3213 
 1 9i4 
 
BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 FROM THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 1891 
 
 (l,.M5aa. - ,. :^ l^ko'^ 
 
Cornell University Library 
 B3218 .P9 1914 
 
 Problem of individuality a course of fo 
 
 olin 
 
 1924 029 083 982 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029083982 
 
THE 
 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
S0^^^ 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
 london . bombay ■ calcutta 
 
 melb'ouene 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO 
 DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
THE PROBLEM OF 
 INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 A COURSE OF FOUR LECTURES DELIVERED 
 
 BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON IN 
 
 OCTOBER 1913 
 
 BY 
 
 HANS DRIESCH 
 
 Ph.D.', LL.D. 
 
 professor of philosophy at the university of heidelberg 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1914 
 
A^ '^'^i'^- 1 z 
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This little volume contains, in an almost unaltered 
 form, the four lectures which I had the honour to 
 deliver before the University of London in October 
 19 1 3. In a rather condensed manner the same 
 subject was treated in a single lecture which I after- 
 wards gave at the invitation of the University of 
 Cambridge. The interest taken in the subject was, 
 I was glad to observe, very great in both places. 
 For this reason, and also because I have the general 
 impression that great interest in questions of the 
 Philosophy of Nature prevails all over Great Britain 
 — more, perhaps, than in other countries, — I agreed 
 to the publication of my manuscript. 
 
 It is impossible, of course, in the space of four 
 hours to treat the Problem of Individuality in full. 
 I therefore do not regard this little book as a definite 
 contribution to the subject, but merely as a sort of 
 intellectual stimulus. The method of discussion 
 which I have chosen represents the line of my own 
 intellectual development, though a more systematic 
 method of argument might well have been possible. 
 A personal accent is allowed, it seems to me, where 
 
vi PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 the chief aim is to give the hearer or reader an 
 impetus in his own thinking. 
 
 The first two lectures may be regarded as a brief 
 revision of the subject, by those who are familiar 
 with my Gifford Lectures on The Science and Philosophy 
 of the Organism, or as a sort of introduction, by 
 those who intend to become acquainted with that 
 work. The contents of the third and fourth lecture 
 are new to the British public. The " Logic of 
 Vitalism," as developed in Lecture III., is part of 
 my general theory of Becoming, as explained in my 
 system of logic (Ordnungslehre, Jena, 191 2). The 
 discussion of the problem of Monism and the 
 metaphysical conclusions in Lecture IV. form part 
 of the contents of a completed work on meta- 
 physics {Wirklichkeitslehre), which I do not intend 
 to publish for another year or two. The contents 
 of this lecture may thus be said to be altogether 
 new. 
 
 The notes which I have added to the text are 
 intended in the first place to establish the relation 
 of my own theoretical and philosophical views to 
 those of recent British authors. I am very glad 
 that there is so much intellectual relationship 
 between British philosophers and biologists and 
 myself. This is a consequence, it seems to me, of 
 our common conviction that philosophy and, in 
 particular, metaphysics must take notice of the results 
 of science, and cannot, so to speak, live a life by itself, 
 as " ontology " did in the past — a conviction which, I 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 hope, will also gain ground among students of other 
 
 countries. 
 
 The same English friend who revised the Gifford 
 
 Lectures on the linguistic side has kindly attended 
 
 to the text of the present volume in manuscript and 
 
 proof. 
 
 HANS DRIESCH. 
 
 Heidelberg, January i, 1914. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FIRST LECTURE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction — Experimental Embryology — First Proof 
 
 OF Vitalism ........ i 
 
 SECOND LECTURE 
 
 Further Proofs of Vitalism — Entelechy and its Rela- 
 tions to Matter and Energy . . . .20 
 
 THIRD LECTURE 
 
 The Logic of Vitalism — The Problem of Suprapersonal 
 
 Unity ......... 41 
 
 FOURTH LECTURE 
 
 The Problem of Monism — Metaphysical Conclusions . 62 
 
 INDEX. . 83 
 
FIRST LECTURE 
 
 INTRODUCTION EXPERIMENTAL EMBRYOLOGY 
 
 FIRST PROOF OF VITALISM 
 
 Every problem of the philosophy of nature or, what 
 is almost the same thing, every problem of theoretical 
 science may be discussed in two very different ways. 
 We may begin with what is generally called '- the 
 facts," or we may begin with the Ego as conceiving 
 " facts " ; we may either ascend or we may descend. 
 In the first case we arrive at a certain logical scheme 
 postulated by the facts as they are, in the second we 
 end by realizing that the facts discussed are the 
 factual illustration of certain a priori possibilities. 
 Neither of these two methods is strictly exclusive of 
 the other, for, on the one hand, there is a good deal 
 of logic in what is called " facts," and, on the other 
 hand, there is something factual, so to speak, in all 
 the concepts of logic, except the principle of identity, 
 and especially in the general concept of Nature. But, 
 nevertheless, the two methods may clearly be 
 distinguished in practice, and this in every case, 
 whether a problem of mechanics be the subject or a 
 problem of biology. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the descending way 
 
 B 
 
2 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 is preferable from the philosophical point of view. 
 We should start from the concepts of general logic 
 as the theory of order, from concepts such as this, such, 
 relation, other, implication, member, arrangement, mani- 
 fold. We should develop the concept of Nature on 
 the basis of everyday knowledge, and we should try 
 then to discover what Reason makes of this strange 
 thing called " Nature," i.e. what the general logical 
 scheme of " Nature " might possibly be. At the end 
 of all would come " the facts " of empirical science 
 and would fit into certain places in the general 
 logical scheme of " Nature," or even cover the 
 whole. 
 
 But this kind of argument, though certainly 
 superior to the other philosophically, because it is 
 founded on the very essence of reason, is also much 
 more difficult, at least for all who are not trained 
 philosophers. All men are reasoning beings, but 
 they do not consciously reason. We, in fact, do not 
 realize what we are doing, what an enormously com- 
 plicated logical operation we are performing, when 
 we merely pronounce such an everyday phrase as 
 " I got a letter from my friend this morning." 
 
 This being so, I shall not adopt the descend- 
 ing or deductive method of discussion alone in 
 this course of lectures. Nor shall I pursue the 
 ascending or empirically inductive method quite 
 exclusively. To do so would detract from the 
 absolute intrinsic necessity, the legitimate character, 
 if I may say so, of the most general statements to 
 be reached. I shall adopt both methods, one after the 
 other, and let them come together. Let us, then, 
 
I PROBLEMS OF METHOD 3 
 
 begin by formulating a certain well-known problem 
 of natural science proper, without any particular 
 philosophical aims at the outset. 
 
 Nobody will deny that the individual organism 
 is of the type of a manifoldness which is at the 
 same time a unity, that it represents a factual whole- 
 ness, if we may express its most essential character 
 in a single technical word. And there is also not 
 the least doubt that a great many of the processes 
 occurring in the organism bring about this wholeness, 
 or restore it if it is disturbed in any way. Processes 
 of the first class are generally called embryo logical or 
 ontogenetical. The restoring ones are spoken of as 
 restitution or " regeneration " if the wholeness of the 
 form as such is restored ; they are described as 
 adaptation if the physiological state of the organism 
 has been disturbed and has now to be repaired ; the 
 factual wholeness represented by the organism being 
 not merely a wholeness of form as such, but of living 
 and functioning form. All of you know something, 
 at least in rough outline, of the embryology of the 
 frog ; you have heard of the regeneration of the leg 
 of a newt, and of the strange fact that in man one 
 of the kidneys becomes larger if the other has been 
 removed by an operation rendered necessary by some 
 disease. These are three examples of processes which 
 bring about or restore wholeness. 
 
 Let us now call all processes leading to factual 
 wholeness teleological or purposeful processes. The 
 expression " teleological " is for the moment to be 
 nothing but a mere word, descriptive of a certain 
 factual feature on the analogy of human acting. 
 
4 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 There are the individual organisms, each of them 
 representing manifoldness in unity, i.e. factual whole- 
 ness, and there are processes, of at least three different 
 kinds, embryological, restitutive, and adaptive, leading 
 to this wholeness as if the existence of this wholeness 
 were their " purpose." They always lead to whole- 
 ness ; they have done so, and do so, and will do so, 
 in innumerable cases. 
 
 So far there is a simple statement of fact, described 
 by a certain technical name ; there is as yet no 
 problem. But a problem, in fact, the problem of 
 biology at once arises, as soon as we consider a 
 certain possibility that is suggested to us by another 
 well-known fact. We are familiar with certain 
 products of human workmanship which, factual 
 wholenesses in themselves, produce other wholenesses 
 by the processes which occur in them. These pro- 
 ducts of human work may, then, also be said to act 
 " purposefully " ; they are called machines ; at least 
 machines of certain kinds are of this type. Now, 
 all single acts of becoming in a machine, taken by 
 themselves, are of the physico-chemical, or mechanical, 
 or, so to say, " inorganic " type. Wholeness, then, 
 may be produced by a constellation of single inorganic 
 or mechanical processes, in short by the working of 
 a machine, and thus we are faced by the fundamental 
 problem : 
 
 Is organic individual wholeness produced on the 
 basis of a machine, i.e. by processes which, though 
 arranged in a special given manner., are in themselves 
 inorganic processes., as known from physics and chemistry, 
 or are there in the organism whole-making processes sui 
 
I MECHANISM OR VITALISM ? 5 
 
 generis, i.e. processes not reducible to the forms of inorganic 
 becoming ? 
 
 This, then, is the central problem of biology 
 proper : Mechanism or Vitalism ? if by " Vitalism " 
 we mean the possibility, merely negative at first, 
 that there may be processes in the organism which 
 are not of the machine-like or " mechanistic " type, 
 and which may be said to be " teleological " or pur- 
 poseful in more than a merely formal sense. 
 
 It follows from the negative character which the 
 concept of " vitalism " must necessarily have at the 
 outset, that the argument employed in dealing with 
 the great question must be of a particular logical 
 type. If ever we are able to " prove " vitalism, the 
 proof can only be an apagogical proof, or a proof 
 per exclusionem, i.e. it can consist only in our 
 becoming convinced that a machine cannot be the 
 foundation of life. For the concept of a machine 
 is all that has been established as something positive, 
 so far ; and the question is whether there be a 
 machine or not. 
 
 It would be impossible in the course of these 
 lectures, in which biology proper forms only part 
 of the subject, to discuss all classes of biological 
 phenomena at full length, and to inquire with respect 
 to each class whether " teleology " is here of the 
 machine-like or of some other type. This I have 
 done elsewhere, and I may be allowed to refer to my 
 published work on the subject.^ Before my present 
 
 1 The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, The GifFord Lectures 
 delivered before the University of Aberdeen in the years 1907-8, 2 vols. 
 London, Adam & Charles Black, 1908. 
 
6 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 audience I shall select those biological facts that 
 seem to me to be best suited to decide our question, 
 and shall mention the rest only in a few words. 
 For it is not with biology alone that we have to 
 do in this course ; biology is only to yield us the 
 solid foundation on which a factual — and not merely 
 a formal — understanding of the universe is to be 
 obtained. 
 
 The facts of active adaptation — I do not speak 
 here of " adaptedness," i.e. of being adapted, as a 
 state — the facts of adaptation are very numerous. 
 Take for example what is called functional adaptation, 
 i.e. the fact that glands, muscles, bones and other 
 tissues of the body arrange their quantity and even 
 their structure in correspondence to changes of the 
 general functional state, so that a bone, for instance, 
 may even adapt itself histologically to its being 
 broken. Let me further remind you of the adaptive 
 structures of amphibious plants, adapted to the 
 water as well as to the air, and of the remarkable 
 histological adaptations of the larvae of Salamandra, 
 according as they are reared in the water or in the 
 air, as discovered by Kammerer. There are also 
 well-known cases of purely physiological adaptation, 
 unaccompanied by histological changes ; the regula- 
 tion of heat-production in warm-blooded animals 
 belongs here, as does the selection of food materials 
 out of given mixtures of food by Fungi, as discovered 
 by PfefFer — to mention only some of the most 
 remarkable cases. Lastly, there is the production 
 of so-called " antibodies " in correspondence to 
 poisons and other substances, a fact which underlies 
 
I ADAPTATION 7 
 
 the phenomena of immunity. In this case the range 
 of active adaptation is very great, for the organism, 
 at least of the higher vertebrates, is able to protect 
 itself against an enormous variety of substances by 
 the production of a material that counteracts their 
 harmful effects. 
 
 This short survey has reminded you of well- 
 known facts. What is the importance of these 
 facts with regard to our central problem ? 
 
 There cannot be the least doubt that all facts of 
 adaptation are teleological in the sense defined ; they 
 re-establish functional wholeness after it has been 
 disturbed ; and we know that the organism is not 
 only whole as regards its mere form, but that it is 
 whole as a living, i.e. functioning form. 
 
 But, strange to say, none of the facts of adapta- 
 tion, not even the curious facts of immunity and 
 the production of " antibodies " have any decisive 
 bearing on the question " mechanism or vitalism." 
 Not that they are against vitalism in any way, if 
 you are inclined to accept it ; but they simply do 
 not prove anything with regard to vitalism as the 
 only possible form of a theory of life — and that is 
 what a real theory of vitalism would require. 
 
 We have contrasted vitalism with the machine- 
 theory of life. Now nobody could say from the facts 
 of adaptation taken by themselves that a machine 
 could not be the pre-established foundation of their 
 happening. Such a machine would be very wonderful, 
 very improbable even qua machine, in particular in 
 the case of the production of antibodies to react 
 against materials that had never entered the organism 
 
8 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 before. But the machine would not be impossible, 
 and its impossibility must be demonstrated in order 
 to establish vitalism. 
 
 Here, then, we may leave the facts of adaptation,^ 
 not without a certain feeling of disappointment ; 
 they can teach us nothing but what we are taught, 
 say, by the selective faculties of the kidney. They 
 may in principle be explained " mechanically," just 
 as is possible with respect to secretion, if only 
 we attribute to the secreting organ, the kidney for 
 example, a very complicated pre-established arrange- 
 ment of its minute structure. 
 
 The study of adaptation, then, only teaches us a 
 good deal with regard to the purposefulness of 
 organic phenomena, but nothing more. Will the 
 result be any more fertile, if we study the wonderful 
 facts of regeneration in the same way } Strange to 
 say, it will not. Regeneration in all its forms, be it 
 regeneration of the embryo or of the adult, if only 
 taken as regeneration, i.e. as a process repairing 
 disturbed wholeness, would again make us familiar 
 with a certain class of teleological processes, but 
 would not do more. We should be dealing only 
 with probabilities as regards the problem of vitalism. 
 
 But we want more ; and we can gain more, if we 
 only change our method of analysis. We must not 
 attack teleology so directly and immediately in order 
 to see whether it is of the machine-like or vitalistic 
 type. We must devote ourselves to the facts 
 without bias of any kind. It will be found that we 
 
 1 For a full discussion of the facts of adaptation refer to Gifiord 
 Lectures, vol. i. pp. 165-213. 
 
I EXPERIMENTAL EMBRYOLOGY 9 
 
 get to real vitalism if we leave " teleology," at first, 
 quite alone. 
 
 At. the end of the 'eighties of the last century 
 Professor Roux of Halle laid the foundations of 
 Entwicklungsmechanik, a " new branch of anatomi- 
 cal science," as he called it. By the word Entwick- 
 lungsmechanik Roux means a branch of biology 
 which may properly be called the physiology of 
 morphogenesis or, in short, the physiology of form. 
 It is an analytical and experimental science, just like 
 physiology proper ; ontogenesis, all kinds of restitu- 
 tion, heredity, phylogeny are its subjects. 
 
 Let us now enter a little more deeply into the 
 embryological part of Entwicklungsmechanik} Roux 
 has worked out a sort of programme for this branch 
 of the subject, and to it his own experimental investi- 
 gations relate. At the beginning of his studies 
 Roux was an evolutionist, almost in the same form 
 as Weismann ; and so - called evolutionism in 
 embryology has always been a special form of 
 machine-theory from the time of Leibniz to the 
 present day. There is a very complicated machine 
 in the egg and in particular in its nucleus — so 
 Roux and Weismann said, — and the development 
 of the embryo is carried out by the disintegration 
 of this machine during the great number of cell- 
 cleavages which occur during the embryological 
 process. 
 
