THE ORGANIC AND THE INORGANIC 329 



that is to say, of arresting the drop of chemical potential 

 involved in the process of the hydrolysis of (say) a 

 proteid. When this process of hydrolysis is necessary 

 in the interest of the organism entelechy can then 

 institute the reaction which it has itself suspended : 

 all this is in accord with the law of conservation. 

 Entelechy does not cause chemical reactions to occur 

 which are " impossible " : it could not, for instance, 

 cause sulphuric acid and an alkaline phosphate to 

 react with the formation of hydrochloric acid. But 

 chemical reactions which are possible may be sus- 

 pended, and suspended reactions may then become 

 actual when this is necessary in the interest of the 

 organism. 



Entelechy is therefore not energy, nor any parti- 

 cular form of energy-transformation, and in its opera- 

 tions energy is neither used nor dissipated. In all 

 that it does the law of conservation holds with all the 

 rigidity with which we imagine it to hold in purely in- 

 organic happening — at least we need not assume that 

 it does not hold — and this is the essential difference 

 between the entelechian manifestations and the mani- 

 festations of the " vital " or " biotic " forces or energies 

 of the historic systems of vitalism. It is essentially 

 arrangement, or order of happening, and it is therefore 

 a non-energetic agency. The workman who may build 

 half-a-dozen zigzag walls, or an archway, or a small 

 house, from the same materials and with the ex- 

 penditure of the same quantity of energy, is indeed an 

 energetical agent, but he is more than that. He is a 

 physico-chemical system in which any one phase is 

 not determined by the preceding phase. Different 

 results may arise from the same initial arrangement of 

 materials and energies, and this is because the system 

 contains more than the material and energetical 



