THE DIRECT JUSTIFICATION OF ENTELECHY 329 



for instance, be predicted from the very nature of an 

 organism, that it would restore itself, after disturbances of 

 its organisation, either by regeneration or by re-differentia- 

 tion, that is to say on the basis of either an harmonious- or 

 a complex - equipotential system. But this aprioristic 

 distinction is not gained from an analysis of entelechy 

 as such, but from an analysis of the nature of the perfect 



organism. 



6. A FEW REMARKS ON THE PROBLEM OF TIME 



We know that autonomous vital phenomena are 

 founded upon natural factors and laws which we are able 

 to conceive by the aid of a special category of relation, 

 individualitv. We know also in what relations these 



\t 



factors stand with regard to inorganic factors and laws 

 and how they act with regard to space they are non- 

 spatial but manifest themselves in space. But one point 

 of great importance has only been incidentally mentioned 

 the relation of entelechy to time. 



Somewhat mysteriously I said in a former chapter 1 

 " being and becoming are united in entelechy," " time 

 enters into the timeless," namely, into ideas in the Platonic 

 sense. That is to say, entelechy, though an elemental 

 ontological entity, cannot manifest itself completely in 

 any case without taking a definite amount of time ; and 

 this, at the first glance at least, seems to be contradictory 

 to the concept of a Platonic idea, which expresses the 

 timeless, the non-historical par excellence. 



Let us first consider the process of morphogenesis 







1 See page 149. Compare also my Organischc Regulationen (1901), p. 204. 



