o accept such
an important statement on his mere _ipse dixit_. We pass on to the next
elimination: "Although its visible results are in a high degree
purposeful, we may also exclude as unscientific the vitalistic theory of
an _entelechy_[37] or any other form of internal perfecting agency
distinct from known or unknown physio-chemical energies." Why
"unscientific"? Numbers of high authorities have not thought it so; and
in quite recent years such eminent writers as Driesch and McDougal have
written erudite works to prove this "unscientific" hypothesis. Is there
any proof brought forward for _this_ assertion and its corresponding
elimination?

Let us continue the quotation: "Since certain forms of adaptation which
were formerly mysterious can now be explained without the assumption of
an entelechy we are encouraged to hope that all forms may be thus
explained." The author does not tell us what the mysterious adaptations
are, nor does he offer us the explanations which, in his opinion,
explain them. We cannot, therefore, criticise his views, and can only
remind his readers that, because an explanation plausibly explains an
occurrence, it is by no means always therefore certain to be the true
explanation; it may, indeed, be wholly false.

Further, those who have been wandering for the past half-century in the
fields of science have become a little wearied of "explanations,"
vaunted, for periods of five or ten years, as the key to open all locks,
and then cast into the furnace. What the author would seem to mean by
his statement is this: "I am convinced myself that we can do without a
'supernatural' explanation, and I regard as 'unscientific' any
explanation which cannot be put to the test of chemistry and physics;
hence I must shut the door on anything like an _entelechy_, and, that
being so, it behoves me to look for some other explanation." Of course,
we are putting these words into the mouth of our author; if we were
dealing with the matter ourselves we should be inclined to argue that,
by the eliminatory method, chemistry and physics do prove, or do help to
prove, the existence of an entelechy.

With these expostulations we may turn to the writer's pronouncements on
the vitalistic question which seem to us to be worthy of serious
consideration. Everybody knows that there are two very diverse opinions
on this topic; the one that there is, the other that there is not
something more--a _plus_--in living than there is i