296 DRIESCH'S THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT V 



regarding only the material and efficient, and ignoring the 

 formal and the final cause ; for the organic body is not what it 

 is because it is produced in such and such a fashion, rather it is 

 because it is to be such and such that it must be developed as it is. 1 



And here lies the kernel of the whole matter. For while 

 Aristotle has made it perfectly plain that according to his idea, 

 the soul, at least its nutritive and perceptive faculties, is to be 

 regarded as a function of matter and that this function may be 

 ultimately expressed in terms of movement, and further that 

 development is a mechanism which is set going by the communica- 

 tion of motion proceeding from the ' soul ' of the male element, 

 and derivable in the last resort from the ' motions ' into which 

 the ' functions ' or ' soul ' of the parent can be resolved, to the mere 

 matter which the female provides, it is equally evident that he does 

 not regard this mechanical explanation in terms of material and 

 efficient causes as satisfactory or complete. But when we 

 inquire why, he gives us no certain and consistent answer. On 

 the one hand there are passages in which he tells us that there 

 must be something which controls the material forces and 

 imposes upon them a limit and proportionality of growth, 2 that 

 the soul makes use of these forces as the artist makes use of 

 his implements, 3 and such passages are naturally interpreted by 

 Driesch in the sense of a ( dynamic ' teleology ; it is the ^vx 1 ? (not, 

 of course, vovs, but the two lower kinds) which superintends and 

 controls, and the -fyvyji is ' Entelechy '. Elsewhere, however, 

 we are informed that even the proportionality of the developing 

 parts is simply the outcome of the motion imparted by the male, 

 which is actu what the female material only is potential 



Moreover it may be questioned whether Aristotle ever intended 

 to imply more than an ' analogy with the causality of purpose ' 

 when he uses the figure of the workman and his implements to 

 illustrate his meaning of the formal cause. The formal cause 

 of a work of art is an intelligible ( vera causa ', it is the idea in 

 the mind of the artist antecedent to the execution of the work, 

 but the formal or final cause of an organism, the end which it 

 apparently strives to attain, is only metaphorically prior in time 

 to the existence of the organism itself. Prior in thought, how- 



1 De Gen. V. 1. 2 De An. II. 4. s De Gen. II. 4. * Ibid. II. 1. 44- 



