DOMAIN OF EVOLUTIONAKY HYPOTHESIS 95 



natural agency which expresses itself in them/ ' Ente- 

 lechia utilizes the factors of the inorganic in order 

 to produce that which is suitable to the particular 

 species concerned and to regulate its preservation/ l 

 ' Entelechia is that something which carries its 



purpose in itself (o e-^eu ev eavrw TO reXo?)/ 2 



Since we are not idealists, the ' Dominants ' and 

 ' Entelechia ' do not signify for us any symbols and 

 abstractions (Reinke), but actual things which we, 

 with the philosophy of past ages, call the ' soul/ As 

 evidence there suffices, however, the confession that 

 in the activity of the organism there asserts itself a 

 principle which stands above inorganic matter and 

 forces. 



An organism is thus a natural body which by virtue 

 of a directive and regulating principle conducts material 

 activities and products of such on a plan and regulates 

 these actively and purposefully to an end which is 

 inherent in the organism itself. 



5. Since the inorganic material, left to itself, never 

 betrays the trace of a tendency to form such a system in 

 which the separate parts are only instruments, there 

 is, between organisms and combinations of inorganic 



1 Der Vitalismus als Geschichte und als Lehre, Leipzig, 1905, pp. 242, 246. 

 He treats this subject very fully in the Philosophic des Organischen, II, 

 p. 137. H. Driesch appears to have made the study of life his particular 

 task. His evidences of the autonomy of life in his many works and 

 writings are executed with a marvellous expenditure of thought, but 

 are inaccessible to ordinary men through the many new terms and his 

 mathematico-analytical methods. 



2 Philosophic des Organischen, I, p. 145. The word is borrowed from 

 the writings of Aristotle. 



