172 VITALISM AND SCHOLASTICISM 



may picture a lathe which has had a wound 

 inflicted in its side setting to and producing 

 a new chuck from the incision. 



This would be wonderful enough and is 

 hard enough to imagine, but still more difficult 

 of mental imagery would be the state of affairs 

 in which the wounded locomotive should re- 

 solve itself into its constituent steel and brass, 

 and having done so should then, by the force 

 of its own intrinsic powers, reconstruct a full, 

 complete and working railway-engine. Yet 

 this is what is done by another form and the 

 whole chain of occurrences is so remarkable 

 and so forcible an example of the powers of 

 living matter, as well as of their differences 

 from those of non-living objects, that it may 

 be given here at length. 



The observation in question was made by 

 Driesch * who is that rare combination of 

 qualities a professed philosopher and a bio- 

 Clavellina lgi st f the first rank. It deals with Clavel- 

 lina lepadiformis, a tolerably highly organised 

 creature belonging to the class of ascidians 

 placed by zoologists very near the lower 

 vertebrates in the scale of animal life. It is 

 about an inch in length and its body is divided 

 into three portions, the uppermost of which 

 forms an extraordinarily large, basket-like gill, 



* Arch. /. Entwickl.-Mech. d. Organismen, xiv., 1902. 



