THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 201 



as a force sui generis or a unique agent, which operates in- 

 trusively among physicochemical factors in the role of an active 

 or efficient cause of vital functions. That such is really the 

 case, appears from his rhetorical question: "Shall we then join 

 hands with the neo-vitalists in referring the unifying and 

 regulatory principle to the operation of an imknown power, a 

 directive force, an archaeus, an entelechy or a soul?" {Loc. cit., 

 p. 285 — italics mine.) The objection, however, does not apply 

 to these terms used in their Aristotelian sense. In the phi- 

 losophy of the Stagirite, the soul, like all other entelechies, is a 

 cause in the entitive, but not in the dynamic, order of things. 

 Its efficacy is formal, not efficient. It is not an agent, but a 

 specifying type. The organism must be integrated, specified, 

 and existent before it can operate, and hence its integration 

 and specification by the soul is prior to all vital activity. The 

 soul is a constituent of being and not an immediate principle 

 of action. The soul is not even an entity (in the sense of a 

 complete and separate being) , but rather an incomplete entity 

 or constituent of an entity. It takes a complete entity to be an 

 agent, and the soul or vital entelechy is not an independent 

 existent, which is somehow inserted into the organism, but an 

 incomplete being which has no existence of its own, but only co- 

 existence, in the composite that it forms with the organism. Nor 

 is there any such thing as a special vital force resident in the 

 organism. The executive factors in all vital operations of the 

 organic order are the physicochemical energies, which are 

 native to matter in general. These forces, as we have seen, 

 receive a reflexive orientation and are elevated to a higher 

 plane of efficiency by reason of their association with an en- 

 telechy superior to the binding and type-determining principles 

 present in inorganic units, but they are not supplanted or 

 superseded by a new executive force. Wilson's fear, therefore, 

 that the experimental analysis of life is discouraged by vital- 

 ism, inasmuch as this conception subtracts something from, 

 the efficiency of the physicochemical forces, is groundless in 

 the case of hylomorphic vitalism., but is well-founded in the 



