ABSTRACT
In the last chapter we started from the difference between living and non-living natural bodies. I said that it was fundamentally impossible to decide whether the course of life processes results only from chemical and physical phenomena, or whether there is behind them a special non-material, psyche-like agent. In order to make the difference between the living and the non-living particularly clear, I introduced some fictions, which were to be applied only to biology. I spoke of the wholeness of the individual, of the maintenance of a whole as the end and object of biological processes; this end is attained by living creatures by means which differ from case to case. We finally arrived at the following two rules; “the end determines the means” and “the whole determines the parts”. In the application of these two fictional sentences to biological events, we see the much debated “self-rule of life”.