 This was a possible theory, no doubt, and It 
 seemed for a short time to be the right theory, for 
 Roux happened to perform an experiment which, 
 
 ' Cp. Gifford Lectures, vol. i. pp. 25-164. 
 
lo PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 standing alone as it did, could really be considered 
 as a sort of proof of embryological evolutionism. 
 
 Roux killed one of the first two cleavage cells 
 of a frog's egg that had just performed the first 
 cleavage ; and from the surviving cell he reared 
 an embryo which was in all respects one half of a 
 normal one, that is to say, either the right or the left 
 side of it. Was not this a very convincing result .'' 
 It seemed so, no doubt — but only for a few years. 
 
 In 1 891 I repeated Roux's experiment by a 
 somewhat different method on the egg of the 
 common sea-urchin. And my result was just the 
 reverse of what Roux's result had been : not one 
 half of an embryo ^^was reared out of the surviving 
 cell, but a complete embryo of half size. And I also 
 observed the development of complete embryos of 
 smaller size when I made my experiments with the 
 four-cell-stage instead of the two-cell-stage. I might 
 destroy one or two or even three of the first four 
 cleavage cells ; in the latter case I got a very small 
 embryo — but it was complete in its organization. 
 
 Before we proceed in our argument let us make 
 ourselves familiar with two technical concepts ; this 
 will prove to be very useful for what is to come. I 
 mean the two concepts of prospective value and 
 prospective potency, now quite familiar to embryo- 
 logical experimenters. By the prospective value of 
 any embryonic cell whatever, I mean the actual fate 
 which that cell will have in the special course of 
 development going on before our eyes, be it normal 
 or abnormal. By prospective potency I mean not the 
 actual but the possible fate of a certain cell, i.e. the 
 
I EXPERIMENTAL EMBRYOLOGY ii 
 
 totality of possible characters of the adult into which 
 this cell may develop. 
 
 Using these two concepts just defined, we may 
 formulate what we have learned so far about the 
 theories of Weismann and Roux and about the ex- 
 perimental results, in the following way. Roux and 
 Weismann believed at first that the prospective value 
 of a cleavage cell under normal conditions was 
 identical with its prospective potency or, in other 
 words, that its potency was strictly limited, and 
 Roux believed he had proved this by his experiment 
 with the frog's egg. But I was able to show that, 
 for the egg of the sea-urchin at least, prospective 
 value and prospective potency are not the same, the 
 range of the prospective potency, i.e. the range of 
 possibilities with regard to the morphogenetic fate, 
 being far greater than the observation of the pro- 
 spective value, i.e. of the actual fate in the actual 
 case before me, could reveal. 
 
 I must next mention another experiment on the 
 egg of the sea-urchin which is logically connected 
 with what we have already learned. 
 
 The so-called " cleavage " of the egg, the first 
 stages of which we have already considered, ends in 
 the formation of the blastula, i.e. a hollow sphere 
 built up of about a thousand cells, forming an 
 epithelium. If you cut this blastula with a pair of 
 very fine scissors in any direction you like, each part 
 so obtained will go on developing — provided it is 
 ,not smaller than one quarter of the whole — and will 
 .form a complete larva of small size. This result, 
 certainly, might be expected after what we have 
 
12 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 learned from the experiment with the cleavage 
 cells. 
 
 We are now at the right point for a theoretical 
 discussion of our results. But before entering into 
 it let us still devote a few words to the results of 
 experiments carried out with eggs other than those 
 of the frog and the sea-urchin. It has been shown 
 that the eggs of very different classes of animals 
 behave exactly as the egg of the sea-urchin does — 
 namely, the eggs of Fishes, Newts, Amphioxus, 
 Nemerteans, Medusae, etc. It has moreover been 
 proved that even the frog's egg, the classical object 
 of Roux's researches, produces a small but complete 
 embryo from one of its cleavage cells, if only you 
 give the cell an opportunity for a certain rearrange- 
 ment of its protoplasm. And, finally, it is now 
 known that in cases where, contrary to the behaviour 
 of the Echinoderms, the prospective value of cleavage 
 cells is truly fixed — as is the case in Annelids, 
 Molluscs, and, to a certain extent, Ascidians — the 
 fixation depends solely upon a certain physical state 
 of the protoplasm, which does not allow of any 
 regulatory rearrangement. It has been shown that 
 in the forms with a fixed prospective value of the 
 cleavage cells the nuclei, quite contrary to the theory 
 of Weismann, are without any diversity, and that 
 moreover there is no prospective specification in the 
 protoplasm before cleavage really begins, or rather, to 
 state it quite exactly, before so-called maturation. For 
 you may alter in a fundamental manner the relative 
 position of the nuclei of the cleavage cells with 
 respect to one another by pressure experiments, or 
 
I EQUIPOTENTIAL SYSTEMS 13 
 
 you may remove any portion you like from the egg 
 before maturation : in both cases you will get com- 
 plete embryos. Thus, then, our experimental results 
 may be said to be of universal validity. 
 
 And now let us turn to the theoretical aspect. 
 
 How are we to account for what we have learned ? 
 A theory like Weismann's is impossible in the face 
 of the facts. There is certainly not a machine in 
 the egg that is disintegrated step by step during 
 the cleavage, for single cleavage cells give complete 
 organisms ; and this relates to the protoplasm as 
 well as to the nuclei. Might not, however, some 
 other form of the machine theory fit the case ? 
 
 In order to come to a conclusion in this difficult 
 question I propose to formulate analytically, in quite 
 a simple and unbiassed way, what our experiments 
 have really shown us ; and in particular I refer to 
 the experiment with the blastula of the sea-urchin 
 or the starfish. 
 
 Fragments of this blastula always gave complete 
 embryos, though cut quite at random. This could 
 only be possible, if the pro.spectiv£L_pQt_ency of all 
 the thousand blastula cells was the same, just as the 
 potency of the two or four first cleavage cells proved 
 to be identical. Let us apply the term equipotential 
 ontogenetic system to any ontogenetic totality which 
 consists of cells with equal prospective potency, i.e. 
 with an equal possible fate ; then the blastula is, in 
 short, an equipotential system. 
 
 But we must analyse our case still further, for 
 there exist " equipotential " systems, which are very 
 different from the blastula with regard to morpho- 
 
14 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lbct. 
 
 genetic significance, in spite of their equipotentiality. 
 The ovary, for instance, is certainly " equipotential," 
 for each egg is " equally " able to form the organism ; 
 and yet there is a great logical difference between 
 the ovary and the blastula. In the ovary each 
 element of the system is equally able to form for itself 
 the same complex totality, namely, the organism ; we 
 may speak of a " complex-equipotential system " in 
 this case. But in the blastula each element is equally 
 able to play any single part in the formation of 
 one totality. Any particular cell would have played 
 another single part, had you cut the blastula in some 
 other direction ; it can play any single part required. 
 And what it actually does in the special case— normal 
 or experimental — is always in harmony with what is 
 done by its fellow-cells, which possess the same 
 great potentiality as itself. Let us, then, call our 
 blastula an harmonious-equipotential system. 
 
 On the discussion of the harmonious-equipotential 
 system and its differentiation will depend our most 
 important argument in favour of a vitalistic con- 
 ception of biology. It is important, therefore, that 
 this concept should become a little more familiar to 
 you, and for this purpose the analysis of some other 
 instances of harmonious equipotentiality is of great 
 use. Harmonious systems not only appear else- 
 where in embryology — the two so-called germ- 
 layers, for instance, are of this type ^ — but very 
 often they are the basis of rejtitutign, which in this 
 
 1 A very important case of harmonious equipotentiality, not men- 
 tioned in my Gifford Lectures, was afterwards discovered by Braus (see 
 Morfhologisches Jahrbuch, vol. 39). 
 
I HARMONIOUS SYSTEMS 15 
 
 case is not " regeneration " proper, i.e. not a process 
 of budding from a wound as is the case in the 
 restitution of an earthworm cut into parts. The 
 hydroid Tubularia offers a very typical instance of 
 harmonious restitution ; but more instructive still 
 is the case of the restitution of the branchial apparatus 
 in the Ascidian Clavellina, which therefore may 
 be shortly analysed. In Clavellina the branchial 
 apparatus is quite separated from the rest of the 
 body. If you isolate it by a cut, it either regenerates 
 the body in the usual way by budding processes, or 
 it behaves very differently : it undergoes a complete 
 reduction of form, until it is but a minute sphere, and 
 then, after a few days of rest, transforms itself as it 
 is into a complete little Ascidian. This, certainly, is 
 a very strange process ; but much more remarkable 
 with regard to our problem is what follows. Isolate 
 the branchial apparatus and then cut it into two 
 pieces of any shape you like ; each portion will then 
 reduce its form, rest for a few days, and finally 
 transform itself into a complete little animal, as did the 
 whole branchial apparatus in the former experiment. 
 The branchial apparatus of Clavellina, therefore, is 
 the very type of a harmonious-equipotential system : 
 each element of it is able to perform any single 
 morphogenetic action that is required, and all the 
 elements together work in harmony in each single 
 case. For the cut may be made quite at random. 
 
 How, then, are we to account for these wonderful 
 phenomena of life .'' Let us first enumerate all the 
 possibilities of becoming that might seem to be 
 present here at the first glance, but are found not 
 
1 6 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 to be present when you look at what happens in 
 detail. 
 
 The question is this : What makes the equipotential 
 system unequal with regard to the actual fate of its 
 parts ? What transforms equal potentialities into 
 unequal actualities ? In other words : the localization 
 of the various singularities of morphogenesis is the 
 problem. Whence does this localization come ^ 
 
 It does not come from without, for there are no 
 localized exterior stimuli, responsible for differentia- 
 tion in our cases of morphogenesis. The various 
 factors or agents of the medium are either without 
 direction or, if possessed of direction {e.g. gravity and 
 light), they are notoriously without influence In 
 animal ontogeny. 
 
 But localization can also not be based upon purely 
 chemical processes inside the system. It is true, a 
 chemical compound might be disintegrated, a real 
 mixture might be separated into its component parts 
 and the one or the other process might a priori be 
 the main factor in ontogeny. But it cannot be so 
 in fact. For from chemical disintegration or from 
 unmixing there can only arise equilibria of, so to 
 say, geometrical arrangement. But an organism is 
 not a geometrical arrangement or a complex of such 
 arrangements. And, further, there are many organs 
 in an organism which have very different specific 
 forms, though they have the same chemical com- 
 position — as for example the bones of vertebrates. 
 For all this a purely chemical theory of ontogeny — 
 which otherwise might be compatible with equi- 
 potentiallty — cannot account. 
 
I FIRST PROOF OF VITALISM 17 
 
 But if a purely chemical theory of ontogenesis 
 fails, might not some form of the machine theory 
 be successful? Not, of course, the theory of 
 Weismann, i.e. a theory of evolution or preformation 
 in the narrow meaning of the word ; but a theory 
 which, nevertheless, makes use of the concept of 
 a machine as the basis of ontogeny, a machine being 
 defined as a given specific combination of specific 
 chemical and physical agents. Ontogeny might then 
 probably be the result of what would be called the 
 " interaction " of these agents. Thus we know, 
 for example, that the lens of the eye of Amphibians 
 is formed from the epidermis in consequence of a 
 so-called " formative stimulus " on the part of the 
 primary optic vesicle ; and there are other cases of 
 morphogenesis of a similar kind.-' 
 
 Now it is not difficult to prove from what we 
 have learned about our harmonious -equipotential 
 systems that no machine of any kind soever can be 
 the ultimate basis of ontogenesis as far as harmonious 
 equipotentiality is concerned. 
 
 If normal undisturbed embryogenesis alone would 
 result in the formation of a complete embryo, if, 
 in other words, all the experiments carried out with 
 early embryonic stages would result in the production 
 of fragments of organization, then we should feel 
 obliged to accept the theory of machine-like pre- 
 formation. But this is not the case. On the 
 contrary, the ontogenetic systems are " harmonious- 
 equipotential." Take whatever portion of them 
 
 1 Cp. Herbst, Biologisches Centralhlatt, vols. xiv. and xv. (1894-5), 
 and Formati've Reize in der tierischen Ontogenese, Leipzig, 1901. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 you like, quite at random, and yet there will be 
 completeness of final organization. The embryonic 
 " machine," then, that is supposed to exist in the 
 normal system, would be obliged to be present in 
 its completeness in one part of the system also, and 
 also in another such part, and in yet other such parts 
 too, and equally well in parts of different size, over- 
 lapping one another (Fig. i). For we know that 
 
 Fig. I. — The harmonious-equipotential system (H.E.S.). 
 
 The large rectangle represents an H.E.S. in its normal undisturbed state. It might 
 a priori coxitain a very complicated kind of "machine" as the foundation of development. 
 But any fragment of the system (the small rectangles and innumerable others), contingent 
 as to its size and to its position in the original H. E.S., is equally able to produce a small 
 but complete organism. On the basis of the mechanistic theory, then, any fragment of the 
 H.E.S. would contain the same " machine " as the original system. This is absurd. 
 
 any part of the system, contingent as to its size and as 
 to its position in the original system, can give rise to 
 a complete being. Every cell of the original system 
 can play every single r61e in morphogenesis ; which 
 r61e it will play is merely " a function of its position." 
 In face of these facts the machine theory as an 
 embryological theory becomes an absurdity. These 
 facts contradict the concept of a machine; for a 
 machine is a specific arrangement of parts, and it 
 does not remain what it was if you remove from it 
 any portion you like. 
 
I FIRST PROOF OF VITALISM 19 
 
 Now the machine theory was the only possible 
 form of a mechanistic theory that might a priori 
 seem to be applicable to the phenomena of mor- 
 phogenesis. To dismiss the machine theory, there- 
 fore, is the same as to give up the attempt of a 
 mechanical theory of these phenomena altogether. 
 Or, in other words, the analytical discussion of the 
 differentiation of harmonious-equipotential systems 
 entitles us to establish the doctrine of the autonomy 
 of life, i.e. the doctrine of so-called vitalism, at least in 
 a limited field : there is some agent at work in 
 morphogenesis which is not of the type of physico- 
 chemical agents. 
 
SECOND LECTURE 
 
 FURTHER PROOFS OF VITALISM ENTELECHY AND 
 
 ITS RELATIONS TO MATTER AND ENERGY 
 
 A TRUTH is either proved or not proved ; and, if 
 it Is once proved, it is not necessary to prove it 
 further. We therefore might well proceed at once 
 to analyse what is meant by saying that a machine 
 cannot be the foundation of ontogeny. But the 
 discussion of certain other facts of biology, which 
 also " prove " the impossibility of the machine 
 theory of life, will perhaps give us a stronger 
 personal conviction of the great importance of what 
 we are doing. 
 
 New proofs of the autonomy of life or of vitalism 
 must, of course, be Independent of our first proof; 
 otherwise they would not be " new." It Is useless, 
 therefore, especially considering the limited time at 
 our disposal, to analyse here the formation of one 
 single embryo from two eggs, or the restitution of 
 restitution, i.e. restitution of the second degree, or 
 the remarkable phenomenon of the equlfinallty of 
 restitution, the fact, namely, that individuals of the 
 same species may reach the same regulatory result 
 by very different ways. For all these facts are 
 
LECT. II SECOND PROOF OF VITALISM 21 
 
 reducible in the last resort to the problem of 
 harmonious equipotentiality ; if not, they, only prove 
 teleology in the general formal sense, and nothing 
 else. 
 
 But a truly independent " second " proof of the 
 autonomy of life^ has already been prepared for by 
 certain remarks in the first lecture, and shall now be 
 shortly mentioned. Wh en speakin g of equipotential 
 sygtems_^]n_^ejaeraJ^ i.e. of embryonic parts, each 
 element of which possesses the same prospective 
 morphogenetic potency, wesaid that there a re J:wQ 
 classes of such systems : harmonious., like the blastula ; 
 z.n3~complex, like the oya,ry. In a complex - equi- 
 potential system^ it was said,, all _ the elements are 
 equally able to form the same complex totality out of 
 thenjaelves. It will be easily appreciated that there 
 are various other sorts of complex equipotential 
 systems besides the ovary. The cambium of the 
 higher plants belongs here, the epidermis of Begonia, 
 many tissues connected with animal regeneration, and 
 almost the complete organism of lower plants. 
 
 Having studied the differentiatian oi the harmonious 
 systems in the first lecture, we shall to-day study the 
 genesis or the origin of the complex ones ; and we 
 shall get a new and important analytical result. 
 That is to say : We shall study not what comes out of 
 the complex systems, but what they themselves come 
 from. And we shall take the ovary as one instance 
 
 ' See Gifford Lectures, vol. i. pp. 214-242. J. S. Haldane in his book, 
 Mechanism, Life and Personality (191 3), accepts what I have called the 
 second proof of vitalism (pp. 56-58), but rejects (p. 27) the first proof 
 He rejects it, however, without any close analysis of the problem of 
 harmonious equipotentiality. 
 
