Creative Evolution (book)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
"Nature arrives at identical results, in sometimes neighboring species, by entirely different embryogenic processes. . . , The retina of the vertebrate is produced by an expansion of the rudimentary brain of the embryo. ... In the mollusc, on the contrary, the retina is derived from the ectoderm directly. ... If the crystalline lens of a Triton be removed, it is regenerated by the iris. Now the original lens was built out of the ectoderm, while the iris is of mesodermal origin. What is more, in the Salamandra maculata, if the lens be removed and the iris left, the regeneration of the lens takes place at the upper part of the iris ; but if this upper part of the iris itself be taken away, the regeneration takes place in the inner or retinal layer of the remaining region. Thus parts differently situated, differently constituted, meant normally for different functions, are capable of performing the same duties and even of manufacturing, when necessary, the same pieces of the machine."--Creative Evolution (1907) by Henri Bergson "Love in which some have seen the great mystery of life, may possibly deliver us life's secret. It shows us each generation leaning over the generation that shall follow. It allows us a glimpse of the fact that the living being is above all a thorough-fare and that the essence of life is in the movement by which life is transmitted."--Creative Evolution (1907) by Henri Bergson |
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Creative Evolution (L'Evolution créatrice) is a 1907 book by French philosopher Henri Bergson. Its English translation appeared in 1911. The book provides an alternate explanation for Darwin's mechanism of evolution, suggesting that evolution is motivated by an élan vital, a "vital impetus" that can also be understood as humanity's natural creative impulse. The book was very popular in the early decades of the twentieth century, before the Neodarwinian synthesis was developed.
The book also develops concepts of time (offered in Bergson's earlier work) which significantly influenced modernist writers and thinkers such as Marcel Proust. For example, Bergson's term "duration" refers to a more individual, subjective experience of time, as opposed to mathematical, objectively measurable "clock time." In Creative Evolution, Bergson suggests that the experience of time as "duration" can best be understood through creative intuition, not through intellect.
Harvard philosopher William James intended to write the introduction to the English translation of the book, but died in 1910 prior to its completion.
Full text of Arthur Mitchell translation
INTRODUCTION
THE history of the evolution of life, incomplete as it yet
is, already reveals to us how the intellect has been formed,
by an uninterrupted progress, along a line which ascends
through the vertebrate series up to man. It shows us
in the faculty of understanding an appendage of the faculty
of acting, a more and more precise, more and more complex
and supple adaptation of the consciousness of living be-
ings to the conditions of existence that are made for them.
Hence should result this consequence that our intellect,
in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the
perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent
the relations of external things among themselves—in
short, to think matter. Such will indeed be one of the
conclusions of the present essay. We shall see that the
human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects,
more especially among solids, where our action finds its
fulcrum and our industry its tools; that our concepts
have been formed on the model of solids; that our logic
is, pre-eminently, the logic of solids; that, consequently,
our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is revealed
the kinship of logical thought with unorganized matter,
and where the intellect has only to follow its natural move-
ment, after the lightest possible contact with experience,
in order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that ex-
perience is following behind it and will justify it invariably.
But from this it must also follow that our thought, in its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the
true nature of life, the full meaning of the evolutionary
movement. Created by life, in definite circumstances,
to act on definite things, how can it embrace life, of which
it is only an emanation or an aspect? Deposited by the
evolutionary movement in the course of its way, how can
it be applied to the evolutionary movement itself? As
well contend that the part is equal to the whole, that the
effect can reabsorb its cause, or that the pebble left on the
beach displays the form of the wave that brought it there.
In fact, we do indeed feel that not one of the categories of
our thought—unity, multiplicity, mechanical causality,
intelligent finality, etc.—applies exactly to the things of
life: who can say where individuality begins and ends,
whether the living being is one or many, whether it is
the cells which associate themselves into the organism
or the organism which dissociates itself into cells? In
vain we force the living into this or that one of our molds.
All the molds crack. They are too narrow, above all too
rigid, for what we try to put into them. Our reasoning,
so sure of itself among things inert, feels ill at ease on this
new ground. It would be difficult to cite a biological
discovery due to pure reasoning. And most often, when
experience has finally shown us how life goes to work to
obtain a certain result, we find its way of working is just
that of which we should never have thought.
Yet evolutionist philosophy does not hesitate to extend to the things of life the same methods of explanation which have succeeded in the case of unorganized matter. It begins by showing us in the intellect a local effect of evo- lution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow passage open to their action; and lo! forgetting what it has just told us, it makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can illuminate the world. Boldly it proceeds, with the powers of conceptual thought alone, to the ideal reconstruction of all things, even of life. True, it hurtles in its course against such formidable difficulties, it sees its logic end in such strange contradictions, that it very speedily renounces its first ambition. “It is no longer reality itself,” it says, “that it will reconstruct, but only an imitation of the real, or rather a symbolical image; the essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always; we move among relations; the absolute is not in our prov- ince; we are brought to a stand before the Unknowable.”— But for the human intellect, after too much pride, this is really an excess of humility. If the intellectual form of the living being has been gradually modeled on the recip- rocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their material environment, how should it not reveal to us some- thing of the very essence of which these bodies are made? Action cannot move in the unreal. A mind born to specu- late or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, might deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it—as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an in- tellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling its object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something of the absolute. Would the idea ever have occurred to us to doubt this absolute value of our knowledge if philoso- phy had not shown us what contradictions our speculation meets, what dead-locks it ends in? But these difficulties and contradictions all arise from trying to apply the usual forms of our thought to objects with which our industry has nothing to do, and for which, therefore, our molds are not made. Intellectual knowledge, in so far as it relates to a certain aspect of inert matter, ought, on the contrary, to give us a faithful imprint of it, having been stereotyped on this particular object. It becomes relative only if it claims, such as it is, to present to us life—that is to say, the maker of the stereotype-plate.
Must we then give up fathoming the depths of life?
Must we keep to that mechanistic idea of it which the
understanding will always give us—an idea necessarily
artificial and symbolical, since it makes the total activity
of life shrink to the form of a certain human activity which
is only a partial and local manifestation of life, a result
or by-product of the vital process? We should have to do
so, indeed, if life had employed all the psychical potential-
ities it possesses in producing pure understandings—that
is to say, in making geometricians. But the line of evo-
lution that ends in man is not the only one. On other
paths, divergent from it, other forms of consciousness have
been developed, which have not been able to free themselves
from external constraints or to regain control over them-
selves, as the human intellect has done, but which, none
the less, also express something that is immanent and
essential in the evolutionary movement. Suppose these
other forms of consciousness brought together and amalga-
mated with intellect: would not the result be a conscious-
ness as wide as life? And such a consciousness, turning
around suddenly against the push of life which it feels
behind, would have a vision of life complete—would it
not?—even though the vision were fleeting.
It will be said that, even so, we do not transcend our intellect, for it is still with our intellect, and through our intellect, that we see the other forms of consciousness. And this would be right if we were pure intellects, if there did not remain, around our conceptual and logical thought, a vague nebulosity, made of the very substance out of which has been formed the luminous nucleus that we call the intellect. Therein reside certain powers that are
INTRODUCTION xiii
complementary to the understanding, powers of which
we have only an indistinct feeling when we remain shut up
in ourselves, but which will become clear and distinct
when they perceive themselves at work, so to speak, in the
evolution of nature. They will thus learn what sort of
effort they must make to be intensified and expanded in
the very direction of life.
This amounts to saying that theory of knowledge and
theory of life seem to us inseparable. A theory of life that
is not accompanied by a criticism of knowledge is obliged
to accept, as they stand, the concepts which the under-
standing puts at its disposal: it can but enclose the facts,
willing or not, in pre-existing frames which it regards as
ultimate. It thus obtains a symbolism which is convenient,
perhaps even necessary to positive science, but not a direct
vision of its object. On the other hand, a theory of knowl-
edge which does not replace the intellect in the general
evolution of life will teach us neither how the frames of
knowledge have been constructed nor how we can enlarge
or go beyond them. It is necessary that these two in-
quiries, theory of knowledge and theory of life, should
join each other, and, by a circular process, Pes each other
on unceasingly.
Together, they may solve by a method more sure, brought . nearer to experience, the great problems that philosophy poses. For, if they should succeed in their common en- terprise, they would show us the formation of the intellect, and thereby the genesis of that matter of which our in- tellect traces the general configuration. They would dig to the very root of nature and of mind. They would substitute for the false evolutionism of Spencer—which consists in cutting up present reality, already evolved, into little bits no less evolved, and then recomposing it
XIV CREATIVE EVOLUTION
with these fragments, thus positing in advance everything
that is to be explained—a true evolutionism, in which
reality would be followed in its generation and its growth.
But a philosophy of this kind will not be made in a
day. Unlike the philosophical systems properly so called,
each of which was the individual work of a man of genius
and sprang up as a whole, to be taken or left, it will only
be built up by the collective and progressive effort of many
thinkers, of many observers also, completing, correcting
and improving one another. So the present essay does not
aim at resolving at once the greatest problems. It simply
desires to define the method and to permit a glimpse, on
some essential points, of the possibility of its application.
Its plan is traced by the subject itself. In the first
chapter, we try on the evolutionary progress the two
ready-made garments that our understanding puts at our
disposal, mechanism and finality; we show that they do
not fit, neither the one nor the other, but that one of them
might be recut and resewn, and in this new form fit less
badly than the other. In order to transcend the point
of view of the understanding, we try, in our second chapter,
to reconstruct the main lines of evolution along which life
1The idea of regarding life as transcending teleology as well as
mechanism is far from being a new idea. Notably in three articles by
Ch. Dunan on ‘‘Le probléme de la vie” (Revue philosophique, 1892) it
is profoundly treated. In the development of this idea, we agree with
Ch. Dunan on more than one point. But the views we are presenting
on this matter, as on the questions attaching to it, are those that we
expressed long ago in our Essai sur les données immédiates de la con-
science (Paris, 1889). One of the principal objects of that essay was,
in fact, to show that the psychical life is neither unity nor multiplicity,
that it transcends both the mechanical and the intellectual, mechanism
and finalism having meaning only where there is ‘ ‘distinct multiplicity,”
‘“spatiality,” and consequently assemblage of pre-existing parts:
‘freal duration” signifies both undivided continuity and creation. In
the present work we apply these same ideas to life in general, regarded,
moreover, itself from the psychological point of view.
INTRODUCTION XV
has traveled by the side of that which has led to the human
intellect. The intellect is thus brought back to its generat-
ing cause, which we then have to grasp in itself and follow
in its movement. It is an effort of this kind that we at-
tempt—incompletely indeed—in our third chapter. A
fourth and last part is meant to show how our understand-
ing itself, by submitting to a certain discipline, might
prepare a philosophy which transcends it. For that,
a glance over the history of systems became necessary,
together with an analysis of the two great illusions to which,
as soon as it speculates on reality in general, the human
understanding is exposed.
==CHAPTER I THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE—MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY
THE existence of which we are most assured and which
we know. best is unquestionably our own, for of every
other object we have notions which may be considered
external and superficial, whereas, of ourselves, our per-
ception is internal and profound. What, then, do we
find? In this privileged case, what is the precise mean-
ing of the word “exist”? Let us recall here briefly the
conclusions of an earlier work.
I find, first of all, that I pass from state to state. I am warm or cold, I am merry or sad, I work or I do noth- ing, I look at what is around me or I[ think of something else. Sensations, feelings, volitions, ideas—such are the changes into which my existence is divided and which color it in turns. I change, then, without ceasing. But this is not saying enough. Change is far more radical than we are at first inclined to suppose.
For I speak of each of my states as if it formed a block and were a separate whole. I say indeed that I change, but the change seems to me to. reside in the passage from one state to the next: of each state, taken separately, I am apt to think that it remains the same during all the time that it prevails. Nevertheless, a slight effort of attention would reveal to me that there is no feeling, no idea, no volition which is not undergoing change every
moment: if a mental state ceased to vary, its duration
1
2 CREATIVE EVOLUTION {cHar.
would cease to flow. Let us take the most stable of in-
ternal states, the visual perception of a motionless external
object. The object may remain the same, I may look at
it from the same side, at the same angle, in the same light;
nevertheless the vision I now have of it differs from that
which I have just had, even if only because the one is an
instant older than the other. My memory is there, which
conveys something of the past into the present. My men-
tal state, as it advances on the road of time, is continually
swelling with the duration which it accumulates: it goes
on increasing—rolling upon itself, as a snowball on the
snow. Still more is this the case with states more deeply
internal, such as sensations, feelings, desires, etc., which
do not correspond, like a simple visual perception, to an
unvarying external object. But it is expedient to dis-
regard this uninterrupted change, and to notice it only
when it becomes sufficient to impress a new attitude on
the body, a new direction on the attention. Then, and
then only, we find that our state has changed. The
truth is that we change without ceasing, and that the
state itself is nothing but change.
This amounts to saying that there is no essential differ- ence between passing from one state to another and per- sisting in the same state. If the state which ‘‘remains the same” is more varied than we think, on the other hand the passing from one state to another resembles, more than we imagine, a single state being prolonged; the transition is continuous. But, just because we close our eyes to the unceasing variation of every psychical state, we are obliged, when the change has become so considerable as to force itself on our attention, to speak as if a new state were placed alongside the previous one. Of this new state we assume that it remains unvarying in its turn, and so on endlessly. The apparent discontinuity of the psychical
1] DURATION eT es Gy
life is then due to our attention being fixed on it by a
series of separate acts: actually there is only a gentle
slope; but in following the broken line of our acts of at-
tention, we think we perceive separate steps. True,
our psychic life is full of the unforeseen. A thousand
incidents arise, which seem to be cut off from those which
precede them, and to be disconnected from those which
follow. Discontinuous though they appear, however,
in point of fact they stand out against the continuity of a
background on which they are designed, and to which
indeed they owe the intervals that separate them; they
are the beats of the drum which break forth here and there
in the symphony. Our attention fixes on them because
they interest it more, but each of them is borne by the
fluid mass of our whole psychical existence. Each is only
the best illuminated point of a moving zone which com-
prises all that we feel or think or will—all, in short, that
we are at any given moment. It is this entire zone which
in reality makes up our state. Now, states thus defined
cannot be regarded as distinct elements. They continue
each other in an endless flow.
But, as our attention has distinguished and separated them artificially, it is obliged next to reunite them by an artificial bond. It imagines, therefore, a formless ego, indifferent and unchangeable, on which it threads the psychic states which it has set up as independent entities. Instead of a flux of fleeting shades merging into each other, it perceives distinct and, so to speak, solid colors, set side by side like the beads of a necklace; it must perforce then suppose a thread, also itself solid, to hold the beads together. But if this colorless sub- stratum is perpetually colored by that which covers it, it is for us, in its indeterminateness, as if it did not exist, since we only perceive what is colored, or, in other words,
4 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
psychic states. As a matter of fact, this substratum has
no reality; it is merely a symbol intended to recall un-
ceasingly to our consciousness the artificial character of
the process by which the attention places clean-cut states
side by side, where actually there is a continuity which
unfolds. If our existence were composed of separate
states with an impassive ego to unite them, for us there
would be no duration. For an ego which does not change
does not endure, and a psychic state which remains the
same so long as it is not replaced by the following state
does not endure either. Vain, therefore, is the attempt
to range such states beside each other on the ego supposed
to sustain them: never can these solids strung upon a solid
make up that duration which flows. What we actually
obtain in this way is an artificial imitation of the internal
life, a static equivalent which will lend itself better to the
requirements of logic and language, just because we have
eliminated from it the element of realtime. But, as regards
the psychical life unfolding beneath the symbols which
conceal it, we readily perceive that time is just the stuff
it is made of.
There is, moreover, no stuff more resistant nor more substantial. For our duration is not merely one instant replacing another; if it were, there would never be any- thing but the present—no prolonging of the past into the actual, no evolution, no concrete duration. Duration is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances. And as the past grows without ceasing, so also there is no limit to its preservation. Memory, as we have tried to prove,! is not a faculty of putting away recollections in a drawer, or of inscribing them in a register. There is no register, no drawer; there is not even, properly speaking, a faculty,
1 Matiere et mémoire, Paris, 1896, chaps. ii. and iii.
1 DURATION . ae
for a faculty works intermittently, when it will or when it
can, whilst the piling up of the past upon the past goes on
without relaxation. In reality, the past is preserved by
itself, automatically. In its entirety, probably, it follows
us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and
willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the
present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals
of consciousness that would fain leave it outside. The
cerebral mechanism is arranged just so as to drive back into
the unconscious almost the whole of this past, and to admit
beyond the threshold only that which can cast light on
the present situation or further the action now being pre-
pared—in short, only that which can give useful work.
At the most, a few superfluous recollections may succeed
in smuggling themselves through the half-open door.
These memories, messengers from the unconscious, remind
us of what we are dragging behind us unawares. But,
even though we may have no distinct idea of it, we feel
vaguely that our past remains present to us. What are
we, in fact, what is our character, if not the condensation
of the history that we have lived from our birth—nay,
even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal
dispositions? Doubtless we think with only a small
part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including
the original bent of our soul, that we desire, wi'l and act.
Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its
impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a
small part of it only is known in the form of idea.
From this survival of the past it follows that conscious- ness cannot go through the same state twice. The cir- cumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person, since they find him at a new moment of his history. Our personality, which is being built up each instant with its accumulated experience,
6 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
changes without ceasing. By changing, it prevents any
state, although superficially identical with another, from
ever repeating it in its very depth. That is why our
duration is irreversible. We could not live over again
a single moment, for we should have to begin by effacing
the memory of all that had followed. Even could we erase
this memory from our intellect, we could not from our will.
Thus our personality shoots, grows and ripens with- out ceasing. Each of its moments is something new added to what was before. We may go further: it is not only something new, but something unforeseeable. Doubt- less, my present state is explained by what was in me and by what. was acting on me a moment ago. In analyzing it I should find no other elements. But even a superhuman intelligence would not have been able to foresee the simple indivisible form which gives to these purely abstract elements their concrete organization. For to foresee con- sists of projecting into the future what has been perceived in the past, or of imagining for a later time a new group- ing, in a new order, of elements already perceived. But that which has never been perceived, and which is at the same time simple, is necessarily unforeseeable. Now such is the case with each of our states, regarded as a moment in a history that is gradually unfolding: it is simple, and it cannot have been already perceived, since it concen- trates in its indivisibility all that has been perceived and what the present is adding to it besides. It is an original moment of a no less original history.
The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by the nature of the artist, by the colors spread out on the palette; but, even with the knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, could have fore- seen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it would have been to produce it before it was produceed—
1] DURATION (a
an absurd hypothesis which is its own refutation. Even
so with regard to the moments of our life, of which we are
the artisans. Each of them is a kind of creation. And
just as the talent of the painter is formed or deformed—
in any case, is modified—under the very influence of the
works he produces, so each of our states, at the moment
of its issue, modifies our personality, being indeed the new
form that we are just assuming. It is then right to say
that what we do depends on what we are; but it is necessary
to add also that we are, to a certain extent, what we do,
and that we are creating ourselves continually. This
creation of self by self is the more complete, the more one
reasons on what one does. For reason does not proceed
in such matters as in geometry, where impersonal premisses
are given once for all, and an impersonal conclusion must
perforce be drawn. Here, on the contrary, the same
reasons may dictate to different persons, or to the same
person at different moments, acts profoundly different,
although equally reasonable. The truth is that they
are not quite the same reasons, since they are not those
of the same person, nor of the same moment. That is
why we cannot deal with them in the abstract, from out-
side, as in geometry, nor solve for another the problems
by which he is faced in life. Each must solve them from
within, on his own account. But we need not go more
deeply into this. We are seeking only the precise meaning
that our consciousness gives to this word “exist,” and we
find that, for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to
change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself
endlessly. Should the same be said of existence in general?
A material object, of whatever kind, presents opposite
characters to those which we have just been describing.
Hither it remains as it is, or else, if it changes under the
8 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
influence of an external force, our idea of this change is
that of a displacement of parts which themselves do not
change. If these parts took to changing, we should split
them up in their turn. We should thus descend to the
molecules of which the fragments are made, to the atoms
that make up the molecules, to the corpuscles that generate
the atoms, to the ‘“imponderable” within which the
corpuscle is perhaps a mere vortex. In short, we should
push the division or analysis as far as necessary. But we
should stop only before the unchangeable.
Now, we say that a composite object changes by the displacement of its parts. But when a part has left its position, there is nothing to prevent its return to it. A group of elements which has gone through a state can therefore always find its way back to that state, if not by itself, at least by means of an external cause able to restore everything to its place. This amounts to saying that any state of the group may be repeated as often as desired, and consequently that the group does not grow old. It has no history.
Thus nothing is created therein, neither form nor matter. What the group will be is already present in what it is, provided “what it is” includes all the points of the uni- verse with which it is related. A superhuman intellect could calculate, for any moment of time, the position of any point of the system in space. And as there is nothing more in the form of the whole than the arrangement of its parts, the future forms of the system are theoretically visible in its present configuration.
All our belief in objects, all our operations on the systems that science isolates, rest in fact on the idea that time does not bite into them. We have touched on this question in an earlier work, and shall return to it in the course of the present study. For the moment, we will confine our-
I.] UNORGANIZED BODIES 9
selves to pointing out that the abstract time ¢ attributed
by science to a material object or to an isolated system
consists only in a certain number of simultaneities or more
generally of correspondences, and that this number re-
mains the same, whatever be the nature of the intervals
between the correspondences. With these intervals we
are never concerned when dealing with inert matter; or,
if they are considered, it is in order to count therein fresh
correspondences, between which again we shall not care
what happens. Common sense, which is occupied with
detached objects, and also science, which considers isolated
systems, are concerned only with the ends of the intervals
and not with the intervals themselves. Therefore the flow
of time might assume an infinite rapidity, the entire past,
present, and future of material objects or of isolated
systems might be spread out all at once in space, without
there being anything to change either in the formulae
of the scientist or even in the language of common sense.
The number ¢ would always stand for the same thing; it
would still count the same number of correspondences
between the states of the objects or systems and the points
of the line, ready drawn, which would be then the “course
of time.”
