196 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



positively or negatively ; the energetical principles relate 

 to the diversity of potentials or intensities exclusively. 



Now it would be wrong to conclude from this fact 

 that there is no opposition between inorganic and vital 

 phenomena. But the opposition does not relate to the 

 true second principle of energetics, but relates to a certain 

 more general ontological principle that might have been 

 established with regard to inorganic events, to a principle 

 that in fact is realised in a certain form in the Inorganic 

 and in a certain other form in the Organic, 1 but that, so 

 to say, has been forgotten by physics and chemistry. 



This principle may most generally be expressed as 

 follows : 



" It is impossible to transform any system that possesses 

 a certain state of diversity among its actual and potential 

 constituents into a more heterogeneous state by the sole 

 agency of the system." 



Our principle becomes limited to the Inorganic if the 

 words "constituents" and "agency" are understood energetic- 

 ally, and in this form, of course, implies the true second 

 energetical principle as a sub-class ; but even then it 

 speaks of any kind of diversity, even of mere diversity 

 of spatial arrangement, and not only of diversity with 

 regard to intensities, as the latter does. 



What is done by entelechy now contradicts or rather 

 exceeds our principle in its general inorganic form, and here 



1 It is very strange to note, that from this point of view the most 

 remarkable biological phenomenon of " retro-differentiation " (as it occurs 

 in Clavellina and Tubularia, compare vol. i. page 163), in spite of its biological 

 exceptionality, appears more similar to inorganic phenomena than ordinary 

 differentiation does: there is a decfrea.se of "diversity of distribution" in 

 retro-differentiation. 



