THE DIRECT JUSTIFICATION OF ENTELECHY 337 



remains between organisms and things made by art is the 

 following : in products of art matter is formed through an 

 entelechian manifestation pre-existing already, in morpho- 

 genesis and in the process of acting itself matter is affected 

 immediately by entelechy. But in both cases non-spatial 

 individualising entelechy is at work in the last resort, and 

 entelechy is external to its " material." 



The Method Applied 



We now are at the end of our theory of the individual 

 living organism, both scientific and philosophical. 



In the first place, let me remind you again on this 

 occasion of the path that we have followed during our long 

 analysis and synthesis. It seems to me that the chief and 

 most characteristic feature of our method I might even 

 say the feature which alone enabled us to pursue our 

 theoretical construction so far as we have done is the 

 specific character of the concepts from which we started. 

 These concepts were not " collective " concepts, as used in 

 ordinary biology, not concepts such as " the cell," " the 

 nucleus," " the gastrula," " secretion/' " nervous conduction " ; 

 these only had their place in our introductory remarks. 

 But the concepts we really worked with were of a very 

 different character : " the prospective potency," " the equi- 

 potential system," " regulation," " the historical basis of 

 reacting," " the individualised stimulus " are a few instances 

 of the concepts that we employed. All of them are categorical 

 concepts, concepts built up by a specific arrangement of pure 

 categories ; and to them we owe the possibility of reaching 

 finally the realm of the pure categories themselves. 



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