22 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 standing for them all. The ovary develops from 
 one special single cell which is its Anlage, to use a 
 German word not easy to translate. This Anlage 
 divides and divides many thousand times, at least 
 in lower animals — and as the result of all these 
 divisions we have the single eggs, capable of de- 
 velopment. 
 
 We now argue in a manner very similar in form 
 to our discussion of the harmonious systems, though 
 the subject is now really very different. If we only 
 regard the egg and its normal ontogenesis, we, no 
 doubt, might accept the machine theory for the latter. 
 Why should there not be a machine in miniature 
 present in an egg, and representative of the adult, 
 say in the form imagined by Bonnet and Haller or 
 by Weismann ? The machine cannot be present for 
 the following reason. The egg has undergone an 
 enormous number of divisions before becoming what 
 it now is. But how could a " machine " be divided 
 and divided and — always remain the ' same ? And 
 this machine would have to be enormously complex 
 in composition, for the adult organism in all its 
 wonderful manifoldness is to arise from it ! But, 
 on the other hand, if you say that our argument is 
 wrong, because the Anlage of the ovary was not a 
 machine, and that, therefore, the problem of the 
 " division " of a " machine " does not arise at all 
 — how then does the machine originate in the final 
 products of division in the egg } Where does it 
 come from ? Thus it follows that our problem must 
 either be accepted as an independent proof of vitalism, 
 or be reduced to the problem of morphogenesis 
 
II SECOND PROOF OF VITALISM 23 
 
 without machine-like preformation, i.e. the problem 
 of harmonious equipotentiality already discussed. 
 
 Our discussion of the genesis of complex-equi- 
 potential systems, proving the autonomy of life a 
 second time and independently, may now leave the 
 rather abstract path it has followed so far, and be 
 brought into relation with problems that occupy the 
 centre of interest among biologists at the present day, 
 namely, the problems of inheritance. Much has been 
 done during the last ten years to discover the laws 
 and material conditions of inheritance : ^ Mendelism 
 and the cytological investigation of inheritance are 
 among the best established results in biology. If 
 now we have said that, for very important reasons, 
 the egg cannot be regarded as the bearer of an 
 embryological machine, that Is as much as to say that 
 all Mendelian and cytological investigations about 
 heredity, irrespective of their great and undeniable 
 importance, yet cover but one half of the field. 
 Though there are material units, transferred from one 
 generation to the next, on which the realization of 
 inheritance depends, though we know that these 
 material conditions are localized in the nucleus in 
 particular, these material conditions are not the main 
 thing. Some agent that arranges is required, and this 
 arranging agent in inheritance cannot be of a machijie- 
 like, physico-chemicaLcharacter. (^/ ^,, , 
 
 In order to find a third independent proof of the 
 vitalistic conception of life we will now leave the 
 
 1 Cp. J. A. Thomson, Heredity, 1908, and W. Bateson, Mendel's 
 Principles of Heredity, 1909. 
 
24 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 subject of morphogenesis and turn to a very difficult 
 branch of biology, namely, the. physiology of movements} 
 We shall again leave aside everything that has not 
 been studied well enough to be used for our purposes, 
 and shall only discuss what seems really profitable. 
 And our third proof of vitalism will be at the same 
 time the last argument we analyse in favour of the 
 vitalistic doctrine. For I do not intend to deal here 
 with certain groups of rather problematic facts, which 
 are being much discussed nowadays, particularly in 
 this country, but which do not yet allow of any 
 definite interpretation.^ 
 
 It is greatly to be regretted that instinct is so very 
 little studied nowadays, at least in an exact way. 
 The important investigations of Lloyd Morgan are 
 almost all that we possess in this field. American 
 authors, it is true, have studied the behaviour of 
 animals in quite an admirable way, but they have 
 analysed almost exclusively such movements as are 
 based upon experience. The main feature of instinct, 
 however, is that it is not based on experience, but is 
 " primary-teleological," i.e. perfect in its typical 
 manifoldness the very first time it occurs, just like 
 regenerations. There can be no doubt that some of 
 the most important results of biology in the future 
 will be derived from the study of instinct. Let me 
 only shortly mention the two problems which seem 
 to me to be more important than any other : firstly, 
 
 1 See afford Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 1-113. 
 
 '^ This observation is by no means intended to disparage the remark- 
 able work done by the Society for Psychical Research, for which on 
 the contrary I possess the highest admiration. But things are not yet 
 ripe for "theory." 
 
11 INSTINCT AND ACTION 25 
 
 the question whether instincts can be regulated or 
 not, whether they may be modified as circumstances 
 require, like morphogenetic processes ; and secondly, 
 what kinds of stimuli call forth instinctive reactions, 
 whether simple stimuli exclusively, or also complex 
 individualized stimuli, such as, for instance, a specific 
 sort of object as " seen " by the eye. Unfortunately, 
 it is not possible at present to do more than simply 
 state the problems. 
 
 Better results await us when we proceed to an 
 analysis of the most complicated form of movement, 
 namely, action, i.e. that form of movement which, to 
 speak in popular language, rests upon *' memory " 
 and " experience," and is not " primary-teleological." 
 The analysis of human action will give us the best 
 results, because, for very obvious reasons, there is no 
 other sphere of biological inquiry in which we are 
 able to discover so many details and varieties of 
 events as here. 
 
 But this remark needs a few words of explanation. 
 We proceed as biologists in this part of the lectures ; 
 human actions, therefore, are to be regarded by us 
 merely as forms of natural phenomena. And this 
 means that we are not allowed to have recourse to 
 "psychology" in the proper sense. The realm of 
 natural reality and the realm of psychical becoming 
 in the true sense, as discovered by introspection, are 
 separated by an absolute gap. But, nevertheless, 
 because we have the faculty of introspection into 
 ourselves we are able to discover many more details 
 and varieties of action in another human individual 
 than in any other living being ; for we know that 
 
26 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 our own psychical life is connected with very various 
 minute movements of our body and we are, there- 
 fore, well prepared to discover all sorts of minute 
 varieties of movement in the bodies of others. 
 
 Everybody knows that the " acting " man is in 
 possession of sense-organs, a nervous system, a bram 
 and muscles ; and everybody knows, further, that 
 all these organs are concerned in acting, and that 
 some of them, especially the brain, are enormously 
 complex in structure. But the question is, whether 
 " structure " is at all sufficient to explain what really 
 happens in acting. And I hope to be able to show 
 you that it is not. 
 
 Let us first consider action without reference to 
 the organization, merely as a natural phenomenon 
 possessed of certain peculiar characteristics. These 
 characteristics may be expressed by two technical 
 terms. Acting is characterized by its occurring upon 
 an historical basis of reaction and according to an 
 individualized correspondence between stimuli and effects. 
 
 By the historical basis of reaction as concerned in 
 acting I mean the well-known fact that the possibility 
 of all actions which a man may perform in a special 
 given moment of his life depends on the personal 
 history of this man, or, in the subjective terminology 
 which is properly not allowable at this stage, but 
 which helps to make the matter clear, on his 
 "experience." Let an English-born boy be educated 
 all his life in Germany and he will " act," in particular 
 with regard to his speaking, quite otherwise than if 
 he had stayed in Great Britain all his life. Now it 
 seems at the first glance as if it would be by no 
 
II ANALYSIS OF ACTING 27 
 
 means difficult to understand what we have called 
 " the historical basis of reaction " on a mechanical 
 analogy. There is a certain well-known class of 
 " machines " which also " act," so to say, upon one 
 " historical " basis of reaction : the phonograph is 
 one example, and the pianola another. But the 
 moment we mention these machines we know that 
 the acting man is something different. Why is 
 this so? 
 
 The explanation is easy. The phonograph and 
 machines of a similar type give forth what they have 
 received with all its specificity. The acting man 
 usually does something else, or rather, something 
 more. An actor in the theatre or a boy who recites 
 a poem by heart may be said to give forth in its very 
 specificity what they have received during their 
 personal history ; but these are exceptional cases. 
 Which features, then, constitute the difference 
 between the acting man of everyday life and the 
 " actor " upon the stage ? We have said already 
 that the actor on the stage gives forth what he has 
 received just as he received it. What then does 
 the " historical basis " of reaction mean in the 
 ordinary acting man, if it does not mean specific 
 determination for actions created by personal history } 
 
 There is no doubt that the historical basis means 
 nothing but a certain limited totality of possibilities, 
 a sort of warehouse or reservoir as it were, but 
 nothing specific. At least it is in this respect, as 
 a mere totality of possibilities, that the historical 
 basis comes into account in a real action. The 
 acting person uses this basis, but he is not bound 
 
28 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 to it as it is. He dissolves the combined specificities 
 that have created the basis. 
 
 All this, then, serves to discriminate most easily 
 between an acting man and a stage-actor, and still 
 more between an acting man and a phonograph. 
 And moreover, in the phonograph the reaction is 
 just the same physical process as the stimulus, only, 
 so to say, reversed ; in the acting man there are 
 sensory processes on the one side and motor processes 
 on the other. 
 
 But this is the right moment to begin the dis- 
 cussion of the second characteristic of action : the 
 individual correspondence between stimuli and effects. 
 For it is only when they are united with one another 
 that the criteria of acting can be fully understood. 
 
 The term " individual correspondence " is self- 
 explanatory, and is not at all difficult to understand. 
 We are all very familiar with this feature of action, 
 for we all experience it hundreds of times a day. 
 In acting, stimulus and reaction are individuals and 
 not mere sums — this is chiefly what the term aims 
 at expressing — and there is a specific correspondence 
 as individuals between the individualized forms of 
 the stimuli and reactions. It thus appears that, 
 whilst the first characteristic, " the historical basis 
 of reaction," refers to the totality of actions possible 
 at a given moment of the life of an acting man, the 
 second characteristic refers to the actual action at 
 that moment. The actual action is individualized 
 in specific correspondence to another individuality, 
 subject, of course, to the conditions of the first 
 criterion, i.e. the actual individualized reaction corre- 
 
II ANALYSIS OF ACTING 29 
 
 spending to the actual individualized stimulus is 
 formed out of possibilities which have been " histori- 
 cally " created. 
 
 A good instance of what the criterion of individual 
 correspondence in action means is afforded by a 
 conversation between two friends who speak several 
 languages. To these a phrase spoken in English, 
 German, or French is the same " individualized 
 stimulus," though physically the processes are totally 
 different. And, on the other hand, phrases which 
 are almost identical from the physical point of view, 
 may be very different individual stimuli. Think of 
 the German words for " my, your, his," mein, deiriy 
 sein, and imagine the fundamentally different effect 
 produced in the "stimulated" person according as 
 he hears one or other of these words at the beginning 
 of a phrase, e.g. " My, your, or his money is lost," 
 " My, your, or his father is dead." In German 
 only one consonant would be different in the three 
 phrases. And, what is still more strange than the 
 facts mentioned, do we not know that a " stimulus " 
 has the same effect on acting even if it is " written " 
 in one case and " spoken " in another .? 
 
 Thus it is not possible to connect every single 
 element of the stimulus with a single element of the 
 reaction ; but one totality is connected with one other 
 totality. 
 
 And now we are prepared to say whether "action" 
 is explainable upon the basis of the machine theory of 
 life or not — whether material processes in the brain 
 and nervous system can fully account for what really 
 happens. 
 
30 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 If the acting man behaved like a phonograph or 
 a machine of a similar type, we could accept the 
 machine theory ; but he does not behave like that 
 machine and, what is more, all the peculiarities which 
 distinguish him from the phonograph are such as to 
 distinguish him from any machine whatever. The 
 phonograph, when reacting, only reverses the series 
 of processes that have encountered it. Even of an 
 actor — who not only reverses a causal series but 
 learns by means of his eye or ear and speaks with 
 his mouth — we might go so far as to say that what 
 he does might be explainable by the machine theory. 
 But the acting man, we have seen, is not a stage- 
 actor. He is the sovereign of the results of his personal 
 history ; his history affords him only means of future 
 acting and nothing more. When he acts, these 
 means are used according to the principle of corre- 
 spondence among totalities ; it is not that one part of 
 the stimulus causes one part of the effect according 
 to a fixed order. In action nothing is fixed in the 
 sense of what fixation means in anything like a 
 " machine." And the " machine " itself in this case 
 — I mean the historical basis of reaction — has been 
 made from without ! 
 
 Thus, then, we are entitled to say that the 
 characteristics of action, considered as a natural 
 process, forbid us to accept the machine theory.^ 
 
 What we have brought forward against the 
 
 ' I am very glad to learn that William M'Dougall, in his interest- 
 ing and thorough book, Body and Mind (191 1), not only accepts my 
 argument in favour of the autonomy of action (p. 268 ff.) but also 
 the results of my discussion of experimental embryology (p. 241 ff.). 
 
II THIRD PROOF OF VITALISM 31 
 
 mechanical theory of life, as far as acting is con- 
 cerned, is a certain part of the arguments employed 
 against the theory of so-called psycho-physical parallel- 
 ism, i.e. the theory that psychical phenomena are 
 but " the other side " of an unbroken causal series 
 of the mechanical type. And, in fact, the problem 
 of action has close logical relations with the central 
 problem of Psycho-physics.^ 
 
 Those who reject the theory of parallelism are 
 generally — apart from arguments of the purely 
 metaphysical class — accustomed to say that psychical 
 phenomena and events cannot be the " other side " 
 of physical, i.e. mechanical states and processes, 
 firstly, because there is unity in the one case and 
 a sum in the other, even the most complex thought 
 being always possessed as one ; ^ secondly, because the 
 relation of all the various objects to one single subject, 
 the Ego, has nothing similar in the mechanical world ; 
 and thirdly, because the power of the Ego to use its 
 experience in thinking and in imagining could never 
 be something mechanical " from the other side." 
 There is the concept of evidence on the one hand 
 and oi psychical progress on the other, and both mean 
 the formation of something new. The truth of 
 Galilei^ principle of inertia is " evident " to you, 
 
 ^ See Gifford Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 114-117 and pp. 287-295. Com- 
 pare also the important discussions of the problem by James Ward in 
 his Naturalism and Agnosticism (2nd ed., 1903, vol. ii. pp. 1-93); by 
 L. Busse in his work, Geist und Korper, Seele und Leib {1903) ; and by 
 M'Dougall (see last note). 
 
 2 Modern psychology has made it quite clear that real psychological 
 entities are all of the type of complex unities, i.e. of the same type as 
 " thoughts." A pure " sensation " is an artificial abstraction. Compare 
 the analysis given in my essay, Die Logih als Aufgabe (1913). 
 
32 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 though what you have experienced in a merely 
 passive way flatly contradicts it ; and all progress 
 in culture, including science and art, rests upon 
 invention and not upon mere reproduction. Now, 
 this is stating in psychological terms what we have 
 already said with regard to the characteristics of 
 action considered as a natural phenomenon. The 
 " historical basis " is merely used but not reproduced. 
 The stimuli and the effects in action, we said, are 
 unities and are not related with one another part 
 by part. They both have a meaning, a significance, 
 we may now say, speaking in terms of psychology. 
 And we may add that it is precisely their meaning as 
 thoughts that remains " the same," whether they are 
 expressed in English or German or French, whether 
 they are written, printed or spoken, or otherwise 
 conveyed. 
 
 In short, the vitalist cannot accept the parallel- 
 istic doctrine of certain psychologists with respect to 
 action, at least not in so far as this doctrine holds 
 that the natural side of action is one unbroken line 
 of mechanical events. 
 
 The mention of psychology now leads us from 
 our proofs of vitalism, which as factual proofs are 
 complete for the present, to certain general consider- 
 ations which stand, so to say, half-way between 
 science proper and pure philosophy. And in the first 
 place something more may be said with regard to 
 Psychology. 
 
