THE UNIQUENESS OF LIFE 171 



first finds the differentia of organisms in the greater complexity 

 of their configurations or collocations of elementary particles. 

 Living creatures are apart, hut they do not require new concepts 

 (an autonomous science) for their description. They only require 

 separate laboratories for their study. (2) The second vitalistic 

 theoery holds that organisms have a monopoly of some peculiar phys- 

 ical energy or energies in a line with, say, electricity. (3) The 

 third theory the only thoroughgoing vitalism postulates a non- 

 perceptual vital agency, associated with organisms, operating 

 actively in certain cases, directing the chemico-physical processes, 

 so that their results are different from what they would have been 

 apart from intervention. The finest expression of this view is 

 Driesch's doctrine of Entelecby, the advantages and difficulties of 

 which must be carefully considered. 



Perhaps it is safer to be content with a descriptive or method- 

 ological vitalism that is, with maintaining that in describing organ- 

 isms we require ultra-mechanical concepts. But if the word vitalism 

 is taken to imply dualism and intervention, we may call our posi- 

 tion simply biological or organismal. The central idea is that of 

 the organism as a psycho-physical individuality which has enreg- 

 istered within itself the gains of experience and experiment, and 

 has ever its conative bow bent towards the future. Instead of 

 trying to interpolate a new agency, may we not simply recognise 

 that organisms reveal certain aspects of reality which are not 

 apparent in the domain of the inorganic? 



