154 The Unity of the Organism 



tist school. For them internal secretions would be, in so far 

 as they contribute to the harmony of the organism, merely 

 agencies produced and used by supernatural causes. 



Another course, and perhaps the one most frequented by 

 element alists, would be to contend that internal secretions 

 are sufficient as a causal explanation of organic unity to 

 make the entelechy or any similar notion quite superfluous, 

 even though these substances are far from a complete ex- 

 planation. The reasoning of this group of elementalists as 

 to this situation is substantially as follows: although in- 

 ternal secretions fall far short of fully explaining organic 

 unity and harmony, the action of these being merely that 

 of incitors and inhibitors, they are yet genuinely causal, 

 genuinely physico-chemical and so are on the road toward 

 complete explanation of the phenomena. All that is nec- 

 essary consequently, is to believe that still further advance 

 in the same direction will reach finally a full elementalistic 

 explanation ; that is, an explanation which will have no need 

 of either supernatural elements or the organism as a whole. 

 The attitude of this large class is one primarily of faith 

 rather than of reliance on positive knowledge; they are 

 inspired more by what they believe they will do in the future 

 than by what they actually have done. They are preemi- 

 nently men of promises. Although their achievements in 

 experimental science are indeed large, the results reached 

 by them are prized more on account of what they are believed 

 to augur for the future than for their present meaning and 

 worth. 



Then, finally, there is the group of elementalistic absolu- 

 tists, of whom the author of The Organism as a Whole from 

 the Physico-Chemical Viewpoint is one of the most eminent 

 in our day, who, as we have pointed out, by confusing theo- 

 ries about objective phenomena with theories about the 

 knowledge of such phenomena, are led to affirm that such 

 phenomena as the unity of the organism are fully explained 