Yet succession is an undeniable fact, even in the material world. Though our reasoning on isolated systems may imply that their history, past, present, and future, might be instantaneously unfurled like a fan, this history, in point of fact, unfolds itself gradually, as if it occupied a duration like our own. If I want to mix a glass of sugar and water, I must, willy nilly, wait until the sugar melts. This little fact is big with meaning. . For here the time I have to wait is not that mathematical time which would apply equally well to the entire history of the material world, even if that history were spread out instantaneously
10 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
in space. It coincides with my impatience, that is to say,
with a certain portion of my own duration, which I cannot
protract or contract as I like. It is no longer something
thought, it is something lived. It is no longer a relation,
it is an absolute. What else can this mean than that the
glass of water, the sugar, and the process of the sugar’s
melting in the water are abstractions, and that the Whole
within which they have been cut out by my senses and un-
derstanding progresses, it may be in the manner of a
consciousness?
Certainly, the operation by which science isolates and closes a system is not altogether artificial. If it had no objective foundation, we could not explain why it is clearly indicated in some cases and impossible in others. We shall see that matter has a tendency to constitute zsolable systems, that can be treated geometrically. In fact, we shall define matter by just this tendency. But it is only a tendency. Matter does not go to the end, and the isolation is never complete. If science does go to the end and isolate completely, it is for convenience of study; it is understood that the so-called isolated system remains subject to certain external influences. Science merely leaves these alone, either because it finds them slight enough to be negligible, or because it intends to take them into account later on. It is none the less true that these influences are so many threads which bind up the system to another more extensive, and to this a third which in- cludes both, and so on to the system most objectively isolated and most independent of all, the solar system com- plete. But, even here, the isolation is not absolute. Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet. And, on the other hand, it moves in a certain fixed direction, drawing with it the planets and their satellites. The thread attaching it to the rest of the universe is doubtless
| UNORGANIZED BODIES il
very tenuous. Nevertheless it is along this thread that
is transmitted down to the smallest particle of the world
in which we live the duration immanent to the whole
of the universe.
The universe endures. The more we study the nature of time, the more we shall comprehend that duration means invention, the creation of forms, the continual elaboration of the absolutely new. The systems marked off by science endure only because they are bound up inseparably with the rest of the universe. It is true that in the universe itself two opposite movements are to be distinguished, as we shall see later on, “descent” and “ascent.” The first only unwinds a roll ready prepared. In principle, it might be accomplished almost instantaneously, like releasing a spring. But the ascending movement, which corresponds to an inner work of ripening or creating, endures essentially, and imposes its rhythm on the first, which is inseparable from it.
There is no reason, therefore, why a duration, and so a form of existence like our own, should not be attributed to the systems that science isolates, provided such sys- tems are reintegrated into the Whole. But they must be so reintegrated. The same is even more obviously true of the objects cut out by our perception. The dis- tinct outlines which we see in an object, and which give it its individuality, are only the design of a certain kind of influence that we might exert on a certain point of space: it is the plan of our eventual actions that is sent back to our eyes, as though by a mirror, when we see the surfaces and edges of things. Suppress this action, and with it consequently those main directions which by perception are traced out for it in the entanglement of the real, and the individuality of the body is re-absorbed in the universal interaction which, without doubt, is reality itself.
ane CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
Now, we have considered material objects generally.
Are there not some objects privileged? The bodies we
perceive are, so to speak, cut out of the stuff of nature
by our perception, and the scissors follow, in some way,
the marking of lines along which action might be taken.
But the body which is to perform this action, the body
which marks out upon matter the design of its eventual
actions even before they are actual, the body that has
only to point its sensory organs on the flow of the real
in order to make that flow crystallize into definite forms
and thus to create all the other bodies—in short, the living
body—is this a body as others are? ;
Doubtless it, also, consists in a portion of extension bound up with the rest of extension, an intimate part of the Whole, subject to the same physical and chemical laws that govern any and every portion of matter. But, while the subdivision of matter into separate bodies is relative to our perception, while the building up of closed- off systems of material points is relative to our science, the living body has been separated and closed off by nature herself. It is composed of unlike parts that complete each other. It performs diverse functions that involve each other. It is an individual, and of no other object, not even of the crystal, can this be said, for a crystal has neither difference of parts nor diversity of functions. No doubt, it is hard to decide, even in the organized world, what is individual and what is not. The difficulty is great, even in the animal kingdom; with plants it is almost insurmountable. This difficulty is, moreover, due to profound causes, on which we shall dwell later. We shall see that individuality admits of any number of degrees, and that it is not fully realized anywhere, even in man. But that is no reason for thinking it is not a character- istic property of life. The biologist who proceeds as a
ive ORGANIZED BODIES Fara
geometrician is too ready to take advantage here of our
inability to give a precise and general definition of in-
dividuality. A perfect definition applies only to a com-
pleted reality; now, vital properties are never entirely
realized, though always on the way to become so; they
are not so much states as tendencies. And a tendency
achieves all that it aims at only if it is not thwarted by
another tendency. How, then, could this occur in the
domain of life, where, as we shall show, the interaction
of antagonistic tendencies is always implied? In particu-
lar, it may be said of individuality that, while the ten-
dency to individuate is everywhere present in the organized
world, it is everywhere opposed by the tendency towards
reproduction. For the individuality to be perfect, it
_ would be necessary that no detached part of the organism
could live separately. But then reproduction would be
impossible. For what is reproduction, but the building
up of a new organism with a detached fragment of the old?
Individuality therefore harbors its enemy at home. Its
very need of perpetuating itself in time condemns it never
to be complete in space. The biologist must take due
account of both tendencies in every instance, and it is
therefore useless to ask him for a definition of individuality
that shall fit all cases and work automatically.
But too often one reasons about the things of life in the same way as about the conditions of crude matter. Nowhere is the confusion so evident as in discussions about individuality. We are shown the stumps of a Lum- briculus, each regenerating its head and living thence- forward as an independent individual; a hydra whose pieces become so many fresh hydras; a sea-urchin’s egg whose fragments develop complete embryos: where then, we are asked, was the individuality of the egg, the hydra, the worm?—But, because there are several individuals
14 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
now, it does not follow that there was not a single in-
dividual just before. No doubt, when I have seen several
drawers fall from a chest, I have no longer the right to
say that the article was all of one piece. But the fact is
that there can be nothing more in the present of the chest
of drawers than there was in its past, and if it is made up
of several different pieces now, it was so from the date of
its manufacture. Generally speaking, unorganized bodies,
which are what we have need of in order that we may act,
and on which we have modelled our fashion of thinking,
are regulated by this simple law: the present contains noth-
ing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was
already in the cause. But suppose that the distinctive
feature of the organized body is that it grows and changes
without ceasing, as indeed the most superficial observation
testifies, there would be nothing astonishing in the fact
that it was one in the first instance, and afterwards many.
The reproduction of unicellular organisms consists in
just this—the living being divides into two halves, of which
each is a complete individual. True, in the more complex
animals, nature localizes in the almost independent sexual
cells the power of producing the whole anew. But some-
thing of this power may remain diffused in the rest of the
organism, as the facts of regeneration prove, and it is
conceivable that in certain privileged cases the faculty
may persist integrally in a latent condition and manifest
itself on the first opportunity. In truth, that I may have
the right to speak of individuality, it is not necessary that
the organism should be without the power to divide into
fragments that are able to live. It is sufficient that it
should have presented a certain systematization of parts
before the division, and that the same systematization
tend to be reproduced in each separate portion afterwards.
Now, that is precisely what we observe in the organic
1 ORGANIZED BODIES | 15
world. We may conclude, then, that individuality is
never perfect, and that it is often difficult, sometimes
impossible, to tell what is an individual, and what is not,
but that life nevertheless manifests a search for indi-
viduality, as if it strove to constitute systems naturally
isolated, naturally closed.
By this is a living being distinguished from all that
our perception or our science isolates or closes artifici-
ally. It would therefore be wrong to compare it to an
object. Should we wish to find a term of comparison in
the inorganic world, it is not to a determinate material
object, but much rather to the totality of the material
universe that we ought to compare the living organism.
It is true that the comparison would not be worth much,
for a living being is observable, whilst the whole of the
universe is constructed or reconstructed by thought. But
at least our attention would thus have been called to the
essential character of organization. Like the universe as a
whole, like each conscious being taken separately, the
organism which lives is a thing that endures. Its past,
in its entirety, is prolonged into its present, and abides
there, actual and acting. How otherwise could we under-
stand that it passes through distinct and well-marked
phases, that it changes its age—in short, that it has a
history? If I consider my body in particular, I find that,
like my consciousness, it matures little by little from infancy
to old age; like myself, it grows old. Indeed, maturity
and old age are, properly speaking, attributes only of my
body; it is only metaphorically that I apply the same names
to the corresponding changes of my conscious self. Now,
if I pass from the top to the bottom of the scale of living
beings, from one of the most to one of the least differentia-
ted, from the multicellular organism of man to the unicellu-
16 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
lar organism of the Infusorian, I find, even in this simple
cell, the same process of growing old. The Infusorian
is exhausted at the end of a certain number of divisions,
and though it may be possible, by modifying the environ-
ment, to put off the moment when a rejuvenation by con-
jugation becomes necessary, this cannot be indefinitely
postponed.: It is true that between these two extreme
cases, in which the organism is completely individualized,
there might be found a multitude of others in which the
individuality is less well marked, and in which, although
there is doubtless an ageing somewhere, one cannot say
exactly what it is that grows old. Once more, there is no
universal biological law which applies precisely and auto-
matically to every living thing. There are only directions
in which life throws out species in general. Hach particular
species, in the very act by which it is constituted, affirms
its independence, follows its caprice, deviates more or
less from the straight line, sometimes even remounts the
slope and seems to turn its back on its original direction.
It is easy enough to argue that a tree never grows old,
since the tips of its branches are always equally young,
always equally capable of engendering new trees by budding.
But in such an organism—which is, after all, a society
rather than an individual—something ages, if only the
leaves and the interior of the trunk. And each cell, con-
sidered separately, evolves in a specific way. Wherever
anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which
time is being inscribed.
This, it will be said, is only a metaphor.—It is of the very essence of mechanism, in fact, to consider as meta- phorical every expression which attributes to time an effective action and a reality of its own. In vain does
1 Calkins, Studies on the Lije History of Protozoa (Archiv j. Entwick-
lungsmechanik, vol. xv., 1903, pp. 139-186).
e INDIVIDUALITY AND AGE _ 17
immediate experience show us that the very basis of our
conscious existence is memory, that is to say, the pro-
longation of the past into the present, or, in a word, dura-
tion, acting and irreversible. In vain does reason prove
to us that the more we get away from the objects cut out
and the systems isolated by common sense and by science
and the deeper we dig beneath them, the more we have
to do with a reality which changes as a whole in its in-
most states, as if an accumulative memory of the past
made it impossible to go back again. The mechanistic
instinct of the mind is stronger than reason, stronger than
immediate experience. The metaphysician that we each
carry unconsciously within us, and the presence of which
is explained, as we shall see later on, by the very place that
man occupies amongst the living beings, has its fixed re-
quirements, its ready-made explanations, its irreducible
propositions: all unite in denying concrete duration.
Change must be reducible to an arrangement or rearrange-
ment of parts; the irreversibility of time must be an ap-
pearance relative to our ignorance; the impossibility of
turning back must be only the inability of man to put
things in place again. So growing old can be nothing more
than the gradual gain or loss of certain substances, per-
haps both together. Time is assumed to have just as
much reality for a living being as for an hour-glass, in
which the top part empties while the lower fills, and all goes
where it was before when you turn the glass upside down.
True, biologists are not agreed on what is gained and what is lost between the day of birth and the day of death. There are those who hold to the continual growth in the volume of protoplasm from the birth of the cell right on
to its death.: More probable and more profound is the
1 Sedgwick Minot, On Certain Phenomena of Growing Old (Proc. Amer. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, 39th Meeting, Salem, 1891, pp. 271-288).
18 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
theory according to which the diminution bears on the
quantity of nutritive substance contained in that “inner
environment” in which the organism is being renewed,
and the increase on the quantity of unexcreted residual
substances which, accumulating in the body, finally “ crust
it over.”? Must we however—with an eminent bacteri-
ologist—declare any explanation of growing old insufficient
that does not take account of phagocytosis?? We do not
feel qualified to settle the question. But the fact that the
two theories agree in affirming the constant accumulation
or loss ofa certain kind of matter, even though they have
little in common as to what is gained and lost, shows pretty
well that the frame of the explanation has been furnished
a prior. We shall see this more and more as we proceed
with our study: it is not easy, in thinking of time, to escape
the image of the hour-glass.
The cause of growing old must lie deeper. We hold that there is unbroken continuity between the evolution of the embryo and that of the complete organism. The impetus which causes a living being to grow larger, to develop and to age, is the same that has caused it to pass through the phases of the embryonic life. The develop- ment of the embryo is a perpetual change of form. Any one who attempts to note all its successive aspects becomes lost in an infinity, as is inevitable in dealing with a con- tinuum. Life does but prolong this prenatal evolution. The proof of this is that it is often impossible for us to say whether we are dealing with an organism growing old or with an embryo continuing to evolve; such is the case,
1Le Dantec, L’Individualité et Verreur individualiste, Paris, 1905,
pp. 84 ff.
2 Metchnikoff, La Dégénérescence sénile (Année biologique, iii., 1897, pp. 249 ff.). Gf. by the same author, La Nature humaine, Paris, 1903, pp. 312 ff.
1] INDIVIDUALITY AND AGE 19
for example, with the larvae of insects and crustacea.
On the other hand, in an organism such as our own, crises
like puberty or the menopause, in which the individual
is completely transformed, are quite comparable to changes
in the course of larval or embryonic life—yet they are part
and parcel of the process of our aging. Although they occur
at a definite age and within a time that may be quite short,
no one would maintain that they appear then ex abruptio,
from without, simply because a certain age is reached, just
as a legal right is granted to us on our one-and-twentieth
birthday. It is evident that a change like that of puberty
is in course of preparation at every instant from birth,
and even before birth, and that the aging up to that crisis
consists, in part at least, of this gradual preparation.
In short, what is properly vital in growing old is the in-
sensible, infinitely graduated, continuance of the change
of form. Now, this change is undoubtedly accompanied
by phenomena of organic destruction: to these, and to
these alone, will a mechanistic explanation of aging be
confined. It will note the facts of sclerosis, the gradual
accumulation of residual substances, the growing hyper-
trophy of the protoplasm of the cell. But under these
visible effects an inner cause lies hidden. The evolution
of the living being, like that of the embryo, implies a con-
tinual recording of duration, a persistence of the past in
the present, and so an appearance, at least, of organic
memory.
The present state of an unorganized body depends ex- clusively on what happened at the previous instant; and likewise the position of the material points of a system defined and isolated by science is determined by the po- sition of these same points at the moment immediately before. In other words, the laws that govern unorganized matter are expressible, in principle, by differential equations
20 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
in which time (in the sense in which the mathematician
takes this word) would play the role of independent variable.
Is it so with the laws of life? Does the state of a living
body find its complete explanation in the state immediately
before? Yes, if it is agreed a priori to liken the living body
to other bodies, and to identify it, for the sake of the argu-
ment, with the artificial systems on which the chemist,
physicist, and astronomer operate. But in astronomy,
physics, and chemistry the proposition has a perfectly
definite meaning: it signifies that certain aspects of the
present, important for science, are calculable as functions
of the immediate past. Nothing of the sort in the domain
of life. Here calculation touches, at most, certain phe-
nomena of organic destruction. Organic creation, on the
contrary, the evolutionary phenomena which properly
constitute life, we cannot in any way subject to a mathe-
matical treatment. It will be said that this impotence
is due only to our ignorance. But it may equally well
express the fact that the present moment of a living body
does not find its explanation in the moment immediately
before, that all the past of the organism must be added to
that moment, its heredity—in fact, the whole of a very
long history. In the second of these two hypotheses,
not in the first, is really expressed the present state of
the biological sciences, as well as their direction. As for
the idea that the living body might be treated by some
superhuman calculator in the same mathematical way as
our solar system, this has gradually arisen from a meta-
physic which has taken a more precise form since the
physical discoveries of Galileo, but which, as we shall
show, was always the natural metaphysic of the human
mind. Its apparent clearness, our impatient desire to
find it true, the enthusiasm with wnich so many excellent
minds accept it without proof—all the seductions, in short,
Bi! INDIVIDUALITY AND AGE 21
that it exercises on our thought, should put us on our
guard against it. The attraction it has for us proves well
enough that it gives satisfaction to an innate inclination.
But, as will be seen further on, the intellectual tendencies
innate to-day, which life must have created in the course
of its evolution, are not at all meant to supply us with
an explanation of life: they have something else to do.
Any attempt to distinguish between an artificial and a
natural system, between the dead and the living, runs
counter to this tendency at once. Thus it happens that
we find it equally difficult to imagine that the organized
has duration and that the unorganized has not. When
we say that the state of an artificial system depends ex-
clusively on its state at the moment before, does it not
seem as if we were bringing time in, as if the system had
something to do with real duration? And, on the other
hand, though the whole of the past goes into the making
of the living being’s present moment, does not organic
memory press it into the moment immediately before the
present, so that the moment immediately before becomes
the sole cause of the present one?—To speak thus is to
ignore the cardinal difference between concrete time, along
which a real system develops, and that abstract time which
enters into our speculations on artificial systems. What
does it mean, to say that the state of an artificial system
depends on what it was at the moment immediately before?
There is no instant immediately before another instant;
there could not be, any more than there could be one
mathematical point touching another. The instant “im-
mediately before” is, in reality, that which is connected
with the present instant by the interval dt. All that you
mean to say, therefore, is that the present state of the
system is defined by equations into which differential
coefficients enter, such as ds|dt, dv|dt, that is to say, at
22 - QGREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
bottom, present velocities and present accelerations. You
are therefore really speaking only of the present—a present,
it is true, considered along with its tendency. . The systems
science works with are, in fact, in an instantaneous present
that is always being renewed; such systems are never in
that real, concrete duration in which the past remains
bound up with the present. When the mathematician
calculates the future state of a system at the end of a time
t, there is nothing to prevent him from supposing that the
universe vanishes from this moment till that, and suddenly
reappears. It is the ¢th moment only that counts—
and that will be a mere instant. What will flow on in
the interval—that is to say, real time—does not count,
and cannot enter into the calculation. If the mathe-
matician says that he puts himself inside this interval,
he means that he is placing himself at a certain point,
at a particular moment, therefore at the extremity again
of a certain time ¢’; with the interval up to 7” he is not
concerned. If he divides the interval into infinitely small
parts by considering the differential dt, he thereby expresses
merely the fact that he will consider accelerations and
velocities—that is to say, numbers which denote ten-
dencies and enable him to calculate the state of the system
at a given moment. But he is always speaking of a given
moment—a static moment, that is—and not of flowing
time. In short, the world the mathematician deals with is
a world that dies and is reborn at every instant—the world
which Descartes was thinking of when he spoke of continued
creation. But, in time thus conceived, how could evolution,
which is the very essence of life, ever take place? Evo-
lution implies a real persistence of the past in the present,
a duration which is, as it were, a hyphen, a connecting
link. In other words, to know a living being or natural
system is to get at the very interval of duration, while
hs INDIVIDUALITY AND AGE . 23
the knowledge of an artificial or mathematical system applies
only to the extremity.
Continuity of change, preservation of the past in the present, real duration—the living being seems, then, to share these attributes with consciousness. Can we go further and say that life, like conscious activity, is in- vention, is unceasing creation?
It does not enter into our plan to set down here the
proofs of transformism. We wish only to explain in a
word or two why we shall accept it, in the present work,
as a sufficiently exact and precise expression of the facts
actually known. The idea of transformism is already
in germ in the natural classification of organized beings.
The naturalist, in fact, brings together the organisms that
are like each other, then divides the group into sub-groups
within which the likeness is still greater, and so on: all
through the operation, the characters of the group appear
as general themes on which each of the sub-groups per-
forms its particular variation. Now, such is just the re-
lation we find, in the animal and in the vegetable world
between the generator and the generated: on the canvas
which the ancestor passes on, and which his descendants
possess in common, each puts his own original embroidery.
True, the differences between the descendant and the
ancestor are slight, and it may be asked whether the same
living matter presents enough plasticity to take in turn
such different forms as those of a fish, a reptile and a bird.
But, to this question, observation gives a peremptory
answer. It shows that up to a certain period in its de-
velopment the embryo of the bird is hardly distinguishable
from that of the reptile, and that the individual develops,
throughout the embryonic life in general, a series of trans-
formations comparable to those through which, according
24 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
to the theory of evolution, one species passes into another.
A single cell, the result of the combination of two cells,
male and female, accomplishes this work by dividing.
Every day, before our eyes, the highest forms of life are
springing from a very elementary form. Experience,
then, shows that the most complex has been able to issue
from the most simple by way of evolution. Now, has it
arisen so, as a matter of fact? Paleontology, in spite
of the insufficiency of its evidence, invites us to believe
it has; for, where it makes out the order of succession of
species with any precision, this order is just what con-
siderations drawn from embryogeny and comparative
anatomy would lead any one to suppose, and each new
paleontological discovery brings transformism a new
confirmation. Thus, the proof drawn from mere ob-
servation is ever being strengthened, while, on the other
hand, experiment is removing the objections one by one.
The recent experiments of H. de Vries, for instance, by
showing that important variations can be produced sud-
denly and transmitted regularly, have overthrown some of
the greatest difficulties raised by the theory. They have
enabled us greatly to shorten the time biological evolution
seems to demand. They also render us less exacting
toward paleontology. So that, all things considered, the
transformist hypothesis looks more and more like a close
approximation to the truth. It is not rigorously de-
monstrable; but, failing the certainty of theoretical or
experimental demonstration, there is a probability which
is continually growing, due to evidence which, while com-
ing short of direct proof, seems to point persistently in its
direction: such is the kind of probability that the theory
of transformism offers.
