We come to another order of mind in Hans Driesch. At the time he began his work biologists were largely busy in a region indicated by Darwin, and roughly mapped out by Haeckel—that of phylogeny. From the facts of development of the individual, from the comparison of fossils in successive strata, they set to work at the construction of pedigrees, and strove to bring into line the principles of classification with the more or less hypothetical “stemtrees.” Driesch considered this futile, since we never could reconstruct from such evidence anything certain in the history of the past. He therefore asserted that a more complete knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the organic world might give a scientific explanation of the phenomena, and maintained that the proper work of the biologist was to deepen our knowledge in these respects. He embodied his views, seeking the explanation on this track, filling up gaps and tracing projected roads along lines of probable truth in his “Analytische Theorie der organische Entwicklung.” But his own work convinced him of the hopelessness of the task he had undertaken, and he has become as strenuous a vitalist as Butler. The most complete statement of his present views is to be found in “The Philosophy of Life” (1908–9), being the Giffold Lectures for 1907–8. Herein he postulates a quality (“psychoid”) in all living beings, directing energy and matter for the purpose of the organism, and to this he applies the Aristotelian designation “Entelechy.” The question of the transmission of acquired characters is regarded as doubtful, and he does not emphasise—if he accepts—the doctrine of continuous personality. His early youthful impatience with descent theories and hypotheses has, however, disappeared.
In the next work the influence of Hering and Butler is definitely present and recognised. In 1906 Signor Eugenio Rignano, an engineer keenly interested in all branches of science, and a little later the founder of the international review, Rivistà di Scienza (now simply called Scientia), published in French a volume entitled “Sur la transmissibilité des Caractères acquis—Hypothèse d’un Centro-épigenèse.” Into the details of the author’s work we will not enter fully. Suffice it to know that he accepts the Hering-Butler theory, and makes a distinct advance on Hering’s rather crude hypothesis of persistent vibrations by suggesting that the remembering centres store slightly different forms of energy, to give out energy of the same kind as they have received, like electrical accumulators. The last chapter, “Le Phénomène mnémonique et le Phénomène vital,” is frankly based on Hering.
In “The Lesson of Evolution” (1907, posthumous, and only published for private circulation) Frederick Wollaston Hutton, F.R.S., late Professor of Biology and Geology, first at Dunedin and after at Christchurch, New Zealand, puts forward a strongly vitalistic view, and adopts Hering’s teaching. After stating this he adds, “The same idea of heredity being due to unconscious memory was advocated by Mr. Samuel Butler in his “Life and Habit.”
Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Stuart Professor of Psychology in Princeton University, U.S.A., called attention early in the 90’s to a reaction characteristic of all living beings, which he terms the “Circular Reaction.” We take his most recent account of this from his “Development and Evolution” (1902):—[0h]
“The general fact is that the organism reacts by concentration upon the locality stimulated for the continuance of the conditions, movements, stimulations, which are vitally beneficial, and for the cessation of the conditions, movements, stimulations which are vitally depressing.”
This amounts to saying in the terminology of Jenning (see below) that the living organism alters its “physiological states” either for its direct benefit, or for its indirect benefit in the reduction of harmful conditions.
Again:—
“This form of concentration of energy on stimulated localities, with the resulting renewal through movement of conditions that are pleasure-giving and beneficial, and the consequent repetition of the movements is called ‘circular reaction.’”
Of course, the inhibition of such movements as would be painful on repetition is merely the negative case of the circular reaction. We must not put too much of our own ideas into the author’s mind; he nowhere says explicitly that the animal or plant shows its sense and does this because it likes the one thing and wants it repeated, or dislikes the other and stops its repetition, as Butler would have said. Baldwin is very strong in insisting that no full explanation can be given of living processes, any more than of history, on purely chemico-physical grounds.
The same view is put differently and independently by H. S. Jennings, [0i] who started his investigations of living Protista, the simplest of living beings, with the idea that only accurate and ample observation was needed to enable us to explain all their activities on a mechanical basis, and devised ingenious models of protoplastic movements. He was led, like Driesch, to renounce such efforts as illusory, and has come to the conviction that in the behaviour of these lowly beings there is a purposive and a tentative character—a method of “trial and error”—that can only be interpreted by the invocation of psychology. He points out that after stimulation the “state” of the organism may be altered, so that the response to the same stimulus on repetition is other. Or, as he puts it, the first stimulus has caused the organism to pass into a new “physiological state.” As the change of state from what we may call the “primary indifferent state” is advantageous to the organism, we may regard this as equivalent to the doctrine of the “circular reaction,” and also as containing the essence of Semon’s doctrine of “engrams” or imprints which we are about to consider. We cite one passage which for audacity of thought (underlying, it is true, most guarded expression) may well compare with many of the boldest flights in “Life and Habit”:—