Note 8 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY

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.”