in ORGANIC ADAPTABILITY 37 



mechanically perfect. It is rather an arrangement which 

 sets effort at work and provides a basis of co-operation 

 between parts. In the most general terms the organism 

 is a structure which maintains, reproduces, and develops 

 itself by co-ordinated conations, the basis of the conations 

 and their co-ordination being laid by the inherited arrange- 

 ment of the structure. We shall see that this formula is 

 applicable to higher and confessedly intelligent as well as 

 to lower activities, and serves to indicate the connection 

 between them. Whether it supplies a basis for the 

 explanation of vital processes, whether these can after all 

 be referred to some peculiar complication of mechanism, 

 or whether some wholly distinct agent, neither mechanical 

 nor teleological, is to be prayed in aid, the future of 

 physiology must decide. 1 



1 Driesch's Entelechy which is neither conation nor mechanism, 

 comes at the end altogether to transcend the individual (see especially 

 vol. II. p. 318). If the directive forces are within the individual I know 

 of no alternative between the mechanical and the conational. Both of 

 these are at least verae causae. The study of conation is still in its 

 infancy, and to say the least, further light may be expected from the 

 exploration of its possibilities. 



