THE INDIRECT JUSTIFICATION OF ENTELECHY 253 



sphere of the same material and moving with the same 

 angular velocity will throw off its equatorial substance in 

 the form of a ring, and a satellite may be formed out of it ; 

 for the absolute amount of peripheral velocity increases 

 enormously with the increase of the total amount of sub- 



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stance. So there may result very different definitive forms 

 from systems which differed only in size at the outset. 



But, of course, it is clear from the very beginning that 

 the origin of new elemental factors is not touched at all in 

 this example. 



But how about the relation of rubbing a glass rod to 

 electricity, how about the rise of the electric current from 

 chemical potentials, as we see in the familiar galvanic cell ? 



It is true that at the first glance there may seem to be 

 a real creation of something fundamentally new by a mere 

 constellation : phenomenalism in its purest form, in fact, 

 would advocate such a view. But the history of physics 

 shows that it is impossible for human reason to rest content 

 with such a conception. Science always has been in search 

 of some pre-existence of what seemed to be new, and, in 

 fact, science has always managed to find this pre-existence 

 in some way. Either it has attributed the new thing that 

 arose to what existed already, endowing the latter with it 

 in the form of a potentiality, expressed under the name of 

 a so-called " constant," or it has gone further and has tried 

 to conceive the possibility under the form of a substantiality. 

 Mathematical phenomenalism takes the first line, the modern 

 theory of electricity follows the second ; the mere E of the 

 first, marking the " being potentially electric ' as an irre- 

 ducibility, becomes the electron of the second, in the sense 

 of the elemental quantity of the new phenomenality in 



