§ 6. Hylomorphism versus Mechanism and Neo-vitalism
Mechanism and Neo-vitalism represent two extreme solutions of this problem of accounting for the difference between living and lifeless matter. Strictly speaking, it is an abuse of language to refer to mechanism as a solution at all. Its first pretense at solving the problem is to deny that there is any problem. But facts are facts and cannot be disposed of in this summary fashion. Forced, therefore, to face the actual fact of the uniqueness of living matter, mechanists concede the inadequacy of their physicochemical analogies, but obstinately refuse to admit the legitimacy of any other kind of explanation. Confronted with realities, which simply must have some explanation, they prefer to leave them unexplained by their own theory than have them explained by any other. They recognize the difference between a living animal and a dead animal (small credit to them for their perspicacity!), but deny that there is anything present in the former which is not present in the latter.
Neo-vitalism, on the other hand, is, at least, an attempt at solving the problem in the positive sense. It ascribes the unique activities of living organisms to the operation of a superphysical and superchemical energy or force resident in living matter. This unique dynamic principle is termed vital force. It is not an entitive nor a static principle, but belongs to the category of efficient or active causes, being variously described as an agent, energy, or force. To speak precisely, the term agent denotes an active being or substance; the term energy denotes the proximate ground in the agent of a specific activity; while the term force denotes the activity or free, kinetic, or activated phase of a given energy. In practice, however, these terms are often used interchangeably. Thus Driesch, who, like all other Neo-vitalists, makes the vital principle a dynamic factor rather than an entitive principle, refers to the vital principle as a “non-material,” “non-spatial” agent, though the term energy would be more precise. To this active or dynamic vital principle Driesch gives a name, which he borrowed from Aristotle, that is, entelechy. In so doing, however, he perverted, as he himself confesses, the true Aristotelian sense of the term in question: “The term,” he says, “ ... is not here used in the proper Aristotelian sense.” (“History and Theory of Vitalism,” p. 203.) His admission is quite correct. At the critical point, Driesch, for all his praise of Aristotle, deserts the Stagirite and goes over to the camp of Plato, Descartes, and the Neo-vitalists!
Driesch’s definition is as follows: “Entelechy is an agent sui generis, non-material and non-spatial, but acting ‘into’ space.” (Op. cit., p. 204.) Aristotle’s use of the term in this connection is quite different. He uses it, for example, in a static, rather than a dynamic, sense: “The term ‘entelechy,’” he says, “is used in two senses; in one it answers to knowledge, in the other to the exercise of knowledge. Clearly in this case it is analogous to knowledge.” (“Peri Psyches,” Bk. II, c. 1.) Knowledge, however, is only a second or static entelechy. Hence, in order to narrow the sense still further Aristotle refers to the soul as a first entelechy, by which he designates a purely entitive principle, that is, a constituent of being or substance (cf. op. cit. ibidem). The first, or entitive, entelechy, therefore, is to be distinguished from all secondary entelechies, whether of the dynamic order corresponding to kinetic energy or force, or of the static order corresponding to potential energy. Neither is it an agent, because it is only a partial constituent of the total agent, that is, of the total active being or substance. Hence, generally speaking, that which acts (the agent) is not entelechy, but the total composite of entelechy and matter, first entelechy being consubstantial with matter and not a separate existent or being. In fine, according to Aristotelian philosophy, entelechy (that is, “first” or “prime” entelechy) is not an agent nor an energy nor a force. In other words, it is totally removed from the category of efficient or active causes. The second difference between Driesch and Aristotle with respect to the use of the term entelechy lies in the fact that Driesch uses it as a synonym for the soul or vital principle, whereas, according to Aristotle, entelechy is common to the non-living units of inorganic nature as well as the living units (organisms) of the organic world. All vital principles or souls are entelechies, but not all entelechies are vital principles. All material beings or substances, whether living or lifeless, are reducible, in the last analysis, to two consubstantial principles or complementary constituents, namely, entelechy and matter. Entelechy is the binding, type-determining principle, the source of unification and specification, which makes of a given natural unit (such as a molecule or a protozoan) a single and determinate whole. Matter is the determinable and potentially-multiple element, the principle of divisibility and quantification, which can enter indifferently into the composition of this or that natural unit, and which owes its actual unity and specificity to the entelechy which here and now informs it. It is entelechy which makes a chemical element distinct from its isobare, a chemical compound distinct from its isomer, a paramœcium distinct from an amœba, a maple distinct from an oak, and a bear distinct from a tiger.
