We shall understand the word “machine” in a most general sense. A machine is a typical configuration of physical and of chemical constituents, by the acting of which a typical effect is attained. We, in fact, lay much stress upon embracing in our definition of a machine the existence of chemical constituents also; we therefore understand by the word “machine” a configuration of a much higher degree of complication than for instance a steam-engine is. Of course a machine, whose acting is to be typical with regard to the three dimensions in space, has to be typically constructed with regard to these three dimensions itself; a machine that was an arrangement of elements in a strict plane could never have typical effects at right angles to that plane. This is a point which must well be kept in mind in all hypothetical considerations about machines that claim to explain morphogenesis. It must be granted that a machine, as we understand the word, might very well be the motive force of organogenesis in general, if only normal, that is to say, if only undisturbed development existed, and if a taking away of parts of our systems led to fragmental development. But we know that, at least in our harmonious-equipotential systems, quite another process occurs after parts have been taken away: the development that occurs is not fragmental but whole, only on a smaller scale. And we know, further, that this truly whole development sets in irrespective of the amount and direction of the separation. Let us first consider the second of these points. There may be a whole development out of each portion of the system--above certain limits--which is, say, of the volume *V*. Good! Then there ought to exist a machine, like that which exists in the whole undisturbed system, in this portion *V* also, only of smaller dimensions; but it also ought to exist in the portion *V*_1 which is equal to *V* in amount, and also in *V*_2, in *V*_3, *V*_4 and so on. Indeed, there do exist almost indefinitely many *V*_n all of which can perform the whole morphogenesis, and all of which therefore ought to possess the machine. But these different portions *V*_n are only partly different from each other in spatial relation. Many parts of *V*_2 are also parts of *V*_1 and of *V*_3 and of *V*_4 and so on; that is to say, the different volumes *V*_n overlap each other successively and in such a manner that each following one exceeds the preceding one in the line by a very small amount only. But what then about our machines? Every volume which may perform morphogenesis completely must possess the machine in its totality. As now every element of one volume may play any possible elemental rôle in every other, it follows that each part of the whole harmonious system possesses any possible elemental part of the machine equally well, all parts of the system at the same time being constituents of different machines.