154 THE UNIQUENESS OF LIFE 



ing for something, " at work " as Driesch says. On this view, 

 obviously, there is a deep-lying distinction between the flight 

 of a bird and the movement of a comet, and Biology is by 

 hypothesis autonomous. A general statement of this third 

 position, apart from Driesch's particular formulation, has 

 been given by Ritter (1911, p. 437). After stating that 

 materialism is the belief that all vital phenomena can be 

 completely explained in terms of the material elements that 

 go to make up the organism, he defines vitalism as " the 

 belief that organic phenomena cannot be fully explained by 

 referring them to the material elements of which organisms 

 are composed, but that something not really belonging to 

 the natural order, either explicit or implicit, is present in 

 living things. The essence of the conception, whatever be its 

 variety or form of statement, is that something absolutely 

 new and novel came into the world when living beings 

 came and that this came as a special force, or principle, or 

 factor anything you have in mind to call it, so long as 

 it is not material. A further essential to the conception is 

 that this new thing- is elemental, protean, once-for-all. It 

 is not exactly the life itself of the organism. It is rather 

 the informing, underpinning, ultimate motor, of life." 



The general nature of the argument that Driesch uses to 

 support his conception of Entelechy may be briefly indi- 

 cated. He takes in particular the facts of morphogenesis 

 the development of the embryo or the regeneration of a lost 

 part. If what takes place is determined solely by physical 

 factors there must be something in the nature of a very 

 complex machine in the egg or at the cut end of the hydroid 

 branch from which a new polyp grows. He allows the 

 imagination to erect this machine with all conceivable 

 intricacy and device, and then proceeds remorselessly to 