 We believe we have proved that certain great 
 classes of facts in organic Nature are not of the 
 
II ENTELECHY NOT "PSYCHICAL" 33 
 
 physico-chemical type, but have an autonomy of 
 their own. This is, at first, nothing but a mere 
 negative statement, and we go no farther if we intro- 
 duce the Aristotelian word entelechy as a name for 
 the autonomous agent at work in the vital processes 
 we have been studying. Entelechy is something 
 that is non-physico-chemical ; and the only positive 
 character we are entitled to attribute to it, so far, is 
 that it is an actual elementary agent or factor of 
 Nature, the word " entelechy " being not merely a 
 name for a formal point of view. It is important to 
 grasp the provisional negativeness of entelechy, because 
 it will save us from a mistake often committed by 
 vitalists, namely, the mistake of regarding the vitalistic 
 agent as something " psychical " without further 
 consideration. But the contrary of mechanical is 
 merely non-mechanical, and not " psychical." And, 
 moreover, in Nature there is no room for " psychical " 
 entities at all, if, at least, the concept of Nature and 
 the concept of the Psyche are well defined. I may 
 talk of my own psychical life, or of my soul, if you like 
 to call it so ; but even to speak of what are popularly 
 termed the " souls " of others is already to make a 
 statement with regard to Nature that ought really to 
 be formulated in another terminology. It, therefore, 
 is quite meaningless at first, and will perhaps only 
 acquire a meaning in metaphysics, to say that 
 entelechy is " psychical " in character. On the 
 contrary, that which is generally spoken of as 
 "psychical" in other beings, men or animals, is, 
 strictly speaking, in the sphere of natural science 
 simply non-mechanical ; but we can assert nothing as 
 
 D 
 
34 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 to its nature until we have undertaken special logical 
 inquiries. 
 
 Only in the region of metaphysics, we repeat, 
 entelechy may possibly appear to be of a " psychical " 
 type. But even then the word " psychical " would 
 not be applied without a certain limitation, at least 
 with regard to the phenomena of instinct and all 
 organic regulations. For even if you were to use 
 the word " psychical " with regard to these phenomena 
 you would mean something very different from what 
 you mean when you apply the word to other human 
 beings. For all instincts and restitutions do not rest 
 upon experience ; they present themselves in a primary 
 teleological manner the very first time they occur. 
 It is as if entelechy had a knowledge of peculiarities 
 without having met with them. Great caution then is 
 required with regard to the biological application of 
 the word " psychical " even in a metaphysical sense.^ 
 
 We now consider the question whether anything 
 whatever, and if so, what, may be said about the 
 relations between mechanical and non-mechanical agents 
 in Nature. There can be no doubt that this part of 
 our analysis will be of great importance.^ 
 
 And in the first place let us consider the relation 
 of our biological entelechy, i.e. the non-mechanical 
 agent responsible for the phenomena of life, to the 
 concept of substance as employed in inorganic 
 
 ' A full discussion of " Psycho-Vitalism " will be found in Marcus 
 Hartog's remarkable book, Problems of Life and Reproduction, London, 
 1913, particularly in chapter ix. Hartog's own vitalistic theory 
 (" Mitokinetism ") is explained in chapters iv. and viii. of his work. 
 
 ^ Cp. afford Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 153-265. 
 
n ENTELECHY AND SUBSTANCE 35 
 
 science. Whatever our metaphysical conception of 
 a " substance " may be, with respect to the science 
 of non-living Nature we mean by substance in space 
 something that, firstly, possesses a certain quality or, 
 rather, in order to exclude sensible "quality," let us 
 say suchness. This something, secondly, endures 
 with regard to its suchness at least for a long period ; 
 and, thirdly, the concept of so much is applicable to 
 it, or, in other words, it possesses quantity. This 
 substance in space, now, may be conceived mechanically 
 as mass, or electrodynamically as electrons with their 
 fields, or in any other way whatsoever. In any case 
 we see that entelechy is not a " property " or attribute 
 or accident, or anything similar, of a substance in 
 space in the sense defined. For it is among the chief 
 characteristics of a substance in space to be measur- 
 able, say by weight, because it has quantity ; and 
 it would be nonsense to apply the concepts of 
 " quantity " and " measure " to something which has 
 only to do with the arrangement of a manifoldness. 
 
 Thus, then, entelechy does not depend for its 
 existence — I do not say for its active effects — on 
 substance in space. And for the same reasons for 
 which it does not depend on substance in space, we 
 are allowed to say that it is not a species of so-called 
 energy. For energy is nothing but a measurement of 
 causality in space. How could arrangement and 
 arranging be measured ? 
 
 Now, the recognition of the non-energetic character 
 of entelechy has a very important consequence. If 
 entelechy is not a kind of energy itself, if it is non- 
 energetic itself, it follows that the principle of the 
 
36 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 conservation of energy, ■<N\i\ch is a priori, i.e. a postulate 
 of reason, in its last resort, at least under certain 
 conditions, need not necessarily be violated by vitalism. 
 And this is what physiological experience teaches us. 
 The experiments of Rubner, Atwater, and others 
 have shown most clearly that the principle of the 
 conservation of energy holds good for the organism, 
 that a stream of energy, so to say, passes through it. 
 There is no disappearing or appearing of energy into 
 or from nothing ; entelechy does not create energy — 
 at least as far as we know. 
 
 I add these words of limitation, because it is not 
 absolutely unthinkable that entelechy might create 
 energy. The principle of conservation is a postulate 
 only as long as spatial causality is the only form of 
 causality in a system — as will be fully explained later 
 on. But any form of vitalism allowing entelechy to 
 create energy would be more complicated than a 
 form that does not allow this ; and it is a sound 
 principle of methodology to reduce complications to 
 a minimum. 
 
 But how is vitalism in its relations to inorganic 
 phenomena intelligible at all, if entelechy is neither 
 dependent on a spatial substance, nor energy itself, 
 nor creative of energy ? It is here that we begin 
 with certain positive characteristics of entelechy. 
 Unfortunately in doing so we are entering upon the 
 most difficult and obscure regions of theoretical 
 natural science. 
 
 We reject the hypothesis that entelechy may create 
 energy, firstly, on account of the unnecessary compli- 
 cation that would thus be introduced — unnecessary 
 
II ENTELECHY AND ENERGY 37 
 
 because we have something else to offer, as we shall 
 see presently. We reject that hypothesis, secondly, 
 because it would not account for a well-established 
 biological fact — the limited character of all regu- 
 lations, adaptive or restitutive. There are limits 
 of regulability, and there is a very strictly defined de- 
 pendence of life on certain quite specified conditions 
 of the medium. Herbst has shown, for instance, in 
 a well-known series of experiments that a very 
 definite combination of salts must be present in the 
 sea-water in order that the embryo of marine animals 
 may develop ; and we know that the organism 
 depends on oxygen, heat, and other agents for the 
 most fundamental features of its life. All this would 
 be quite unintelligible if entelechy could create energy 
 just as it wanted it. 
 
 For the same reason, namely, because it would 
 not account for the limits of regulability, we must 
 reject a further a priori possible hypothesis about 
 the relations between the mechanical and the non- 
 mechanical world. I refer to the famous hypothesis, 
 first established by Descartes with regard to the 
 influence of the " soul " upon the body, that the 
 Non-mechanical might turn portions of matter with 
 all their inherent forces, and so change the direction 
 of given forces. This would not alter the principle 
 of the conservation of energy in its most general 
 form — though it would, if this principle were enunci- 
 ated for any of the three dimensions of space separ- 
 ately, — and yet we cannot accept the Cartesian theory, 
 because there are such strict limits of regulability in 
 the organism. 
 
38 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 But what are we to do if we want to account for 
 the material limitations of life and yet at the same 
 time introduce some kind of becoming that is alien 
 to what we know from inorganic Nature ? There is 
 but one way left open to us, it seems to me ; and this 
 is the hypothesis that the non-mechanical agent at 
 work in life may suspend such kind of happening 
 as would occur if not so suspended, such as, in 
 other words, is possible on account of pre-established 
 " uncompensated differences of intensities of energy," 
 or whatever you choose to call the necessary conditions 
 of purely inorganic processes. Here we have at once 
 a very specified non-mechanical kind of happening, 
 and yet it enables us to understand the limits of 
 regulability. Entelechy is bound to material con- 
 ditions, not for its existence but in its effects. The 
 so-called material continuity of life now means simply 
 that there are certain areas of matter, certain material 
 systems, embracing an enormous number of possi- 
 bilities of happening in the form of differences of 
 " potential," to use a technical term, certain material 
 systems that are permanently under the control of 
 entelechy. 
 
 Where this controlling action on the part of 
 entelechy comes from, we do not know at all. We 
 are therefore absolutely unable to say anything whatever 
 about the origin of life. Life is there, and is trans- 
 ferred from generation to generation in material 
 continuity ; and this material continuity means a 
 continuity of systems under control. 
 
 All this is very abstract and general ; it may be 
 more easily understood if we look once more at the 
 
II POWER OF ENTELECHY 39 
 
 differentiation of our morphogenetic harmonious- 
 equipotential systems. Such a system consists, say, 
 of n cells, all equipotential. This then means, 
 according to our hypothesis, that in each of the 
 n cells the same great number of possibilities of 
 becoming is physico-chemically prepared, but checked, 
 so to say, by entelechy. Development of the system 
 now depends, according to our assumption, upon the 
 fact that entelechy relaxes its suspensory power and 
 thus allows events to go on. And the relaxation is 
 different in each cell, and differs also according to 
 the different cases established by experiment : in cell 
 a one thing is allowed to occur, in cell b another, 
 and in cell c something else ; but what now actually 
 occurs in a might also have occurred m b or c ; for 
 each one out of an enormous number of possibilities 
 may occur in each cell. Thus, by the regulatory 
 relaxing action of entelechy in a system in which an 
 enormous variety of possible events had been suspended 
 by it, it may happen that an equal distribution of 
 possibilities is transformed into an unequal distribution 
 of actual effects. And all this without any omni- 
 potence on the part of entelechy. 
 
 Let it be well understood that the relaxing action 
 of entelechy which we have assumed is absolutely 
 non-energetic. There is nothing like the removal 
 of a mechanical obstacle by what in German is 
 called an Ausl'osung ; for such removal would 
 require a certain amount of energy, however small. 
 The relaxing action of entelechy is entirely an action 
 sui generis, just as the suspending action was. 
 
 This then, it seems to me, is the only possible 
 
40 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. ii 
 
 way in which the causal relation between the 
 mechanical and the non-mechanical world can be 
 made intelligible without sacrificing the fact that 
 organic life is limited by matter.-^ 
 
 In the next lecture we shall try to ascertain what 
 the concept of a " non-mechanical " natural agent 
 means to the student of logic, or whether it can 
 have any meaning at all to him. In other words, 
 we shall try to legitimate our concept of entelechy 
 positively and directly. What we have effected so 
 far is only an indirect legitimation, namely, the proof 
 that the agent we call Entelechy is compatible with 
 the agents known to be at work in inorganic Nature. 
 
 ' My theory of suspension is accepted as a possible theory by 
 M'Dougall [Body and Mind, p. 214 f.), and Zwaardemaker {Ergebnisse 
 der Physiologie, xii., 1912, p. 627). T. Percy Nunn, in his very sug- 
 gestive article published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 
 (33rd session, 1911-12), is of opinion that it would hardly make any 
 difference whether entelechy is said to interfere only with inertia or 
 also with energy ; he holds that energy " is not a quantity," but " a 
 mathematical fiction." I cannot agree with the latter statement, for to 
 me energy means quantity of spatial becoming ; but I concede, as is ex- 
 plained in the text, that vitalism might violate the principle of con- 
 servation — if only there were not such strict material limits of life. 
 
 M'Dougall {Body and Mind, p. 253) gives the names of a 
 number of British physicists who have denied the possibility of a 
 mechanistic explanation of life — Sir G. Stokes, Lord Kelvin, Maxwell, 
 P. G. Tait, Balfour Stewart, Sir W. Crookes, Sir O. Lodge, Sir J. J. 
 Thomson, Sir J. Larmor, Professor Poynting (see also my Gifford 
 Lectures, ii. p. 225 f.). Most of these authors have advocated the 
 Cartesian theory, as did most decidedly Sir O. Lodge in chapter ix. of 
 his well-known Life and Matter (3rd ed. p. 152 ff.). 
 
 J. S. Haldane believes that vitalism must violate the principle of the 
 conservation of energy (see p. 28 of his Mechanism, Life and Person- 
 ality). This is certainly not the case. 
 
THIRD LECTURE 
 
 THE LOGIC OF VITALISM THE PROBLEM OF 
 
 SUPRAPERSONAL UNITY 
 
 The logic of. vitalism is a branch of the logic of 
 wholeness. The logic of wholeness, however, is the 
 beginning and the end of all logic — at least if it is 
 understood that logic is essentially the theory of order. 
 
 The theory of order^ is the science of those 
 characteristics of objectivity by means of which 
 objectivity Is one ordered totality. The term 
 " Objectivity " is here employed in the very general 
 sense of " everything that is consciously possessed, 
 or rather — to use a very neutral expression — had by 
 myself," in the sense of " everything that is, so to 
 say, the content of my consciousness." " Objectivity," 
 then, is not an equivalent of " Nature " or " Reality " 
 in this place. If now the theory of order tries to 
 discover order in the one totality of objectivity, it 
 follows that it must start from the knowledge of 
 what order and totality are. This primordial know- 
 ledge of the meaning of order and totality may be 
 called the mystery of logic. 
 
 The concept of order being given, the thinking, 
 
 ' Cp. my Ordnungdehre, ein System des nicht-metafhysischen Teiles 
 der Philosophie (1912), and Die Logik ah Aufgahe (1913). 
 
 41 
 
42 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 i.e. the ordering Ego now endeavours to find out 
 all the signs of order in objectivity. This is done 
 by means of introspection. With regard to every 
 specificity of the content of "experience," in the 
 widest meaning of the word, the Ego has to ask, 
 What makes this special experience an ordered one ? 
 Here again it is a sort of mysterious knowledge — 
 called " evidence " — which enables the Ego to find 
 what it is in search of. 
 
 This, such, relation, the other, difference, number, 
 arrangement, manifoldness, the whole, the parts, are 
 among the irreducible signs found by the most 
 general branch of the theory of order. And among 
 relations let us mention implication or consequence as 
 a very important sign of order that we shall ourselves 
 use later on : " one thing is because another thing 
 is," the word " is " meaning here " is an object " in 
 the most general sense defined. 
 
 The most general branch of the theory of order, 
 or logic, is then, as we have seen, based upon the 
 concept of order in general, and includes the concept 
 of a whole in a narrower sense among its irreducible 
 constituents. Every concept is a whole, i.e. is more 
 than the mere sum of its constituents as enumer- 
 ated in definition. And thus from the very beginning 
 the coQcept jiLjKZi&izieggijr or totality, so important in 
 the theory of vitalism, is fully justified as a concept. 
 This now is a merely formal legitimation ; but we 
 want some sort of justification with regard to natural 
 agents that are whole. We shall get what we want 
 if we follow the theory of order along its path. 
 
 At the end of the general theory of order, relating 
 
Ill THE THEORY OF ORDER 43 
 
 to all objectivity, stand the concepts of becomings 
 substance, and causality ; but they stand there as mere 
 postulates expressing, so to speak, a hope with regard 
 to future order and nothing more ; and it is only by 
 the creation of a new and very strange concept that 
 this hope of logic can be fulfilled. 
 
 Let us see briefly how this is to happen : ' 
 
 / possess or have all those objects which are this 
 and such and related and so many, etc. I have them 
 consciously. And I have them always in a now, in 
 a certain moment. But in a certain moment I may 
 also have consciously a something that bears an 
 indication or sign on itself that denotes not being, 
 but having been, or, in relation to the Ego, having 
 been possessed consciously. This sort of sign or in- 
 dication — quite irreducible in its immediateness — I 
 shall call the sign of time. But this is only a word ; 
 for the sign is not what we are all accustomed to 
 call time, but only a certain irreducible content of 
 consciousness relating to the concept of time. 
 
 On the foundation of my consciously possessing 
 indications or signs of time, or, if you prefer a 
 familiar word to our abstract analysis, on the founda- 
 tion of memory, I now formulate the following 
 statements : I am enduring inasmuch as I possess 
 something consciously at all, but I am unstable or 
 becoming inasmuch as I have now this and then that. 
 
 And now I endeavour to formulate some further 
 postulates of order. 
 
 May I not also say, : It, i.e. objectivity, is stable 
 or enduring as the same It with regard to certain of 
 
 1 See Ordnungshhre, pp. 124-133, 145-149. 
 
44 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 its characteristics and yet changes or becomes with 
 regard to certain others ? If so, I may say that the 
 merely logical principle of identity — A is A — has 
 gained some ontological importance, or rather has 
 been used in an ontological analogy ; and this on 
 the foundation of my immediate knowledge of the 
 Ego, which endures as the same and is yet changing. 
 
