SEGMENTATION 81 



desired that these unknown forces of order should have a name, 

 and the word entelechy is proposed, the only objection I have to 

 make is that the adoption of a term from Aristotelian philosophy 

 carries a plain hint that we propose to relegate the future study 

 of the problem to metaphysic. 



From this implication the vitalist does not shrink. But 

 I cannot find in the facts yet known to us any justification of so 

 hopeless a course. It was but yesterday that the study of 

 Entwicklungsmechanik was begun, and if in our slight survey 

 we have not yet seen how the living machine is to be expressed 

 in terms of natural knowledge that is poor cause for despair. 

 Driesch sums up his argument thus: 13 



"It seems to me that there is only one conclusion possible. 

 If we are going to explain what happens in our harmonious- 

 equipotential sytems by the aid of causality based upon the 

 constellation of single chemical factors and events, there must 

 be some such thing as a machine. Now the assumption of the 

 existence of a machine proves to be absolutely absurd in the 

 light of the experimental facts. Therefore there can be neither 

 any sort of a machine nor any sort of causality based upon con- 

 stellation underlying the differentiation of harmonious-equipotential 

 systems. 



"For a machine, typical with regard to the three chief dimen- 

 sions of space, cannot remain itself if you remove parts of it 

 or if you rearrange its parts at will." 



To the last clause a note is added as follows: 



"The pressure experiments and the dislocation experiments 

 come into account here; for the sake of simplicity they have 

 not been alluded to in the main line of our argument." 



I doubt whether any man has sufficient knowledge of all 

 possible machines to give reality to this statement. In spite also 

 of the astonishing results of experiments in dislocation, doubt 

 may further be expressed as to whether they have been tried in 

 such variety or on such a scale as to justify the suggestion that 

 the living organism remains itself if its parts are rearranged at 



13 The Science and Philosophy of the Organism; Gifford Lectures, 1907. London, 

 1908, p. 141. 



