But could such a theory--irrespective of all the experimental facts which contradict it--could such a theory stand before the *one* fact, that there occurs a *genesis* of that complex-equipotential system, of which our one single egg forms a part? Can you imagine a very complicated machine, differing in the three dimensions of space, to be divided hundreds and hundreds of times and in spite of that to remain always the same whole? You may reply that during the period of cell-divisions there is still no machine, that the machine is established only after all the divisions are complete. Good; but what then constructs this machine in the definitive cells of our systems, say in the eggs? Another sort of machine perhaps? That could hardly be said to be of much use. Or that entelechy of which we have spoken? Then you would recur to our first proof of vitalism and would burden entelechy with a specific performance, that is with the construction of the hypothetic machine which you are postulating in every single egg. But of course you would break the bounds of physics and chemistry even then. It seems to me that it is more simple, and so to say more natural, not to recur to our first proof of life-autonomy in order to keep to the “machine theory” in this new branch of inquiry, but to consider facts as they offer themselves to analysis. But then indeed we are entitled to draw an independent second proof of the autonomy of life from our analysis of the genesis of systems of the complex-equipotential type. We say it is a mere absurdity to assume that a complicated machine, typically different in the three dimensions of space, could be divided many many times, and in spite of that always be the whole: therefore there cannot exist any sort of machine as the starting-point and basis of development. Let us again apply the name entelechy to that which lies at the very beginning of all individual morphogenesis. Entelechy thus proves to be also that which may be said to lie at the very root of inheritance,[128] or at least of the outcome of inheritance; the individual formation of the next generation is shown not to be performed by a machine but by a natural agent *per se*. [128] And, of course, at the root of every new starting of certain parts of morphogenesis also, as in regeneration and in adventitious budding; these processes, as we know, being also founded upon “complex-equipotential systems,” which have had their “genesis.” THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MATERIAL CONTINUITY IN INHERITANCE