21 8 ESSENTIALS OF BIOLOGY 



ing a crystal, growing the fragment in mother-liquor and again 

 fragmenting and so on : it does not, however, need much acumen 

 to expose the analogy. The only analogous thing is the com- 

 munication of an idea from one man to another, w^ho then shares 

 it with another and so on. 



Driesch's argument, in this connection, still retains its validity. 

 If we conceive of the organization as a material-energetic 

 mechanism we cannot clearly think of anything of that nature 

 that can be subdivided and still remain what it was. And, of 

 course, the self-reproduction of a machine cannot easily be 

 imagined. 



76. ON THE PSYCHO-BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTION OF THE 



DEVELOPMENTAL PROCESS 



So far as we can understand it, the developmental organization 

 or agency, is (i) not a chemical substance, for this, of itself, would 

 disintegrate into simpler substances and attain equilibrium ; 

 (2) It is not a form of energy, for this, of itself, w^ould undergo 

 dissipation ; (3) it is not anything kinetic, for in the resting ovum 

 that is going to develop there are no chemical or physical activities 

 apart from feeble respiration ; (4) it is therefore a potential — 

 the power to do something which, nevertheless, may not be done ; 

 (5) it is a specific power or potential, that operates upon physical- 

 chemical things so as to produce a unique configuration — the 

 organs and tissue of the organism — and this unique effect is 

 manifested in an indefinitely great number of examples, or indivi- 

 duals of a species ; (6) it is not spatially extended in the ovum, 

 for (7) it can be indefinitely subdivided among the millions of 

 ova formed by the one ovum that develops. 



There is no chemical-physical agency known to us that is as 

 we have just seen the developmental agency to be. But every 

 human being (or, at all events, the reader) has immediate and 

 unconfused knowledge of an analogous agency in his own mind. 

 The salient fact about the developmental organization is that it 

 assembles things in some specific configuration and that is what 

 the inventor of a machine, the bricklayer, the musician who 

 writes an original theme, the artist in general, or the man who 

 plays a game of '' Patience " with a pack of cards does. In all 

 these cases a configuration of some kind is thought about, 

 visualized, imagined or contemplated. Such a configuration does 