 And further : May not the becoming or changing 
 of the // be connected in itself as ife.Y&Ty phase of 
 becoming were a reason of some other becoming if 
 you look to the future, and a consequence of some 
 other becoming if you look to the past ? If so, 
 becoming would be intelligible, because it would be 
 rationalized. For becoming would be conceived on 
 the analogy of the purely logical relation of 
 implication ; the principle of sufficient reason would 
 have gained an ontological importance in the same 
 way as the principle of identity had previously done. 
 "B is because A is," we have said before; "this 
 becoming is such because that becoming has taken 
 place," we should be able to say now. 
 
 Of course it would be a great advance towards 
 order, if we could really formulate what endures in 
 all objectivity and if we could rationalize the becoming 
 of objectivity, as if there were reasons and con- 
 sequences in it, i.e. if we could conceive so-called 
 " causality " in a rational way. 
 
 But we can do neither, at least not without 
 further preparation. Objectivity in its immediate- 
 ness, in its "immediately being possessed consciously," 
 to speak quite strictly, remains chaotic. Think of 
 everything that presents itself to your consciousness 
 
Ill BECOMING— NATURE 45 
 
 in the space of, say, ten minutes, and you will 
 admit that I am right : there is no rational order of 
 becoming among the contents of consciousness as 
 they are. 
 
 But the theory of order does not give up its en- 
 deavours. If — it says — I cannot discover endurance 
 and rationality of becoming in all objectivity as it is 
 immediately, can I not form a special concept of 
 limited validity on the foundation of all immediate 
 objectivity, which will satisfy my postulates of 
 order, even though immediate objectivity does not 
 satisfy them .'' 
 
 And thus the theory of order forms the concept 
 of Nature. 
 
 I do not hesitate to say : 'f he definition — and the 
 only strict definition — of the concept of Nature is, 
 that Nature is a something which satisfies the postu- 
 lates of a rational theory of becomings and which 
 behaves at the same time as if it were independent 
 and self-persistent in itself. All other definitions of 
 " Nature " fail to fulfil their promise ; and it is 
 certainly quite impossible to found the concept of 
 "Nature" upon its relation to so-called "sensations." 
 On the contrary, sensations taken by themselves are 
 nothing but a part of consciously possessed objectivity 
 in the widest sense, and are not per se distinguishable 
 from remembrances, images of the imagination, or 
 hallucinations. It is only because that which a 
 " sensation " signifies is related to the one self- 
 consistent and rational being Nature that this sensa- 
 tion is a " sensation," and is admitted as such. 
 
 Objects of Nature we shall call natural or real 
 
46 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 objects, to distinguish them from objects in general. 
 They are objects of the second order or mediate 
 objects. They are indicated or signified by an im- 
 mediate object, consciously possessed, i.e. by the 
 content of a thought. They are regarded as always 
 the same in themselves, even if they are not perceived 
 or thought of. They are these single quasi-independent 
 objects in their true independent singleness. 
 
 With regard to Nature, then, it is possible to 
 discover a certain It that endures, and to connect 
 the changes that occur in this // as if the logical 
 relation of reason and consequence were realized or 
 petrified, so to say, in them. In other words : with 
 regard to Nature the concepts of substance and 
 causality have a meaning ; with regard to Nature a 
 rational theory of causality is possible. 
 
 This, now, is very important for the theory of 
 natural becoming in general and for the theory of 
 vitalism in particular. If only we keep in mind 
 what Nature means to us, what becoming or change 
 means, and in what form we become acquainted with 
 natural objects, we shall be able to make some a priori 
 statements about the possible forms of becoming. We 
 can say something about a certain limited number 
 of types in which natural becoming may appear, and 
 about the qualities of these types.^ 
 
 Our acquaintance with the objects of Nature — to 
 begin with this topic — always starts from sense- 
 data which possess a spatial character, let me say : a 
 sign of spatiality. Data relating to Nature are always 
 not only now and such, but also here. All that we 
 
 ' Cp. Ordnungdehre, pp. 173-187. 
 
Ill POSSIBLE FORMS OF BECOMING 47 
 
 immediately know about Nature Is, then, of the form 
 of a now-here-such. This does not mean that all 
 the immediate objects of our consciousness which 
 are of the form of a now-here-such signify mediate 
 objects of Nature. We have already said that they 
 do not. It means that there are no states of Nature 
 knowable to us immediately, except by data of that 
 form. 
 
 Becoming in Nature is a something " between " 
 two states of Nature.^ As, then, a state of Nature 
 can only be experienced in the form of a now-here- 
 such, it follows that natural becoming, as far as it is 
 to be experienced immediately^ is always given by 
 two data, no more and no less, of the form now- 
 here-such. This is very important for what is to 
 follow. 
 
 The meaning of Nature and becoming has been 
 stated. But, in order to be well prepared for our 
 a priori deduction of the possible forms of becoming, 
 we must devote a few words to a certain conse- 
 quence of what we have called the quasi-rational 
 
 ' In a review of my Ordnungdehre (a review which, by the way, refers 
 to a few purely mathematical topics exclusively, and this from an ortho- 
 dox Russellian point of view) I am told that the concept of becoming is 
 superfluous, as " all the properties of a motion can be deduced " if 
 motion is defined " by expressing the co-ordinates as functions of the 
 time" {Mind, N.S. No. 89). I should be glad to learn from my critic 
 how he can " deduce " the behaviour of a dog, the restitution of 
 Clavellina, or the history of the Roman Republic in this way, i.e. with- 
 out the concepts the same, enduring, and becoming (cp. Ordnungslekre, 
 p. 174, note 1, and p. 210 note). 
 
 Mathematicians are very often inclined to neglect everything that 
 they cannot attack by their own methods, and to identify their own 
 limited subject with the totality of philosophical problems. But, as 
 Schopenhauer has well said : " Wo das Rechnen anfangt, hOrt das 
 Verstehen auf" {Satz -vom Grunde, % 21). 
 
48 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 connexion of becoming in itself, or the rational 
 conception of causality. Every instance of becom- 
 ing is to be regarded as if it were the reason of a 
 later and the consequence of an earlier one, it is 
 — to introduce now the usual names in a specified 
 meaning — to be regarded as cause on the one side, 
 and as effect on the other. This is what the rational 
 conception of so-called causality means. 
 
 Now in logic a reason can never have a conse- 
 quence that is richer in content than itself ; the 
 degree of manifoldness, i.e. the number of irreducible 
 constituents of a concept can never increase in the 
 course of consequences. If, then, we regard causality 
 as an analogon to the logical relation of implication 
 or, what is the same thing in the last resort, reason 
 and consequence, it follows that the effect can only be 
 accounted for by the cause if the cause is at least of 
 the same degree of manifoldness as the eiFect. Cause 
 and effect, it is true, are here objects of Nature and 
 not mere concepts, and therefore the purely logical 
 concept of a " degree of manifoldness " has to be 
 changed in some way in order to be applicable. 
 But there is no difficulty in doing this, as any state 
 of Nature may, so to say, be covered by a concept, 
 and therefore be regarded as having a degree of 
 manifoldness itself. 
 
 This, then, is the most essential principle of a 
 rational theory of becoming and causality : The 
 degree of manifoldness of a natural system cannot 
 increase from itself 
 
 And now we proceed to our a priori argument. 
 
 Two states of a natural system, embracing one 
 
Ill POSSIBLE FORMS OF BECOMING 49 
 
 phase of change, are, as we know, the starting-point. 
 The change that has led from one to the other has 
 to appear as the quasi-consequence of some former 
 becoming. This is our postulate ; but we do not 
 know a priori of what kind the former or earlier becom- 
 ing may be that we are in search of. 
 
 In the first possible case, the state of things 
 may be simply as follows. There is the change or 
 becoming we start from ; it is flanked by two states, 
 say B and C, each of them of the form of a now- 
 here-such. If now we happen to discover an earlier 
 spatial state of our system, A, which is such that 
 the degree of manifoldness of the states A, B, and C 
 is the same though the three states are not identical, 
 and if each single constituent of the becoming 
 flanked by B and C may properly be related to a 
 corresponding singularity of the becoming between 
 A and B, then our postulate is satisfied. The prob- 
 lem of a rationalization of becoming is solved. 
 
 But the problem is also easily solved under the 
 following circumstances : There is again the one 
 becoming marked by the spatial states B and C ; 
 but C is of a higher degree of complexity than B, 
 and there is no earlier becoming in the system to 
 which the increase of manifoldness can be due. If 
 then we find some earlier becoming outside the 
 system in the spatial sense of the word that may be 
 responsible for the increase of manifoldness, the 
 problem of rationalization is again solved. As in 
 the first case, we have found the quasi-sufficient 
 reason of what happened in former spatial becoming. 
 
 Let us call it singular causality in the cases studied 
 
 E 
 
50 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 so far. Causality as known in physics and chemistry 
 is always of the singular type. The principles of 
 mechanics, as formulated by Newton, and the two 
 chief principles of so-called energetics are expressions 
 of special aspects of singular causality. 
 
 But singular causality by no means covers the whole 
 field of possibilities with regard to causal connexion. 
 
 Imagine our system again at the two stages B 
 and C. Suppose that C is richer in manifoldness 
 than B is in one special respect, namely, with regard 
 to the number of elementary things, say " atoms," 
 constituting the system. What are we to do if we 
 assume that we know — it is certainly imaginable — 
 that no elementary thing has ever entered the 
 system by passing through its boundaries? Unless 
 we are to sacrifice the rationality of becoming, wc 
 cannot avoid saying that thing-creating natural agents 
 have been at work. And motion-creating natural 
 agents are to be postulated, if the system had been 
 at rest, say, until the time / and then begins to 
 change, there being no former becoming " outside " 
 the system in the spatial sense of the word that 
 can be responsible for the beginning of change. 
 
 Two forms of creation are thus possible as forms 
 of natural becoming. Neither of them actually 
 occurs, it seems. But it is of some logical value to 
 remember that certain psychologists who reject the 
 theory of psycho-physical parallelism do assume a 
 " creation " of energy on the part of the " soul." 
 
 The last type of becoming starts again from two 
 spatial states of a system, the degree of manifoldness 
 or complexity of which is different, the complexity 
 
Ill POSSIBLE FORMS OF BECOMING 51 
 
 having been increased during the change from B to 
 C. The difference of manifoldness in this case is not 
 due to the existence of more elementary things in the 
 second state, but to another pecuHarity : the number 
 of different kinds of relations among the '■'■things" 
 -present is greater in the second state than in the first. 
 A greater number of elementary concepts are now 
 necessary to determine the second state of the system 
 considered as a concept, and this is what the expres- 
 
 O O O u O 
 
 Fig. 2. — Diagram illustrating the fourth possible type of becoming. 
 
 A homogeneous distribution of elements is made heterogeneous without any machine- 
 like preformation in space. 
 
 sion " higher degree of manifoldness " really means. 
 Imagine sixteen balls of the same size and composition 
 arranged in rows of four at equal distances from 
 one another. Their arrangement is now less complex 
 than if they were arranged, say, in lines suggestive 
 of a plant (Fig. 2). A greater number of concepts 
 are required to describe the latter formation, because 
 there is a much greater variety of relations, all of 
 them in this case merely spatial. 
 
 If, then, in a given natural system an increase of 
 the degree of manifoldness, i.e. of complexity, occurs, 
 of the kind just explained, and if, on the other hand, 
 
52 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 we know that this increase has not been prepared in 
 any way inside or outside the system in space, that 
 there has not been any kind of spatial preformation, 
 then, unless we are to violate the rationale of change, 
 we are obliged to introduce non-spatial factors of 
 becoming, and credit them with the increase of 
 complexity that has occurred. Let it be well under- 
 stood : there is no creation of things, and no creation 
 of becoming as such. The sufficient reason for the 
 amount of mere becoming as such may be present 
 in space ; but the sufficient reason for the greater 
 variety of relations establishing itself before our 
 eyes is not. 
 
 The most important case of an increase of the 
 degree of manifoldness occurs when an arrangement 
 that is a mere sum is transformed into an arrange- 
 ment of the character of unity or totality of some 
 kind. We shall therefore give to this type of 
 possible becoming the name of unifying causality. 
 
 Now, unifying causality is the type of becoming 
 encountered in the organic world. 
 
 Has not our analytical description of unifying 
 causality been almost verbally a description of the 
 differentiation of a harmonious-equipotential system, 
 say of the development of the blastula of the sea- 
 urchin or of the restitution of parts of the branchial 
 apparatus of the Ascidian Clavellina ^ An equal 
 sum-like distribution of possibilities is transformed, 
 without preformation in space, into an unequal and 
 whole distribution of actualities : that was our descrip- 
 tion of what happens in harmonious differentiation ; 
 and we added that the principle of the conservation 
 
Ill JUSTIFICATION OF VITALISM 53 
 
 of energy is not violated by this process. Now, this 
 is a perfect illustration of what goes on in the fourth 
 type of becoming. A natural system passes from 
 one state to another which is more complex. It is 
 no longer a mere sum that can be described by a few 
 elementary concepts ; it has become a whole, a 
 totality, a unit, that requires a great number of 
 concepts for its description, since it abounds in a 
 variety of relations. This all happens without any 
 machine-like preformation in space. 
 
 Thus then we have justified vitalism on the basis 
 of logic and ontology : wholeness is a legitimate 
 concept, and becoming that leads from non-whole- 
 ness to wholeness, i.e. unifying causality, is one of 
 the a priori possible forms of becoming. We have 
 proved this on the foundation of what may be 
 called " the geometry of becoming " in the form of 
 an analogy. 
 
 We may also say, though we have not used the 
 word so far, that we have proved wholeness and 
 becoming to be real categories, and the union of whole- 
 ness and becoming to be a legitimate categorical union. 
 
 But what about the concept of teleology, which is 
 certainly much more popular than wholeness and 
 unifying causality are .-' To put it briefly : Apart 
 from its psychological and its merely descriptive 
 sense we may use the word teleological whenever a 
 result that is a whole is reached by a succession of 
 various steps or phases of becoming, each of which is 
 subject to unifying causality. The words evolution 
 or evolutionary becoming may also be applied in this 
 case, as, for example, in embryology. 
 
54 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 But the concepts of wholeness and unifying 
 causality are more fundamental than the concepts of 
 teleology and evolution are, the latter being, so to 
 say, categories of the second degree.^ 
 
 Our argument has been quite unbiassed by any 
 of the current philosophical theories ; it has been 
 quite self-consistent and, so to say, immediate. But, 
 as the subject is very important, I should now like to 
 try to legitimate vitalism by yet another line of 
 argument. I should like to show that " categories " 
 as laid down by Kant can be brought into conformity 
 with the doctrine of vitalism. 
 
 Kant's conception of a category differs somewhat 
 from ours, if we apply that term to such concepts as 
 becoming, the enduring It, the quasi-logical connexion of 
 becoming in itself, singular and unifying causality. 
 Our concepts of order with respect to Nature may be 
 resolved into the really elemental concepts of this, 
 such, relation, reason, consequence, manifoldness, etc. 
 Kant's categories, on the other hand, and especially 
 those of " relation," namely, "substance," "causality," 
 and " Wechselwirkung" are regarded as elemental in 
 themselves, as "Stammbegriffe des reinen Verstandes." 
 
 Kant tries to deduce his categories, as he calls it, 
 and his deduction is of two different kinds. 
 
 'Firstly, in what he calls the "transcendental 
 deduction," he tries to show that categories are the 
 prerequisite of experience, so that, conversely, every 
 
 1 I am glad to see that this doctrine of the primacy of 'wholeness 
 is also advocated in the very suggestive Gifford Lectures delivered by 
 Professor B. Bosanquet, The Principle of Indi-viduality and lvalue {i^iz) ; 
 see, in particular, pp. xxv., 123, 135, 14.6, 181, etc. 
 
Ill KANT'S THEORY OF CATEGORIES 55 
 
 concept that proves to be a prerequisite of experience 
 is, by virtue of this very feature, a "category." From 
 this point of view it is easy to show that wholeness, or 
 the double concept of the whole and the fart, is a real 
 category also ; for it is as indispensable in forming 
 any kind of experience with regard to Nature as 
 are the concepts of a thing with its properties and the 
 concepts oi cause and effect. 
 
 But Kant tried also to give what he calls a 
 " metaphysical deduction " of the categories, and this 
 has become very famous. 
 
