176 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



them flows a steady stream of energy and matter which is 

 ever changing, yet momentarily molded by life; organized, 

 in short." ("Fitness of the Environment," 1913, pp. 23, 24.) 

 The living unit maintains its own specific type amid a con- 

 stant flux of matter and flow of energy. It subjugates the 

 alien substances of the inorganic world, eliminates their min- 

 eral entelechies and utilizes their components and energies for 

 its ov/n purposes. The soul or vital entelechy, therefore, is more 

 powerful than the entelechies of inorganic units which it sup- 

 plants. It turns the forces of living matter inward, so that the 

 living organism becomes capable of self-regulation and of striv- 

 ing for the attainment of self-perfection. It is this reflexive 

 orientation of all energies towards self-perfection that is the 

 unique characteristic of the living being, and not the nature of 

 the energies themselves. The energies by which vital functions 

 are executed are the ordinary physicochemical energies, but it 

 is the vital entelechy or soul which elevates them to a higher 

 plane of efficiency and renders them capable of reflexive or vital 

 action. There is, in short, no such thing as a special vital 

 force. The radical difference between living and non-living 

 units does not consist in the possession or non-possession of an 

 entelechy, nor yet in the peculiar nature of the forces dis- 

 played in the execution of vital functions, but solely in the 

 orientation of these forces towards an inner finality. 



§ 7. The Definition of Life 



Life, then, may be defined as the capacity of reflexive or 

 self-perfective action. In any action, we may distinguish four 

 things: (1) the agent, or source of the action; (2) the activity 

 or internal determination differentiating the agent in the ac- 

 tive state from the selfsame agent in the inactive state; (3) 

 the patient or receptive subject; (4) the effect or change 

 produced in the patient by the agent. Let us suppose that 

 a boy named Tom kicks a door. Here Tom is the agent, the 

 muscular contraction in hiis leg is the activity, the door is the 

 patient or recipient, while the dent produced in the door is 



