THE INDIRECT JUSTIFICATION OF ENTELECHY 175 



energy which appears. But this increase is not only due to 

 the decrease of the intensity of the other kind, 1 but it is 

 always of a smaller amount than the corresponding decrease 

 had been : the difference between decrease and increase has 

 been " dissipated," and has thus been lost for future changes 

 in nature. 



On Catenation of Energy 



By our last remarks we have been led to the important 

 problem of the " catenation 3: or " chaining " of different 

 kinds of energy, and by this we shall be led back to biology. 

 There exists a specific equivalence between the factors of 

 intensity of different energies, just as there was such an 

 equivalence between the amounts of energy as such. The 

 increasing of the intensity of any one energy stands in fixed 

 relations to the decreasing of the intensity of the others, in 

 such a manner that there is fixed not only what has been 

 called the " coupling " of one energy A to the energies B, C, 

 and so on, but also the amount of this coupling. By this 

 fact of coupling the concept of the diversity of intensities is 

 enlarged in a very important way : it becomes relative. 

 There may be " equilibrium ' if there is so much of the 

 intensity of one energy and so much of the intensity of the 

 other, and there may be a disturbance of equilibrium if the 

 relation of the two intensities is changed. 



It is at this point that potentialities regarded as realities 

 enter the field of the second principle of energetics in the 



1 This is the language of dogmatic energetics. As a matter of fact, in 

 chemical becoming for instance, the decreasing intensity probably always 

 caiises the increase of another intensity by means of heat. The increase is 

 smaller than the corresponding decrease, because part of that heat is " dis- 

 sipated." 