 Kant wishes to prove the completeness of his system 
 of categories. He therefore says : Categories are 
 concepts of connexion with regard to objects in Nature. 
 If, then, we could enumerate completely all the 
 possible concepts of purely logical connexion, i.e. of 
 connexion not among things in Nature but among 
 logical objects, and could co-ordinate a " category " 
 with each of these concepts of logical connexion, the 
 system of categories would also be complete. Now, 
 the system of the possible forms of judgments, as 
 developed in classical logic, enables us to enumerate 
 the purely logical concepts of connexion completely. 
 The system of the forms of judgments, then, is the 
 foundation of the system of categories. The 
 category of substance, i.e. the concepts of thing and 
 property, is co-ordinated with the so-called categorical 
 judgment, the category of causality with the hypo- 
 thetical judgment, etc. 
 
 If we take it for granted that Kant's deduction of 
 the categories is legitimate as a philosophical method 
 In general — a problem that we cannot attempt to 
 
S6 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 solve in these lectures — it is easy to show that a 
 category like wholeness or totality or individuality, or 
 whatever you like to call it, must also be " deduced," 
 and has simply been forgotten by Kant. Kant, in fact, 
 forgot to enumerate among the forms of judgments, 
 considered from the point of view of relation, what 
 might be called the complete conjunctive judgment, i.e. 
 the judgment that expresses a definition. He only 
 recognizes the categorical judgment, i.e. judgment in 
 the form A is a B \ the hypothetical judgment, i.e. 
 judgment in the form If there is A there is B ; and 
 the disjunctive judgment, i.e. judgment in the form 
 A is either B or C or D, etc. The complete con- 
 junctive judgment, which has the form A is Bj and 
 B2 and 5g and . . . B^ was not recognized by him 
 as an independent type of judgment, though it really 
 is. And to this form of judgment the category of 
 wholeness corresponds. 
 
 I have added these few remarks about Kant's 
 theory of the categories for those of you who are 
 familiar with the philosophy of that great man.^ 
 Personally, I am of opinion that my own justification 
 of unifying causality is more immediate and less 
 artificial, and that it has the further advantage of 
 " deducing " unifying becoming as a whole, whilst a 
 category in the Kantian sense would have to be 
 secondarily united with something else in order to 
 constitute a real natural factor. But it is important 
 that even on Kantian lines a legitimation of the 
 concept of natural wholeness is possible. 
 
 ' Compare my article in Kantstudien, vol. xvi,, 1911 ; see also 
 Gifford Lectures, vol. ii. pp. 296-329. 
 
Ill WHOLENESS A CATEGORY 57 
 
 The logical justification of the concept of whole- 
 ness, and the theory of unifying causality in particular, 
 not only legitimate the vitalism we have developed in 
 our previous lectures, they raise at the same time a 
 great number of new and very important problems.^ 
 
 We have only spoken of the biological individual 
 so far, and we have seen that the type of becoming 
 in this individual is unifying causality. But besides 
 the biological individual, there is still to be considered 
 the community of biological individuals, the totality 
 of living beings, the process of life as expressed in the 
 theory of descent. 
 
 We may accept this theory without restriction, it 
 seems. Strong arguments, especially those derived 
 from the geographical distribution of animals and 
 plants and from palaeontology, are in favour of it. 
 But what about the law of so-called phylogeny .'' 
 That the well-known theories connected with the 
 names of Lamarck and Darwin do not account for 
 the true phylogenetic law seems almost universally 
 granted at the present day. Both theories may be 
 true in certain fields, but they do not touch the main 
 problem, the apparent progressive complication in 
 phylogeny. They can only account for certain kinds 
 of adaptedness in certain organisms — and even then 
 only with the aid of various hypothetical additions, 
 as, for example, the inheritance of acquired characters. 
 But, unfortunately, concerning the central problem of 
 phylogeny we are absolutely ignorant. We can offer 
 only a formal hypothetical solution, namely, the 
 
 1 Com^dse Gifford Lectures, vol. i. p. 250 to end; vol. ii. pp. 340-358 ; 
 Ordnungslehre,Yp. 251-289. 
 
58 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 assumption that there may be a certain suprapersonal 
 kind of entelechy that realizes itself in space in the 
 phylogenetic process, just as personal entelechy realizes 
 itself in ontogeny. 
 
 The phylogenetic problem as a question of supra- 
 personal unity, then, is the first problem newly 
 raised by our logical discussion of wholeness. It Is 
 in any case a necessary task of science to examine the 
 phenomena of phylogeny with regard to the question 
 whether there be any indication of factual wholeness 
 in them or not. 
 
 There is, however, a second problem of a similar 
 kind, namely, the history of men, into which we 
 are able to see farther than into the problem of 
 phylogeny. 
 
 The evolutionary character of history, its wholeness 
 in becoming as we might call it, was most strongly 
 advocated by Herder and Hegel, and must no doubt 
 remain the leading idea for every one who desires 
 to grasp historical facts from the point of view 
 of order with due respect to their peculiarities in 
 comparison with other facts of reality. History as 
 the working of one evolutionary law is the point in 
 question, not laws of history or in history ; not that 
 which is repeatable, but the one line of becoming 
 which is unrepeatable. This at least is the main 
 problem of order, in relation to which all others are 
 secondary.^ 
 
 ' I fully agree with what Bosanquet says (p. I02 of his Principle of 
 Indi'viduality and Value, 1912) : " We are constantly being told that the 
 intelligence can deal with nothing but repetitions. This is simply an 
 echo of the Logic of extension and classiiication which . . . can never, 
 surely, give a genuine account of knowledge." 
 
in PHYLOGENY AND HISTORY 59 
 
 But is there really any reason for assuming history 
 to be an evolutionary unity ? Is it not a mere 
 logical postulate, quite barren when brought face to 
 face with facts ? 
 
 No doubt we do not yet know for a fact that 
 history is a unity in becoming. On the contrary, 
 we see certain features in history that seem to 
 make its evolutionary character unknowable in 
 principle, or at least extremely difficult to discover. 
 In the first place, if the suprapersonal wholeness in 
 becoming exists, there is certainly a great deal of 
 chance mixed up with it. This feature, which to a 
 certain extent appears also in phylogeny and even in 
 individual biology, will be studied in the next 
 lecture on a larger scale. Secondly, a strange diffi- 
 culty arises from the fact that the historian is him- 
 self a link in the evolutionary process he intends to 
 discover, that process being by no means finished. 
 He is really in the position in which an embryonic 
 cell would be, supposing it were a thinking being 
 and we asked it to say whether the strange collection 
 of processes, amidst which it stands, is a supra- 
 cellular unity or not. Thirdly, there is the question. 
 What can the supposed end of historical evolution 
 be? Certainly not a material state, as the end of 
 ontogeny is. But if immaterial, nothing can be said 
 about it. Even with respect to individual entelechy 
 we were only able to speak about its effects, we could 
 not say what it was in itself, and this quite apart 
 from metaphysical problems. 
 
 The problem of a real evolution in history, then, 
 seems in fact to be hardly approachable. And yet 
 
6o PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 there are certain signs of wholeness in history, or at 
 least in the object of history, i.e. the community of 
 men, or "the State" in the widest sense of the word. 
 There is, firstly, the general biological fact of pro- 
 pagation, which seems to signify something supra- 
 personal. In the second place, there is a certain 
 harmony among the professions of men that seems 
 not to be due to chance. In the third place, there 
 are some changes with regard to the behaviour of 
 mankind in general, which seem to us to be 
 " progress," as, for instance, the abolishing of torture 
 and slavery. Fourthly, it has been said that what 
 Wundt calls the " heterogeny of purposes " is also 
 a sign of suprapersonal evolution. This is the fact 
 that any action of a single person or of a community of 
 men may have effects which were not foreseen, and 
 which were not at all intended, but which are yet of 
 benefit to the whole. Hegel speaks of the " List der 
 Idee " in a similar sense. 
 
 But more than anything else, it seems to me, the 
 existence of a moral consciousness in man gives us a sign 
 of suprapersonal unity. Moral feeling, taken in itself, 
 is quite unintelligible and absolutely isolated. It loses 
 its isolated character when — to put it briefly — ethics 
 becomes part of logic, i.e. as soon as a man's moral 
 feeling is regarded as a sign of the part he is to play in 
 •a suprapersonal wholeness, of which he would other- 
 wise have no knowledge. Conscience seems to be the 
 means by which the suprapersonal agent guides the 
 will. And conscience is guided by the two ideals of 
 pity and duty. Pity regulates the relations between 
 all men as mere men, whilst the feeling of duty tells 
 
in SUPRAPERSONAL UNITY 6i 
 
 a man his own personal task, which nobody but 
 himself can fulfil. 
 
 Thus, then, there certainly are signs of supra- 
 personal unity in history, or at least in human society. 
 But, of course, great caution is required here, and 
 there is certainly a very great amount of contingency, 
 i.e. non-wholeness, in every actual historical and politi- 
 cal formation, as for instance in the various states as 
 they actually exist. At any rate we must not say that 
 every historical event is a step in historical evolution. 
 
 Here we close our theory of becoming, and of 
 unifying causality in particular. In what follows we 
 shall regard the problem of wholeness from yet 
 another point of view. So far our view of the 
 world has been throughout dualistic : we have had 
 singular and unifying causality, inorganic and organic 
 Nature, contingency and order. May we not try to 
 replace dualism by some sort of monism ? Not, 
 of course, by the modern monism of contingency, 
 but by a true monism of order ? 
 
FOURTH LECTURE 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF MONISM METAPHYSICAL 
 
 CONCLUSIONS 
 
 The concept of wholeness, as applied to Nature, has 
 been used by us hitherto in very close connexion 
 with the concept of becoming. Now it is possible to 
 show that this has been only provisionary, and that 
 the concept of wholeness is able to play a far more 
 important, and in fact the most important part, in a 
 rational theory of Nature. 
 
 In the theory of " becoming " we applied the 
 concept of wholeness to limited systems occurring 
 in Nature. The fact that such systems become 
 individual wholes instead of mere sums gave us 
 the concept of unifying causality. Now at length 
 the profound importance of the concept " a whole " 
 is to become evident and to justify our re- 
 mark at the beginning of the last lecture, that 
 logic begins as well as ends with the concept of 
 order. 
 
 Our possession of the concept of order in some 
 unexplained and mysterious way was the starting- 
 point of the theory of order. And now having 
 come to the end of that theory, we may ask in con- 
 
 62 
 
LECT. IV NATURE AS ONE WHOLE 67, 
 
 elusion : What is natural reality hut an arrangement of 
 facts constituting a whole ? 
 
 This question brings us to the last part of our 
 discussions.^ 
 
 The doctrine that the universe is one ordered whole 
 may be called the monism of order. What then does 
 this monism of order — or briefly monism, since the 
 possibility of a " monism of summation," so much in 
 vogue nowadays, is to be excluded a limine — what 
 then does monism advocate ? It amounts simply to 
 this : Whatever is a constituent of the being or 
 becoming of the universe has its one specified place in 
 one order, or, in short, it is this being or becoming in 
 this order. 
 
 There can be no doubt that this monism, were it 
 true, would supersede all other theories of natural 
 order. Everything would prove to have been pro- 
 visionary and would merge into the concept of 
 monism. There would be no limited systems, for 
 there would be only the one system ; and, strange to 
 say, there would be no "laws of Nature " with regard 
 to independent repeatable kinds of becoming, for 
 there would be but one law, and no kind of independ- 
 ence. What is usually called a law of Nature 
 would therefore be nothing but a certain form of 
 the behaviour, so to say, of The One, a form of 
 behaviour that has occurred so far in many cases, 
 but is by no means guaranteed for the future ; the 
 theory of causality as laid down by Hume would 
 thus receive quite a new and surprising illustration. 
 
 1 Cp. Ordnungslehre, pp. 284-289, and my article in Logos, vol. iv., 
 1913. 
 
64 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 ^ And, finally, there would be no difference between 
 " mechanism " and " vitalism," for there would be no 
 mechanism. There would be one organism, so to 
 say ; or, in other terms, the universe would be the 
 one organism. 
 
 Very many concepts and doctrines now fashion- 
 able in science and philosophy would thus have to be 
 given up, and would prove to be only of a prepara- 
 tory kind. But one thing whose disappearance 
 would certainly not afflict us is chance, contingency, 
 which is, in fact, the greatest enemy of all thinking, 
 that which breaks all the postulates of order, the 
 fjirj ov. Chance would disappear ; for where there is 
 but one order with ordered constituents there is no 
 chance or contingency : every this is a this in this 
 order. 
 
 Is what we have been describing a state of the 
 logic of natural reality, actually attainable .? I am 
 sorry to say it remains a mere hypothetical ideal. It 
 is true that if we had the actual concept of the one 
 order of Nature., we should know by having this concept 
 everything that is knowable ; in the same strange 
 manner, perhaps, as in mathematics, where we are 
 able to know about the species by knowing about the 
 genus, e.g. from the concept of " conic section " we 
 are able to develop the different possible forms of these 
 sections. But we do not possess the concept of " the 
 one order of Nature," we are not even on the way to 
 establish it hypothetically, and we have every reason 
 to be satisfied with having at least some notions of 
 " natural laws," whether provisional or not. 
 
 The main reason for our inability to attain the 
 
IV CONTINGENCY 65 
 
 ideal of a monism of order is the impossibility of 
 denying the actual existence of contingency. By 
 "contingency" in Nature we mean every kind of 
 being or becoming that cannot be brought into 
 relation with any natural wholeness whatever, i.e. not 
 even with a limited whole. Let us look for a 
 moment at the various ways in which contingency 
 meets us in Nature ; and let us begin with rather 
 concrete cases. 
 
 Embryological development, as we have seen, 
 occurs in an autonomous way, the wholeness of the 
 individual living form being guaranteed by a non- 
 mechanical natural agent, the essence of which is 
 wholeness, in the way of unifying causality. But is 
 every single character of an embryo the special and 
 determined link of this one whole .'' Certainly not, as 
 appears most decidedly from the simple fact that the 
 single cells which make up the organs of the adult indi- 
 viduals of a species have a different position and size 
 in each individual. Wholeness, then, does not go so 
 far as to determine every peculiarity of cellular con- 
 struction : the position of the single organ-forming 
 cell is contingent^ in spite of all vitalism. 
 
 With regard to phylogeny our actual knowledge of 
 a suprapersonal evolutionary factor is, unfortunately, 
 very poor. But we may assume with good reason 
 that besides the line of evolution there is also some- 
 thing contingent in phylogeny, with regard to pure 
 variations as well as adaptations. Contingencies 
 with regard to suprapersonal wholeness form the 
 subject-matter ofLamarckism and Darwinism. The 
 specific characters of the organic forms which are 
 
 F 
 
66 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 the expression of suprapersonal wholeness are, in 
 other words, mixed or overlaid with characters of 
 form contingent with regard to this wholeness. And 
 it is this contingency in " form " that makes it so 
 difficult to discover the true evolutionary phylogenetic 
 line or even to establish a really " rational " system 
 of the organisms. 
 
 And what about the hypothetical evolution in 
 history proper .'' Granted that this evolution exists, 
 it is certainly obscured, so to say, by what may be 
 called psychological cumulations of a non-evolutionary 
 character to such an extent as to be hardly discover- 
 able. And, moreover, if we regard the ethical 
 qualities of the single individuals in suprapersonal 
 evolution as the true signs of their suprapersonal 
 significance, are there not very many actions that are 
 not " moral," and of which we cannot say that they 
 " should be " ? There is moral evil in the world, 
 and this moral evil is contingent with regard to 
 evolution ; in fact, it may be said to be anti- 
 evolutionary, just as disease of the cells or organs 
 is with regard to the evolution of the individual 
 body. 
 
 These, then, are cases where contingency is mixed 
 with non-contingency or wholeness. But what are 
 we to say with regard to chance or contingency in our 
 common daily experience } Is not almost every- 
 thing "contingent" here.? Is it not contingent 
 that we met such and such people in the street 
 to-day, and that the stones by the wayside lie just as 
 they do } In fact, all inorganic constellations seem 
 to be contingent to such an extent that it appears 
 
IV HARMONY OF NATURE 67 
 
 at first glance as if the realm of inorganic science had no 
 room at all for the concept of wholeness, but only for 
 the concept of " law of Nature " with regard to' in- 
 dependent cases of becoming. 
 
 The result therefore seems to be : contingency- 
 mixed with wholeness in the organic, pure contingency 
 in the inorganic world. 
 
