4 INTRODUCTORY [ch. 



phenomenes de la Vie*, and abides in much of modern physio- 

 logy f . Inherited from Hegel, it dominated Oken's Natur'philosophie 

 and lingered among his later disciples, who were wont to liken 

 the course of organic evolution not to the straggling branches of 

 a tree, but to the building of a temple, divinely planned, and the 

 crowning of it with its polished minarets J. 



It is retained, somewhat crudely, in modern embryology, by 

 those who see in the early processes of growth a significance 

 "rather prospective than retrospective," such that the embryonic 

 phenomena must be "referred directly to their usefulness in 

 building the body of the future animal§" : — which is no more, and 

 no less, than to say, with Aristotle, that the organism is the reXo^, 

 or final cause, of its own processes of generation and development. 

 It is writ large in that Entelechy|| which Driesch rediscovered, 

 and which he made known to many who had neither learned of it 

 from Aristotle, nor studied it with Leibniz, nor laughed at it with 

 Voltaire. And, though it is in a very curious way, we are told that 

 teleology was "refounded, reformed or rehabilitated^" by Darwin's 

 theory of natural selection, whereby "every variety of form and 

 colour was urgently and absolutely called upon to produce its 

 title to existence either as an active useful agent, or as a survival ' 

 of such active usefulness in the past. But in this last, and very 

 important case, we have reached a "teleology" without a reXo'i., 



* Cf. p. 162. "La force vitale dirige des phenomenes qu'elle ne produit pAs: 

 les agents physiques produisent des phenomenes qu'ils ne dirigent pas." 



t It is now and then conceded with reluctance. Thus Enriques, a learned 

 and philosophic naturalist, writing "deUa economia di sostanza nelle osse cave" 

 {Arch.f. Entw. Mech. xx, 1906), says "una certa impronta di teleologismo qua e la 

 e rimasta, mio malgrado, in questo scritto." 



% Cf. Cleland, On Terminal Forms of Life, J. Anat. and Phys. xvni, 1884. 



§ Conklin, Embryology of Crepidula, Journ. of Marphol. xm, p. 203, 1897; 

 Lillie, F. R., Adaptation in Cleavage, Woods Holl Biol. Lectures, pp. 43-67, 1899. 



II I am inclined to trace back Driesch' s teaching of Entelechy to no less a 

 person than Melanchthon. When Bacon {de Augm. iv, 3) states with disapproval 

 that the soul "has been regarded rather as a function than as a substance," R. L. 

 ElUs points out that ho is referring to Melanchthon' s exposition of the Aristotelian 

 doctrine. For Melanchthon, whose view of the peripatetic philosophy had long 

 great influence in the Protestant Universities, affirmed that, according to the true 

 view of Aristotle's opinion, the soul is not a substance, but an ivTeXexe^o., or 

 function. He defined it as dvva/jLis qunedam ciens actiones — a description all but 

 identical with that of Claude Bernard's ""force vitale.''' 



•1 Ray Lankester, Encijd. Brit. (9th ed.), art. "Zoology," p. 806, 1889. 



