THE DIRECT JUSTIFICATION OF ENTELECHY 319 



in general is " ideal inorganic nature " in the scientific 

 meaning of the word. Ideal inorganic nature as a whole 

 corresponds to the totality of possible relations which may 

 be established from the point of view of pure ontology or 

 " transcendental logic " in the sense of Kant, always in 

 combination with the simple categories of quantity, quality, 

 space, time, actuality, and possibility. 



On the basis of all the categories just named a certain 

 number of irreducible principles of relation, a certain 

 number of " ontological prototypes" as they might properly 

 be called, are established, and the task of science is to co- 

 ordinate natural Givenness with these ontological prototypes. 1 

 Natural Givenness can only claim to be " understood >: so 

 far as this co-ordination has been successful. 



Now all inorganic nature, as the total system of all the 

 constituents at work in it, is in space ; and all potentialities, 

 such as potentials, potential energies, constants, have their 

 proper spatial locality. " Causality " then means that one 

 spatial change is univocally followed by another. 



Organic Nature 



The category of individuality quite certainly allows of 

 creating elemental constituents with regard to spatial nature, 



1 Kant maintained, as is generally known, that his "transcendental 

 logic" rests upon the faculty of "synthetic judgments a priori." It may 

 appear questionable whether in fact this concept meets the point, and 

 whether it would not be more advisable to speak of the faculty of establishing 

 a certain system of irreducible concepts as the fundamental faculty of reason- 

 ing, all proper "judging" a priori being analytical. But I agree that this 

 would only be another explanation of the same fundamental fact of conscious- 

 ness. Poincare, in his Science et Hypothese, advocates the view that a 

 good deal of so-called synthetic apriorism is analytical, since it simply rests 

 upon definitions. This assumption, it seems to me, though not wrong, is 

 certainly incomplete. The question arises: "Why are there just these 

 definitions and no others ? " 