The molecular entelechy finds expression in what the organic chemist and the stereochemist understand by valence, that is, the static aspect of valence considered as the structural principle of a molecule. Hence it is entelechy which makes a molecule of urea [O:C:(NH2)2] an entirely different substance from its isomer ammonium cyanate [NH4·O·C:N], although the material substrate of each of these molecular units consists of precisely the same number and kinds of atoms. Similarly, it is the atomic entelechy which gives to the isotopes of Strontium chemical properties different from those of the isotopes of Rubidium, although the mass and corpuscular (electronic and protonic) composition of their respective atoms are identical. It is the vital entelechy or soul, which causes a fragment cut from a Stentor to regenerate its specific protoplasmic architecture instead of the type which would be regenerated from a similar fragment cut from another ciliate such as Dileptus.
In all the tridimensional units of nature, both living and non-living, the hylomorphic analysis of Aristotle recognizes an essential dualism of matter and entelechy. Hence it is not in the presence and absence of an entelechy (as Driesch contends) that living organisms differ from inorganic units. The sole difference between these two classes of units is one of autonomy and inertia. The inorganic unit is inert, not in the sense that it is destitute of energy, but in the sense that it is incapable of self-regulation and rigidly dependent upon external factors for the utilization of its own energy-content. The living unit, on the other hand, is endowed with dynamic autonomy. Though dependent, in a general way, upon environmental factors for the energy which it utilizes, nevertheless the determinate form and direction of its activity is not imposed in all its specificity by the aforesaid environmental factors. The living being possesses a certain degree of independence with respect to these external forces. It is autonomous with a special law of immanent finality or reflexive orientation, by which all the elements and energies of the living unit are made to converge upon one and the same central result, namely, the maintenance and development of the organism both in its capacity as an individual and in its capacity as the generative source of its racial type.
The entelechies of the inert units of inorganic nature turn the forces of these units in an outward direction, so that they are incapable of operating upon themselves, of modifying themselves, or of regulating themselves. They are only capable of operating upon other units outside themselves, and in so doing they irreparably externalize their energy-contents. All physicochemical action is transitive or communicable in character, whereas vital action is of the reflexive or immanent type. Mechanical action, for example, is intermolar (i.e. an exchange between large masses of inorganic matter); physical action is intermolecular; chemical action is interatomic; while in radioactive and electrical phenomena we have intercorpuscular action. Hence all the forms of activity native to the inorganic world are reducible to interaction between discontinuous and unequally energized masses or particles. Always it is a case of one mass or particle operating upon another mass or particle distinct from, and spatially external to, itself. The effect or positive change produced by the action is received into another unit distinct from the agent or active unit, which can never become the receptive subject of the effect generated by its own activity. The living being, on the contrary, is capable of operating upon itself, so that what is modified by the action is not outside the agent but within it. The reader does not modify the book, but modifies himself by his reading. The blade of grass can nourish not only a horse, but its very self, whereas a molecule of sodium nitrate is impotent to nourish itself, and can only nourish a subject other than itself, such as the blade of grass. Here the active source and receptive subject of the action is one and the same unit, namely, the living organism, which can operate upon itself in the interest of its own perfection. In chemical synthesis two substances interact to produce a third, but in vital assimilation one substance is incorporated into another without the production of a third. Thus hydrogen unites with oxygen to produce water. But in the case of assimilation the reaction may be expressed thus: Living protoplasm plus external nutriment equals living protoplasm increased in quantity but unchanged in specificity. Addition or subtraction alters the nature of the inorganic unit, but does not change the nature of the living unit. In chemical change, entelechy is the variant and matter is the constant, but in metabolic change, matter is the variant and entelechy the constant. “Living beings,” says Henderson, “preserve, or tend to preserve, an ideal form, while through them flows a steady stream of energy and matter which is ever changing, yet momentarily molded by life; organized, in short.” (“Fitness of the Environment,” 1913, pp. 23, 24.) The living unit maintains its own specific type amid a constant flux of matter and flow of energy. It subjugates the alien substances of the inorganic world, eliminates their mineral entelechies and utilizes their components and energies for its own purposes. The soul or vital entelechy, therefore, is more powerful than the entelechies of inorganic units which it supplants. It turns the forces of living matter inward, so that the living organism becomes capable of self-regulation and of striving for the attainment of self-perfection. It is this reflexive orientation of all energies towards self-perfection that is the unique characteristic of the living being, and not the nature of the energies themselves. The energies by which vital functions are executed are the ordinary physicochemical energies, but it is the vital entelechy or soul which elevates them to a higher plane of efficiency and renders them capable of reflexive or vital action. There is, in short, no such thing as a special vital force. The radical difference between living and non-living units does not consist in the possession or non-possession of an entelechy, nor yet in the peculiar nature of the forces displayed in the execution of vital functions, but solely in the orientation of these forces towards an inner finality.