Let us admit, however, that transformism may be wrong. Let us suppose that species are proved, by in-
1.) TRANSFORMISM 25
ference or by experiment, to have arisen by a discontinuous
process, of which to-day we have no idea. Would the
doctrine be affected in so far as it has a special interest
or importance for us? Classification would probably
remain, in its broad lines. The actual data of embryology
would also remain. The correspondence between com-
parative embryogeny and comparative anatomy would
remain too. Therefore biology could and would continue
to establish between living forms the same relations and
the same kinship as transformism supposes to-day. It
would be, it is true, an ideal kinship, and no longer a
material affiliation. But, as the actual data of paleontology
would also remain, we should still have to admit that it is
successively, not simultaneously, that the forms between
which we find an ideal kinship have appeared. Now, the
evolutionist theory, so far as it has any importance for
philosophy, requires no more. It consists above all in
establishing relations of ideal kinship, and in maintaining
that wherever there is this relation of, so to speak, logical
affiliation between forms, there is also a relation of chrono-
logical succession between the species in which these forms
are materialized. Both arguments would hold in any
case. And hence, an evolution somewhere would still
have to be supposed, whether in a creative Thought in
which the ideas of the different species are generated by
each other exactly as transformism holds that species them-
selves are generated on the earth; or in a plan of vital organi-
zation immanent in nature, which gradually works itself out,
in which the relations of logical and chronological affiliation
between pure forms are just those which transformism
presents as relations of real affiliation between living
individuals; or, finally, in some unknown cause of life,
which develops its effects as if they generated one another.
Evolution would then simply have been transposed, made
26 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
to pass from the visible to the invisible. Almost all that
transformism tells us to-day would be preserved, open to
interpretation in another way. Will it not, therefore,
be better to stick to the letter of transformism as almost
all scientists profess it? Apart from the question to what
extent the theory of evolution describes the facts and to
what extent it symbolizes them, there is nothing in it
that is irreconcilable with the doctrines it has claimed to
replace, even with that of special creations, to which it is
usually opposed. For this reason we think the language
of transformism forces itself now upon all philosophy, as
the dogmatic affirmation of transformism forces itself upon
science.
But then, we must no longer speak of life in general as an abstraction, or as a mere heading under which all living beings are inscribed. At a certain moment, in certain points of space, a visible current has taken rise; this current of life, traversing the bodies it has organized one after another, passing from generation to generation, has become divided amongst species and distributed amongst individuals without losing anything of its force, rather intensifying in proportion to its advance. It is well known that, on the theory of the “continuity of the germ-plasm,” maintained by Weismann, the sexual ele- ments of the generating organism pass on their properties directly to the sexual elements of the organism engendered. In this extreme form, the theory has seemed debatable, for it is only in exceptional cases that there are any signs of sexual glands at the time of segmentation of the ferti- lized egg. But, though the cells that engender the sexual _ elements do not generally appear at the beginning of the embryonic life, it is none the less true that they are always formed out of those tissues of the embryo which have not undergone any particular functional differentiation, and
«
ny | TRANSFORMISM 7 -
whose cells are made of unmodified protoplasm.: In other
words, the genetic power of the fertilized ovum weakens,
the more it is spread over the growing mass of the tissues
of the embryo; but, while it is being thus diluted, it is
concentrating anew something of itself on a certain special
point, to wit, the cells, from which the ova or spermatozoa
will develop. It might therefore be said that, though
the germ-plasm is not continuous, there is at least con-
tinuity of genetic energy, this energy being expended only
at certain instants, for just enough time to give the requisite
impulsion to the embryonic life, and being recouped as
soon as possible in new sexual elements, in which, again,
it bides its time. Regarded from this point of view, life
is like a current passing from germ to germ through the
medium of a developed organism. It is as if the organism
itself were only an excrescence, a bud caused to sprout by
the former germ endeavoring to continue itself ina new germ.
The essential thing is the continuous progress indefinitely
pursued, an invisible progress, on which each visible organ-
ism rides during the short interval of time given it to live.
Now, the more we fix our attention on this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, in which the past presses against the present and causes the upspringing of a new form of consciousness, incommensurable with its ante- cedents. That the appearance of a vegetable or animal species is due to specific causes, nobody will gainsay. But this can only mean that if, after the fact, we could know these causes in detail, we could explain by them the form that has been produced; foreseeing the form is out of the question.?. It may perhaps be said that the form could
1 Roule, L’Embryologie générale, Paris, 1893, p. 319.
- The irreversibility of the series of living beings has been well set
forth by Baldwin (Development and Evolution, New York, 1902; in
particular p. 327).
28 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
be foreseen if we could know, in all their details, the con-
ditions under which it will be produced. But these con-
ditions are built up into it and are part and parcel of its
being; they are peculiar to that phase of its history in
which life finds itself at the moment of producing the form:
how could we know beforehand a situation that is unique
of its kind, that has never yet occurred and will never occur
again? Of the future, only that is foreseen which is like
the past or can be made up again with elements like those
of the past. Such is the case with astronomical, physical
and chemical facts, with all facts which form part of a
system in which elements supposed to be unchanging are
merely put together, in which the only changes are changes
of position, in which there is no theoretical absurdity in
imagining that things are restored to their place; in which,
consequently, the same total phenomenon, or at least the
same elementary phenomena, can be repeated. But an
original situation, which imparts something of its own
originality to its elements, that is to say, to the partial
views that are taken of it, how can such a situation be
pictured as given before it is actually produced?: All that
can be said is that, once produced, it will be explained by
the elements that analysis will then carve out of it. Now,
what is true of the production of a new species is also true
of the production of a new individual, and, more generally,
of any moment of any living form. For, though the
variation must reach a certain importance and a certain
generality in order to give rise to a new species, it is being
produced every moment, continuously and _ insensibly,
in every living being. And it is evident that even the sudden
“mutations” which we now hear of are possible only if
a process of incubation, or rather of maturing, is going
1 We have dwelt on this point and tried to make it clear in the Essat
sur les données immédiates de la conscience, pp. 140-151.
1) BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY 29
on throughout a series of generations that do not seem to
change. In this sense it might be said of life, as of con-
sciousness, that at every moment it is creating something.
But against this idea of the absolute originality and un- foreseeability of forms our whole intellect rises in revolt. The essential function of our intellect, as the evolution of life has fashioned it, is to be a light for our conduct, to make ready for our action on things, to foresee, for a given situation, the events, favorable or unfavorable, which may follow thereupon. Intellect therefore in- stinctively selects in a given situation whatever is like something already known; it seeks this out, in order that it may apply its principle that “like produces like.” In just this does the prevision of the future by common sense consist. Science carries this faculty to the highest possible degree of exactitude and precision, but does not alter its essential character. Like ordinary knowledge, in dealing with things science is concerned only with the aspect of repetition. Though the whole be original, science will always manage to analyze it into elements or aspects which are approximately a reproduction of the past. Science can work only on what is supposed to repeat it- self—that is to say, on what is withdrawn, by hypothesis,
from the action of real time. Anything that is irreducible
1Tn his fine work on Genius in Art (Le Génie dans l'art), M. Séailles develops this twofold thesis, that art is a continuation of nature and that life is creation. We should willingly accept the second formula; but by creation must we understand, as the author does, a synthesis of elements? Where the elements pre-exist, the synthesis that will be made is virtually given, being only one of the possible arrangements. This arrangement a superhuman intellect could have perceived in ad- vance among all the possible ones that surround it. We hold, on the contrary, that in the domain of life the elements have no real and sepa- rate existence. They are manifold mental views of an indivisible process. And for that reason there is radical contingency in progress, incommensurability between what goes before and what follows—in short, duration.
30 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
and irreversible in the successive moments of a history
eludes science. To get a notion of this irreducibility and
irreversibility, we must break with scientific habits which
are adapted to the fundamental requirements of thought,
we must do violence to the mind, go counter to the natural
bent of the intellect. But that is just the function of
philosophy.
In vain, therefore, does life evolve before our eyes as a continuous creation of unforeseeable form: the idea always persists that form, unforeseeability and continuity are mere appearance—the outward reflection of our own ig- norance. What is presented to the senses as a continuous history would break up, we are told, into a series of suc- cessive states. “What gives you the impression of an original state resolves, upon analysis, into elementary facts, each of which is the repetition of a fact already known. What you call an unforeseeable form is only a new arrangement of old elements. The elementary causes, which in their totality have determined this arrangement, are themselves old causes repeated in a new order. Know- ledge of the elements and of the elementary causes would have made it possible to foretell the living form which is their sum and their resultant. When we have resolved the biological aspect of phenomena into physico-chemical factors, we will leap, if necessary, over physics and chemis- try themselves; we will go from masses to molecules, from molecules to atoms, from atoms to corpuscles: we must indeed at last come to something that can be treated as a kind of solar system, astronomically. If you deny it, you. oppose the very principle of scientific mechanism, and you arbitrarily affirm that living matter is not made of the same elements as other matter.”—We reply that we do not question the fundamental identity of inert matter and organized matter. The only question is whether the
1.1 BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY = 31
natural systems which we call living beings must be as-
similated to the artificial systems that science cuts out
within inert matter, or whether they must not rather be
compared to that natural system which is the whole of
the universe. That life is a kind of mechanism I cordially
agree. But is it the mechanism of parts artificially isolated
within the whole of the universe, or is it the mechanism
of the real whole? The real whole might well be, we con-
ceive, an indivisible continuity. The systems we cut out
within it would, properly speaking, not then be parts at
all; they would be partial views of the whole. And, with
these partial views put end to end, you will not make
even a beginning of the reconstruction of the whole, any
more than, by multiplying photographs of an object in
a thousand different aspects, you will reproduce the object
itself. So of life and of the physico-chemical phenomena
-to which you endeavor to reduce it. Analysis will un-
doubtedly resolve the process of organic creation into an
ever-growing number of physico-chemical phenomena,
and chemists and physicists will have to do, of course,
with nothing but these. But it does not follow that
chemistry and physics will ever give us the key to life.
A very small element of a curve is very near being a straight line. And the smaller it is, the nearer. In the limit, it may be termed a part of the curve or a part of the straight line, as you please, for in each of its points a curve coincides with its tangent. So likewise “ vitality” is tangent, at any and every point, to physical and chemical forces; but such points are, as a fact, only views taken by a mind which imagines stops at various moments of the movement that generates the curve. In reality, life is no more made of physico-chemical elements than a curve is composed of straight lines.
In a general way, the most radical progress a science
32 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
can achieve is the working of the completed results into
a new scheme of the whole, by relation to which they
become instantaneous and motionless views taken at in-
tervals along the continuity of a movement. Such, for
example, is the relation of modern to ancient geometry.
The latter, purely static, worked with figures drawn once
for all; the former studies the varying of a function—
that is, the continuous movement by which the figure
is described. No doubt, for greater strictness, all con-
siderations of motion may be eliminated from mathe-
matical processes; but the introduction of motion into the
genesis of figures is nevertheless the origin of modern
mathematics. We believe that if biology could ever get
as close to its object as mathematics does to its own, it
would become, to the physics and chemistry of organized
bodies, what the mathematics of the moderns has proved
to be in relation to ancient geometry. The wholly super-
ficial displacements of masses and molecules studied in
physics and chemistry would become, by relation to that
inner vital movement (which is transformation and not
translation) what the position of a moving object is to the
movement of that object in space. And, so far as we can
see, the procedure by which we should then pass from the
definition of a certain vital action to the system of physico-
chemical facts which it implies would be like passing from
the function to its derivative, from the equation of the
curve (i.e. the law of the continuous movement by which
the curve is generated) to the equation of the tangent
giving its instantaneous direction. Such a science would
be a mechanics of transformation, of which our mechanics
of translation would become a particular case, a simpli-
fication, a projection on the plane of pure quantity. And
just as an infinity of functions have the same differential,
these functions differing from each other by a constant,
1) BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY 33
so perhaps the integration of the physico-chemical ele-
ments of properly vital action might determine that action
only in part—a part would be left to indetermination.
But such an integration can be no more than dreamed of;
we do not pretend that the dream will ever be realized.
We are only trying, by carrying a certain comparison as
far as possible, to show up to what point our theory goes
along with pure mechanism, and where they part company.
Imitation of the living by the unorganized may, how- ever, go a good way. Not only does chemistry make organic syntheses, but we have succeeded in reproducing artificially the external appearance of certain facts of organization, such as indirect cell-division and proto- plasmic circulation. It is well known that the protoplasm of the cell effects various movements within its envelope; on the other hand, indirect cell-division is the outcome of very complex operations, some involving the nucleus and others the cytoplasm. These latter commence by the doubling of the centrosome, a small spherical body alongside the nucleus. The two centrosomes thus ob- tained draw apart, attract the broken and doubled ends of the filament of which the original nucleus mainly con- sisted, and join them to form two fresh nuclei about which the two new cells are constructed which will succeed the first. Now, in their broad lines and in their external appearance, some at least of these operations have been successfully imitated. If some sugar or table salt is pulverized and some very old oil is added, and a drop of the mixture is observed under the microscope, a froth of alveolar structure is seen whose configuration is like that of protoplasm, according to certain theories, and in which movements take place which are decidedly like those of
protoplasmic circulation.: If, in a froth of the same kind,
1 Biitschli, Untersuchungen iiber mikroskopische Schéume und das Pro-
toplasma, Leipzig, 1892, First Part.
34 . CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
the air is extracted from an alveolus, a cone of attraction
is seen to form, like those about the centrosomes which
result in the division of the nucleus... Even the external
motions of a unicellular organism—of an amoeba, at any
rate—are sometimes explained mechanically. The dis-
placements of an amoeba in a drop of water would be
comparable to the motion to and fro of a grain of dust
in a draughty room. Its mass is all the time absorbing
certain soluble matters contained in the surrounding
water, and giving back to it certain others; these con-
tinual exchanges, like those between two vessels separated
by a porous partition, would create an everchanging
vortex around the little organism. As for the temporary
prolongations or pseudopodia which the amoeba seems
to make, they would be not so much given out by it as
attracted from it by a kind of inhalation or suction of the
surrounding medium.? In the same way we may perhaps
come to explain the more complex movements which the
Infusorian makes with its vibratory cilia, which, more-
over, are probably only fixed pseudopodia.
But scientists are far from agreed on the value of ex- planations and schemas of this sort. Chemists have pointed out that even in the organic—not to go so far as the organized—science has reconstructed hitherto nothing but waste products of vital activity; the peculiarly active plastic substances obstinately defy synthesis. One of the most notable naturalists of our time has insisted on the opposition of two orders of phenomena observed in living tissues, anagenesis and katagenesis. The role of the anagenetic energies is to raise the inferior energies
1Rhumbler, Versuch einer mechanischen Erklarung der indirekten
Zell- und Kernteilung (Roux’s Archiv, 1896).
2 Berthold, Studien tiber Protoplasmamechanik, Leipzig, 1886, p. 102. Cf. the explanation proposed by Le Dantec, Théorie nouvelle de la vie, Paris, 1896, p. 60.
1} BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY — 35
to their own level by assimilating inorganic substances.
They construct the tissues. On the other hand, the actual
functioning of life (excepting, of course, assimilation,
growth, and reproduction) is of the katagenetic order,
exhibiting the fall, not the rise, of energy. It is only with
these facts of katagenetic order that physico-chemistry
deals—that is, in short, with the dead and not with the
living.. The other kind of facts certainly seem to defy
physico-chemical analysis, even if they are not. anagenetic
in the proper sense of the word. As for the artificial
imitation of the outward appearance of protoplasm, should
a real theoretic importance be attached to this when the
question of the physical framework of protoplasm is not
yet settled? We are still further from compounding pro-
toplasm chemically. Finally, a physico-chemical ex-
planation of the motions of the amoeba, and a fortiori of
the behavior of the Infusoria, seems impossible to many
of those who have closely observed these rudimeritary
organisms. Even in these humblest manifestations of
life they discover traces of an effective psychological activ-
ity. But instructive above all is the fact that the ten-
dency to explain everything by physics and chemistry is
discouraged rather than strengthened by deep study of
histological phenomena. Such is the conclusion of the
truly admirable book which the histologist E. B. Wilson
1 Cope, The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, Chicago, 1896, pp. 475-484. =
2Maupas, “Etude des infusoires ciliés’’ (Arch. de zoologie expéri- mentale, 1883, pp. 47, 491, 518, 549, in particular). P. Vignon, Re- cherches de cytologie générale sur les épithéliums, Paris, 1902, p. 655. A profound study of the motions of the Infusoria and a very penetrating criticism of the idea of tropism have been made recently by Jennings (Contributions to the Study of the Behavior of Lower Organisms, Wash- ington, 1904). The ‘‘type of behavior’’ of these lower organisms, as
Jennings defines it (pp. 237-252), is unquestionably of the psychological
order.
36 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
has devoted to the development of the cell: “The study
of the cell has, on the whole, seemed to widen rather than
to narrow the enormous gap that separates even the lowest
forms of life from the inorganic world.”
To sum up, those who are concerned only with the functional activity of the living being are inclined to be- lieve that physics and chemistry will give us the key to biological processes.?. They have chiefly to do, as a fact, with phenomena that are repeated continually in the living being, as in a chemical retort. This explains, in some measure, the mechanistic tendencies of physiology. On the contrary, those whose attention is concentrated on the minute structure of living tissues, on their genesis and evolution, histologists and embryogenists on the one hand, naturalists on the other, are interested in the retort itself, not merely in its contents. They find that this retort creates its own form through a unique series of acts that really constitute a history. Thus, histologists, em- bryogenists, and naturalists believe far less readily than physiologists in the physico-chemical character of vital actions.
The fact is, neither one nor the other of these two theories, neither that which affirms nor that which denies the possi- bility of chemically producing an elementary organism, can claim the authority of experiment. They are both unverifiable, the former because science has not yet ad- vanced a step toward the chemical synthesis of a living substance, the second because there is no conceivable way of proving experimentally the impossibility of a fact. But we have set forth the theoretical reasons which prevent us from likening the living being, a system closed off by
nature, to the systems which our science isolates. These
1E. B. Wilson, The Cell in Development and Inheritance, New York,
1897, p. 330.
2 Dastre, La Vie et la mort, p. 43.
x RADICAL MECHANISM 37
reasons have less force, we acknowledge, in the case of a
rudimentary organism like the amoeba, which hardly
evolves at all. But they acquire more when we consider
a complex organism which goes through a regular cycle
of transformations. The more duration marks the living
being with its imprint, the more obviously the organism
differs from a mere mechanism, over which duration glides
without penetrating. And the demonstration has most
force when it applies to the evolution of life as a whole,
from its humblest origins to its highest forms, inasmuch as
this evolution constitutes, through the unity and con-
tinuity of the animated matter which supports it, a single
indivisible history. Thus viewed, the evolutionist hypothe-
sis does not seem so closely akin to the mechanistic con-
ception of life as it is generally supposed to be. Of this
mechanistic conception we do not claim, of course, to
furnish a mathematical and final refutation. But the
refutation which we draw from the consideration of real
time, and which is, in our opinion, the only refutation
possible, becomes the more rigorous and cogent the more
frankly the evolutionist hypothesis is assumed. We must
dwell a good deal more on this point. But let us first show
more clearly the notion of life to which we are leading up.
The mechanistic explanations, we said, hold good for
the systems that our thought artificially detaches from the
whole. But of the whole itself and of the systems which,
within this whole, seem to take after it, we cannot admit
a priori that they are mechanically explicable, for then
time would be useless, and even unreal. The essence of
mechanical explanation, in fact, is to regard the future
and the past as calculable functions of the present, and thus
to claim that all is given. On this hypothesis, past,
present and future would be open at a glance to a super-
human intellect capable of making the calculation. Indeed,
38 CREATIVE EVOLUTION sete.
the scientists who have believed in the universality and
perfect objectivity of mechanical explanations have,
consciously or unconsciously, acted on a hypothesis of
this kind. Laplace formulated it with the greatest pre-
cision: “An intellect which at a given instant knew all
the forces with which nature is animated, and the respective
situations of the beings that compose nature—supposing
the said intellect were vast enough to subject these data
to analysis—would embrace in the same formula the motions
of the greatest bodies in the universe and those of the
slightest atom: nothing would be uncertain for it, and
the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes.”
And Du Bois-Reymond: “We can imagine the knowledge
of nature arrived at a point where the universal process
of the world might be represented by a single mathematical
formula, by one immense system of simultaneous differ-
ential equations, from which could be deduced, for each
moment, the position, direction, and velocity of every
atom of the world.”? Huxley has expressed the same idea
in a more concrete form: “If the fundamental proposition
of evolution is true, that the entire world, living and not
living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according
_ to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules
of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was
composed, it is no less certain that the existing world
lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapor, and that a sufficient
intellect could, from a knowledge of the properties of the
molecules of that vapor, have predicted, say the state of
the Fauna of Great Britain in 1869, with as much cer-
tainty as one can say what will happen to the vapor of
the breath in a cold winter’s day.”’ In such a doctrine,
1 Laplace, Introduction & la théorie analytique des probabilités (Euvres
completes, vol. vii., Paris, 1886, p. vi.).
2 Du Bois-Reymond, Uber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens, Leipzig,
1892.
Ss RADICAL FINALISM 39
time is still spoken of: one pronounces the word, but one
does not think of the thing. For time is here deprived
of efficacy, and if it does nothing, it is nothing. Radical
mechanism implies a metaphysic in which the totality
of the real is postulated complete in eternity, and in which.
the apparent duration of things expresses merely the in-
firmity of a mind that cannot know everything at once.
But duration is something very different from this for
our consciousness, that is to say, for that which is most
indisputable in our experience. We perceive duration
as a stream against which we cannot go. It is the founda-
tion of our being, and, as we feel, the very substance of
the world in which we live. It is of no use to hold up
before our eyes the dazzling prospect of a universal mathe-
matic; we cannot sacrifice experience to the requirements
of a system. That is why we reject radical mechanism.
But radical finaltism is quite as unacceptable, and for
the same reason. The doctrine of teleology, in its extreme
form, as we find it in Leibniz for example, implies that
things and beings merely realize a programme previously
arranged. But if there is nothing unforeseen, no invention
or creation in the universe, time is useless again. As in the
mechanistic hypothesis, here again it is supposed that
all 1s given. Finalism thus understood is only inverted
mechanism. It springs from the same postulate, with
this sole difference, that in the movement of our finite
intellects along successive things, whose successiveness
is reduced to a mere appearance, it holds in front of us the
light with which it claims to guide us, instead of putting
it behind. It substitutes the attraction of the future for
the impulsion of the past. But succession remains none
the less a mere appearance, as indeed does movement
itself. In the doctrine of Leibniz, time is reduced to a
40 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
confused perception, relative to the human standpoint,
a perception which would vanish, like a rising mist, for a
mind seated at the centre of things.
