l^f^"] Jennings. — Behavior of the Starfish. 181 



inj4' itsolf. How does our problem now differ from what we had 

 before? There still remains the question: How is the specific, 

 differential action of each part to be accounted for? We find 

 that these actions have certain complex relations to the local- 

 ization of certain external stiunili; to the action of certain past 

 stimuli, etc., etc. Admitting that the Entelechy brings about 

 these actions and relations, we must still ask: How does it bring 

 them about ? How does it cause ray a to act in one way, ray h in 

 another, with relation to the localized stimuli, present or past? 

 In attemi)ting to answer these questions we can only have recourse 

 as before to changes in physiological state, to conduction by the 

 nerves, etc., etc., exactly as was done before the Entelechy was 

 brought into the matter at all. In other words, the original prob- 

 lem is still present in its entirety. It is difficult to comprehend 

 how any investigator, accustomed to the experimental and con- 

 ceptual analysis of complex phenomena, can hold that he has 

 gained any insight into such a matter if he is merely told that the 

 ICntelechy determines the various actions. 



Why has so acute an investigator and thinker as Driesch set 

 up such a theory as that of the Entelechy? It has certainly not 

 been without grounds of some sort. There are indeed grounds on 

 which the existence of some such entity as the psychoid or Entel- 

 eehy might be maintained. One might hold that certain phe- 

 nomena directly indicate the existence of such an entity. Thus, 

 what is the unified impulse that we see appearing at a certain 

 n^oment? It is certainly a natural tendency of the mind to put 

 something behind what we actually see in such a phenomenon ; to 

 say that "the starfish decides" at that moment what to do, — 

 thinking of the stai'fish as an individual. Considering it an 

 individual, one might well hold that there is, as Driesch expresses 

 it, a sort of "constant of individuality," which might be called a 

 psychoid or Entelechy. This view might conceivably be sup- 

 ported by comparison with what we know (by introspection) in 

 man, the starfish being considered to have something correspond- 

 ing to what we call the "mind" of man. The existence of this 

 entity would be maintained quite independently of the question 

 whether it makes the phenomena more intelligible or not. It 

 seems probable that such considerations have actually aided in the 



