446 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



entelechy in conjunction with material factors, that aberration 

 of morphogenesis which we call cancer is as likely to be due to 

 an aberrant entelechy as to mere physical causes : more likely 

 indeed, for as one physical cause after another is suggested and 

 abandoned, the number of possible alternatives must be steadily 

 diminishing. Perhaps a time will come when some disciple of 

 Driesch will declare that, all physical causes having been proved 

 inadequate, the only remaining alternative — entelechy — must 

 per exchisionem be the true cause and thus found upon cancer 

 a new proof of vitalism. And if cancer be really due to a way- 

 ward entelechy, all hope of a cure or of therapeutics would, I 

 presume, be gone. We may always hope to institute material 

 changes in the organism by physical means ; but such means 

 must be powerless to deal with an intangible ghostly factor like 

 entelechy — a " true element of nature." We are here brought 

 face to face with the profound pessimism which follows upon 

 every kind of vitalism and spiritualism. All such phenomena 

 are necessarily beyond our control : when they take a course 

 opposed to us, we can only fold our arms and cry. How 

 different is the more materialistic outlook ! For when we know 

 that our means are not incommensurable with the ends to be 

 attained, hope need never be abandoned. 



Driesch's second proof of vitalism is analogous to his first 

 proof. The first rested upon the alleged impossibility of ex- 

 plaining individual development on the basis of mechanism ; the 

 second proof rests upon the alleged impossibility of explaining 

 inheritance on that basis. The egg-cell contains, somehow or 

 other, the potentiality of the structure of the entire future 

 organism. Driesch affirms that it is impossible to conceive 

 how, when it divides into two, each half can conserve the same 

 potentiality as the whole. " It is a mere absurdity," he says, 

 " to assume that a complicated machine, typically different in 

 the three dimensions of space, could be divided many many 

 times and in spite of that always be the whole ; therefore, there 

 cannot exist any sort of machine as the starting-point and basis 

 of development. Let us again apply the name entelechy to that 

 which lies at the very beginning of all individual morphogenesis. 

 Entelechy thus proves to be also that which may be said to lie 

 at the very root of inheritance." The whole argument is hope- 

 lessly inconsequent. Driesch's charge of absurdity lies really 

 not against the unknown mechanism of the process but against 



