GREATER PROBLEMS OF BIOLOGY THOMPSON. 383 



which entelechy has formed, are no other than the afodyuid], whereby 

 animalia vivunt et sentiunt, and the dcavorjztur), to which Aristotle 

 ascribes the reasoning faculty of man. Save only that Driesch, like 

 Darwin, would deny the restriction of voug, or reasoning, to man alone, 

 and would extend it to animals, it is clear, and Driesch himself admits, 1 

 that he accepts both the vitalism and the analysis of vitalism laid 

 down by Aristotle. 



The 7ived{M of Galen, the vis plastica, the vis vita? formatrix, of the 

 older physiologists, the Bildungstrieb of Blumenbach, the Lebenskraft 

 of Paracelsus, Stahl, and Treviranus, " shaping the physical forces of 

 the body to its own ends," "dreaming dimly in the grain of the prom- 

 ise of the full corn in the ear" 2 (to borrow the rendering of an Oxford 

 scholar), these and many more, like Driesch's " Entelechy" of to-day, 

 are all conceptions under which successive generations strive to depict 

 the something that separates the earthy from the living, the living 

 from the dead. And John Hunter described his conception of it in 

 words not very different from Driesch's, when he said that his principle, 

 or agent, was independent of organization, which yet it animates, 

 sustains, and repairs; it was the same as Johannes Miiller's conception 

 of an innate " unconscious idea." 



Even in the Middle Ages, long before Descartes, we can trace, if we 

 interpret the language and the spirit of the time, an antithesis that, 

 if not identical, is at least parallel to our alternative between vitalistic 

 and mechanical hypotheses. For instance, Father Harper tells us 

 that Suarez maintained that in generation and development a divine 

 interference is postulated, by reason of the perfection of living beings ; 

 in opposition to St. Thomas, who (while invariably making an excep- 

 tion in the case of the human soul) urged that, since the existence of 

 bodily and natural forms consists solely in their union with matter, 

 the ordinary agencies which operate on matter sufficiently account 

 for them. 3 



But in the history of modern science, or of modern physiology, it 

 is, of course, to Descartes that we trace the origin of our mechanical 

 hypotheses — to Descartes, who, imitating Archimedes, said: "Give 

 me matter and motion and I will 'construct the universe." In fact, 

 leaving the more shadowy past alone, we may say that it is since 

 Descartes watched the fountains in the garden and saw the likeness 



1 Science and Philosophy of the Organism (Giflord Lectures), ii. p. 83, 1908. 



2 Cit. JenMnson (Art. " Vitalism" in Hibbert Journal, April, 1911), who has given me the following quota- 

 tion: "Das Weitzenkorn hat allerdings Bewusstsein dessen-nvas in ihm ist und ausihm werden kann, und 

 traumt wirklich davon. Sein Bewusstsein und seine Traume mogen dunkel genug sein"; Treviranus, 

 Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens, 1831. 



a "Cum formarum naturalium et corporalium esse non consistat nisi in unione ad materiain, ejusdam 

 agentis esse videtur eas producere, cujus est materiam transmutare. Secundo, quia cum hujusmodi formae 

 non excedant virtutem et ordinem et facultatem principiorum agentium in natura, nulla videtur necessitas 

 eorumoriginemin principia reducere altiora." Aquinas, De Pot. Q., iii. a 11. Cf. Harper, Metaphysics of 

 the School, iii. 1. p. 152. 



