ORGANIC MOVEMENTS 



M&noire* had, as early as 1896, established what I should 

 call the autonomy of acting, by a discussion which, though 

 confined to Psychology, and therefore different from my 

 own analysis in verbis, is very similar to it in re. I most 

 strongly recommend Bergson's book to all who take a deeper 

 interest in our subject. 



Let us call those arguments in favour of the autonomy 

 of life which were gained from the analysis of the 

 differentiation of the harmonious-equipotential systems as 

 concerned in morphogenesis the first proof of vitalism. Let 

 us call the evidence obtained from the discussion of the 

 genesis of the complex-equipotential systems, which are the 

 foundation of heredity and of many morphological regula- 

 tions, the second proof. Then we may see a third proof of 

 vitalism in our analysis of the principle of the " individuality 

 of correspondence," which is one of the chief characteristics 

 of action. This proof is as independent and self-contained 

 as the first two proofs ; nothing but the general logical 

 scheme is the same, viz., a machine of whatever kind or 

 degree of complication is not imaginable. 



The Union of the two Chief Criteria of Acting 



But our third proof is not yet complete ; we must add 

 another half to it, and it was for this reason that we have 

 so far dealt with it comparatively briefly. 



The principle of the individuality of correspondence, as 

 we know, does not mean that there is a statical or fixed 



1 Paris, 1896. This excellent work was quite unknown to me when I 

 wrote my Seele (1903), and is not even mentioned by Busse or by A. Klein 

 (Die modernen Theorien uber das aUyemeine Verhaltnis von Leib und Seele, 

 Breslau, 1906). 



