THE SYSTEM 69 



sophy, a subject with which writers of this school 

 seldom have even a nodding acquaintance. " The 

 idea of a quasi-superhuman intelligence presiding 

 over the forces of the living is met with in the 

 field of regeneration." Echoes of the Cartesian 

 idea of the soul seem to ring in this statement ; 

 but it could not have been written by anyone who 

 had mastered the Aristotelian or the Scholastic 

 explanation of matter and form. But let us take 

 this question of Regeneration ; the power which 

 all living things have, in some measure, though 

 in very different measure, of reconstructing 

 themselves when injured. It has been dealt with 

 in a masterly manner by Driesch ; and we may at 

 once say that we do not think that Loeb has in 

 any way contraverted his argument, nor even 

 entered the first line of defence of that which is 

 built up around what he calls by the somewhat 

 forbidding name of " Harmonious-Equipotential 

 System." 



Let us take one particular example, a very 

 remarkable one, which has been cited by both 

 writers Wolff's experiment on the lens of the 

 eye. The lens is just behind the pupil or central 

 aperture in the iris or coloured ring at the front 

 of the eye, and behind the cornea which is to the 

 eye what a watch-glass is to a watch. If the lens 

 of the eye be removed from a newt, as it is from 

 human beings in the operation for cataract, the 

 animal will grow another one. How does it do 

 it ? In certain cases a tiny fragment of the lens 

 has been left behind after the operation, and the 

 new one grows from that. This is sufficiently 



