THEORETIC CONSIDERATIONS 2)77 



according to the Individuality of the actual stimulus in 

 question." 



Thus it is maintained that acting or behavior cannot 

 be accounted for on the basis of physics and chemistry. 

 There must be a factor involved here which is not active in 

 the inorganic realm. This factor is postulated as a non- 

 energetic regulatory factor. It is supposed to prevent 

 reactions — activity or becoming — by compensating po- 

 tentials, i.e., by transferring kinetic into potential energy, 

 and to regulate reactions and becoming by setting " free 

 into actuality what it has itself prevented from actuality, 

 what it has suspended hitherto " (p. i8o). Thus it is 

 that this non-energetic factor, entelechy, psychoid, is sup- 

 posed to regulate development, becoming and action in 

 organisms. It requires the same amount of energy under 

 certain conditions to fire a gun to-morrow at lO A.M. as it 

 does at II a.m., and just as much to fire it east as it does 

 to fire it west. In some such way, I understand the author 

 to assume that psychoid can regulate behavior without 

 energy. It does jiot create reactions, but it regulates 

 them with regard to time and direction. 



Admitting the operation of a factor of this sort it is a 

 simple matter to explain the regulation of physiological 

 states and all of the puzzling phenomena in behavior previ- 

 ously referred to, but in such an explanation we still have an 

 u'nknown factor to account for, the psychoid ; and concern- 

 ing this some maintain nothing can be learned, for it is evi- 

 dent that if there is such a factor at work in behavior dif- 

 ferent things can happen under precisely the same physico- 

 chemical conditions. And if this be true, how can we hope 

 to progress experimentally? According to Driesch's theory 

 every act is definitely and absolutely determined, although 

 not mechanically. With a given physico-chemical con- 

 stellation and a psychoid in a given state, precisely the same 

 things will always occur. If there is a psychoid of this 

 sort, a factor which has different states but which always 

 acts tie same in any given state, it seems to me that by 



