VITALISM. 33 



guide. It seems as if a double accompanies them like 

 a shadow. This intelligent guide of blind, material 

 force is what Reinke calls a dominant. Nothing 

 could be more like the bias and the archeus of Van 

 Helmont. Material energies would thus be paired 

 off with their bias, their dominants, in the living 

 organisms. In them there would therefore be two cate- 

 gories of force : " material forces," or rather, material 

 energies obeying the laws of universal energetics; 

 and in the second place, intelligent " spiritual forces," 

 the dominants. When the sculptor is working his 

 marble, in every blow which elicits a spark there is 

 something more than the strong force of the hammer. 

 There is thought, the volition of the artist, which is 

 realizing a plan. In a machine there is more than 

 machinery. Behind the wheels is the object which 

 the author had in view when he adjusted them for a 

 determined end. The energies spent in action are 

 regulated by the adjustment — that is to say, by the 

 dominants due to the intellect of the constructor. 



Thus it is in the living machine. The dominants 

 in this case are the guardians of the plan, the agents 

 of the aim in view. Some regulate the functional 

 activity of the living body, and some regulate its 

 development and its construction. Such is the second 

 form, the philosophical form, extreme and teleological, 

 of contemporary neo-vitalism. 



