[4] Cf. p. 162. “La force vitale dirige des phénomènes qu’elle ne produit pas: les agents physiques produisent des phénomènes qu’ils ne dirigent pas.”
[5] It is now and then conceded with reluctance. Thus Enriques, a learned and philosophic naturalist, writing “della economia di sostanza nelle osse cave” (Arch. f. Entw. Mech. XX, 1906), says “una certa impronta di teleologismo quà e là è rimasta, mio malgrado, in questo scritto.”
[6] Cf. Cleland, On Terminal Forms of Life, J. Anat. and Phys. XVIII, 1884.
[7] Conklin, Embryology of Crepidula, Journ. of Morphol. XIII, p. 203, 1897; Lillie, F. R., Adaptation in Cleavage, Woods Holl Biol. Lectures, pp. 43–67, 1899.
[8] I am inclined to trace back Driesch’s teaching of Entelechy to no less a person than Melanchthon. When Bacon (de Augm. IV, 3) states with disapproval that the soul “has been regarded rather as a function than as a substance,” R. L. Ellis points out that he is referring to Melanchthon’s exposition of the Aristotelian doctrine. For Melanchthon, whose view of the peripatetic philosophy had long great influence in the Protestant Universities, affirmed that, according to the true view of Aristotle’s opinion, the soul is not a substance, but an ἑντελέχεια, or function. He defined it as δύναμις quaedam ciens actiones—a description all but identical with that of Claude Bernard’s “force vitale.”
[9] Ray Lankester, Encycl. Brit. (9th ed.), art. “Zoology,” p. 806, 1888.
[10] Alfred Russel Wallace, especially in his later years, relied upon a direct but somewhat crude teleology. Cf. his World of Life, a Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose, 1910.
[11] Janet, Les Causes Finales, 1876, p. 350.
[12] The phrase is Leibniz’s, in his Théodicée.
[13] Cf. (int. al.) Bosanquet, The Meaning of Teleology, Proc. Brit. Acad. 1905–6, pp. 235–245. Cf. also Leibniz (Discours de Métaphysique; Lettres inédites, ed. de Careil, 1857, p. 354; cit. Janet, p. 643), “L’un et l’autre est bon, l’un et l’autre peut être utile ... et les auteurs qui suivent ces routes différentes ne devraient point se maltraiter: et seq.”