184 Cc. M. CHILD 
bration. We find that the system is capable within certain limits 
of attaining or approaching a condition of equilibrium after a 
disturbance of a previously existing equilibrium. 
And again in the law of mass action and the general principles of 
chemical equilibrium, together with what we know of katalysis, we 
have the possibility of accounting for a great variety of processes 
of equilibration in the organism. Until we have exhausted these 
and other physico-chemical possibilities and found them inade- 
quate, we have no adequate reason for oelieving that organic indi- 
viduality and its maintenance are anything unique. 
The fact that physiological correlation exists between different 
parts of an organism must necessarily determine a certain relation, 
a certain proportionality in the activities of the different parts. 
It is this relation, this proportion in activity determined by corre- 
lation which constitutes what we call organic or physiological 
equilibrium in the organism. This equilibrium is dynamic, not 
static, it is an equilibrium of processes, not of masses and it must 
be dependent either upon physiological correlation, or upoa some- 
thing else which controls the supply of energy to this or that part 
in very much the way in which the man in charge controls the 
workings of a complex machine, e. g., asteam-shovel, turning the 
steam into this or that cylinder as required for the harmonious 
working of the whole. Driesch’s entelechy is comparable to the 
man in charge of the engine. 
But it is not the mere existence of an organic equilibrium which 
constitutes the real problem; it is the apparent power of adjust- 
ment, of equilibration, the harmony of actionof the parts, as in the 
engine, which has been regarded as the strongest argument for 
vitalism. How, the vitalist asks, is it conceivable that a machine 
with such capacity of adjustment, of equilibration as the organism, 
which can even repair itself, can be constructed and continue to 
exist and work unless there is something comparable to the man in 
charge concerned in these processes. 
As a matter of fact this question is based on a wrong conception 
of the organism. The organism as we see it, 7. e., morphologically, 
is not the machine whose action constitutes life, but rather simply 
a part of the products of that machine, which accumulate during 
