THEORIES OF INDIVIDUALITY 



23 



and ordering of millions of such units through all the 

 changes involved in the development of a complex organ- 

 ism, say the human being, is one which staggers human 

 intelligence, it is practically ignored. Even some of 

 our present-day speculations which attempt to assign 

 actual topographic positions in the chromosomes to par- 

 ticular factors in heredity ignore completely the prob- 

 lem of the ordering and control of these factors which is 

 involved in their assumptions. In fact, if we subject 

 this group of theories to logical analysis we soon reach 

 the point where it is necessary to assume the existence 

 of something very like a superhuman intelligence as the 

 underlying principle in all of them. They leave the 

 essential problem unsolved, but their implications are 

 anthropomorphic and teleological. 



Dualistic or ^'vitalistic" theories of the individual 

 recognize the real problem more or less clearly, but 

 assume the existence of a non-mechanistic ordering and 

 controlling principle. Before the development of the 

 experimental method in biology the doctrine of vital 

 force as something peculiar to the organism and funda- 

 mentally different from the forces acting in the inorganic 

 world was very generally accepted, but as evidence for 

 the validity of physico-chemical laws in the activities 

 of living things accumulated, the hypothesis of vital 

 force was discarded by most biologists. Within recent 

 years, however, various attempts have been made to 

 show the inadequacy of mechanistic conceptions of life. 

 Driesch, at present the chief exponent of this line of 

 thought, has postulated the existence of a controlling 

 and ordering principle which he calls entelechy, following 

 Aristotle. Entelechy is independent of and superior 



