200 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



a plastic principle called matter. Entelechy is the integrating 

 determinant, the source of the unit's coherence and of its dif- 

 ferentiation from units of another type. Matter is the de- 

 terminable and quantifying factor, in virtue of which the unit 

 is potentially-multiple and endowed with mass. In the electro- 

 chemical reactions of non-living substances (synthesis, analy- 

 sis, and transmutation), entelechy is the variant and matter 

 is the constant; in the metabolic activities of living substances 

 (assimilation and dissimilation), matter is the variant and 

 entelechy is the constant. This persistent entelechy of the 

 living unit or organism is what Aristotle terms the psyche or 

 soul. The latter, therefore, may be defined as the vital prin- 

 ciple or primary source of life in the organism. 



But in using such terms as "soul" and "vital principle" we 

 are employing expressions against which not merely rabid 

 mechanists, but many conservative biologists as well, see fit 

 to protest. The opposition of the latter, however, is found 

 on closer scrutiny to be nominal rather than real. It is the 

 name which offends; they have no objection to the thing sig- 

 nified. Wilson, to cite a pertinent example, rejects as meaning- 

 less all such terms as "vital principle," "soul," etc. "They 

 are words," he avers, "that have been written into certain 

 spaces that are otherwise blank in our record of knowledge, 

 and as far as I can see no more than this." ("Biology," p. 23, 

 1908.) Yet he himself affirms again and again the existence 

 of the reality which these terms (understood in their Aris- 

 totelian sense) denote. In discussing the relation of the tissue 

 cell to the multicellular body, for instance, he speaks of "a 

 formative power pervading the growing mass as a whole." 

 ("The Cell," 2nd ed., p. 59), and, in his recent lecture on 

 the "Physical Basis of Life," he makes allusion to "the in- 

 tegrating and unifying principle in the vital processes." 

 (Science, March 9, 1923, p. 284.) It would seem, therefore, 

 that Wilson's aversion to such terms as soul and vital prin- 

 ciple is based on the dynamic sense assigned to them by the 

 neo-vitalists, who, as we have seen, regard the vital principle 