 But, it seems, we have been a little too rash in 
 stating this result. For is not the concept " law of 
 Nature" itself a sign of wholeness, at least wholeness 
 of a certain kind .'' Does not the existence of " laws " 
 prove that there is at least a certain degree of com- 
 munity in the totality to which they apply .? 
 
 And, moreover, is there not a certain community 
 of existence when one body acts upon another, say 
 by pushing 1 But the constellation of matter is 
 throughout contingent, you will say. With regard 
 to this problem it seems to me very important that 
 the ancient concept of a harmony of Nature has come 
 to the front again recently in a modern form. I 
 shall say nothing here about the constellation of the 
 heavenly bodies, of the Milky Way for example, for 
 all these things are still very problematic at present. 
 I will only refer to some very important results pub- 
 lished by the American biological chemist, Professor 
 Henderson, in his remarkable book. The Fitness of 
 the Environment. Henderson calls attention to the 
 numerous exceptional properties of water and car- 
 bonic acid. The so-called " constants " of these two 
 substances are in fact " exceptions " in almost every 
 branch of physics and chemistry, and it is the 
 unique constant in each case that makes them so 
 
68 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 important to living things. There is a sort of mutual 
 adaptation between water and carbonic acid on the 
 one side and life on the other ; and this seems 
 to prove a certain wholeness or teleology of the 
 universe in general, including organic and non-organic 
 Nature. 
 
 We must therefore modify our former general 
 result by saying that throughout the universe there is 
 wholeness mixed with contingency. 
 
 This, then, is the Aristotelian dualism of elSo? 
 and vKt), of form and matter, in a modern form. 
 Must we accept it as a definite answer, and thus give 
 up altogether our logical ideal of a " monism of 
 order " .'' 
 
 There can be no doubt that any one who regards 
 experience as the most important source of factual 
 knowledge and also believes that hypotheses must be 
 formed in close connexion with experience, is bound 
 to remain a dualist. He may allow the hypothesis 
 of a suprapersonal unity in phylogeny and history, 
 but he will be unable to accept the monism of order, 
 i.e. the doctrine that reality is one ordered whole in 
 which every single case of being and becoming has Its 
 own place of order. 
 
 But there have always been others with whom the 
 postulates of logic came first, and they have advocated 
 the monism of order In spite of all that we know 
 about the existence of non-wholeness, i.e. of chance 
 and contingency. In earlier periods of philosophy the 
 problem of " Theodicy," as it Is generally called, was 
 the expression of this belief in the primary function 
 of postulatlon. " Theodicy " means the justifica- 
 
IV DUALISM OR MONISM ? 69 
 
 tion of God, which in the dry language of logic 
 is equivalent to saying that nothing exists that is 
 unordered with regard to one wholeness. We now 
 understand how it could be the chief task of Leibniz, 
 for example, to show that all kinds of evil in the 
 world are not what they at first seem to be, if only 
 you go deeper, and that in any case the actual world 
 is the best of all possible worlds. 
 
 The " Theodicy " and the monism of order in a 
 purely logical form are based in the first place upon 
 the postulatory concept of factual wholeness — though 
 this as a rule is by no means made out in a clear 
 and explicit manner — and, secondly, upon the fact that 
 there are limiu to our capacity of factual knowledge. As 
 this second point is of a certain principal importance, 
 we will go a little deeper into a discussion of it. 
 We shall see that monism of order, improbable as it 
 may appear to many of us, is by no means to be 
 entirely denied — and this on account of certain 
 peculiarities in the limitations of human knowledge. 
 
 Let us begin with one special form of defence of 
 monism that is historically important as well as 
 important in our own days. 
 
 Leibniz goes with Spinoza in so far as he assumes 
 that every elementary character of the Absolute — 
 be this in itself what it may — is represented to the 
 human mind by a certain peculiarity of the spatial 
 kind. But with respect to spatiality our knowledge 
 is very limited, as regards things very distant and as 
 regards things very small, the latter being the more 
 important restriction. Unlimited experience, then, 
 
70 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 would enable us to know of the one order of things 
 in space and therefore of the one order of Reality. 
 
 Those who do not accept vitalism and yet feel 
 that there is something else in Nature than mere 
 mechanism, have occasionally in our own days 
 advocated a view that is rather similar to that of 
 Leibniz. They speak of the " union of universal 
 teleology and mechanism," meaning by this phrase 
 that the universe would appear as one ordered whole 
 and as a mechanical system at the same time, if only 
 we had a sufficient knowledge of spatial reality, 
 which is supposed to furnish us with a symbol of every- 
 thing that there is. 
 
 But to this form of a hypothetical monism of 
 order, and, in fact, to all endeavours to " unite " 
 mechanism and " universal teleology," i.e. ordered 
 wholeness, it is possible to make very grave objec- 
 tions — so grave, indeed, that nothing of the theory 
 of " union " remains. And these objections can be 
 made just as well if we start from wholeness as if we 
 start from mechanism} 
 
 If we begin with the concept of wholeness, we 
 remark that it certainly would be very strange if 
 there were one order with regard to spatial reality 
 and yet we could discover nothing of it ; for we 
 know a good deal both about things very distant and 
 about things very minute. This, then, counts against 
 monism of order as such, if ever it takes the form of 
 spatial monism. With regard to spatially symbolized 
 
 1 A full discussion of the following argument may be found in my 
 paper published in Sitzungsherichte d. Heidelberg. Akad. d. JViss., Phil.- 
 hist. Kl., 1914, No. I. 
 
IV MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY 71 
 
 reality our knowledge is in fact not so scanty that we 
 could entirely overlook an order that would be 
 expressed in everything. 
 
 But we have a further observation to make, and 
 this in particular against the theory of a so-called 
 " union " of universal teleology and mechanism. A 
 spatial monism of order would negate " mechanism," 
 for it would give to every singleness of being and 
 becoming this one place ; therefore there would be 
 no proper " laws," for there would be no independ- 
 ence of being and becoming. Therefore the concept 
 of mechanism in its real sense is the true opposite 
 to the concept of wholeness of order, from which 
 we started, and thus there can never be a "union" 
 of the two. 
 
 But if we begin with " mechanism," could it not 
 then be shown that ordered wholeness might be its 
 result ^ Certainly it is possible to show that whole- 
 ness can be the result of a true mechanism that 
 follows the principles of Newton or others of a 
 similar kind — but what sort of wholeness is it ? From 
 a real " mechanism " nothing but the " most probable " 
 distribution of elements can result, according to the 
 principles of the calculus of probability. And every 
 Jinal arrangement of a real mechanism can only be 
 of a geometrical type, comparable with that of the 
 planetary systems. Could this be "the other side" 
 or " a symbol " of what we must attribute to Reality 
 by reason of what we know from biology, history, 
 psychology, and ethics ? The assumption is simply 
 absurd. 
 
 And so we may sum up as follows. There is a 
 
72 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 special kind of monism of order that may be called 
 the monism of Spinoza, Leibniz, and the Neo-Kantian 
 school, or, in short, spatial monism of order. On the 
 hypothesis that every character of the Absolute has a 
 spatial symbol, or in short, on the basis of what we 
 may call the Spinozian dogma, it tries to find the one 
 ordered whole in spatial data. But it fails simply 
 because there is not this ordered wholeness in spatial 
 Givenness. And, moreover, it must be remembered, 
 firstly, that, if there were ordered wholeness in 
 spatiality, we could not speak of " mechanism," and, 
 secondly, that, from mechanism in a true sense 
 nothing but geometrical wholeness can arise.^ 
 
 Monism of order may, however, be justified in 
 principle by a very different method, by taking the 
 concept of the limited character of the possibilities of 
 our knowledge in a much deeper sense. 
 
 This form of monism rejects the Spinozian dogma, 
 to put the matter shortly. 
 
 And this means the following : Be the Absolute 
 
 ' By far the best instance of a spatial monism of order in recent 
 times is contained in the Gifford Lectures of Bernard Bosanquet. It 
 is particularly interesting to see that his mechanism u not a real 
 " mechanism." The fact that I feel unable to accept any kind of 
 monism of order as more than a mere logical ideal does not diminish 
 my admiration for this brilliant system. James Ward, in his Naturalism 
 and Agnosticism (vol. ii.), advocates a non-spatial monism, similar in 
 certain respects to that of Lotze, whilst Bosanquet may be said to be a 
 Hegelian to a great extent. I confess I am not quite clear about the 
 point of view taken by J. S. Haldane in his Mechanism, Life and 
 Personality (1913). Haldane rejects mechanism as well as vitalism ; it 
 seems that he is in favour of a monism of order of some sort. Compare 
 pages 104. and 122 of his book, and in particular page 132 f, where 
 personality is called " the great central fact of the universe,'' and this 
 in the sense of "not mere individual personality." 
 
IV THE SPINOZIAN DOGMA 73 
 
 what it may, in any case it cannot be postulated to 
 assume that all its elementary characters are able 
 to be symbolized to the human mind by spatial 
 signs. 
 
 In our vitalistic theory we have shown that in a 
 field of research, which may be said to be artificially 
 limited, there is reason to assume that non-mechanical 
 natural agents are at work, acting not in space but 
 " into " space, so to say. Metaphysically interpreted 
 this already means that the Spinozian dogma is 
 broken. But now we break that dogma much more 
 fundamentally, though merely in the negative sense, 
 by remarking that it is not necessary to regard 
 absolute Reality as something that is throughout 
 spatially symbolized. 
 
 And on this basis the monism of order, or 
 "Theodicy," which we know is the same thing 
 in the last resort, may be justified in spite of all 
 experience proper. For if we allow the Absolute 
 to consist of innumerable qualities which are not 
 spatially symbolized and are therefore unknowable, it 
 follows that the world of experience proper can only 
 give us a fragmental knowledge of absolute Reality 
 and nothing more. We do not speak here of tem- 
 porary ignorance due, say, to the minuteness or 
 remoteness of the objects, but of the fundamental 
 impossibility of knowing. In short, because we are 
 human, i.e. spatially limited beings, we cannot know. 
 And therefore from our piecemeal experience we can 
 never say whether there be not a monism of order 
 in the Absolute : e'« fiepov; yap yiyvdcrKOfiev — " We 
 know in part," as St. Paul says (i Cor. xiii. 9). 
 
74 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 This, then, is the last hope of the monism of 
 order. You may say that it is a hope resting upon 
 human imperfection and that it does not mean very 
 much ; that it rehes a little too much on mere 
 possibiHties. You may then reject monism of order 
 in favour of dualism ; you will then follow experience 
 proper, but, remember, you will renounce the fulfil- 
 ment of logical postulates and you will also get into 
 great metaphysical difficulties, of which the greatest 
 is the problem of evil, then absolutely insoluble. 
 On the other hand, as a dualist you do remain 
 loyal to experience and to your properly human 
 nature. You may even go so far as to say that even 
 with our hypothetical monism of order, based upon 
 human imperfection and fundamental ignorance, it 
 would still be necessary to explain why the Absolute 
 appears to us not only imperfect but bad in certain 
 respects, i.e. as something that is strictly negative. 
 And, it must be admitted, not even hypothetically can 
 the monism of order give an answer to this formu- 
 lation of the question of non-wholeness. 
 
 Personally, I confess that, while a monism of 
 order for the reasons explained is not altogether 
 impossible — though even then it is not quite satis- 
 factory, — I myself feel forced to accept the dualistic 
 doctrine, in spite of all logical postulates. This 
 duahsm, then, might be summed up as follows. 
 There is the material world as the world of chance, 
 but there is also a world of form or order that 
 manifests itself in certain areas of the material world, 
 namely, in the biological individual, and probably, in 
 another way, in phylogeny and history also ; there 
 
IV LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS 75 
 
 may even be formlike constellations in what we call 
 the Inorganic. 
 
 Let me conclude these lectures with a few very 
 general remarks. 
 
 We have based the philosophical part of our 
 lectures upon what we have called logic or the 
 theory of order. Now the theory of order deals 
 merely with what / consciously possess, and is there- 
 fore absolutely free from metaphysics. /" endeavour to 
 bring order into what / have experienced, into my 
 " Erlehtheitf to employ a German word hardly trans- 
 latable into English, — that is all ; / retain and fix 
 what I regard as a sign of order, i.e. a concept by 
 which there is order in the whole of that of which I 
 am conscious. 
 
 In this sense the whole theory of order may be 
 said to be founded solipsistically, that is with regard 
 to / as the one who arranges. When I say that a 
 thing is, it always and exclusively means that it is 
 or may be an object to my consciousness. This 
 applies also to natural objects, for we have said 
 nothing whatever about Nature, except that its objects 
 may be regarded as 2/^ they had an independent exist- 
 ence of their own. 
 
 Solipsism is the only basis of philosophy that is 
 not dogmatic ; for, let it be well understood, solipsism 
 does not say that I " exist " as a " substance " or 
 something else, but it only analyses the fundamental 
 pre-phenomenon : I have something consciously. And 
 this is the only fact — though not a " fact " in the 
 usual sense — that is beyond any doubt. 
 
76 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 Solipsism, then, is not dogmatic, not even in a 
 negative manner. It does not say : What I con- 
 sciously have is nothing but my phenomenon. It 
 merely says : What I consciously have is certainly my 
 phenomenon — whether it " be " anything else or not. 
 
 But now, for reasons that cannot be explained here 
 in full, the ordering Ego tries to go beyond the 
 limits of a pure theory of order and to establish the 
 concept of a something that " is " not merely in so far 
 as it is consciously possessed or possibly possessed in 
 some way. Thus, for reasons of order, the theory 
 of order gives itself up and asks for metaphysics. 
 
 But if metaphysics is to be of any use at all 
 and not a mere poetic fiction, it must start from 
 what is consciously possessed by me, i.e. from 
 " experience," and go on in such a way as to formu- 
 late judgments, which, though they mean more than 
 experience, yet are such as to make experience appear as 
 it is as their consequence. In other words : meta- 
 physics must use the method of induction in the 
 deeper sense of the word, and can only reach hypo- 
 thetical results ; for it is impossible to get from the 
 consequences to the reasons in a univocal way ; and 
 experience is the consequence in this case. 
 
 Leaving aside all other questions, let us ask only 
 this : What does our vitalistic and supravitalistic 
 theory mean with regard to metaphysics ; at least 
 with regard to certain fundamental metaphysical 
 questions } 
 
 Only once in the course of our lectures have 
 we gone beyond the boundaries of solipsism and the 
 pure theory of order. That was when we spoke of 
 
IV POSSIBILITY OF METAPHYSICS 77 
 
 the alternative of dualism and monism of order, 
 and tried to show that only under a certain 
 " metaphysical " assumption would monism be tenable 
 — at least in principle. We were then dealing with 
 what we called the Spinozian dogma, and to this we 
 shall now briefly return. 
 
 Monism of order would be an all-embracing 
 conception of the universe, and, moreover, a truly 
 metaphysical doctrine. Our vitalism, personal as 
 well as suprapersonal, is of a far more modest char- 
 acter ; it either rests immediately on " facts " or 
 remains in close relations to them. And yet it 
 violates the Spinozian dogma also, for it looks upon 
 Nature as something that cannot be entirely compre- 
 hended under spatial symbolism. There is more in 
 Nature than merely something in space ; there is 
 something in it that only has certain discrete points 
 of manifestation in space, so that space data can give 
 us only fragments with regard to Nature as it is. 
 Nature, so far, is only included in the realm of the 
 theory of order ; that is to say, it is my Nature and 
 only behaves as if it were independent in itself. But 
 what will happen if now we allow Nature to be a 
 sign of something that is more than Nature as a 
 concept of order, i.e. of something absolute ? 
 
 The Absolute — we are now entitled to say — is in 
 any case such as to possess properties which at least 
 in part are not symbolized to the human mind by 
 spatial signs. This holds on the basis of a real 
 monism of order, which completes the empirical 
 non-wholeness and makes it an absolute wholeness 
 by adding unknowable unspatial possibilities, and 
 
78 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 it also holds on the basis of mere personal and supra- 
 personal vitalism as a dualistic theory, remaining in 
 close relation with facts. Only if there were one 
 whole discoverable in spatial data as they are would it 
 be otherwise, as we have seen. Only in this case 
 should we not be obliged by the postulate of monism 
 of order and by the empirical facts of wholeness to 
 enlarge the realm of reality beyond the limits of 
 spatiality, because we should find what we are in 
 search of quite immediately. But this case does not 
 occur. 
 
