106 WHAT IS LIFE 



a bad break-down, setting to work to grow for 

 itself a new wheel or to construct a new connect- 

 ing-rod. Or we 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 resolve 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 remark- 

 able 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 1 who is the author of a neo-vitalistic 

 theory of extreme complexity. It deals with 

 ciaveiiina Clavellina lepadiformis, a tolerably highly organ- 

 ised 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 

 1 Arch. f. Entwickl.-Mech. d. Organismen, xiv., 1902. 



