MODERN BIOLOGY 609 



On these grounds he has produced his arguments in proof of "the autonomy 

 of life-phenomena"; he asserts that a living being forms a "harmoniously 

 equipotential system," by which he means that a hydra or other primitive 

 organism can be regenerated out of severed parts; this proves, to his mind, 

 that the animal is not a machine, for a machine cannot be evolved out of 

 its parts. This antithesis — machine and living being — he is constantly 

 bringing forward as a proof of the impossibility of deriving the animate 

 from the inanimate, and by drawing a comparison between them he comes 

 to the same negative result as the vitalists referred to above, though on 

 markedly abstract and schematic grounds. 



The ' ' entelechy 

 He is not content with this, however, but seeks to discover what life really 

 is. The answer is summed up in an expression borrowed from Aristotle: "an 

 entelechy." By this word Aristotle meant the potentiality which is inherent 

 in matter and which achieves reality to the extent of matter's development 

 into an ever higher and higher form (see Part I, p. 36). Driesch has likewise 

 a marked interest for form in living nature, which, he considers, lends itself 

 far more readily to "philosophical analysis" than metabolism does. By en- 

 telechy , however, Driesch means something far more involved : it is supposed 

 to mean "something that carries its purpose within itself." It is thus the 

 functional adaptation of living beings that is here indicated, but in entering 

 into a profound and far-reaching analysis of the idea Driesch becomes in- 

 volved in a maze of abstract speculations, which become still more difficult 

 to understand owing to the extremely complicated terminology he employs; 

 really we have to go back to the heyday of Hegelian philosophy to find the 

 counterpart, in point of difficulty of comprehension, of Driesch's definitions 

 and characterization of the phenomena of life. This much, however, can be 

 gathered from them, that as the ultimate proof of his vitalism he cites his 

 own personal consciousness; it is thus, apparently, that we are to interpret 

 his expression " phenomenological idealism," which, according to his con- 

 ception, leads directly to vitalism, at any rate as far as his own body is 

 concerned. He then draws the same conclusion in other living bodies. But 

 this is certainly, if anything, pure metaphysics; it has nothing to do with 

 biology; to give a detailed account of how the idea of the relation of en- 

 telechy to matter is further developed would in such circumstances be super- 

 fluous, all the more so as here the incomprehensibility of his language ex- 

 ceeds all bounds; sentences such as the chapter heading: " Entelecbie bex,ieht 

 sich auj den Kaum und gehort daher %}ir Natur, aber Entelecbie ist nicht im Kaum," 

 which is afterwards explained as follows: " Sie wirkt nicbt hn Kaum, sie wirkt 

 in den Kaum hinein,'' do not make the reader much the wiser. The same is 

 true of such a statement as that " Mater ie ist nicbt einmal in irgend einem 

 Sinne die Grundlage des Lebens." The new formula that Driesch gives in this 



