principles 

 and laws that are valid for these. Therefore with regard to spatial pheno- 

 mena exclusively the problem of "mechanism or vitalism " arises. That the 

 complete series of phenomena which are immediately presented to consciousness 

 is not a " mechanistic " series even if the word " immediate " is understood 

 in an enlarged meaning is self-evident; the terms "mechanism" and 

 "vitalism " lose their meaning in this field. 



