THE INDIRECT JUSTIFICATION OF ENTELECHY 181 



TJie Role of Entelechy in the Continuity of Life 



This statement implies a very important consequence. 

 If entelechy always must have done something in order that 

 it may do anything in the present and future, there can, of 

 course, never be any real beginning of its acting, but this 

 acting must be continuous. And this is what the fact of 

 inheritance teaches us. Life is indeed continuous : a certain 

 portion of matter that stands under the control of entelechy 

 is handed down from generation to generation. And thus 

 entelechy always has already * acted ! 



Unfortunately, as will be seen later on, we are unable 

 to escape this regressus ad infinitum in any way ; at least 

 we know nothing about a " first " and really primordial act 

 of suspension of inorganic becoming on the part of 

 entelechy. 



Entelechy and Chemism 



Of course we can only affirm the possibility of a 

 temporary suspending of reactions on the part of entelechy 

 in those cases where there is an empirical reason for doing 

 so ; and that is only the case at present in the spheres of 

 chemical and of aggregative events. 



1 It might be objected here that the continuity of entelechian control 

 would imply a decrease of the amount of possible becoming, according to the 

 principle of dissipation ; and that for this reason life, i.e. the suspending 

 action of eutelechy, would soon come to an end. But the principle of dissi- 

 pation is a purely empirical principle of inorganic science, and nobody is 

 able to say a priori that the regulating acts of entelechy in relaxing sus- 

 pension must be subject to it. Decrease and increase between coupled inten- 

 sities therefore may amount to the same value in the sphere of vitalistic 

 happening. 



