350 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



" supra-personal " teleology, so to speak, of the future. Of an 

 immanent or entelechian teleology we most decidedly know 

 absolutely nothing in this domain of nature were it other- 

 wise, our task would not be difficult. Thus the only thing 

 we can do teleologically is to search for some point among 

 inorganic specificities of constellation, which might possibly 

 relate to some imaginable purpose. And the organisms 

 alone can be such purposes. In this way the frequency 

 and distribution of salt and of iron, and the remarkable 

 properties of the ever-present water indeed do serve to 

 assist important functions of all organisms and of men, and 

 so does the separation of oceans and continents on the earth. 

 But we shall postpone the further discussion of this 

 central question until we have reviewed another type of 

 possible individuality or teleology in the Inorganic. 



B. THE PROBLEM OF A REAL INORGANIC INDIVIDUALITY 



It is not the specific distribution and frequency of the 

 types of matter to which I refer, but the general distribution 

 of masses in the cosmic universe. And, on the other hand, 

 it is not with a possible mere general " harmony ' that we 

 shall deal here exclusively, but with the problem whether 

 there may be found in the inorganic universe such types of 

 constellation or perhaps even dynamical events as might 

 allow us to speak of real inorganic individuals, or, strange 

 to say, inorganic organisms. Of course this is quite 

 a different logical problem from the problem of a general 

 harmony of the universe, with man as its purpose. Our 

 new problem, so it seems, is much less " anthropomorphic " 

 than the problem of harmony. 