Yet finalism is not, like mechanism, a doctrine with fixed rigid outlines. It admits of as many inflections as we like. The mechanistic philosophy is to be taken or left: it must be left if the least grain of dust, by straying from the path foreseen by mechanics, should show the slightest trace of spontaneity. The doctrine of final causes, on the contrary, will never be definitively refuted. If one form of it be put aside, it will take another. Its principle, which is essentially psychological, is very flexible. It is so extensible, and thereby so comprehensive, that one accepts something of it as soon as one rejects pure mech- anism. The theory we shall put forward in this book will therefore necessarily partake of finalism to a certain ex- tent. For that reason it is important to intimate exactly what we are going to take of it, and what we mean to leave.
Let us say at once that to thin out the Leibnizian finalism by breaking it into an infinite number of pieces seems to us a step in the wrong direction. This is, however, the tendency of the doctrine of finality. It fully realizes that if the universe as a whole is the carrying out of a plan, this cannot be demonstrated empirically, and that even of the organized world alone it is hardly easier to prove all harmonious: facts would equally well testify to the contrary. Nature sets living beings at discord with one another. She everywhere presents disorder alongside of order, retrogression alongside of progress. But, though finality cannot be affirmed either of the whole of matter or of the whole of life, might it not yet be true, says the finalist, of each organism taken separately? Is there not a wonderful division of labor, a marvellous solidarity among the parts of an organism, perfect order in infinite
e RADICAL FINALISM 41
complexity? Does not each living being thus realize
a plan immanent in its substance?—This theory con-
sists, at bottom, in breaking up the original notion of
finality into bits. It does not accept, indeed it ridicules,
the idea of an ezternal finality, according to which living
beings are ordered with regard to each other: to suppose
the grass made for the cow, the lamb for the wolf—that is
all acknowledged to be absurd. But there is, we are told,
an internal finality: each being is made for itself, all its
parts conspire for the greatest good of the whole and are
intelligently organized in view of that end. Such is the
notion of finality which has long been classic. Finalism
has shrunk to the point of never embracing more than one
living being at atime. By making itself smaller, it probably
thought it would offer less surface for blows.
The truth is, it lay open to them a great deal more. Radical as our own theory may appear, finality is external or it is nothing at all.
Consider the most complex and the most harmonious organism. All the elements, we are told, conspire for the greatest good of the whole. Very well, but let us not forget that each of these elements may itself be an organism in certain cases, and that in subordinating the existence of this small organism to the life of the great one we accept the principle of an ezternal finality. The idea of a finality that is always internal is therefore a self- destructive notion. An organism is composed of tissues, each of which lives for itself. The cells of which the tissues are made have also a certain independence. Strictly speak- ing, if the subordination of all the elements of the individ- ual to the individual itself were complete, we might contend that they are not organisms, reserve the name organism for the individual, and recognize only internal finality. But every one knows that these elements may possess a true au-
42 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
tonomy. To say nothing of phagocytes, whick push inde-
pendence to the point of attacking the organism that
nourishes them, or of germinal cells, which have their own
life alongside the somatic cells—the facts of regeneration
are enough: here an element or a group of elements sud-
denly reveals that, however limited its normal space and
function, it can transcend them occasionally; it may even,
in certain cases, be regarded as the equivalent of the
whole.
There lies the stumbling-block of the vitalistic theories. We shall not reproach them, as is ordinarily done, with replying to the question by the question itself: the “vital principle” may indeed not explain much, but it is at least a sort of label affixed to our ignorance, so as to remind us of this occasionally,: while mechanism invites us to ignore that ignorance. But the position of vitalism is rendered very difficult by the fact that, in nature, there is neither purely internal finality nor absolutely distinct individuality. The organized elements composing the individual have themselves a certain individuality, and each will claim its vital principle if the individual pre- tends to have its own. But, on the other hand, the in- dividual itself is not sufficiently independent, not sufficiently
cut off from other things, for us to allow it a “vital princi-
1 There are really two lines to follow in contemporary neo-vitalism: on the one hand, the assertion that pure mechanism is insufficient, which assumes great authority when made by such scientists as Driesch or Reinke, for example; and, on the other hand, the hypotheses which this vitalism superposes on mechanism (the ‘‘entelechies’’ of Driesch, and the ‘‘dominants’’ of Reinke, etc.). Of these two parts, the former is perhaps the more interesting. See the admirable studies of Driesch— Die Lokalisation morphogenetischer V organge, Leipzig, 1899; Die organ- ischen Regulationen, Leipzig, 1901; Naturbegriffe und Natururteile, Leip- zig, 1904; Der Vitalismus als Geschichte und als Lehre, Leipzig, 1905; and of Reinke—Die Welt als Tat, Berlin, 1899; Hinleitung in die theoretische Biologie, Berlin, 1901; Philosophie der Botanik, Leipzig, 1905.
I. RADICAL FINALISM 43
ple” of its own. An organism such as a higher vertebrate
is the most individuated of all organisms; yet, if we take
into account that it is only the development of an ovum
forming part of the body of its mother and of a spermato-
zoon belonging to the body of its father, that the egg
(z.e. the ovum fertilized) is a connecting link between the
two progenitors since it is common to their two sub-
stances, we shall realize that every individual organism,
even that of a man, is merely a bud that has sprouted on
the combined body of both its parents. Where, then,
does the vital principle of the individual begin or end?
Gradually we shall be carried further and further back,
up to the individual’s remotest ancestors: we shall find
him solidary with each of them, solidary with that little
mass of protoplasmic jelly which is probably at the root
of the genealogical tree of life. Being, to a certain extent,
one with this primitive ancestor, he is also solidary with
all that descends from the ancestor in divergent directions.
In this sense each individual may be said to remain united
with the totality of living beings by invisible bonds. So
it is of no use to try to restrict finality to the individuality
of the living being. If there is finality in the world of life, it
includes the whole of life in a single indivisible embrace.
This life common to all the living undoubtedly presents
many gaps and incoherences, and again it is not so mathe-
matically one that it cannot allow each being to become
individualized to a certain degree. But it forms a single
whole, none the less; and we have to choose between the
out-and-out negation of finality and the hypothesis which
co-ordinates not only the parts of an organism with the
organism itself, but also each living being with the col-
lective whole of all others.
Finality will not go down any easier for being taken as a@ powder. Hither the hypothesis of a finality im-
44 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
manent in life should be rejected as a whole, or it must
undergo a treatment very different from pulverization.
The error of radical finalism, as also that of radical
mechanism, is to extend too far the application of certain
concepts that are natural to our intellect. Originally,
we think only in order to act. Our intellect has been
cast in the mold of action. Speculation is a luxury, while
action is a necessity. Now, in order to act, we begin by
proposing an end; we make a plan, then we go on to the
detail of the mechanism which will bring it to pass. This
latter operation is possible only if we know what we can
reckon on. We must therefore have managed to extract
resemblances from nature, which enable us to anticipate
the future. Thus we must, consciously or unconsciously,
have made use of the law of causality. Moreover, the
more sharply the idea of efficient causality is defined in
our mind, the more it takes the form of a mechanical
causality. And this scheme, in its turn, is the more
mathematical according as it expresses a more rigorous
necessity. That is why we have only to follow the bent
of our mind to become mathematicians. But, on the
other hand, this natural mathematics is only the rigid
unconscious skeleton beneath our conscious supple habit
of linking the same causes to the same effects; and the usual
object of this habit is to guide actions inspired by in-
tentions, or, what comes to the same, to direct movements
combined with a view to reproducing a pattern. We are
born artisans as we are born geometricians, and indeed
we are geometricians only because we are artisans. Thus
the human intellect, inasmuch as it is fashioned for the
needs of human action, is an intellect which proceeds at
the same time by intention and by calculation, by adapt-
ing means to ends and by thinking out mechanisms of
1.) BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 45
more and more geometrical form. Whether nature be
conceived as an immense machine regulated by mathe-
matical laws, or as the realization of a plan, these two ways
of regarding it are only the consummation of two tendencies
of mind which are complementary to each other, and which
have their origin in the same vital necessities.
For that reason, radical finalism is very near radical mechanism on many points. Both doctrines are reluc- tant to see in the course of things generally, or even simply in the development of life, an unforeseeable creation of form. In considering reality, mechanism regards only the aspect of similarity or repetition. It is therefore dominated by this law, that in-nature there is only like reproducing like. The more the geometry in mechanism is emphasized, the less can mechanism admit that any- thing is ever created, even pure form. In so far as we are geometricians, then, we reject the unforeseeable. We might accept it, assuredly, in so far as we are artists, for art lives on creation and implies a latent belief in the spontaneity of nature. But disinterested art is a luxury, like pure speculation. Long before being artists, we are artisans; and all fabrication, however rudimentary, lives on likeness and repetition, like the natural geometry which serves as its fulcrum. Fabrication works on models which it sets out to reproduce; and even when it invents, it proceeds, or imagines itself to proceed, by a new ar- rangement of elements already known. Its _ principle is that “‘we must have like to produce like.” In short, the strict application of the principle of finality, like that of the principle of mechanical causality, leads to the con- clusion that “all is given.” Both principles say the same thing in their respective languages, because they respond to the same need.
That is why again they agree in doing away with time.
46 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
Real duration is that duration which gnaws on things,
and leaves on them the mark of its tooth. If everything
is in time, everything changes inwardly, and the same
concrete reality never recurs. Repetition is therefore
possible only in the abstract: what is repeated is some
aspect that our senses, and especially our intellect, have
singled out from reality, just because our action, upon
which all the effort of our intellect is directed, can move
only among repetitions. Thus, concentrated on that
which repeats, solely preoccupied in welding the same
to the same, intellect turns away from the vision of time.
It dislikes what is fluid, and solidifies everything it touches.
We do not think real time. But we live it, because life
transcends intellect. The feeling we have of our evolution
and of the evolution of all things in pure duration is there,
forming around the intellectual concept properly so-called
an indistinct fringe that fades off into darkness. Mechan-
ism and finalism agree in taking account only of the bright
nucleus shining in the centre. They forget that this
nucleus has been formed out of the rest by condensation,
and that the whole must be used, the fluid as well as and
more than the condensed, in order to grasp the inner move-
ment of life.
Indeed, if the fringe exists, however delicate and in- distinct, it should have more importance for philosophy than the bright nucleus it surrounds. For it is its presence that enables us to affirm that the nucleus is a nucleus, that pure intellect is a contraction, by condensation, of a more extensive power. And, just because this vague intuition is of no help in directing our action on things, which action takes place exclusively on the surface of reality, we may presume that it is to be exercised not merely on the sur- face, but below.
As soon as we go out of the encasings in which radical
11 BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 47
mechanism and radical finalism confine our thought, reality
appears as a ceaseless upspringing of something new, which
has no sooner arisen to make the present than it has al-
ready fallen back into the past; at this exact moment it
falls under the glance of the intellect, whose eyes are ever
turned to the rear. This is already the case with our
inner life. For each of our acts we shall easily find ante-
cedents of which it may in some sort be said to be the
mechanical resultant. And it may equally well be said
that each action is the realization of an intention. In
this sense mechanism is everywhere, and finality every-
where, in the evolution of our conduct. But if our action
be one that involves the whole of our person and is truly
ours, it could not have been foreseen, even though its
antecedents explain it when once it has been accomplished.
And though it be the realizing of an intention, it differs,
as a present and new reality, from the intention, which
can never aim at anything but recommencing or rear-
ranging the past. Mechanism and finalism are there-
fore, here, only external views of our conduct. They
extract its intellectuality. But our conduct slips between
them and extends much further. Once again, this does
not mean that free action is capricious, unreasonable
action. To behave according to caprice is to oscillate
mechanically between two or more ready-made alternatives
and at length to settle on one of them; it is no real matur-
ing of an internal state, no real evolution; it is merely—
however paradoxical the assertion may seem—bending
the will to imitate the mechanism of the intellect. A
conduct that is truly our own, on the contrary, is that of a
will which does not try to counterfeit intellect, and which,
remaining itself—that is to say, evolving—ripens gradually
into acts which the intellect will be able to resolve in-
definitely into intelligible elements without ever reaching
48 CREATIVE EVOLUTION _tomap.
its goal. The free act is incommensurable with the idea,
and its “rationality” must be defined by this very in-
commensurability, which admits the discovery of as much
intelligibility within it as we will. Such is the character
of our own evolution; and such also, without doubt, that
of the evolution of life. .
Our reason, incorrigibly presumptuous, imagines itself possessed, by right of birth or by right of conquest, innate or acquired, of all the essential elements of the knowledge of truth. Even where it confesses that it does not know the object presented to it, it believes that its ignorance consists only in not knowing which one of its time-honored categories suits the new object. In what drawer, ready to open, shall we put it? In what garment, already cut out, shall we clothe it? Is it this, or that, or the other thing? And “this,” and “that,” and “the other thing” are always something already conceived, already known. The idea that for a new object we might have to create a new concept, perhaps a new method of thinking, is deeply repugnant to us. The history of philosophy is there, how- ever, and shows us the eternal conflict of systems, the im- possibility of satisfactorily getting the real into the ready- made garments of our ready-made concepts, the necessity of making to measure. But, rather than go to this ex- tremity, our reason prefers to announce once for all, with a proud modesty, that it has to do only with the relative, and that the absolute is not in its province. This pre- liminary declaration enables it to apply its habitual method of thought without any scruple, and thus, under pretense that it does not touch the absolute, to make absolute judgments upon everything. Plato was the first to set up the theory that to know the real consists in finding its Idea, that is to say, in forcing it into a pre-existing frame already at our disposal—as if we implicitly possessed uni-
ee a RIAD BO
1) BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 49
versal knowledge. But this belief is natural to the human
intellect, always engaged as it is in determining under what
former heading it shall catalogue any new object; and it
may be said that, in a certain sense, we are all born
Platonists.
Nowhere is the inadequacy of this method so obvious as in theories of life. If, in evolving in the direction of the vertebrates in general, of man and intellect in par- ticular, life has had to abandon by the way many elements incompatible with this particular mode of organization and consign them, as we shall show, to other lines. of development, it is the totality of these elements that we must find again and rejoin to the intellect proper, in order to grasp the true nature of vital activity. And we shall probably be aided in this by the fringe of vague in- tuition that surrounds our distinct—that is, intellectual —representation. For what can this useless fringe be, if not that part of the evolving principle which has not shrunk to the peculiar form of our organization, but has settled around it unasked for, unwanted? It is there, accordingly, that we must look for hints to expand the intellectual form of our thought; from there shall we derive the impetus necessary to lift us above ourselves. To form an idea of the whole of life cannot consist in combin- ing simple ideas that have been left behind in us by life itself in the course of its evolution. How could the part be equivalent to the whole, the content to the container, a by-product of the vital operation to the operation itself? Such, however, is our illusion when we define the evolution of life as a “passage from the homogeneous to the hetero- geneous,” or by any other concept obtained by putting fragments of intellect side by side. We place ourselves in one of the points where evolution comes to a head— the principal one, no doubt, but not the only one; and
50 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
there we do not even take all we find, for of the intellect
we keep only one or two of the concepts by which it ex-
presses itself; and it is this part of a part that we declare
representative of the whole, of something indeed which
goes beyond the concrete whole, I mean of the evolution
movement of which this “whole” is only the present stage!
The truth is, that to represent this the entire intellect
would not be too much—nay, it would not be enough.
It would be necessary to add to it what we find in every
other terminal point of evolution. And these diverse
and divergent elements must be considered as so many
extracts which are, or at least which were, in their humblest
form, mutually complementary. Only then might we
have an inkling of the real nature of the evolution move-
ment; and even then we should fail to grasp it completely,
for we should still be dealing only with the evolved, which
is a result, and not with evolution itself, which is the act
by which the result is obtained.
Such is the philosophy of life to which we are leading up. It claims to transcend both mechanism and finalism; but, as we announced at the beginning, it is nearer the second doctrine than the first. It will not be amiss to dwell on this point, and show more precisely how far this philosophy of life resembles finalism and wherein it is different.
Like radical finalism, although in a vaguer form, our philosophy represents the organized world as a harmonious whole. But this harmony is far from being as perfect as it has been claimed to be. It admits of much discord, because each species, each individual even, retains only a certain impetus from the universal vital impulsion and tends to use this energy in its own interest. In this con- sists adaptation. The species and the individual thus think only of themselves—whence arises a possible conflict
I.] BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 51
with other forms of life. Harmony, therefore, does not
exist in fact; it exists rather in principle; I mean that
the original impetus is a common impetus, and the higher
we ascend the stream of life the more do diverse tendencies
appear complementary to each other. Thus the wind
at a street-corner divides into diverging currents which
are all one and the same gust. Harmony, or rather “com-
plementarity,” is revealed only in the mass, in tendencies
rather than in states. Especially (and this is the point
on which finalism has been most seriously mistaken)
harmony is rather behind us than before. It is due to an
identity of impulsion and not to a common aspiration.
It would be futile to try to assign to life an end, in the
human sense of the word. To speak of an end is to think
of a pre-existing model which has only to be realized. It
is to suppose, therefore, that all is given, and that the future
can be read in the present. It is to believe that life, in its
movement and in its entirety, goes to work like our in-
tellect, which is only a motionless and fragmentary view
of life, and which naturally takes its stand outside of time.
Life, on the contrary, progresses and endures in time. Of
course, when once the road has been traveled, we can
glance over it, mark its direction, note this in psychological
terms and speak as if there had been pursuit of an end.
Thus shall we speak ourselves. But, of the road which
was going to be traveled, the human mind could have
nothing to say, for the road has been created pari passu
with the act of traveling over it, being nothing but the
direction of this act itself. At every instant, then, evo-
lution must admit of a psychological interpretation which
is, from our point of view, the best interpretation; but
this explanation has neither value nor even significance
except retrospectively. Never could the finalistic inter-
pretation, such as we shall propose it, be taken for an
52 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
anticipation of the future. It is a particular mode of
viewing the past in the light of the present. In short,
the classic conception of finality postulates at once too
much and too little: it is both too wide and too narrow.
In explaining life by intellect, it limits too much the mean-
ing of life: intellect, such at least as we find it in ourselves,
has been fashioned by evolution during the course of
progress; it is cut out of something larger, or, rather,
it is only the projection, necessarily on a plane, of a reality
that possesses both relief and depth. It is this more com-
prehensive reality that true finalism ought to reconstruct,
or, rather, if possible, embrace in one view. But, on the
other hand, just because it goes beyond intellect—the
faculty of connecting the same with the same, of per-
ceiving and also of producing repetitions—this reality is
undoubtedly creative, 7. e. productive of effects in which
it expands and transcends its own being. These effects
were therefore not given in it in advance, and so it could
not take them for ends, although, when once produced,
they admit of a rational interpretation, like that of the
manufactured article that has reproduced a model. In
short, the theory of final causes does not go far enough when
it confines itself to ascribing some intelligence to nature,
and it goes too far when it supposes a pre-existence of
the future in the present in the form of idea. And the
second theory, which sins by excess, is the outcome of
the first, which sins by defect. In place of intellect proper
must be substituted the more comprehensive reality of
which intellect is only the contraction. The future then ©
appears as expanding the present: it was not, therefore,
contained in the present in the form of a represented end.
And yet, once realized, it will explain the present as much
as the present explains it, and even more; it must be viewed
as an end as much as, and more than, a result. Our in-
I.) BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 53
tellect has a right to consider the future abstractly from
its habitual point of view, being itself an abstract view
of the cause of its own being.
It is true that the cause may then seem beyond our grasp. Already the finalist theory of life eludes all pre- cise verification. What if we go beyond it in one of its directions? Here, in fact, after a necessary digression, we are back at the question which we regard as essential: can the insufficiency of mechanism be proved by facts? We said that if this demonstration is possible, it is on con- dition of frankly accepting the evolutionist hypothesis. We must now show that if mechanism is insufficient to account for evolution, the way of proving this insufficiency is not to stop at the classic conception of finality, still less to contract or attenuate it, but, on the contrary, to go further.
Let us indicate at once the principle of our demonstration. We said of life that, from its origin, it is the continuation of one and the same impetus, divided into divergent lines of evolution. Something has grown, something has de- veloped by a series of additions which have been so many creations. This very development has brought about a dissociation of tendencies which were unable to grow be- yond a certain point without becoming mutually incom- patible. ‘Strictly speaking, there is nothing to prevent our imagining that the evolution of life might have taken place in one single individual by means of a series of trans- formations spread over thousands of ages. Or, instead of a single individual, any number might be supposed, succeeding each other in a unilinear series. In both cases evolution would have had, so to speak, one dimension only. But evolution has actually taken place through millions of individuals, on divergent lines, each ending at a crossing from which new paths radiate, and so on indefinitely. If
54 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
our hypothesis is justified, if the essential causes working
along these diverse roads are of psychological nature, they
must keep something in common in spite of the divergence
of their effects, as school-fellows long separated keep the
same memories of boyhood. Roads may fork or by-ways
be opened along which dissociated elements may evolve
in an independent manner, but nevertheless it is in virtue
of the primitive impetus of the whole that the movement of
the parts continues. Something of the whole, therefore,
must abide in the parts; and this common element will
be evident to us in some way, perhaps by the presence of
identical organs in very different organisms. Suppose,
for an instant, that the mechanistic explanation is the true
one: evolution must then have occurred through a series
of accidents added to one another, each new accident
being preserved by selection if it is advantageous to that
sum of former advantageous accidents which the present
form of the living being represents. What likelihood is
there that, by two entirely different series of accidents
being added together, two entirely different evolutions
will arrive at similar results? The more two lines of evo-
lution diverge, the less probability is there that accidental
outer influences or accidental inner variations bring about
the construction of the same apparatus upon them, es-
pecially if there was no trace of this apparatus at the
moment of divergence. But such similarity of the two
products would be natural, on the contrary, on a hypothesis
like ours: even in the latest channel there would be some-
thing of the impulsion received at the source. Pure
mechanism, then, would be refutable, and finality, in the
special sense in which we understand it, would be demon-
strable in a certain aspect, if it could be proved that life may
manufacture the like apparatus, by unlike means, on di-
vergent lines of evolution; and the strength of the proof
I.) THE QUEST OF A CRITERION 55
would be proportional both to the divergency between the
lines of evolution thus chosen and to the complexity of the
similar structures found in them.
