VII MECHANISM AND HOLISM 171 



operate, what is the mechanism which interlocks them and 

 makes them one with the physical? What fundamental 

 conception can we form of the physical, the vital, the 

 psychical which will represent in thought the unities which 

 they are and form in fact? Life starts from the simplest 

 almost purely mechanical forms in the vegetable kingdom 

 and passes upward until it flowers into the marvels of 

 organisation of structure and function, of beauty of form 

 and activity, which we see in the plant and animal kingdoms. 

 And it probably had an immensely long history of develop- 

 ment before it attained even the lowest forms now known 

 to us. But all through, the fundamental function of selec- 

 tion, of selective taking and leaving, has distinguished it. 

 Mind again, by selecting the selected, has initiated the 

 power of direction which has gradually evolved into the 

 new world of the free spirit. How can we envisage the 

 physical, the vital, the psychical as together forming unities 

 and wholes as they do in fact? 



Naturalism answers this question, as we have seen, by 

 making life and mind the mere unreal accompaniments, 

 the reflexes or shadows, of the real mechanistic physico- 

 chemical system. A solution which in effect rules out half 

 of the world of reality as revealed in our experience cannot 

 be accepted as satisfactory and need not detain us here. 

 Vitalism again puts forward a theory of its own which we 

 may examine for a moment. We shall take it in the form 

 presented by Professor Hans Driesch, who has elaborated 

 a special form of the Vi talis t theory with an imposing 

 apparatus of proofs. This is the theory of Entelechy. 

 Driesch supposes a non-mechanical agent at work in psycho- 

 physical systems which has the power of suspending their 

 action in particular respects, thus enabling them to store 

 up and retain their energies, and which again relaxes its 

 suspensory power and thereby allows their energies to be set 

 free and their action to proceed when the situation of life 

 requires it. Where this controlling action on the part of 

 the mysterious Entelechy comes from, Driesch does not 

 profess to know. It evidently corresponds somewhat to 



