CHAPTER IV

THE VITAL IMPETUS 120

Argument.--The notion of the organism as a physico-chemical mechanism is a deduction from the methods of physiology, and not from its results. The notion of vitalism is a natural or intuitive one. The historic systems of vitalism assumed the existence of a spiritual agency in the organism, or of a form of energy which was peculiar to the activities of the organism. Modern investigation lends no support to either belief. But the study of the organism as a whole, that is, the study of developmental processes, or that of the organism acting as a whole, afford a logical disproof of pure mechanism. It shows that there cannot be a functionality, in the mathematical sense, between the inorganic agencies that affect the whole organism and the behaviour or functioning of the whole organism. Mechanism is only suggested in the study of isolated parts of the organism. We are compelled toward the belief that there is an agency operative in the activities of the organism which does not operate in purely inorganic becoming. This is the Vital Impetus of Bergson, or the Entelechy of Driesch.