158 THE UNIQUENESS OF LIFE 



while others put them into the proper compartments, others 

 shut the doors and give the signals, and others work the 

 points, the correlation of the whole by the chief Entelechy 

 is just the problem we started w^ith. 



To many it appears that to assume the existence of an 

 Entelechy does not help in the least. '^ It seems to be merely 

 a way of collecting all the difficulties together and giving the 

 bundle a name." Professor Jennings asks persistently how 

 the Entelechy gets its power of co-ordinating and harmonis- 

 ing. ^^ To accept the Entelechy unanalysed and unexplained 

 is merely to give up the problem as insoluble." And if 

 we try to work out a comparative development of Entele- 

 chies, — '^ then surely we are merely transferring our problem 

 from the complex that we actually find in time and space 

 to a sort of manufactured copy of this problem, presenting 

 the same difficulties, with the additional one that it is 

 impalpable and cannot be directly dealt with at all. The 

 Entelechy simply adds to our difficulties." 



We confess to some sympathy with those who ask why 

 there should be all this straining and striving to remove 

 organisms from the domain which includes the stars and 

 precious stones, ^Northern Lights and dew-drops. For the 

 world that we parcel out is probably one after all, and in 

 any case there is no stigma in being mechanical. With this 

 sympathy we would quote from a colleague : — '^ I am neither 

 afraid nor ashamed to uphold (to the great length that I 

 have gone) a mechanical theory of the organism and its 

 activities, or rather of its reactions with the outer world. I 

 do not admit that in doing so we degrade our conceptions, 

 or belittle our notions, of the organism. The mechanical 

 concept is no base one at all. The earth itself and the sea, 

 the earth with her slowly changing face, and the sea multi- 



