196 C. M. CHILD 
conceive to be more or less like himself, though greater, more per- 
fect and more powerful. Doubtless also he would give it a name. 
But when once the idea of the flow of the river as a motive power 
has entered his mind, his whole attitude toward what he has seen 
is altered. He sees that it is the current which carries partic.es 
away from the bank or stones and mud along the channel. On 
the other hand he sees that the banks confine the river, that the 
island, which it has formed divides it, that it accommodates its 
form to the ditch which he has dug and at the same time begins 
to change it. He begins to realize that the remarkable harmonies 
which he has observed are the result, on the one hand, of the flow 
of the river, 2. e., in 1 further analysis, of the characteristics of 
water, and on the other, of the nature of its banks and bed. He 
will also realize in time, that just as long as the flow continues 
these harmonies of action will continue to occur. Then he may 
begin to investigate the characteristics of currents and of water in 
general, and later we find him devising water-wheels, dams, pumps 
etc., 7.e., bringing about the most various harmonies of action 
between the flow of water and other phenomena. 
His conception of what he saw was at first more or less similar 
to that of the vitalist concerning organisms and all his investiga- 
tion could only end in speculation, which did not advance his real 
knowledge. But when he once began to realize the action of the 
current as an energetic and a constructive process, then he saw 
that the harmonies of action were only apparent, not real, be- 
cause he was dealing with mutually dependent phenomena 
rather than with those which were independent and predeter- 
mined. 
Driesch, for example has maintained in criticism of some of my 
own earlier statements, that development is for function (Driesch, 
95, p. 790) and the same view is apparent in his repeated compari- 
son of the organism to a machine constructed by man. This is as 
if our hypothetical man should maintain that because he could 
dig a ditch and turn water into it, therefore the channel of the 
river must have been constructed by some ‘entelechy,’ or other 
principle for the water, and then the water turned in. And more 
specifically, Driesch’s ‘proofs’ of the autonomy of vital proc- 