 It certainly is the most important of all the 
 consequences of vitalism that it violates the Spinozian 
 dogma. Extensio is not an attributum of the 
 " substance " that has to enter into all its modi. 
 And what happens in space is only part of what 
 " happens " altogether in reality. Of a certain part 
 of absolute happening we get full signs, i.e. in 
 inorganic becoming ; of another part we get at 
 least fragmental signs, namely, with regard to the 
 organic world. How many kinds of becoming may 
 there be of which our mind is not able to form the least 
 conception F Thus the way has become open for 
 possibilities of all sorts, and this on the foundation of 
 facts ^ for personal vitalism at least rests quite im- 
 mediately on " facts." It is no longer necessary 
 to look upon spatial data as a strange image of 
 the Absolute in its completeness and then to be 
 disappointed with this strange image. There is not 
 a complete " image " of the Absolute in space. 
 
 This is one of the metaphysical consequences of 
 vitalism which we wished to mention. Let us now 
 
IV VITALISM AND METAPHYSICS 79 
 
 briefly advert to another relation between vitalism 
 and general metaphysics, which must remain far 
 more problematic than what we have said so far. 
 
 When passing from the pure theory of order to 
 the sphere of real knowledge, i.e. metaphysics, one 
 of the most fundamental questions is : Which of the 
 elementary concepts of logic may be of any meta- 
 physical significance ? Now it is not difficult to 
 show — though it cannot be explained in full here — 
 that the metaphysical validity of concepts like this, 
 such, relation, manifoldness, number, etc., is one of the 
 prerequisites of the possibility of metaphysics alto- 
 gether, and is therefore merely a postulate on the 
 part of the metaphysician. But also sface, or rather 
 " spatiality," is certainly a special something, or 
 rather, a special kind of relation, to which quite 
 a special and particular kind of relation, a -particular 
 system of relations, in the Absolute corresponds, 
 though, as our rejection of the dogma of Spinoza 
 implies, it does not express the totality of relations 
 in the Absolute. And what holds good for space 
 holds good also for time or becoming; i.e. becoming, as 
 understood in the theory of order, is the sign of 
 one particular absolute system of relations — unknown 
 and unknowable to the human mind " in itself." 
 
 But, what about the connexion of becoming in 
 itself, on the analogy of reason and consequence, as 
 postulated by the theory of order } What about all 
 predetermination of becoming .'' 
 
 In the theory of order we pressed the postulate 
 of determination so far as to establish a sort of 
 personal entelechy in order to have a sufficient reason 
 
8o PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY lect. 
 
 for what happens in the biological individual. Even 
 with regard to phylogeny and history, i.e. with 
 regard to suprapersonal processes which are unique 
 and not yet finished in their uniqueness, we postulated 
 non-mechanical suprapersonal determining agents. 
 
 What, then, does this mean in metaphysics .? Can 
 it mean anything at all .? Does not our postulating 
 the entelechial predetermination of suprapersonal 
 processes simply mark the limits of our under- 
 standing .f' 
 
 This is what Bergson teaches at the present day, 
 and what the great German philosophers taught in 
 another form in the beginning of the last century. 
 In reality there \s freedom of becoming ; not freedom 
 with regard to the parts among each other, in which 
 case the concept of wholeness would be violated in 
 favour of a strict theory of " monads " — though not 
 in the sense of Leibniz whose theory is far from 
 being a strict monadic theory — but freedom in 
 becoming itself. 
 
 What shall we say here .'' Shall we dismiss the 
 postulates of the theory of order and accept the 
 phrase of the French philosopher that "Dieu se fait" 
 in the suprapersonal evolutionary processes, or must 
 we bring over into metaphysics the logical postulate 
 of predetermination in the same manner as we did 
 with all the elementary concepts of the theory of 
 order, including space and becoming .'' It seems to 
 me that a real decision with regard to this question 
 is absolutely impossible, for we are always bound to 
 start from our empirical knowledge in all our meta- 
 physical construction. For our empirical knowledge, 
 
IV MATTERS OF BELIEF 8i 
 
 as we have seen, must appear as a consequence of our 
 metaphysical construction. Now it is clear without 
 further discussion that what we know about phylo- 
 genetic and historical becoming might be just as well 
 what it is, whether we accept some unknowable sort 
 of metaphysical predetermination of that becoming, 
 founded on the very "essence" of the absolute Being 
 — as was the belief of Plotinus and Spinoza for 
 example — or whether we regard the absolute Being 
 as a something " qui se fait." 
 
 The ultimate problem of the philosophy of whole- 
 ness, then, is a matter of belief. The decision can 
 be nothing but personal in this case ; it will depend 
 on the value which you attribute to logic, in the last 
 resort ; and it may also depend on irrational matters 
 of feeling. 
 
 But what is not a mere belief and not a matter of 
 feeling is the existence of factual wholeness in Nature, 
 the existence of something that is certainly more than 
 a mere sum. And to have proved this, and thus 
 to have given a sound foundation to all further 
 speculations about natural and metaphysical wholeness, 
 is the merit of vitalism. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Absolute, the, 69, 72 f., 77 fF. 
 Action, analysis of, 25 ff. 
 Adaptation, 3, 6 fF. 
 " Antibodies," 6 f . 
 Aristotle, 33, 68 
 Autonomy of life, 19 ff., 
 
 Bateson, W., 23 
 Becoming, 43 ff., 53, 61 f. 
 possible forms of, 46 ff. 
 Bergson, H., 80 
 Bonnet, 22 
 
 Bosanquet, B., 54, 58, 72 
 Braus, H., 14 
 Busse, L., 31 
 
 Categories, 53 ff. 
 Causality, 4.4 ff. 
 
 singular, 49 ff. 
 
 unifying, 52 ff., 56 f., 61 
 Chance. See Contingency 
 Clavellina (experiments on), 15, 52 
 Complex-equipotential system, 14, 
 
 21 
 Contingency, 64 ff. 
 Creation, 50 
 
 Darwin, 57, 65 
 
 Degree of manifoldness, 48 
 
 Descartes, 37 
 
 Dualism, 68, 74 
 
 Embryology, 3, 65 
 
 experimental, 9 ff. 
 Entelechy, 33 if., 79 
 
 and energy, 35 ff. 
 
 and material substance, 35, 38 
 
 suspensory power of, 38 f. 
 Ent'wicklungsmechanilc, 9 ff. 
 
 83 
 
 Evolution (definition of), 53 
 Evolutionism (in embryology), 9 
 
 Formative stimuli, 17 
 Freedom, 80 
 
 Frog's egg (experiments] on), 10, 
 12 
 
 Haldane, J. S., 21, 40, 72 
 Haller, 22 
 Harmonious-equipotential system, 
 
 14 ff-> 39. 5^ f- 
 Hartog, M., 34 
 Hegel, 58, 72 
 Henderson, L. J., 67 
 Herbst, C, 17, 37 
 Herder, 58 
 History (of man), 58 ff., 66, 80 
 
 Inheritance, 23 
 Instinct, 24 f, 34 
 
 Kammerer, P., 6 
 Kant, 54 ff., 72 
 
 Lamarck, 57, 65 
 Law of nature, 63, 67 
 Leibniz, 9, 69 f, 72, 80 
 Localization (problem of morpho- 
 
 genetic), 16 ff. 
 Lodge, Sir O., 40 
 Logic. See Order, theory of 
 Lotze, 72 
 
 M'Dougall, W., 30 f., 40 
 Machine, machine theory, 4 f., 
 
 7 ff., 13, 17 f, 22 
 Mechanism, 5, 7 f , 64, 70 ff. 
 Memory, 25 
 
84 PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALITY 
 
 Mendelism, 23 
 Metaphysics, 34, 76 fF. 
 Method, 1 f. 
 Monism of order, 61, 63 ff., 77 
 
 spatial, 72 
 Morality, 60, 66 
 Morgan, Lloyd, 24 
 
 Nature, i f., 41, 45 ff., 54 f., 64 
 
 harmony of, 67 
 Nunn, T. P., 40 
 
 Objectivity, 41 
 
 Objects of nature, 45 f., 75 
 
 Order, theory of, 41 ff., 75 
 
 signs of, 42 
 Origin of life, 38 
 
 Pfeffer, W., 6 
 Phylogeny, 57, 65 f., 80 
 Physiology of form, 9 ff. 
 
 movement, 24 ff. 
 Plotinus, 81 
 Prospective value and prospective 
 
 potency, 10 ff. 
 Psychical Research, Society for, 24 
 Psychology, 25, 31 ff. 
 Psycho-physical parallelism, 31 f. 
 
 Regeneration. See Restitution 
 Regulability, limits of, 37 f- 
 Restitution, 3, 8, 14 f, 34 
 Roux, W., 9 ff. 
 
 Schopenhauer, 47 
 
 Sea-urchin (experiments on egg of), 
 
 10 ff., 52 f. 
 Solipsism, 75 f. 
 Spinoza, 69, 72, 81 
 Spinozian dogma, 72 f., 77 ff. 
 
 Teleology, 3 ff., 7 ff., 24 f., 34, 53 
 
 universal, 70 
 Theodicy, 68 f, 73 
 Thomson, J. A., 23 
 Tubularia (experiments on), 15 
 
 Vitalism, 5, 7, 64, 76 f., 81 
 proofs of, 16 ff., 21 ff., 29 f. 
 
 Ward, J., 31, 72 
 Weismann, A., 9 ff., 13, 17, 22 
 Wholeness, 3, 8, 41 f., 53, 56, 58, 
 61 f., 66 f., 70 f, 80 f 
 
 Zwaardemaker, 40 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed hy R. & R. Clark. Limited, Edinburgh, 
 
Crown 8vo. 
 
 THE HISTORY AND THEORY 
 OF VITALISM 
 
 BY 
 
 HANS DRIES^CH 
 
 Ph.D., Hon. LL.D. (Aberdeen) 
 professor of philosophy in the university of heidelberg 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'the SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM,' ETC., ETC. 
 
 AUTHORISED TRANSLATION BY 
 
 C. K OGDEN, B.A. 
 
 MAGDALENE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 Revised throughout and in part re-written by the Author 
 for the English Edition. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Translator's Preface — Critical Introduction : The different 
 kinds of Teleology. Part I. : Historical. Chap. I. The Old 
 Vitalism : (a) Aristotle ; (6) The New Science and the New Philo- 
 sophy ; (c) Evolution, Epigenesis, and After ; (d) Kant — Critique 
 of Judgment ; (e) The Vitalism of the Nature -Philosophers — 
 Chap. II. The Critics: and the Materialistic Reaction — Chap. III. 
 The New Vitalism: (i) The Tradition; (2) The Position of 
 Philosophy — Chap. IV. The Anti-Darwinian Theory of Descent 
 — Chap. V. Neovitalism. Part II. : Theoretical. Foreword, (a) 
 Pure Logic ; (6) Nature ; (c) Becoming ; (d) The Forms of 
 Becoming ; {e) Individualising and Singular Causality ; (/) The 
 Empirical Proofs of Vitalism ; (_§-) The Problem of Suprapersonal 
 Individuality ; (/t) Monism and Dualism ; (z) Metaphysical 
 Conclusions. 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
WORKS ON PHILOSOPHY 
 THE SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE EVOLUTION OF 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT 
 
 BY VARIOUS WRITERS 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 Sir henry JONES 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY. 
 By Professor John Adams, M.A., B.Sc, LL.D. 8vo. los. net. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY. By Pro- 
 fessor John Burnet, LL.D. Vol. I. From Thales to Plato. 
 
 [In the Pi-ess. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY FROM 
 HOBBES to REID. By Professor G. F. Stout. 
 
 [/« preparation. 
 Other volumes to follow. 
 
 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL 
 SCIENCES. Edited by WiLHELM Windelband and Arnold 
 RUGE. English Edition under the Editorship of Sir Henry Jones. 
 8vo. 
 
 Vol. I. LOGIC. By Arnold Ruge, Wilhelm Windelband, 
 JosiAH RoYCE, Louis Couturat, Benedetto Croce, Federigo 
 Enriques, and Nicolaj Losskij. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 By Dr. F. C. S. SCHILLER 
 
 RIDDLES OF THE SPHINX. A Study in the Philosophy 
 
 of Humanism. Third Edition. 8vo. los. net. 
 
 HUMANISM. Philosophical Essays. Second Edition. 8vo. 
 I OS. net. 
 
 STUDIES IN HUMANISM. Second Edition. 8vo. 
 
 IDS. net. 
 
 FORMAL LOGIC : A Scientific and Social Problem. 8vo. 
 IDS. net. 
 
 By Professor WILLIAM JAMES 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Two vols. 
 8vo. 25s. net. 
 
 TEXT-BOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. Crown 8vo. 7s. net. 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
WORKS ON PHILOSOPHY 
 
 By Professor HENRI BERGSON 
 
 CREATIVE EVOLUTION. Translated by Arthur 
 Mitchell, Ph.D. 8vo. los. net. 
 
 LAUGHTER; An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. 
 
 Authorised Translation from the Sixth Edition by Cloudesley Brere- 
 TON, L. es L. (Paris), M.A. (Cantab.); and Fred Rothwell, B.A. 
 (London). Extra Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO METAPHYSICS. Translated 
 
 by T. E. HuLME. Crown 8vo. 2S. net. 
 
 A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF BERGSON'S PHILO- 
 SOPHY. By J. M'Kellar Stewart, B.A., D.Phil. 8vo. 5s.net. 
 
 By Professor HENRY SIDGWICK 
 
 THE METHODS OF ETHICS. 8vo. 8s. 6d. net. 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF ETHICS FOR 
 ENGLISH READERS. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY : Its Scope and Relations. 8vo. 6s. 6d. net. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE ETHICS OF T. H. GREEN, 
 Mr. HERBERT SPENCER, and J. MARTINEAU. Svo. 8s. 6d. 
 net. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT, AND 
 OTHER PHILOSOPHICAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS. Svo. 
 I OS. net. 
 
 By Professor HARALD HOFFDING 
 
 A HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY: a Sketch of 
 
 the History of Philosophy from the Close of the Renaissance to our 
 own Day. Translated by B. E. Meyer. Two vols. 8vo. 15s. 
 net each. 
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY. Translated by 
 Galen M. Fisher, and a Preface by William James. Globe 8vo. 
 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. Translated by 
 B. E. Meyer. Svo. 12s. net. 
 
 A BRIEF HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Translated by C. F. Sanders. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. net. 
 
 OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Translated by M. E. 
 Lowndes, Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 3 
 
WORKS ON PHILOSOPHY 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF THE PRACTICAL. Economic and 
 Ethic. Translated from the Italian of Benedetto Croce by 
 Douglas AiNSLiE, B.A. 8vo. 12s.net. 
 
 ESTHETIC AS SCIENCE OF EXPRESSION AND 
 GENERAL LINGUISTIC. Translated from the Italian 
 of Benedetto Croce by Douglas Ainslie, B.A. 8vo. 
 I OS. net. 
 
 THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY. By L. Silberstein, 
 Ph.D. 8vo. [/« the Press. 
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUALITY AND VALUE. 
 The Gifford Lectures for 191 1. By Bernard Bosanquet, 
 LL.D., D.C.L. Svo. los. net. 
 
 THE VALUE AND DESTINY OF THE INDIVIDUAL. 
 The Gifford Lectures for 1912. By Bernard Bosanquet, 
 LL.D., D.C.L. Svo. los. net. 
 
 HISTORICAL STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY. By Pro- 
 fessor Emile Boutroux. Authorised Translation by Fred 
 ROTHWELL, B.A. Svo. 8s. 6d. net. 
 
 THE CROWNING PHASE OF THE CRITICAL PHILO- 
 SOPHY. A Study in Kant's Critique of Judgment. By 
 R. A. C. Macmillan, M.A., D.Phil. Svo. los. net. 
 
 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE. An Essay towards a 
 Philosophy of Evolution. By Prof. L. T. Hobhouse. Svo. 
 IDS. net. 
 
 MIND IN EVOLUTION. By Prof. L. T. Hobhouse. 
 Svo. IDS. net. 
 
 ON THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE UNIVERSAL 
 AND THE INDIVIDUAL. A Contribution to the Pheno- 
 menology of the Thought Processes. By Francis Aveling, 
 Ph.D., D.D. Crown Svo. 5 s. net. 
 
 IDOLA THEATRI: A Criticism of Oxford Thought and 
 Thinkers from the Standpoint of Personal Idealism. By 
 Henry Sturt. Svo. los. net. 
 
 PERSONAL IDEALISM. Philosophical Essays. Edited 
 by Henry Sturt. Svo. los. net 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 4