It will be said that resemblance of structure is due to sameness of the general conditions in which life has evolved, and that these permanent outer conditions may have imposed the same direction on the forces constructing this or that apparatus, in spite of the diversity of transient outer influences and accidental inner changes. We are not, of course, blind to the rdle which the concept of adaptation plays in the science of to-day. Biologists cer- tainly do not all make the same use of it. Some think the outer conditions capable of causing change in organ- isms in a direct manner, in a definite direction, through physico-chemical alterations induced by them in the liv- ing substance; such is the hypothesis of Eimer, for example. Others, more faithful to the spirit of Darwinism, believe the influence of conditions works indirectly only, through favoring, in the struggle for life, those representatives of a species which the chance of birth has best adapted to the environment. In other words, some attribute a positive influence to outer conditions, and say that they actually give rise to variations, while the others say these conditions have only a negative influence and merely eliminate varia- tions. But, in both cases, the outer conditions are sup- posed to bring about a precise adjustment of the organism to its circumstances. Both parties, then, will attempt to explain mechanically, by adaptation to similar condi- tions, the similarities of structure which we think are the strongest argument against mechanism. So we must at once indicate in a general way, before passing to the detail, why explanations from “adaptation” seem to us insufficient.
Let us first remark that, of the two hypotheses just described, the latter is the only one which is not equivocal.
56 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
The Darwinian idea of adaptation by automatic elimina-
tion of the unadapted is a simple and clear idea. But,
just because it attributes to the outer cause which con-
trols evolution a merely negative influence, it has great
difficulty in accounting for the progressive and, so to say,
rectilinear development of complex apparatus such as we
are about to examine. How much greater will this diffi-
culty be in the case of the similar structure of two extremely
complex organs on two entirely different lines of evolution!
An accidental variation, however minute, implies the
working of a great number of small physical and chemical
causes. An accumulation of accidental variations, such
as would be necessary to produce a complex structure,
requires therefore the concurrence of an almost infinite
number of infinitesimal causes. Why should these causes,
entirely accidental, recur the same, and in the same order,
at different points of space and time? No one will hold
that this is the case, and the Darwinian himself will probably
merely maintain that identical effects may arise from
different causes, that more than one road leads to the same
spot. But let us not be fooled by a metaphor. The place
reached does not give the form of the road that leads there;
while an organic structure is just the accumulation of
those small differences which evolution has had to go
through in order to achieve it. The struggle for life and
natural selection can be of no use to us in solving this
part of the problem, for we are not concerned here with
what has perished, we have to do only with what has
survived. Now, we see that identical structures have
been formed on independent lines of evolution by a gradual
accumulation of effects. How can accidental causes,
occurring in an accidental order, be supposed to have
repeatedly come to the same result, the causes being in-
finitely numerous and the effect infinitely complicated?
I.] THE QUEST OF A CRITERION 57
The principle of mechanism is that “the same causes
produce the same effects.” This principle, of course, does
not always imply that the same effects must have the same
causes; but it does involve this consequence in the particu-
lar case in which the causes remain visible in the effect
that they produce and are indeed its constitutive elements.
That two walkers starting from different points and wan-
dering at random should finally meet, is no great wonder.
But that, throughout their walk, they should describe
two identical curves exactly superposable on each other,
is altogether unlikely. The improbability will be the
greater, the more complicated the routes; and it will
becoine impossibility, if the zigzags are infinitely com-
plicated. Now, what is this complexity of zigzags as
compared with that of an organ in which thousands of
different cells, each being itself a kind of organism, are
arranged in a definite order?
Let us turn, then, to the other hypothesis, and see how it would solve the problem. Adaptation, it says, is not merely elimination of the unadapted; it is due to the posi- tive influence of outer conditions that have molded the organism on their own form. This time, similarity of effects will be explained by similarity of cause. We shall remain, apparently, in pure mechanism. But if we look closely, we shall see that the explanation is merely verbal, that we are again the dupes of words, and that the trick of the solution consists in taking the term “adaptation” in two entirely different senses at the same time.
If I pour into the same glass, by turns, water and wine, the two liquids will take the same form, and the sameness in form will be due to the sameness in adaptation of content to container. Adaptation, here, really means mechanical adjustment. The reason is that the form to which the matter has adapted itself was there, ready-made, and
58 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
has forced its own shape on the matter. But, in the
adaptation of an organism to the circumstances it has to
live in, where is the pre-existing form awaiting its matter?
The circumstances are not a mold into which life is inserted
and whose form life adopts: this is indeed to be fooled by
a metaphor. There is no form yet, and the life must
create a form for itself, suited to the circumstances which
are made for it. It will have to make the best of these
circumstances, neutralize their inconveniences and utilize
their advantages—in short, respond to outer actions by
building up a machine which has no resemblance to them.
Such adapting is not repeating, but replying,—an entirely
different thing. If.there is still adaptation, it will be in
the sense in which one may say of the solution of a problem
of geometry, for example, that it is adapted to the con-
ditions. I grant indeed that adaptation so understood
explains why different evolutionary processes result in
similar forms: the same problem, of course, calls for the
same solution. But it is necessary then to introduce,
as for the solution of a problem of geometry, an intelligent
activity, or at least a cause which behaves in the same way.
This is to bring in finality again, and a finality this time
more than ever charged with anthropomorphic elements.
In a word, if the adaptation is passive, if it is mere repetition
in the relief of what the conditions give in the mold, it
will build up nothing that one tries to make it build; and
if it is active, capable of responding by a calculated solu-
tion to the problem which is set out in the conditions,
that is going further than we do—too far, indeed, in our
opinion—in the direction we indicated in the beginning.
But the truth is that there is a surreptitious passing from
one of these two meanings to the other, a flight for refuge
to the first whenever one is about to be caught in flagrante
delicto of finalism by employing the second. It is really
I.) THE QUEST OF A CRITERION 59
the second which serves the usual practice of science, but
it is the first that generally provides its philosophy. In
any particular case one talks as if the process of adaptation
were an effort of the organism to build up a machine
capable of turning external circumstances to the best
possible account: then one speaks of adaptation in general
as if it were the very impress of circumstances, passively
received by an indifferent matter.
But let us come to the examples. It would be interest- ing first to institute here a general comparison between plants and animals. One cannot fail to be struck with the parallel progress which has been accomplished, on both sides, in the direction of sexuality. Not only is fecunda- tion itself the same in higher plants and in animals, since it consists, in both, in the union of two nuclei that differ in their properties and structure before their union and immediately after become equivalent to each other; but the preparation of sexual elements goes on in both under like conditions: it consists essentially in the reduction of the number of chromosomes and the rejection of a certain quantity of chromatic substance. Yet vegetables and animals have evolved on independent lines, favored by unlike circumstances, opposed by unlike obstacles. Here are two great series which have gone on diverging. On either line, thousands and thousands of causes have com- bined to determine the morphological and functional evolution. Yet these infinitely complicated causes have been consummated, in each series, in the same effect. And this effect could hardly be called a phenomenon of “ adapt- ation”: where is the adaptation, where is the pressure of external circumstances? There is no striking utility
1 P, Guérin, Les Connaissances actuelles sur la fécondation chez les
phanérogames, Paris, 1904, pp. 144-148. Cf. Delage, L’Hérédité,
2nd edition, 1903, pp. 140 ff.
60 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
in sexual generation; it has been interpreted in the most
diverse ways; and some very acute enquirers even regard
the sexuality of the plant, at least, as a luxury which nature.
might have dispensed with.: But we do not wish to dwell
on facts so disputed. The ambiguity of the term “adapta-
tion,” and the necessity of transcending both the point
of view of mechanical causality and that of anthropomor-
phic finality, will stand out more clearly with simpler
examples. At all times the doctrine of finality has laid
much stress on the marvellous structure of the sense-
organs, in order to liken the work of nature to that of an
intelligent workman. Now, since these organs are found,
in a rudimentary state, in the lower animals, and since
nature offers us many intermediaries between the pig-
ment-spot of the simplest organisms and the infinitely
complex eye of the vertebrates, it may just as well be
alleged that the result has been brought about by natural
selection perfecting the organ automatically. In short,
if there is a case in which it seems justifiable to invoke
adaptation, it is this particular one. For there may be
discussion about the function and meaning of such a thing
as sexual generation, in so far as it is related to the con-
ditions in which it occurs; but the relation of the eye to
light is obvious, and when we call this relation an adapta-
tion, we must know what we mean. If, then, we can show,
in this privileged case, the insufficiency of the principles
invoked on both sides, our demonstration will at once
have reached a high degree of generality.
Let us consider the example on which the advocates of finality have always insisted: the structure of such an organ as the human eye. They have had no diffi-
1 Mobius, Beitrage zur Lehre von der Fortpflanzung der Gewachse,
Jena, 1897, pp. 203-206 in particular. Cf. Hartog,‘‘Sur les phénoménes
de reproduction’’ (Année biologique, 1895, pp. 707-709).
1.] THE CHOICE OF AN EXAMPLE 61
culty in showing that in this extremely complicated ap-
paratus all the elements are marvelously co-ordinated.
In order that vision shall operate, says the author of a well-
known book on Final Causes, “the sclerotic membrane
must become transparent in one point of its surface, so
as to enable luminous rays to pierce it . . .; the cornea
must correspond exactly with the opening of the socket
.; behind this transparent opening there must be
refracting media ...; there must be a retina' at the
extremity of the dark chamber .. .; perpendicular to
the retina there must be an innumerable quantity of trans-
parent cones permitting only the light directed in the line
of their axes to reach the nervous membrane,” etc. etc. In
reply, the advocate of final causes has been invited to
assume the evolutionist hypothesis. Everything is mar-
velous, indeed, if one consider an eye like ours, in which
thousands of elements are codrdinated in a single function.
But take the function at its origin, in the Infusorian, where
it is reduced to the mere impressionability (almost purely
chemical) of a pigment-spot to light: this function, pos-
sibly only an accidental fact in the beginning, may have
brought about a slight complication of the organ, which
again induced an improvement of the function. It may
have done this either directly, through some unknown
mechanism, or indirectly, merely through the effect of
the advantages it brought to the living being and the hold
it thus offered to natural selection. Thus the progressive
formation of an eye as well contrived as ours would be
explained by an almost infinite number of actions and re-
actions between the function and the organ, without the
intervention of other than mechanical causes.
The question is hard to decide, indeed, when put di-
1 Paul Janet, Les Causes finales, Paris, 1876, p. 83.
2 Ibid. p. 80.
62 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
rectly between the function and the organ, as is done in
the doctrine of finality, as also mechanism itself does. For
organ and function are terms of different nature, and each
conditions the other so closely that it is impossible to say
a prior. whether in expressing their relation we should
begin with the first, as does mechanism, or with the second,
as finalism requires. But the discussion would take an
entirely different turn, we think, if we began by comparing
together two terms of the same nature, an organ with
an organ, instead of an organ with its function. In this
case, it would be possible to proceed little by little to a
solution more and more plausible, and there would be
the more chance of a successful issue the more resolutely
we assumed the evolutionist hypothesis.
Let us place side by side the eye of a vertebrate and that of a mollusc such as the common Pecten. We find the same essential parts in each, composed of analogous elements. The eye of the Pecten presents a retina, a cornea, a lens of cellular structure like our own. There is even that peculiar inversion of retinal elements which is not met with, in general, in the retina of the inverte- brates. Now, the origin of molluscs may be a debated question, but, whatever opinion we hold, all are agreed that molluscs and vertebrates separated from their common parent-stem long before the appearance of an eye so com- plex as that of the Pecten. Whence, then, the structural analogy?
Let us question on this point the two opposed systems of evolutionist explanation in turn—the hypothesis of purely accidental variations, and that of a variation di- rected in a definite way under the influence of external conditions.
The first, as is well known, is presented to-day in two quite different forms. Darwin spoke of very slight vari-
I. THE CHOICE OF AN EXAMPLE 63
ations being accumulated by natural selection. He was
not ignorant of the facts of sudden variation; but he thought
these ‘‘sports,” as he called them, were only monstrosities
incapable of perpetuating themselves; and he accounted
for the genesis of species by an accumulation of insensible
variations. Such is still the opinion of many naturalists.
It is tending, however, to give way to the opposite idea
that a new species comes into being all at once by the
simultaneous appearance of several new characters, all
somewhat different from the previous ones. This latter
hypothesis, already proposed by various authors, notably
by Bateson in a remarkable book,? has become deeply
significant and acquired great force since the striking ex-
periments of Hugo de Vries. This botanist, working on
the Gnothera Lamarckiana, obtained at the end of a few
generations a certain number of new species. The theory
he deduces from his experiments is of the highest interest.
Species pass through alternate periods of stability and
transformation. When the period of “mutability” occurs,
unexpected forms spring forth in a great number of differ-
ent directions..—We will not attempt to take sides be-
tween this hypothesis and that of insensible variations.
Indeed, perhaps both are partly true. We wish merely
to point out that if the variations invoked are accidental,
they do not, whether small or great, account for a similar-
ity of structure such as we have cited.
Let us assume, to begin with, the Darwinian theory of insensible variations, and suppose the occurrence of small differences due to chance, and continually accumulating.
1 Darwin, Origin of Species, chap. ii.
- Bateson, Materials for the Study of Variation, London, 1894, es-
pecially pp. 567 ff. Cf. Scott, ‘‘ Variations and Mutations’: (American Journal of Science, Nov. 1894).
- De Vries, Die Mutationstheorie, Leipzig, 1901-1908. Gf., by the
same author, Species and Varieties, Chicago, 1905.
64 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
It must not be forgotten that all the parts of an organism
are necessarily codrdinated. Whether the function be
the effect of the organ or its cause, it matters little; one,
point is certain—the organ will be of no use and will not
give selection a hold unless it functions. However the
minute structure of the retina may develop, and however
complicated it may become, such progress, instead of
favoring vision, will probably hinder it if the visual centres
do not develop at the same time, as well as several parts of
the visual organ itself. If the variations are accidental,
how can they ever agree to arise in every part of the organ
at the same time, in such way that the organ will con-
tinue to perform its function? Darwin quite understood
this; it is one of the reasons why he regarded variation
as insensible.. For a difference which arises accidentally
at one point of the visual apparatus, if it be very slight,
will not hinder the functioning of the organ; and hence
this first accidental variation can, in a sense, watt for comple-
mentary variations to accumulate and raise vision to a
higher degree of perfection. Granted; but while the
insensible variation does not hinder the functioning of
the eye, neither does it help it, so long as the variations
that are complementary do not occur. How, in that case,
can the variation be retained by natural selection? Un-
wittingly one will reason as if the slight variation were a
toothing stone set up by the organism and reserved for a
later construction. This hypothesis, so little conformable
to the Darwinian principle, is difficult enough to avoid
even in the case of an organ which has been developed along
one single main line of evolution, e.g. the vertebrate eye.
But it is absolutely forced upon us when we observe the
likeness of structure of the vertebrate eye and that of the
molluscs. How could the same small variations, incal-
1 Darwin, Origin of Species, chap. vi.
1] INSENSIBLE VARIATION 65
culable in number, have ever occurred in the same order
on two independent lines of evolution, if they were purely
accidental? And how could they have been preserved
by selection and accumulated in both cases, the same in
the same order, when each of them, taken separately,
was of no use?
Let us turn, then, to the hypothesis of sudden varia- tions, and see whether it will solve the problem. It cer- tainly lessens the difficulty on one point, but it makes it much worse on another. If the eye of the mollusc and that of the vertebrate have both been raised to their present form by a relatively small number of sudden leaps, I have less difficulty in understanding the resemblance of the two organs than if this resemblance were due to an incalculable number of infinitesimal resemblances acquired successively: in both cases it is chance that operates, but in the second case chance is not required to work the miracle it would have to perform in the first. Not only is the number of resemblances to be added some-- what reduced, but I can also understand better how each could be preserved and added to the others; for the ele- mentary variation is now considerable enough to be an advantage to the living being, and so to lend itself to the play of selection. But here there arises another problem, no less formidable, viz., how do all the parts of the visual apparatus, suddenly changed, remain so well codrdinated that the eye continues to exercise its function? For the change of one part alone will make vision impossible, unless this change is absolutely infinitesi- mal. The parts must then all change at once, each con- sulting the others. I agree that a great number of un- coordinated variations may indeed have arisen in less fortunate individuals, that natural selection may have eliminated these, and that only the combination fit to
66 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
endure, capable of preserving and improving vision, has
survived. Still, this combination had to be produced.
And, supposing chance to have granted this favor once,
can we admit that it repeats the self-same favor in the
course of the history of a species, so as to give rise, every
time, all at once, to new complications marvelously regu-
lated with reference to each other, and so related to former
complications as to go further on in the same direction?
How, especially, can we suppose that by a series of mere
“accidents” these sudden variations occur, the same,
in the same order,—involving in each case a perfect har-
mony of elements more and more numerous and complex—
along two independent lines of evolution?
The law of correlation will be invoked, of course; Dar- win himself appealed to it.: It will be alleged that a change is not localized in a single point of the organism, but has its necessary recoil on other points. The ex- amples cited by Darwin remain classic: white cats with blue eyes are generally deaf; hairless dogs have imperfect dentition, etc—Granted; but let us not play now on the word “correlation.” <A collective whole of solidary changes is one thing, a system of complementary changes—changes so coordinated as to keep up and even improve the function- ing of an organ under more complicated conditions—is another. That an anomaly of the pilous system should be accompanied by an anomaly of dentition is quite conceivable without our having to call for a special princi- ple of explanation; for hair and teeth are similar forma- tions, and the same chemical change of the germ that hinders the formation of hair would probably obstruct
1 Darwin, Origin of Species, chap. i.
2 On this homology of hair and teeth, see Brandt, “Uber . . . eine mutmassliche Homologie der Haare und Zahne’’ (Biol. Centralblait, vol. xviii., 1898, especially pp. 262 ff.).
1) SUDDEN VARIATION 67
that of teeth: it may be for the same sort of reason that
white cats with blue eyes are deaf. In these different
examples the “correlative” changes are only solidary
changes (not to mention the fact that they are really
lesions, namely, diminutions or suppressions, and not
additions, which makes a great difference). But when we
speak of “correlative” changes occurring suddenly in
the different parts of the eye, we use the word in an entirely
new sense: this time there is a whole set of changes not
only simultaneous, not only bound together by community
of origin, but so codérdinated that the organ keeps on per-
forming the same simple function, and even performs it
better. That a change in the germ, which influences the
formation of the retina, may affect at the same time also
the formation of the cornea, the iris, the lens, the visual
centres, etc., I admit, if necessary, although they are forma-
tions that differ much more from one another in their
original nature than do probably hair and teeth. But
that all these simultaneous changes should occur in such
a way as to improve or even merely maintain vision, this
is what, in the hypothesis of sudden variation, I cannot
admit, unless a mysterious principle is to come in, whose
duty it is to watch over the interest of the function. But
this would be to give up the idea of “accidental” variation.
In reality, these two senses of the word ‘‘correlation” are
often interchanged in the mind of the biologist, just like
the two senses of the word “adaptation.”’ And the con-
fusion is almost legitimate in botany, that science in which
the theory of the formation of species by sudden variation
rests on the firmest experimental basis. In vegetables,
function is far less narrowly bound to form than in animals.
Even profound morphological differences, such as a change
in the form of leaves, have no appreciable influence on
the exercise of function, and so do not require a whole
68 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
system of complementary changes for the plant to remain
fit to survive. But it is not so in the animal, especially
in the case of an organ like the eye, a very complex struc- _
ture and very delicate function. Here it is impossible
to identify changes that are simply solidary with changes
which are also complementary. The two senses of the
word ‘‘correlation” must be carefully distinguished; it
would be a downright paralogism to adopt one of them
in the premisses of the reasoning, and the other in the con-
clusion. And this is just what is done when the principle
of correlation is invoked in explanations of detail in order
to account for complementary variations, and then cor-
relation 7 general is spoken of as if it were any group of
variations provoked by any variation of the germ. Thus,
the notion ‘of correlation is first used in current science
as it might be used by an advocate of finality; it is under-
stood that this is only a convenient way of expressing one-
self, that one will correct it and fall back on pure mechan-
ism when explaining the nature of the principles and turn-
ing from science to philosophy. And one does then come
back to pure mechanism, but only by giving a new meaning
to the word “correlation” —a meaning which would now
make correlation inapplicable to the detail it is called
upon to explain.
To sum up, if the accidental variations that bring about evolution are insensible variations, some good genius must be appealed to—the genius of the future species—in order to preserve and accumulate these variations, for selection will not look after this. If, on the other hand, the acci- dental variations are sudden, then, for the previous function to go on or for a new function to take its place, all the changes that have happened together must be comple- mentary. So we have to fall back on the good genius again, this time to obtain the convergence of simultaneous
J ORTHOGENESIS 69
changes, as before to be assured of the continuity of di-
rection of successive variations. But in neither case can
parallel development of the same complex structures on
independent lines of evolution be due to a mere accu-
mulation of accidental variations. So we come to the
second of the two great hypotheses we have to examine.
Suppose the variations are due, not to accidental and inner
causes, but to the direct influence of outer circumstances.
Let us see what line we should have to take, on this hypothe-
sis, to account for the resemblance of eye-structure in
two series that are independent of each other from the
phylogenetic point of view.
Though molluscs and vertebrates have evolved separately, both have remained exposed to the influence of light. And light is a physical cause bringing forth certain definite effects. Acting in a continuous way, it has been able to produce @ continuous variation in a constant direction. Of course it is unlikely that the eye of the vertebrate and that of the mollusc have been built up by a series of variations due to simple chance. Admitting even that light enters into the case as an instrument of selection, in order to allow only useful variations to persist, there is no possibility that the play of chance, even thus supervised from with- out, should bring about in both cases the same juxta- position of elements codrdinated in the same way. But it would be different supposing that light acted directly on the organized matter so as to change its structure and some- how adapt this structure to its ownform. The resemblance of the two effects would then be explained by the identity of the cause. The more and more complex eye would be something like the deeper and deeper imprint of light on a matter which, being organized, possesses a special aptitude for receiving it.
But can an organic structure be likened to an imprint?
