Introduction xxv 



sport is not the organic expression of discontent which has 

 been long felt, but which has not been attended to, nor been 

 met step by step by as much small remedial modification as 

 was found practicable : so that when a change does come 

 it comes by way of revolution. Or, again (only that it comes 

 to much the same thing), it may be compared to one of those 

 happy thoughts which sometimes come to us unbidden after 

 we have been thinking for a long time what to do, or how to 

 arrange our ideas, and have yet been unable to come to any 

 conclusion" (pp. 14, 15). ^ 



We come to another order of mind in Hans Driesch. At 

 the time he began his work biologists were largely busy 

 in a region indicated by Darwin, and roughly mapped out 

 by Haeckel — that of phylogeny. From the facts of develop- 

 ment of the individual, from the comparison of fossils in 

 successive strata, they set to work at the construction of 

 pedigrees, and strove to bring into line the principles of 

 classification with the more or less hypothetical " stem- 

 trees." Driesch considered this futile, since we never could 

 reconstruct from such evidence anything certain in the 

 history of the past. He therefore asserted that a more 

 complete knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the 

 organic world might give a scientific explanation of the 

 phenomena, and maintained that the proper work of the 

 biologist was to deepen our knowledge in these respects. 

 He embodied his views, seeking the explanation on this 

 track, filling up gaps and tracing projected roads along 

 lines of probable truth in his " Analytische Theorie der 

 organische Entwicklung." But his own work convinced 

 him of the hopelessness of the task he had undertaken, 

 and he has become as strenuous a vitalist as Butler. The 

 most complete statement of his present views is to be 

 found in " The Philosophy of Life " (1908-9), being the 

 Giffold Lectures for 1907-8. Herein he postulates a 

 quality (" psychoid ") in all living beings, directing energy 



1 Mr. H. Festing Jones first directed my attention to these 

 passages and their bearing on the Mutation Theory. 



