450 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



be mechanical. To which, of course, the reply is that machines 

 are not necessarily " built up for special purposes " : that on the 

 contrary their essential action is in transforming energy or 

 transmitting power : and that they would be just as much 

 machines if that transformation had no purpose whatever. 

 What Driesch does is to define a " machine " in terms which 

 exclude the brain from his definition : and then to argue from 

 these premisses that the brain is not a machine. Well, no 

 mechanist ever said it was, in the sense defined by Driesch ! All 

 they have affirmed is that physical and chemical laws alone are in 

 operation : and that has nothing to do with any fancy conceptions 

 of the " purpose " of the machine. 



Driesch's Science of the Organism is succeeded by his 

 Philosophy of the Organism. Vitalism and entelechy having 

 been established on a firm basis by scientific methods, a similar 

 result is achieved by metaphysical methods. I shall spare my 

 reader any account of this part of the work, firstly because (like 

 all metaphysics) it is indescribably dull, secondly because it 

 appears to me loaded with logical fallacies, thirdly because 

 however immaculate the metaphysics might be, however trium- 

 phant its proofs might appear, I should not think of believing or 

 attaching the slightest weight to any conclusion that might be 

 reached. The metaphysicians, like the theologians, have had 

 their say. Nothing in the world has ever been discovered by 

 metaphysical methods. No metaphysical " truth " has ever been 

 found in all the thousands of years it has been sought. More- 

 over anything appears to be susceptible of" proof" bymetaphysics. 

 Hegel proved, as we know, that everything is the contrary of 

 what it is. I am credibly informed that certain modern philoso- 

 phers are of opinion that the part is (or may be) greater than the 

 whole. I am therefore by no means astonished to learn that 

 entelechy rests upon a firm metaphysical basis : and I am con- 

 tent to let it rest there undisturbed. I notice only that Driesch 

 proposes to " establish vitalism " from " the organisation of 

 the Ego": that he has recourse to odd-sounding things like 

 "psychoids" to help him; that during the process it transpires 

 that every man has not merely one entelechy but a whole army 

 of entelechies— a hierarchy of entelechies ranged in authority 

 one above the other; and that ultimately we meet with what I 

 am inclined to call the audacious statement that " life is explained": 

 explained by psychoids and entelechies ! 