70 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
We have already called attention to the ambiguity of
the term “adaptation.” The gradual complication of a
form which is being better and better adapted to the mold*
of outward circumstances is one thing, the increasingly
complex structure of an instrument which derives more and
more advantage from these circumstances is another. In
the former case, the matter merely receives an imprint;
in the second, it reacts positively, it solves a problem. Ob-
viously it is this second sense of the word “adapt” that
is used when one says that the eye has become better and
better adapted to the influence of light. But one passes
more or less unconsciously from this sense to the other, and
a purely mechanistic biology will strive to make the passive
adaptation of an inert matter, which submits to the in-
fluence of its environment, mean the same as the active
adaptation of an organism which derives from this in-
fluence an advantage it can appropriate. It must be
owned, indeed, that Nature herself appears to invite our
mind to confuse these two kinds of adaptation, for she
usually begins by a passive adaptation where, later on,
she will build up a mechanism for active response. Thus,
in the case before us, it is unquestionable that the first
rudiment of the eye is found in the pigment-spot of the
lower organisms; this spot may indeed have been pro-
duced physically, by the mere action of light, and there are
a great number of intermediaries between the simple spot
of pigment and a complicated eye like that of the verte-
brates.—But, from the fact that we pass from one thing
to another by degrees, it does not follow that the two
things are of the same nature. From the fact that an
orator falls in, at first, with the passions of his audience
in order to make himself master of them, it will not be
concluded that to follow is the same as to lead. Now, liv-
ing matter seems to have no other means of turning cir-
1] ORTHOGENESIS rn §
cumstances to good account than by adapting itself to
them passively at the outset. Where it has to direct a
movement, it begins by adopting it. Life proceeds by
insinuation. The intermediate degrees between .a pig-
ment-spot and an eye are nothing to the point: however
numerous the degrees, there will still be the same interval
between the pigment-spot and the eye as between a photo-
graph and a photographic apparatus. Certainly the photo-
graph has been gradually turned into a photographic
apparatus; but could light alone, a physical force, ever
have provoked this change, and converted an impression
left by it into a machine capable of using it?
It may be claimed that considerations of utility are out of place here; that the eye is not made to see, but that we see because we have eyes; that the organ is what it is, and “utility” isa word by which we designate the functional effects of the structure. But when I say that the eye “makes use of” light, I do not merely mean that the eye is capable of seeing; I allude to the very precise relations that exist between this organ and the apparatus of lo- comotion. The retina of vertebrates is prolonged in an optic nerve, which, again, is continued by cerebral centres connected with motor mechanisms. Our eye makes use of light in that it enables us to utilize, by movements of _ reaction, the objects that we see to be advantageous, and
to avoid those which we see to be injurious. Now, of course, as light may have produced a pigment-spot by physical means, so it can physially determine the move- ments of certain organisms; ciliated Infusoria, for in- stance, react to light. But no one would hold that the influence of light has physically caused the formation of & nervous system, of a muscular system, of an osseous system, all things which are continuous with the apparatus of vision in vertebrate animals. The truth is, when one
72 _ CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
speaks of the gradual formation of the eye, and, still more,
when one takes into account all that is inseparably con-
nected with it, one brings in something entirely different
from the direct action of light. One implicitly attributes
to organized matter a certain capacity sur generis, the
mysterious power of building up very complicated machines
to utilize the simple excitation that it undergoes.
But this is just what is claimed to be unnecessary. Physics and chemistry are said to give us the key to every- thing. Eimer’s great work is instructive in this respect. It is well known what persevering effort this biologist has devoted to demonstrating that transformation is brought about by the influence of the external on the in- ternal, continuously exerted in the same direction, and ~ not, as Darwin held, by accidental variations. His theory. rests on observations of the highest interest, of which the starting-point was the study of the course followed by the color variation of the skin in certain lizards. Before this, the already old experiments of Dorfmeister had shown that the same chrysalis, according as it was sub- mitted to cold or heat, gave rise to very different butter- flies, which had long been regarded as independent species, Vanessa levana and Vanessa prorsa: an intermediate tem- perature produces an intermediate form. We might class with these facts the important transformations observed in a little crustacean, Artemia salina, when the salt of the water it lives in is increased or diminished. In these various experiments the external agent seems to act as a cause of transformation. But what does the word “cause”
1 It seems, from later observations, that the transformation of
Artemia is a more complex phenomenon than was first supposed.
See on this subject Samter and Heymons, “Die Variation bei Artemia
Salina’? (Anhang zu den Abhandlungen der k. preussischen Akad. der
Wissenschaften, 1902).
1] ORTHOGENESIS ooaae &:
mean here? Without undertaking an exhaustive analysis
of the idea of causality, we will merely remark that three
very different meanings of this term are commonly con-
fused. A cause may act by impelling, releasing, or un-
winding. The billiard-ball, that strikes another, deter-
mines its movement by impelling. The spark that explodes
the powder acts by releasing. The gradual relaxing of
the spring, that makes the phonograph turn, unwinds the
melody inscribed on the cylinder: if the melody which is
played be the effect, and the relaxing of the spring the
cause, we must say that the cause acts by unwinding.
What distinguishes these three cases from each other is
the greater or less solidarity between the cause and the effect.
In the first, the quantity and quality of the effect vary
with the quantity and quality of the cause. In the second,
neither quality nor quantity of the effect varies with quality
and quantity of the cause: the effect is invariable. In
the third, the quantity of the effect depends on the quantity
of the cause, but the cause does not influence the quality of
the effect: the longer the cylinder turns by the action
of the spring, the more of the melody I shall hear, but the
nature of the melody, or of the part heard, does not depend
on the action of the spring. Only in the first case, really,
does cause explain effect; in the others the effect is more
or less given in advance, and the antecedent invoked is—
in different degrees, of course—its occasion rather than
its cause. Now, in saying that the saltness of the water
is the cause of the transformations of Artemia, or that the
degree of temperature determines the color and marks
of the wings which a certain chrysalis will assume on be-
coming a butterfly, is the word “cause” used in the first
sense? Obviously not: causality has here an intermediary
sense between those of unwinding and releasing. Such,
indeed, seems to be Eimer’s own meaning when he speaks
74 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
of the “kaleidoscopic” character of the variation, or
when he says that the variation of organized matter works
in a definite way, just as inorganic matter crystallizes in
definite directions. And it may be granted, perhaps,
that the process is a merely physical and chemical one in
the case of the color-changes of the skin. But if this sort
of explanation is extended to the case of the gradual forma-
tion of the eye of the vertebrate, for instance, it must be
supposed that the physico-chemistry of living bodies is
such that the influence of light has caused the organism
to construct a progressive series of visual apparatus, all
extremely complex, yet all capable of seeing, and of seeing
better and better.° What more could the most confirmed
finalist say, in order to mark out so exceptional a physico-
chemistry? And will not the position of a mechanistic
philosophy become still more difficult, when it is pointed
out to it that the egg of a mollusc cannot have the same
chemical composition as that of a vertebrate, that the
organic substance which evolved toward the first of these
two forms could not have been chemically identical with
that of the substance which went in the other direction,
and that, nevertheless, under the influence of light, the
same organ has been constructed in the one case as in
the other?
The more we reflect upon it, the more we shall see that this production of the same effect by two different ac- cumulations of an enormous number of small causes is contrary to the principles of mechanistic philosophy. We have concentrated the full force of our discussion upon an example drawn from phylogenesis. But ontogenesis
would have furnished us with facts no less cogent. Every
1 Himer, Orthogenesis der Schmetterlinge, Leipzig, 1897, p. 24. Cf.
Die Entstehung der Arten, p. 53.
- Kimer, Die Entstehung der Arten, Jena, 1888, p. 25.
- Ibid. pp. 165 ff.
1] ORTHOGENESIS 75
moment, right before our eyes, nature arrives at identical
results, in sometimes neighboring species, by entirely
different embryogenic processes. Observations of “heter-
oblastia”’ have multiplied in late years,: and it has been
necessary to reject the almost classical theory of the
specificity of embryonic gills. Still keeping to our compari-
son between the eye of vertebrates and that of molluscs,
we may point out that the retina of the vertebrate is
produced by an expansion in the rudimentary brain of
the young embryo. It is a regular nervous centre which
has moved toward the periphery. In the mollusc, on the
contrary, the retina is derived from the ectoderm directly,
and not indirectly by means of the embryonic encephalon.
Quite different, therefore, are the evolutionary processes
which lead, in man and in the Pecten, to the development
of a like retina. But, without going so far as to compare
two organisms so distant from each other, we might reach
the same conclusion simply by looking at certain very
curious facts of regeneration in one and the same organism.
If the crystalline lens of a Triton be removed, it is re-
generated by the iris.:. Now, the original lens was built
out of the ectoderm, while the iris is of mesodermic origin.
What is more, in the Salamandra maculata, if the lens be
removed and the iris left, the regeneration of the lens takes
place at the upper part of the iris; but if this upper part
of the iris itself be taken away, the regeneration takes
place in the inner or retinal layer of the remaining region.’
1 Salensky, ‘Heteroblastie’’ (Proc. of the Fourth International Con-
gress of Zoology, London, 1899, pp. 111-118). Salensky has coined
this word to designate the cases in which organs that are equivalent,
but of different embryological origin, are formed at the same points
in animals related to each other.
2 Wolff, ‘Die Regeneration der Urodelenlinse’’ (Arch. fj. Entwick- elungsmechanik, i., 1895, pp. 380 ff.).
8 Fischel, ‘Uber die Regeneration der Linse’’ (Anat. Anzeiger, xiv., 1898, pp. 373-380).
76 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
Thus, parts differently situated, differently constituted,
meant normally for different functions, are capable of
performing the same duties and even of manufacturing,
when necessary, the same pieces of the machine. Here
we have, indeed, the same effect obtained by different
combinations of causes.
Whether we will or no, we must appeal to some inner directing principle in order to account for this convergence of effects. Such convergence does not appear possible in the Darwinian, and especially the neo-Darwinian, theory of insensible accidental variations, nor in the hypothesis of sudden accidental variations, nor even in the theory that assigns definite directions to the evolution of the various organs by a kind of mechanical composition of the external with the internal forces. So we come to the only one of the present forms of evolution which re- mains for us to mention, viz., neo-Lamarckism.
It is well known that Lamarck attributed to the living
being the power of varying by use or disuse of its organs,
and also of passing on the variation so acquired to its
descendants. A certain number of biologists hold a
doctrine of this kind to-day. The variation that results
in a new species is not, they believe, merely an accidental
variation inherent in the germ itself, nor is it governed by a
determinism suz generis which develops definite characters
in a definite direction, apart from every consideration of
utility. It springs from the very effort of the living being
to adapt itself to the circumstances of its existence. The
effort may indeed be only the mechanical exercise of cer-
tain organs, mechanically elicited by the pressure of ex-
ternal circumstances. But it may also imply consciousness
and will, and it is in this sense that it appears to be under-
stood by one of the most eminent representatives of the
I.] VARIATION AND HEREDITY 77
doctrine, the American naturalist Cope. Neo-Lamarckism
is therefore, of all the later forms of evolutionism, the only
one capable of admitting an internal and psychological
principle of development, although it is not bound to do
so. And it is also the only evolutionism that seems to
us to account for the building up of identical complex
organs on independent lines of development. For it is
quite conceivable that the same effort to turn the same
circumstances to good account might have the same result,
especially if the problem put by the circumstances is such
as to admit of only one solution. But the question re-
mains, whether the term “effort” must not then be taken
in a deeper sense, a sense even more psychological than
any neo-Lamarckian supposes.
For a mere variation of size is one thing, and a change of form is another. That an organ can be strengthened and grow by exercise, nobody will deny. But it is a long way from that to the progressive development of an eye like that of the molluscs and of the vertebrates. If this development be ascribed to the influence of light, long continued but passively received, we fall back on the theory we have just criticized. If, on the other hand, an internal activity is appealed to, then it must be something quite different from what we usually call an effort, for never has an effort been known to produce the slightest com- plication of an organ, and yet an enormous number of complications, all admirably codrdinated, have been necessary to pass from the pigment-spot of the Infusorian to the eye of the vertebrate. But, even if we accept this notion of the evolutionary process in the case of animals, how can we apply it to plants? Here, variations of form do not seem to imply, nor always to lead to, functional
1 Cope, The Origin oj the Fittest, 1887; The Primary Factors of Organic
Evolution, 1896.
78 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
changes; and even if the cause of the variation is of a
psychological nature, we can hardly call it an effort, unless
we give a very unusual extension to the meaning of the
word. ‘The truth is, it is necessary to dig beneath the effort
itself and look for a deeper cause.
This is especially necessary, we believe, if we wish to get at a cause of regular hereditary variations. We are not going to enter here into the controversies over the transmissibility of acquired characters; still less do we wish to take too definite a side on this question, which is not within our province. But we cannot remain com- pletely indifferent to it. Nowhere is it clearer that phi- losophers can not to-day content themselves with vague generalities, but must follow the scientists in experimental detail and discuss the results with them. If Spencer had begun by putting to himself the question of the heredita- bility of acquired characters, his evolutionism would no doubt have taken an altogether different form. If (as seems probable to us) a habit contracted by the individual were transmitted to its descendants only in very exceptional cases, all the Spencerian psychology would need re-making, and a large part of Spencer’s philosophy would fall to pieces. Let us say, then, how the problem seems to us to present itself, and in what direction an attempt might be made to solve it.
After having been affirmed as a dogma, the trans- missibility of acquired characters has been no less dog- matically denied, for reasons drawn a priori from the supposed nature of germinal cells. It is well known how Weismann was led, by his hypothesis of the continuity of the germ-plasm, to regard the germinal cells—ova and spermatozoa—as almost independent of the somatic cells. Starting from this, it has been claimed, and is still claimed by many, that the hereditary transmission of an acquired
I.) VARIATION AND HEREDITY rk a
character is inconceivable. But if, perchance, experiment
should show that acquired characters are transmissible,
it would prove thereby that the germ-plasm is not so
independent of the somatic envelope as has been contended,
and the transmissibility of acquired characters would
become ipso facto conceivable; which amounts to saying
that conceivability and inconceivability have nothing
to do with the case, and that experience alone must settle
the matter. But it is just here that the difficulty begins.
The acquired characters we are speaking of are generally
habits or the effects of habit, and at the root of most habits
there is a natural disposition. So that one can always
ask whether it is really the habit acquired by the soma of
the individual that is transmitted, or whether it is not
rather a natural aptitude, which existed prior to the habit.
This aptitude would have remained inherent in the germ-
plasm which the individual bears within him, as it was
in the individual himself and consequently in the germ
whence he sprang. Thus, for instance, there is no proof
that the mole has become blind because it has formed the
habit of living underground; it is perhaps because its
eyes were becoming atrophied that it condemned itself
to a life underground. If this is the case, the tendency to
lose the power of vision has been transmitted from germ
to germ without anything being acquired or lost by the
soma of the mole itself. From the fact that the son of a
fencing-master has become a good fencer much more quickly
than his father, we cannot infer that the habit of the parent
has been transmitted to the child; for certain natural
dispositions in course of growth may have passed from the
plasma engendering the father to the plasma engendering
1 Cuénot, ‘‘La Nouvelle Théorie transformiste’’ (Revue générale des
sciences, 1894). Cf. Morgan, Evolution and Adaptation, London, 1903,
p. 357.
80 CREATIVE EVOLUTION ieee
the son, may have grown on the way by the effect of the
primitive impetus, and thus assured to the son a greatér
suppleness than the father had, without troubling, so to
speak, about what the father did. So of many examples
drawn from the progressive domestication of animals:
it is hard to say whether it is the acquired habit that is
transmitted or only a certain natural tendency—that,
indeed, which has caused such and such a particular
species or certain of its representatives to be specially
chosen for domestication. The truth is, when every
doubtful case, every fact open to more than one inter-
pretation, has been eliminated, there remains hardly a
single unquestionable example of acquired and trans-
mitted peculiarities, beyond the famous experiments
of Brown-Séquard, repeated and confirmed by other
physiologists... By cutting the spinal cord or the sciatic
nerve of guinea-pigs, Brown-Séquard brought about an
epileptic state which was transmitted to the descendants.
Lesions of the same sciatic nerve, of the restiform body, etc.,
provoked various troubles in the guinea-pig which its
progeny inherited sometimes in a quite different form:
exophthalmia, loss of toes, etc. But-it is not demonstrated
that in these different cases of hereditary transmission
there had been a real influence of the soma of the animal
on its germ-plasm. Weismann at once objected that the
operations of Brown-Séquard might have introduced cer-
tain special microbes into the body of the guinea-pig,
which had found their means of nutrition in the nervous
tissues and transmitted the malady by penetrating into
the sexual elements.: This objection has been answered
1 Brown-Séquard, ‘‘ Nouvelles recherches sur l’épilepsie due 4 certaines
lésions de la moelle épiniéere et des nerfs rachidiens’’ (Arch. de physi-
ologie, vol. ii., 1866, pp. 211, 422, and 497).
- Weismann, Aufsatze uber Vererbung, Jena, 1892, pp. 376-378, and
also Vortrage uber Descendenztheorie, Jena, 1902, vol. ii., p. 76.
oF VARIATION AND HEREDITY 811
by Brown-Séquard himself; but a more plausible one
might be raised. Some experiments of Voisin and Peron
have shown that fits of epilepsy are followed by the elimi-
nation of a toxic body which, when injected into animals,*
is capable of producing convulsive symptoms. Perhaps
the trophic disorders following the nerve lesions made by
Brown-Séquard correspond to the formation of precisely
this convulsion-causing poison. If so, the toxin passed
from the guinea-pig to its spermatozoon or ovum, and
caused in the development of the embryo a general dis-
turbance, which, however, had no visible effects except
at one point or another of the organism when developed.
In that case, what occurred would have been somewhat
the same as in the experiments of Charrin, Delamare,
and Moussu, where guinea-pigs in gestation, whose liver
or kidney was injured, transmitted the lesion to their
progeny, simply because the injury to the mother’s organ
had given rise to specific ‘“cytotoxins” which acted on
the corresponding organ of the foetus.* It is true that, in
these experiments, as in a former observation of the same
physiologists, it was the already formed foetus that was
influenced by the toxins. But other researches of Charrin
have resulted in showing that the same effect may be pro-
duced, by an analogous process, on the spermatozoa and
the ova.’ To conclude, then: the inheritance of an ac-
1 Brown-Séquard, ‘‘Hérédité d’une affection due a une cause acci- dentelle’’ (Arch. de physiologie, 1892, pp. 686 ff.).
2 Voisin and Peron, “Recherches sur la toxicité urinaire chez les épileptiques’’ (Arch. de neurologie, vol. xxiv., 1892, and xxv., 1893. Cf. the work of Voisin, L’ Epilepsie, Paris, 1897, pp. 125-133).
- Charrin, Delamare and Moussu, ‘‘Transmission expérimentale aux
descendants de lésions développées chez les ascendants’’ (C. R. del’Acad, des sciences, vol. cxxxv., 1902, p. 191). Cf. Morgan, Evolution and Adaptation, p. 257, and Delage, L’Hérédité, 2nd edition, p. 388.
‘ Charrin and Delamare, ‘‘ Hérédité cellulaire’? (C. R. de l’Acad. des sciences, vol. cxxxiii., 1901, pp. 69-71).
5 Charrin, ‘‘L’Hérédité pathologique’’ (Revue générale des sciences, 15 janvier 1896).
82 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
quired peculiarity in the experiments of Brown-Séquard
can be explained by the effect of a toxin on the germ. The
lesion, however well localized it seems, is transmitted by
the same process as, for instance, the taint of alcoholism.
But may it not be the same in the case of every acquired
peculiarity that has become hereditary?
There is, indeed, one point on which both those who affirm and those who deny the transmissibility of acquired characters are agreed, namely, that certain influences, such as that of alcohol, can affect at the same time both the living being and the germ-plasm it contains. In such case, there is inheritance of a defect, and the result is as if the soma of the parent had acted on the germ-plasm, although in reality soma and plasma have simply both suffered the action of the same cause. Now, suppose that the soma can influence the germ-plasm, as those believe who hold that acquired characters are trans- missible. Is not the most natural hypothesis to suppose that things happen in this second case as in the first, and that the direct effect of the influence of the soma is a general alteration of the germ-plasm? If this 1s the case, it is by exception, and in some sort by accident, that the modification of the descendant is the same as that of the parent. It is like the hereditability of the alcoholic taint: it passes from father to children, but it may take a different form in each child, and in none of them be like what it was in the father. Let the letter C represent the change in the plasm, C being either positive or negative, that is to say, showing either the gain or loss of certain substances. The effect will not be an exact reproduction of the cause, nor will the change in the germ-plasm, provoked by a cer- tain modification of a certain part of the-soma, determine a similar modification of the corresponding part of the new organism in process of formation, unless all the other
I.) VARIATION AND HEREDITY 83
nascent parts of this organism enjoy a kind of immunity
as regards C: the same part will then undergo alteration
in the new organism, because it happens that the develop-
ment of this part is alone subject to the new influence.
And, even then, the part might be altered in an entirely
different way from that in which the corresponding part
was altered in the generating organism.
We should propose, then, to introduce a distinction between the hereditability of deviation and that of char- acter. An individual which acquires a new character thereby deviates from the form it previously had, which form the germs, or oftener the half-germs, it contains would have reproduced in their development. If this modification does not involve the production of sub- stances capable of changing the germ-plasm, or does not so affect nutrition as to deprive the germ-plasm of certain of its elements, it will have no effect on the offspring of the individual. This is probably the case as a rule. If, on the contrary, it has some effect, this is likely to be due to a chemical change which it has induced in the germ- plasm. This chemical change might, by exception, bring about the original modification again in the organism which the germ is about to develop, but there are as many and more chances that it will do something else. In this latter case, the generated organism will perhaps deviate from the normal type as much as the generating organism, but it will do so differently. It will have inherited deviation and not character. In general, therefore, the habits formed by an individual have probably no echo in its offspring; and when they have, the modification in the descendants may have no visible likeness to the original one. Such, at least, is the hypothesis which seems to us most likely. In any case, in default of proof to the con- trary, and so long as the decisive experiments called for
84 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
by an eminent biologist: have not been made, we must
keep to the actual results of observation. Now, even if
we take the most favorable view of the theory of the trans-
missibility of acquired characters, and assume that the
ostensible acquired character is not, in most cases, the
more or less tardy development of an innate character,
facts show us that hereditary transmission is the excep-
tion and not the rule. How, then, shall we expect it
to develop an organ such as the eye? When we think
of the enormous number of variations, all in the same
direction, that we must suppose to be accumulated before
the passage from the pigment-spot of the Infusorian
to the eye of the mollusc and of the vertebrate is possible,
we do not see how heredity, as we observe it, could ever
have determined this piling-up of differences, even sup-
posing that individual efforts could have produced each
of them singly. That is to say that neo-Lamarckism is
no more able than any other form of evolutionism to
solve the problem.
