METAPHYSICAL CONCLUSIONS 373 



would now appear as what might be called a sort of 

 emanation from the Absolute, as a something that has its 

 source in the Absolute. "With regard to causal force and 

 biological entelechy such an emanation may actually happen 

 before our eyes, as it does in inorganic events and in the 

 living organisms. 1 But it also may have happened, if our 

 hypothesis of an individualised general harmony in nature 

 is justified. In this case the Demiurgus that science allows 

 to be established as its eternal task would be the highest 

 form of all emanations. In all these questions, of course, 

 the problem of time would appear once more. 



But our " Science and Philosophy of the Organism " 

 ends here. 



1 Oil a former occasion (page 261) we have said that the ideal or Platonic 

 existence of entelechy as a constituent of "ideal nature" does not guarantee 

 the permanency of the individuals which are the outcome of its manifestation 

 in any way. It seems to me that the problem must remain open in the 

 " absolute " sphere also. In brief: individual immortality is not provable ; 

 but then, of course, neither is its opposite. And a spiritual eternity that is 

 f iiot individual is beyond our comprehension except in a eery general and un- 

 specified fashion though this, of course, is no argument against its existence. 



