THE DIRECT JUSTIFICATION OF ENTELECHY 309 



who most decidedly established " finality " as the third real 

 category of relation. But we shall develop our views 

 without reference to the discussion and terminology of this 

 author. 1 



Unlike causality, " teleology," considered purely as a 

 kind of description, never relates to single phenomena in 

 nature as such, but always applies to the spatial or 

 temporal combination of phenomena in its specificity. We 

 ask " for what purpose ? " whenever we see anything happen 

 that bears on the realisation of a certain typically combined 

 whole, " typical " either on account of any kind of symmetry 

 or on account of its existence in indefinite exemplars. We 

 ask this question in particular the simple uneducated 

 man asks it because we know that there does exist at 

 least one elemental combining factor, manifesting itself 

 with regard to nature our own will. But what does 

 this mean except that our experience with regard to 

 this one factor has awaked a certain category which now 

 seeks for further application, just as did the categories of 

 substance and causality, which at first belonged to intro- 

 spective psychology exclusively ? It is very interesting to 

 note in this connexion that among primitive peoples and 

 in the child the new category, here in question, plays a far 

 greater role than causality : all facts in nature which relate 

 to any kind of constellation being conceived as due to 



1 When this chapter was already definitively written I learnt from the 

 Logik der reinen Erkenntnis of Cohen that this author regards the concepts 

 "purpose" and "individual" as true categories. But he does not draw 

 the conclusions, it seems to me, that ought to be drawn from such a state- 

 ment, and his theory of the Organic, therefore, does not go beyond a sort of 

 Kantianism : mechanical causality remains the ultimate effective and con- 

 stitutive principle of nature, the two organic categories he introduces do 

 not serve to formulate natural agents of a new and special class. 