In thus submitting the various present forms of evo-
lutionism to a common test, in showing that they all
strike against the same insurmountable difficulty, we
have in no wise the intention of rejecting them altogether.
On the contrary, each of them, being supported by a
considerable number of facts, must be true in its way.
Each of them must correspond to a certain aspect of the
process of evolution. Perhaps even it is necessary that
a theory should restrict itself exclusively to a particular
point of view, in order to remain scientific, 7.e. to give
precise direction to researches into detail. But the reality
of which each of these theories takes a partial view must
transcend them all. And this reality is the special object
of philosophy, which is not constrained to scientific pre-
1 Giard, Controverses transformistes, Paris, 1904, p. 147.
> we See
ye
4
1.) RESULT OF THE DISCUSSION 85
cision because it contemplates no practical application.
Let us therefore indicate in a word or two the positive
contribution that each of the three present forms of evo-
lutionism seems to us to make toward the solution of the
problem, what each of them leaves out, and on what point
this threefold effort should, in our opinion, converge in
order to obtain a more comprehensive, although thereby
of necessity a less definite, idea of the evolutionary process.
The neo-Darwinians are probably right, we believe, when they teach that the essential causes of variation are the differences inherent in the germ borne by the individual, and not the experiences or behavior of the individual in the course of his career. Where we fail to follow these biologists, is in regarding the differences inherent in the germ as purely accidental and individual. We cannot help believing that these differences are the development of an impulsion which passes from germ to germ across the individuals, that they are therefore not pure accidents, and that they might well appear at the same time, in the same form, in all the representatives of the same species, or at least in a certain number of them. Already, in fact, the theory of mutations is modifying Dar- winism profoundly on this point. It asserts that at a given moment, after a long period, the entire species is beset with a tendency to change. The tendency to change, therefore, is not accidental. True, the change itself would be accidental, since the mutation works, according to De Vries, in different directions in the different representa- tives of the species. But, first we must see if the theory is confirmed by many other vegetable species (De Vries
has verified it only by the Ginothera Lamarckiana),: and
1 Some analogous facts, however, have been noted, all in the vegetable world. See Blaringhem, “La Notion d’espéce et la théorie de la mu- tation’’ (Année psychologique, vol. xii., 1906, pp. 95 ff.), and De Vries, Species and Varieties, p. 655.
BG hi" CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
then there is the possibility, as we shall explain further
on, that the part played by chance is much greater in the
variation of plants than in that of animals, because, in
the vegetable world, function does not depend so strictly
on form. Be that as it may, the neo-Darwinians are
inclined to admit that the periods of mutation are deter-
minate. The direction of the mutation may therefore
be so as well, at least in animals, and to the extent we shall
have to indicate.
We thus arrive at a hypothesis like Eimer’s, according to which the variations of different characters continue from generation to generation in definite directions. This hypothesis seems plausible to us, within the limits in which Eimer himself retains it. Of course, the evolution of the organic world cannot be predetermined as a whole. We claim, on the contrary, that the spontaneity of life is mani- fested by a continual creation of new forms succeeding others. But this indetermination cannot be complete; it must leave a certain part to determination. An organ like the eye, for example, must have been formed by just a continual changing in a definite direction. Indeed, we do not see how otherwise to explain the likeness of structure of the eye in species that have not the same history. Where we differ from Eimer is in his claim that combinations of physical and chemical causes are enough to secure the result. We have tried to prove, on the contrary, by the example of the eye, that if there is ‘‘orthogenesis” here, a psychological cause intervenes.
Certain neo-Lamarckians do indeed resort to a cause of a psychological nature. There, to our thinking, is one of the most solid positions of neo-Lamarckism. But if this cause is nothing but the conscious effort of the in- dividual, it cannot operate in more than a restricted num- ber of cases—at most in the animal world, and not at all
Ndi AP CPT dar fh Phot nk a ae ela
veh Ay ’ ky mt Peay
1.) RESULT OF THE DISCUSSION 87
in the vegetable kingdom. Even in animals, it will act
only on points which are under the direct or indirect con-
trol of the will. And even where it does act, it is not clear
how it could compass a change so profound as an increase
of complexity: at most this would be conceivable if the
acquired characters were regularly transmitted so as to
be added together; but this transmission seems to be
the exception rather than the rule. A hereditary change
in a definite direction, which continues to accumulate
and add to itself so as to build up a more and more complex
machine, must certainly be related to some sort of effort,
but to an effort of far greater depth than the individual
effort, far more independent of circumstances, an effort
common to most representatives of the same species,
inherent in the germs they bear rather than in their sub-
stance alone, an effort thereby assured of being passed on
to their descendants.
So we come back, by a somewhat roundabout way,
to the idea we started from, that of an original impetus
of life, passing from one generation of germs to the fol-
lowing generation of germs through the developed organ-
isms which bridge the interval between the generations.
This impetus, sustained right along the lines of evolution
among which it gets divided, is the fundamental cause
of variations, at least of those that are regularly passed
on, that accumulate and create new species. In general,
when species have begun to diverge from a common stock,
they accentuate their divergence as they progress in their
evolution. Yet, in certain definite points, they may evolve
identically; in fact, they must do so if the hypothesis of a
common impetus be accepted. This is just what we shall
have to show now in a more precise way, by the same
example we have chosen, the formation of the eye in
88 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
molluscs and vertebrates. The idea of an “original
impetus,’ moreover, will thus be made clearer.
Two points are equally striking in an organ like the eye: the complexity of its structure and the simplicity of its function. The eye is composed of distinct parts, such as the sclerotic, the cornea, the retina, the crystalline lens, etc. In each of these parts the detail is infinite. The retina alone comprises three layers of nervous elements— multipolar cells, bipolar cells, visual cells—each of which has its individuality and is undoubtedly a very compli- cated organism: so complicated, indeed, is the retinal membrane in its intimate structure, that no simple de- scription can give an adequate idea of it. The mechanism of the eye is, in short, composed of an infinity of mechan- isms, all of extreme complexity. Yet vision is one simple fact. As soon as the eye opens, the visual act is effected. Just because the act is simple, the slightest negligence on the part of nature in the building of the infinitely com- plex machine would have made vision impossible. This contrast between the complexity of the organ and the unity of the function is what gives us pause.
A mechanistic theory is one which means to show us the gradual building-up of the machine under the influence of external circumstances intervening either directly by action on the tissues or indirectly by the selection of better- adapted ones. But, whatever form this theory may take, supposing it avails at all to explain the detail of the parts, it throws no light on their correlation.
Then comes the doctrine of finality, which says that the parts have been brought together on a preconceived plan with a view to a certain end. In this it likens the labor of nature to that of the workman, who also pro- ceeds by the assemblage of parts with a view to the real- ization of an idea or the imitation of a model. Mechanism,
1.) THE VITAL IMPETUS 89
here, reproaches finalism with its anthropomorphic charac-
ter, and rightly. But it fails to see that itself proceeds
according to this method—somewhat mutilated! True,
it has got rid of the end pursued or the ideal model. But
it also holds that nature has worked like a human being
by bringing parts together, while a mere glance at the
development of an embryo shows that life goes to work
in a very different way. Life does not proceed by the as-
sociation and addition of elements, but by dissociation and
division.
We must get beyond both points of view, both mechanism and finalism being, at bottom, only standpoints to which the human mind has been led by considering the work of man. But in what direction can we go beyond them? We have said that in analyzing the structure of an organ, we can go on decomposing for ever, although the function of the whole is a simple thing. This contrast between the infinite complexity of the organ and the extreme simplicity of the function is what should open our eyes.
In general, when the same object appears in one aspect and in another as infinitely complex, the two aspects have by no means the same importance, or rather the same degree of reality. In such cases, the simplicity belongs to the object itself, and the infinite complexity to the views we take in turning around it, to the symbols by which our senses or intellect represent it to us, or, more generally, to elements of a different order, with which we try to imitate it artificially, but with which it remains incommensurable, being of a different nature. An artist of genius has painted a figure on his canvas. We can imitate his picture with many-colored squares of mosaic. And we shall reproduce the curves and shades of the model so much the better as our squares are smaller, more numerous and more varied in tone. But an infinity of elements infinitely small,
90 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
presenting an infinity of shades, would be necessary to
obtain the exact equivalent of the figure that the artist
has conceived as a simple thing, which he has wished to
transport as a whole to the canvas, and which is the more
complete the more it strikes us as the projection of an
indivisible intuition. Now, suppose our eyes so made
that they cannot help seeing in the work of the master
a mosaic effect. Or suppose our intellect so made that it
cannot explain the appearance of the figure on the canvas
except as a work of mosaic. We should then be able to
speak simply of a collection of little squares, and we should
be under the mechanistic hypothesis. We might add
that, beside the materiality of the collection, there must
be a plan on which the artist worked; and then we should
be expressing ourselves as finalists. But im neither case
should we have got at the real process, for there are no
squares brought together. It is the picture, 7.e. the simple
act, projected on the canvas, which, by the mere fact of
entering into our perception, is decomposed before our
eyes into thousands and thousands of little squares which
present, as recomposed, a wonderful arrangement. So
the eye, with its marvelous complexity of structure, may be
only the simple act of vision, divided for us into a mosaic
of cells, whose order seems marvelous to us because we
have conceived the whole as an assemblage.
If I raise my hand from A to B, this movement appears to me under two aspects at once. Felt from within, it is a simple, indivisible act. Perceived from without, it is the course of a certain curve, AB. In this curve I can dis- tinguish as many positions as I please, and the line it- self might be defined as a certain mutual codrdination of these positions. But the positions, infinite in number, and the order in which they are connected, have sprung automatically from the indivisible act by which my hand
1) THE VITAL IMPETUS 91
has gone from A to B. Mechanism, here, would consist
in seeing only the positions. Finalism would take their
order into account. But both mechanism and finalism
would leave on one side the movement, which is reality
itself. In one sense, the movement is more than the
positions and than their order; for it is sufficient to make
it in its indivisible simplicity to secure that the infinity
of the successive positions as also their order be given at
once—with something else which is neither order nor
position but which is essential, the mobility. But, in
another sense, the movement is less than the series of
positions and their connecting order; for, to arrange
points in a certain order, it is necessary first to conceive
the order and then to realize it with points, there must
be the work of assemblage and there must be intelligence,
whereas the simple movement of the hand contains noth-
ing of either. It is not intelligent, in the human sense
of the word, and it is not an assemblage, for it is not made
up of elements. Just so with the relation of the eye to
vision. There is in vision more than the component cells
of the eye and their mutual codrdination: in this sense,
neither mechanism nor finalism go far enough. But, in
another sense, mechanism and finalism both go too far,
for they attribute to Nature the most formidable of the
labors of Hercules in holding that she has exalted to the
simple act of vision an infinity of infinitely complex ele-
ments, whereas Nature has had no more trouble in making
an eye than I have in lifting my hand. Nature’s simple
act has divided itself automatically into an infinity of
elements which are then found to be codrdinated to one
idea, just as the movement of my hand has dropped an
infinity of points which are then found to satisfy one
equation.
We find it very hard to see things in that light, because
92 CREATIVE EVOLUTION « (CHAP.
we cannot help conceiving organization as manufacturing.
But it is one thing to manufacture, and quite another to
organize. Manufacturing is peculiar to man. It consists
in assembling parts of matter which we have cut out in
such manner that we can fit them together and obtain
from them a common action. The parts are arranged, so
to speak, around the action as an ideal centre. To manu-
facture, therefore, is to work from the periphery to the
centre, or, as the philosophers say, from the many to the
one. Organization, on the contrary, works from the centre
to the periphery. It begins in a point that is almost a
mathematical point, and spreads around this point by
concentric waves which go on enlarging. The work of
manufacturing is the more effective, the greater the quant-
ity of matter dealt with. It proceeds by concentration
and compression. The organizing act, on the contrary,
has something explosive about it: it needs at the begin-
ning the smallest possible place, a minimum of matter,
as if the organizing forces only entered space reluctantly.
The spermatozoon, which sets in motion the evolutionary
process of the embryonic life, is one of the smallest cells
of the organism; and it is only a small part of the sperma-
tozoon which really takes part in the operation.
But these are only superficial differences. Digging beneath them, we think, a deeper difference would be found.
A manufactured thing delineates exactly the form of the work of manufacturing it. I mean that the manu- facturer finds in his product exactly what he has put into it. If he is going to make a machine, he cuts out its pieces one by one and then puts them together: the machine, when made, will show both the pieces and their assemblage. The whole of the result represents the whole of the work; and to each part of the work corresponds a part of the result.
1. THE VITAL IMPETUS 93
Now I recognize that positive science can and should
proceed as if organization was like making a machine.
Only so will it have any hold on organized bodies. For
its object is not to show us the essence of things, but to
furnish us with the best means of acting onthem. Physics
and chemistry are well advanced sciences, and living matter
lends itself to our action only so far as we can treat it by the
processes of our physics and chemistry. Organization
can therefore only be studied scientifically if the organized
body has first been likened to a machine. The cells will
be the pieces of the machine, the organism their assemblage,
and the elementary labors which have organized the parts
will be regarded as the real elements of the labor which has
organized the whole. This is the standpoint of science.
Quite different, in our opinion, is that of philosophy.
For us, the whole of an organized machine may, strictly speaking, represent the whole of the organizing work (this is, however, only approximately true), yet the parts of the machine do not correspond to parts of the work, because the materiality of this machine does not represent a sum of means employed, but a sum of obstacles avoided: it is a negation rather than a positive reality. So, as we have shown in a former study, vision is a power which should attain by right an infinity of things inaccessible to our eyes. But such a vision would not be continued into action; it might suit a phantom, but not a living being. The vision of a living being is an effective vision, limited to objects on which the being can act: it is a vision that is canalized, and the visual apparatus simply symbolizes the work of canalizing. Therefore the creation of the visual apparatus is no more explained by the assembling of its anatomic elements than the digging of a canal could be explained by the heaping-up of the earth which might have formed its banks. A mechanistic theory would maintain that the
94 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
earth had been brought cart-load by cart-load; finalism
would add that it had not been dumped down at random,
that the carters had followed a plan. But both theories
would be mistaken, for the canal has been made in another
way.
With greater precision, we may compare the process by which nature constructs an eye to the simple act by which we raise the hand. But we supposed at first that the hand met with no resistance. Let us now imagine that, instead of moving in air, the hand has to pass through iron filings which are compressed and offer resistance to it in proportion as it goes forward. At a certain moment the hand will have exhausted its effort, and, at this very moment, the filings will be massed and coérdinated in a certain definite form, to wit, that of the hand that is stopped and of a part of the arm. Now, suppose that the hand and arm are invisible. Lookers-on will seek the reason of the arrangement in the filings themselves and in forces within the mass. Some will account for the position of each filing by the action exerted upon it by the neighboring filings: _ these are the mechanists. Others will prefer to think that a plan of the whole has presided over the detail of these elementary actions: they are the finalists. But the truth is that there has been merely one indivisible act, that of the hand passing through the filings: the inexhaustible detail of the movement of the grains, as well as the order of their final arrangement, expresses negatively, in a way, this undivided movement, being the unitary form of a resistance, and not a synthesis of positive elementary actions. For this reason, if the arrangement of the grains is termed an ‘effect’? and the movement of the hand a “cause,” it may indeed be said that the whole of the effect is explained by the whole of the cause, but to parts of the cause parts of the effect will in no wise correspond. In
I.) THE VITAL IMPETUS 95
other words, neither mechanism nor finalism will here be in
place, and we must resort to an explanation of a different
kind. Now, in the hypothesis we propose, the relation
of vision to the visual apparatus would be very nearly
that of the hand to the iron filings that follow, canalize
and limit its motion.
The greater the effort of the hand, the farther it will go into the filings. But at whatever point it stops, in- stantaneously and automatically the filings codrdinate and find their equilibrium. So with vision and its organ. According as the undivided act constituting vision ad- vances more or less, the materiality of the organ is made of a more or less considerable number of mutually co- ordinated elements, but the order is necessarily complete and perfect. It could not be partial, because, once again, the real process which gives rise to it has no parts. That is what neither mechanism nor finalism takes into account, and it is what we also fail to consider when we wonder at the marvelous structure of an instrument such as the eye. At the bottom of our wondering is always this idea, that it would have been possible for a part only of this coordination to have been realized, that the complete realization is a kind of special favor. This favor the finalists consider as dispensed to them all at once, by the final cause; the mechanists claim to obtain it little by little, by the effect of natural selection; but both see something positive in this codrdination, and consequently something fractionable in its cause,—something which admits of every possible degree of achievement. In reality, the cause, though more or less intense, cannot produce its effect except in one piece, and completely finished. According as it goes further and further in the direction of vision, it gives the simple pigmentary masses of a lower organism, or the rudimentary eye of
96 CREATIVE EVOLUTION : [CHAP.
a Serpula, or the slightly differentiated eye of the Alciope,
or the marvelously perfected eye of the bird; but all these
organs, unequal as is their complexity, necessarily present
an equal coérdination. For this reason, no matter how
distant two animal species may be from each other, if the
progress toward vision has gone equally far in both, there
is the same visual organ in each case, for the form of the
organ only expresses the degree in which the exercise of
the function has been obtained.
But, in speaking of a progress toward vision, are we not coming back to the old notion of finality? It would be so, undoubtedly, if this progress required the conscious or unconscious idea of an end to be attained. But it is really effected in virtue of the original impetus of life; it is implied in this movement itself, and that is just why it is found in independent lines of evolution. If now we are asked why and how it is implied therein, we reply that life is, more than anything else, a tendency to act on inert matter. The direction of this action is not prede- termined; hence the unforeseeable variety of forms which life, in evolving, sows along its path. But this action always presents, to some extent, the character of con- tingency; it implies at least a rudiment of choice. Now a choice involves the anticipatory idea of several possible actions. Possibilities of action must therefore be marked out for the living being before the action itself. Visual perception is nothing else:! the visible outlines of bodies are the design of our eventual action on them. Vision will be found, therefore, in different degrees in the most diverse animals, and it will appear in the same complexity of structure wherever it has reached the same degree of intensity.
We have dwelt on these resemblances of structure
1 See, on this subject, Matiére et mémoire, chap. i.
1.) THE VITAL IMPETUS 97
in general, and on the example of the eye in particular,
because we had to define our attitude toward mechanism
on the one hand and finalism on the other. It remains
for us to describe it more precisely in itself. This we
shall now do by showing the divergent results of evolution
not as presenting analogies, but as themselves mutually
complementary.
CHAPTER II THE DIVERGENT DIRECTIONS OF THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. TORPOR, INTELLIGENCE, INSTINCT
Tue evolution movement would be a simple one, and we should soon have been able to determine its direc- tion, if life had described a single course, like that of a solid ball shot from a cannon. But it proceeds rather like a shell, which suddenly bursts into fragments, which fragments, being themselves shells, burst in their turn into fragments destined to burst again, and so on for a time incommensurably long. We perceive only what is nearest to us, namely, the scattered movements of the pulverized explosions. From them we have to go back, stage by stage, to the original movement.
When a shell bursts, the particular way it breaks is explained both by the explosive force of the powder it contains and by the resistance of the metal. So of the way life breaks into individuals and species. It depends, we think, on two series of causes: the resistance life meets from inert matter, and the explosive force—due to an unstable balance of tendencies—which life bears within itself. The resistance of inert matter was the obstacle that had first to be overcome. Life seems to have succeeded in this by dint of humility, by making itself very small and very insinuating, bending to physical and chemical forces, consenting even to go a part of the way with them,
like- the switch that adopts for a while the direction of
98
I1.] _ DIVERGENT TENDENCIES 99
the rail it is endeavoring to leave. Of phenomena in
the simplest forms of life, it is hard to say whether they are
still physical and chemical or whether they are already
vital. Life had to enter thus into the habits of inert matter,
in order to draw it little by little, magnetized, as it were,
to another track. The animate forms that first appeared
were therefore of extreme simplicity. They were probably
tiny masses of scarcely differentiated protoplasm, out- .
wardly resembling the amoeba observable to-day, but
possessed of the tremendous internal push that was to
raise them even to the highest forms of life. That in
virtue of this push the first organisms sought to grow as
much as possible, seems likely. But organized matter
has a limit of expansion that is very quickly reached;
beyond a certain point it divides instead of growing.
Ages of effort and prodigies of subtlety were probably
necessary for life to get past this new obstacle. It suc-
ceeded in inducing an increasing number of elements,
ready to divide, to remain united. By the division of
labor it knotted between them an indissoluble bond. The
complex and quasi-discontinuous organism is thus made
to function as would a continuous living mass which
had simply grown bigger.
But the real and profound causes of division were those which life bore within its bosom. For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided. This we observe in ourselves, in the evolution of that special tendency which we call our character. Each of us, glancing back over his history, will find that his child-personality, though in- divisible, united in itself divers persons, which could re- main blended just because they were in their nascent state: this indecision, so charged with promise, is one of the
100 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
greatest charms of childhood. But these interwoven
personalities become incompatible in course of growth,
and, as each of us can live but one life, a choice must
perforce be made. We choose in reality without ceasing;
without ceasing, also, we abandon many things. The
route we pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all
that we began to be, of all that we might have become.
But nature, which has at command an incalculable number
of lives, is in no wise bound to make such sacrifices. She
preserves the different tendencies that have bifurcated
with their growth. She creates with them diverging
series of species that will evolve separately.
These series may, moreover, be of unequal import- ance. The author who begins a novel puts into his hero many things which he is obliged to discard as he goes on. Perhaps he will take them up later in other books, and make new characters with them, who will seem like extracts from, or rather like complements of, the first; but they will al- most always appear somewhat poor and limited in compari- son with the original character. So with regard to the evolution of life. The bifurcations on the way have been numerous, but there have been many blind alleys beside the two or three highways; and of these highways them- selves, only one, that which leads through the vertebrates up to man, has been wide enough to allow free passage to the full breath of life. We get this impression when we compare the societies of bees and ants, for instance, with human societies. The former are admirably ordered and united, but stereotyped; the latter are open to every sort of progress, but divided, and incessantly at strife with themselves. The ideal would be a society always in progress and always in equilibrium, but this ideal is perhaps unrealizable: the two characteristics that would fain com- plete each other, which do complete each other in their
11.) ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 101
embryonic state, can no longer abide together when they
grow stronger. If one could speak, otherwise than meta-
phorically, of an impulse toward social life, it might be said
that the brunt of the impulse was borne along the line of
evolution ending at man, and that the rest of it was col-
lected on the road leading to the hymenoptera: the so-
cieties of ants and bees would thus present the aspect
complementary to ours. But this would be only a manner
of expression. There has been no particular impulse
towards social life; there is simply the general movement
of life, which on divergent lines is creating forms ever new.
