MOVEMENT 



emanations of ancient theosophy. They are supposed 

 not only to regulate the special development and con- 

 struction of every species of animal and plant, and direct 

 it to a predetermined end, but also to control all the 

 various movements of the organism and its organs down 

 to the cells. These " hyperenergetic forces " are equiva- 

 lent to the "organizing principle" and the "unconscious 

 will" of Edward Hartmann, the "arranging and con- 

 trolling protoplasmic forces" of Hanstein and others. 

 All these metaphysical, supernatural, and teleological 

 ideas, like the older mystic notion of a special vital 

 force, rest on a perversion of judgment by the apparent 

 freedom of will and purposiveness of organization in 

 the higher organisms. These thinkers overlook the fact 

 that this purposiveness can be traced phylogenetically 

 to simple physical movements in the lower organisms. 

 Moreover, they overlook or deny the definite direction 

 of inorganic forms of energy, though this is just as 

 clear in the origin of a crystal as in the composition of 

 the whole world-structure, in the direction of the mind 

 as in the orbit of a planet. Hence it is important to 

 bear in mmd always these two forms of mechanical 

 energy, and emphasize their identity with the direction 

 of vital movement. 



The force of gravitation which is at work in crystal- 

 formation in the simple chemical body exhibits just 

 as definite a direction as that which appears in the plasm 

 in cell-construction. In this and other respects the 

 comparison of the cell with the crystal, which was made 

 even by the founders of the cell-theory, Schleiden and 

 Schwann, in 1838, is thoroughly justified, though it is 

 not correct in some other aspects. When the crystal is 

 formed in the mother-water, the homogeneous particles 

 of the chemical substance arrange themselves in a per- 

 fectly definite direction and order, so that mathematical 

 planes of symmetry and axes arise within, and definite 



265 



