CONTENTS xv 



PAGE 



forces which are functions of the distances between them. It was 

 a spatially extended system of parts. Therefore at all stages in 

 an evolutionary process, or one of individual development, the 

 elements of the system constitute an extensive manifoldness, and 

 the obligation of mechanistic hypotheses of evolution and develop- 

 ment to accept this view has shaped modern theories of heredity. 

 Life is an intensive manifoldness, but in individual or racial evolu- 

 tion this intensive manifoldness becomes an extensive manifold- 

 ness. Life is a bundle of tendencies which can co-exist, but which 

 cannot all be fully manifested, in the same material constellation, 

 therefore these tendencies become dissociated in the evolutionary 

 process. In this dissociation there is direction and co-ordination, 

 which are the Vital Impetus of Bergson, or the Entelechy of 

 Driesch. 



Entelechy is an elemental agency in nature which we are 

 compelled to postulate because of the failure of mechanism. It is 

 not spirit, nor a form of energy, but the direction and co-ordination 

 of energies. There is a sign, or direction of inorganic happening 

 which absolutely characterises the processes which are capable of 

 analysis by physico-chemical methods of investigation, and the 

 result of this direction of inorganic happening is material inertia. 

 Yet this direction cannot be universal : it must be evaded some- 

 where in the universe. It is evaded by the organism. 



The problem of the nature of life is only a pseudo-problem. 



APPENDIX 



MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL NOTIONS .... 342 



Infinity and the notion of the limit. Functionality. Frequency 

 distributions and probability. Matter, force, mass, and inertia. 

 Energy-transformations. Isothermal and adiabetic transforma- 

 tions. The Carnot engine and cycle. Entropy. Inert matter. 



Index 377 



