190 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



too. There are, as we know, no specified and localised 

 external causes that could be responsible for every single 

 one of the resulting diversities. Entelechy, on the other 

 hand, as we have seen, cannot be regarded as being of the 

 nature of an energy, though it is able to suspend energetical 

 processes. 



What does that mean ? Does it not seem as if, in the 

 differentiation of harmonious-equipotential systems, a state 

 of diversity were created out of the homogeneous state of a 

 system by the sole agency of this system itself ? Indeed, 

 as far as the originating of diversities as such is concerned 

 that seems to be the case, even though energetical potentials 

 between the medium and the system play their part in 

 this process; for these potentials only relate to becoming 

 in general, but not to becoming which leads to diversity 

 in the different parts of the system. 



Such a state of things seems to contradict the second 

 and the third principle of energetics at the same time. 



A Partial Solution 



Now, of course, it must well be kept in mind that an 

 harmonious-equipotential system is far from being homo- 

 geneous in the strictest sense of the word. It is composed 

 of cells, and each of these cells is probably composed of an 

 enormous sum of chemical and aggregative constituents, 

 both in its protoplasm and its nucleus. Part of the 

 problem propounded here may be said to have been solved 

 by this statement, but part of it remains. 



For, granted even that there are not more different 

 single elements taken as truly homogeneous constituents 