If societies should appear on two of these lines, they ought
to show divergence of paths at the same time as community
of impetus. They will thus develop two classes of char-
acteristics which we shall find vaguely complementary
of each other.
So our study of the evolution movement will have to unravel a certain number of divergent directions, and to appreciate the importance of what has happened along each of them—in a word, to determine the nature of the dissociated tendencies and estimate their relative pro- portion. Combining these tendencies, then, we shall get an approximation, or rather an imitation, of the indivisible motor principle whence their impetus proceeds. Evo- lution will thus prove to be something entirely different from a series of adaptations to circumstances, as mechan- ism claims; entirely different also from the realization of a plan of the whole, as maintained by the doctrine of finality.
That adaptation to environment is the necessary con-
dition of evolution we do not question for a moment.
It is quite evident that a species would disappear, should
it fail to bend to the conditions of existence which are im-
posed on it. But it is one thing to recognize that outer
102 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
circumstances are forces evolution must reckon with,
another to claim that they are the directing causes of
evolution. This latter theory is that of mechanism. It
excludes absolutely the hypothesis of an original impetus,
I mean an internal push that has carried life, by more and
more complex forms, to higher and higher destinies. Yet
this impetus is evident, and a mere glance at fossil species
shows us that life need not have evolved at all, or might
have evolved only in very restricted limits, if it had chosen
the alternative, much more convenient to itself, of be-
coming anchylosed in its primitive forms. Certain Fora-
minifera have not varied since the Silurian epoch. Un-
moved witnesses of the innumerable revolutions that have
upheaved our planet, the Lingulae are to-day what they
were at the remotest times of the paleozoic era.
The truth is that adaptation explains the sinuosities of the movement of evolution, but not its general directions, still less the movement itself. The road that leads to the town is obliged to follow the ups and downs of the hills; it adapts itself to the accidents of the ground; but the accidents of the ground are not the cause of the road, nor have they given it its direction. At every moment they furnish it with what is indispensable, namely, the soil on which it lies; but if we consider the whole of the road, in- stead of each of its parts, the accidents of the ground appear only as impediments or causes of delay, for the road aims simply at the town and would fain be a straight line. Just so as regards the evolution of life and the circumstances through which it passes—with this difference, that evo- lution does not mark out a solitary route, that it takes directions without aiming at ends, and that it remains
inventive even in its adaptations.
1 This view of adaptation has been noted by M. F. Marin in a re- markable article on the origin of species, ‘L’Origine des espéces’’ (Revue scientifique, Nov. 1901, p. 580).
I] ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 103
But, if the evolution of life is something other than
a series of adaptations to accidental circumstances, so
also it is not the realization of a plan. A plan is given
in advance. It is represented, or at least representable,
before its realization. The complete execution of it
may be put off to a distant future, or even indefinitely;
but the idea is none the less formulable at the present
time, in terms actually given. If, on the contrary, evo-
lution is a creation unceasingly renewed, it creates, as
it goes on, not only the forms of life, but the ideas that
will enable the intellect to understand it, the terms which
will serve to express it. That is to say that its future
overflows its present, and can not be sketched out therein
in an idea.
There is the first error of finalism. It involves another, yet more serious.
If life realizes a plan, it ought to manifest a greater harmony the further it advances, just as the house shows better and better the idea of the architect as stone is set upon stone. If, on the contrary, the unity of life is to be found solely in the impetus that pushes it along the road of time, the harmony is not in front, but behind. The unity is derived from a vis a tergo: it is given at the start as an impulsion, not placed at the end as an attraction. In communicating itself, the impetus splits up more and more. Life, in proportion to its progress, is scattered in mani- festations which undoubtedly owe to their common origin the fact that they are complementary to each other in certain aspects, but which are none the less mutually incompatible and antagonistic. So the discord between species will go on increasing. Indeed, we have as yet only indicated the essential cause of it. We have sup- posed, for the sake of simplicity, that each species received the impulsion in order to pass it on to others, and that,
104 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
in every direction in which life evolves, the propagation
is in a straight line. But, as a matter of fact, there are
species which are arrested; there are some that retrogress.
Evolution is not only a movement forward; in many cases
we observe a marking-time, and still more often a deviation
or turning back. It must be so, as we shall show further
on, and the same causes that divide the evolution move-
ment often cause life to be diverted from itself, hypnotized
by the form it has just brought forth. Thence results an
increasing disorder. No doubt there is progress, if pro-
gress mean a continual advance in the general direction
determined by a first impulsion; but this progress is ac-
complished only on the two or three great lines of evolution
on which forms ever more and more complex, ever more
and more high, appear; between these lines run a crowd
of minor paths in which, on the contrary, deviations,
arrests, and set-backs, are multiplied. The philosopher,
who begins by laying down as a principle that each detail
is connected with some general plan of the whole, goes from
one disappointment to another as soon as he comes to
examine the facts; and, as he had put everything in the
same rank, he finds that, as the result of not allowing for
accident, he must regard everything as accidental. For
accident, then, an allowance must first be made, and a
very liberal allowance. We must recognize that all is
not coherent in nature. By so doing, we shall be led to
ascertain the centres around which the incoherence crystal-
lizes. This crystallization itself will clarify the rest;
the main directions will appear, in which life is moving
whilst developing the original impulse. True, we shall not
witness the detailed accomplishment of a plan. Nature
is more and better than a plan in course of realization.
A plan is a term assigned to a labor: it closes the future
whose form it indicates. Before the evolution of life, on
1.) §$.THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL — 105
the contrary, the portals of the future remain wide open.
It is a creation that goes on for ever in virtue of an initial
movement. This movement constitutes the unity of
the organized world—a prolific unity, of an infinite rich-
ness, superior to any that the intellect could dream of,
for the intellect is only one of its aspects or products.
But it is easier to define the method than to apply it. The complete interpretation of the evolution movement in the past, as we conceive it, would be possible only if the history of the development of the organized world were entirely known. Such is far from being the case. The genealogies proposed for the different species are generally questionable. They vary with their authors, with the theoretic views inspiring them, and raise dis- cussions to which the present state of science does not admit of a final settlement. But a comparison of the different solutions shows that the controversy bears less on the main lines of the movement than on matters of detail; and so, by following the main lines as closely as possible, we shall be sure of not going astray. Moreover, they alone are important to us; for we do not aim, like the naturalist, at finding the order of succession of different species, but only at defining the principal directions of their evolution. And not all of these directions have the same interest for us: what concerns us particularly is the path that leads to man. We shall therefore not lose sight of the fact, in following one direction and another, that our main business is to determine the relation of man to the animal kingdom, and the place of the animal kingdom itself in the organized world as a whole.
To begin with the second point, let us say that no definite
characteristic distinguishes the plant from the animal.
Attempts to define the two kingdoms strictly have always
106 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
come to naught. There is not a single property of vege-
table life that is not found, in some degree, in certain ani-
mals; not a single characteristic feature of the animal
that has not been seen in certain species or at certain
moments in the vegetable world. Naturally, therefore,
biologists enamored of clean-cut concepts have regarded
the distinction between the two kingdoms as artificial.
They would be right, if definition in this case must be made,
as in the mathematical and physical sciences, according
to certain statical attributes which belong to the object
defined and are not found in any other. Very different, in
our opinion, is the kind of definition which befits the
sciences of life. There is no manifestation of life which
does not contain, in a rudimentary state—either latent
or potential,—the essential characters of most other mani-
festations. The difference is in the proportions. But this
very difference of proportion will suffice to define the group,
if we can establish that it is not accidental, and that the
group as it evolves, tends more and more to emphasize these
particular characters. In a word, the group must not be .
defined by the possession of certain characters, but by its
tendency to emphasize them. From this point of view, taking
tendencies rather than states into account, we find that
vegetables and animals may be precisely defined and
distinguished, and that they correspond to two divergent
developments of life.
This divergence is shown, first, in the method of ali- mentation. We know that the vegetable derives directly from the air and water and soil the elements necessary to maintain life, especially carbon and nitrogen, which it takes in mineral form. The animal, on the contrary, cannot assimilate these elements unless they have already been fixed for it in organic substances by plants, or by animals which directly or indirectly owe them to plants;
11. THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL 107
so that ultimately the vegetable nourishes the animal.
True, this law allows of many exceptions among vegetables.
We do not hesitate to class amongst vegetables the Drosera,
the Dionaea, the Pinguicula, which are insectivorous
plants. On the other hand, the fungi, which occupy so
considerable a place in the vegetable world, feed like ani-
mals: whether they are ferments, saprophytes or parasites,
it is to already formed organic substances that they owe
their nourishment. It is therefore impossible to draw from
this difference any static definition such as would auto-
matically settle in any particular case the question whether
we are dealing with a plant orananimal. But the difference
may provide the beginning of a dynamic definition of the
two kingdoms, in that it marks the two divergent di-
rections in which vegetables and animals have taken their
course. It is a remarkable fact that the fungi, which
nature has spread all over the earth in such extraordinary
profusion, have not been able to evolve. Organically
they do not rise above tissues which, in the higher vegetables,
are formed in the embryonic sac of the ovary, and precede
the germinative development of the new individual.
They might be called the abortive children of the vege-
table world. Their different species are like so many blind
alleys, as if, by renouncing the mode of alimentation custom-
ary amongst vegetables, they had been brought to a stand-
still on the highway of vegetable evolution. As to the
Drosera, the Dionaea, and insectivorous plants in general,
they are fed by their roots, like other plants; they too fix,
by their green parts, the carbon of the carbonic acid in the
atmosphere. Their faculty of capturing, absorbing and
digesting insects must have arisen late, in quite exceptional
cases where the soil was too poor to furnish sufficient nour-
ishment. In a general way, then, if we attach less im-
1 De Saporta and Marion, L’Evolution des cryptogames, 1881, p. 37.
108 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
portance to the presence of special characters than to their
tendency to develop, and if we regard as essential that
tendency along which evolution has been able to continue
indefinitely, we may say that vegetables are distinguished
from animals by their power of creating organic matter
out of mineral elements which they draw directly from the
air and earth and water. But now we come to another
difference, deeper than this, though not unconnected with it.
The animal, being unable to fix directly the carbon and nitrogen which are everywhere to be found, has to seek for its nourishment vegetables which have already fixed these elements, or animals which have taken them from the vegetable kingdom. So the animal must be able to move. From the amoeba, which thrusts out its pseudopodia at random to seize the organic matter scattered in a drop of water, up to the higher animals which have sense-organs with which to recognize their prey, locomotor organs to go and seize it, and a nervous system to coordinate their movements with their sen- sations, animal life is characterized, in its general direction, by mobility in space. In its most rudimentary form, the animal is a tiny mass of protoplasm enveloped at most in a thin albuminous pellicle which allows full freedom for change of shape and movement. The vegetable cell, on the contrary, is surrounded by a membrane of cellu- lose, which condemns it to immobility. And, from the bottom to the top of the vegetable kingdom, there are the same habits growing more and more sedentary, the plant having no need to move, and finding around it, in the air and water and soil in which it is placed, the mineral ele- ments it can appropriate directly. It is true that phe- nomena of movement are seen in plants. Darwin has written a well-known work on the movements of climbing plants. He studied also the contrivances of certain in-
11.) THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL 109
sectivorous plants, such as the Drosera and the Dionaea,
to seize their prey. The leaf-movements of the acacia,
the sensitive plant, etc., are well known. Moreover,
the circulation of the vegetable protoplasm within its
sheath bears witness to its relationship to the protoplasm
of animals, whilst in a large number of animal species
(generally parasites) phenomena of fixation, analogous
to those of vegetables, can be observed.: Here, again,
it would be a mistake to claim that fixity and mobility
are the two characters which enable us to decide, by simple
inspection alone, whether we have before us a plant or an
animal. But fixity, in the animal, generally seems like
a torpor into which the species has fallen, a refusal to
evolve further in a certain direction; it is closely akin to
parasitism and is accompanied by features that recall
those of vegetable life. On the other hand, the move-
ments of vegetables have neither the frequency nor the
variety of those of animals. Generally, they involve only
part of the organism and scarcely ever extend to the whole.
In the exceptional cases in which a vague spontaneity
appears in vegetables, it is as if we beheld the accidental
awakening of an activity normally asleep. In short,
although both mobility and fixity exist in the vegetable
as in the animal world, the balance is clearly in favor of
fixity in the one case and of mobility in the other. These
two opposite tendencies are so plainly directive of the two
evolutions that the two kingdoms might almost be defined
by them. But fixity and mobility, again, are only super-
ficial signs of tendencies that are still deeper.
Between mobility and consciousness there is an obvious relationship. No doubt, the consciousness of the higher organisms seems bound up with certain cerebral arrange-
1 On fixation and parasitism in general, see the work of Houssay,
La Forme et la vie, Paris, 1900, pp. 721-807.
110 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
ments. The more the nervous system develops, the more
numerous and more precise become the movements among
which it can choose; the clearer, also, is the consciousness
that accompanies them. But neither this mobility nor
this choice nor consequently this consciousness involves
as a necessary condition the presence of a nervous system;
the latter has only canalized in definite directions, and
brought up to a higher degree of intensity, a rudimentary
and vague activity, diffused throughout the mass of the
organized substance. The lower we descend in the ani-
mal series, the more the nervous centres are simplified,
and the more, too, they separate from each other, till
finally the nervous elements disappear, merged in the mass
of a less differentiated organism. But it is the same with
all the other apparatus, with all the other anatomical
elements; and it would be as absurd to refuse consciousness
to an animal because it has no brain as to declare it in-
capable of nourishing itself because it has no stomach.
The truth is that the nervous system arises, like the other
systems, from a division of labor. It does not create the
function, it only brings it to a higher degree of intensity
and precision by giving it the double form of reflex and
voluntary activity. To accomplish a true reflex move-
ment, a whole mechanism is necessary, set up in the spinal
cord or the medulla. To choose voluntarily between
several definite courses of action, cerebral centres are
necessary, that is, crossways from which paths start,
leading to motor mechanisms of diverse form but equal
precision. But where nervous elements are not yet canal-
ized, still less concentrated into a system, there is some-
thing from which, by a kind of splitting, both the reflex
and the voluntary will arise, something which has neither
the mechanical precision of the former nor the intelli-
gent hesitations of the latter, but which, partaking of
1.1 THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL 111
both it may be infinitesimally, is a reaction simply unde-
cided, and therefore vaguely conscious. This amounts
to saying that the humblest organism is conscious in pro-
portion to its power to move freely. Is consciousness
here, in relation to movement, the effect or the cause?
In one sense it is the cause, since it has to direct loco-
motion. But in another sense it is the effect, for it is
the motor activity that maintains it, and, once this activity
disappears, consciousness dies away or rather falls asleep.
In crustaceans such as the rhizocephala, which must
formerly have shown a more differentiated structure,
fixity and parasitism accompany the degeneration and
almost complete disappearance of the nervous system.
‘Since, in such a case, the progress of organization must
have localized all the conscious activity in nervous centres,
we may conjecture that consciousness is even weaker in
animals of this kind than in organisms much less differen-
tiated, which have never had nervous centres but have
remained mobile.
How then could the plant, which is fixed in the earth and finds its food on the spot, have developed in the di- rection of conscious activity? The membrane of cellulose, in which the protoplasm wraps itself up, not only prevents the simplest vegetable organism from moving, but screens it also, in some measure, from those outer stimuli which act on the sensibility of the animal as irritants and prevent it from going to sleep. The plant is therefore unconscious. Here again, however, we must beware of radical distinctions. “Unconscious” and “conscious” are not two labels which can be mechanically fastened, the one on every vegetable cell, the other on all animals. While consciousness sleeps in the animal which has degenerated into a motionless parasite, it probably awakens in the vegetable that has
1 Cope, op. cit. p. 76.
112 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
regained liberty of movement, and awakens in just the
degree to which the vegetable has reconquered this liberty.
Nevertheless, consciousness and unconsciousness mark the
directions in which the two kingdoms have developed, in
this sense, that to find the best specimens of consciousness
in the animal we must ascend to the highest representatives
of the series, whereas, to find probable cases of vegetable
consciousness, we must descend as low as possible in the
scale of plants—down to the zoospores of the algae, for
instance, and, more generally, to those unicellular organ-
isms which may be said to hesitate between the vegetable
form and animality. From this standpoint, and in this
measure, we should define the animal by sensibility and
awakened consciousness, the vegetable by consciousness
asleep and by insensibility.
To sum up, the vegetable manufactures organic sub- stances directly with mineral substances; as a rule, this aptitude enables it to dispense with movement and so with feeling. Animals, which are obliged to go in search of their food, have evolved in the direction of locomotor activity, and consequently of a consciousness more and more distinct, more and more ample.
Now, it seems to us most probable that the animal
cell and the vegetable cell are derived from a common
stock, and that the first living organisms oscillated be-
tween the vegetable and animal form, participating in
both at once. Indeed, we have just seen that the char-
acteristic tendencies of the evolution of the two kingdoms,
although divergent, coexist even now, both in the plant
and in the animal. The proportion alone differs. Or-
dinarily, one of the two tendencies covers or crushes down
the other, but in exceptional circumstances the suppressed
one starts up and regains the place it had lost. The
rif
II.) THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL 113
mobility and consciousness of the vegetable cell are not
so sound asleep that they cannot rouse themselves when
circumstances permit or demand it; and, on the other hand,
the evolution of the animal kingdom has always been re-
tarded, or stopped, or dragged back, by the tendency it
has kept toward the vegetative life. However full, how-
ever overflowing the activity of an animal species may
appear, torpor and unconsciousness are always lying in
wait for it. It keeps up its réle only by effort, at the
price of fatigue. Along the route on which the animal
has evolved, there have been numberless shortcomings
and cases of decay, generally associated with parasitic
habits; they are so many shuntings on to the vegetative
life. Thus, everything bears out the belief that vegetable
and animal are descended from a common ancestor which
united the tendencies of both in a rudimentary state.
But the two tendencies mutually implied in this rudi- mentary form became dissociated as they grew. Hence the world of plants with its fixity and insensibility, hence the animals with their mobility and consciousness. There is no need, in order to explain this dividing into two, to bring in any mysterious force. It is enough to point out that the living being leans naturally toward what is most convenient to it, and that vegetables and animals have chosen two different kinds of convenience in the way of procuring the carbon and nitrogen they need. Vegetables continually and mechanically draw these elements from an environment that continually provides it. Animals, by action that is discontinuous, concentrated in certain moments, and conscious, go to find these bodies in organ- isms that have already fixed them. They are two different ways of being industrious, or perhaps we may prefer to say, of being idle. For this very reason we doubt whether nervous elements, however rudimentary, will ever be found
114 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
in the plant. What corresponds in it to the directing will
of the animal is, we believe, the direction in which it bends
the energy of the solar radiation when it uses it to break
the connection of the carbon with the oxygen in carbonic
acid. What corresponds in it to the sensibility of the ani-
mal is the impressionability, quite of its kind, of its chloro-
phyl light. Now, a nervous system being pre-eminently
a mechanism which serves as intermediary between sen-
sations and volitions, the true “nervous. system” of the
plant seems to be the mechanism or rather chemicism
sut generis which serves as intermediary between the im-
pressionability of its chlorophyl to light and the produc-
ing of starch: which amounts to saying that the plant can
have no nervous elements, and that the same wmpetus that
has led the animal to give itself nerves and nerve centres must
have ended, in the plant, in the chlorophyllian function.
This first glance over the organized world will enable
us to ascertain more precisely what unites the two king-
doms, and also what separates them. 7
Suppose, as we suggested in the preceding chapter, that at the root of life there is an effort to engraft on to the necessity of physical forces the largest possible amount of indetermination. This effort cannot result in the creation of energy, or, if it does, the quantity created does not belong to the order of magnitude apprehended
1 Just as the plant, in certain cases, recovers the faculty of moving actively which slumbers in it, so the animal, in exceptional circum- stances, can replace itself in the conditions of the vegetative life and develop in itself an equivalent of the chlorophyllian function. It appears, indeed, from recent experiments of Maria von Linden, that the chrysalides and the caterpillars of certain lepidoptera, under the influence of light, fix the carbon of the carbonic acid contained in the atmosphere (M. von Linden, “L’Assimilation de l’acide carbonique
par les chrysalides de Lépidoptéres,’’ C. R. de la Soc. de biologie, 1905,
pp. 692 ff.).
II.) THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL 115
by our senses and instruments of measurement, our ex-
perience and science. All that the effort can do, then, is
to make the best of a pre-existing energy which it finds
at its disposal. Now, it finds only one way of succeed-
ing in this, namely, to secure such an accumulation of
potential energy from matter, that it can get, at any
moment, the amount of work it needs for its action, simply
by pulling a trigger. The effort itself possesses only
that power of releasing. But the work of releasing,
although always the same and always smaller than any
given quantity, will be the more effective the heavier
the weight it makes fall and the greater the height—or,
in other words, the greater the sum of potential energy
accumulated and disposable. As a matter of fact, the
principal source of energy usable on the surface of our
planet is the sun. So the problem was this: to obtain
from the sun that it should partially and provisionally
suspend, here and there, on the surface of: the earth, its
continual outpour of usable energy, and store a certain
quantity of it, in the form of unused energy, in appropriate
reservoirs, whence it could be drawn at the desired moment,
at the desired spot, in the desired direction. The sub-
stances forming the food of animals are just such reservoirs.
Made of very complex molecules holding a considerable
amount of chemical energy in the potential state, they are
like explosives which only need a spark to set free the energy
stored within them. Now, it is probable that life tended
at the beginning to compass at one and the same time both
the manufacture of the explosive and the explosion by
which it is utilized. In this case, the same organism that
had directly stored the energy of the solar radiation
would have expended it in free movements in space.
And for that reason we must presume that the first living
beings sought on the one hand to accumulate, without
116 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
ceasing, energy borrowed from the sun, and on the other
hand to expend it, in a discontinuous and explosive way,
in movements of locomotion. Even to-day, perhaps, a
chlorophyl]-bearing Infusorian such as the Euglena may
symbolize this primordial tendency of life, though in a
mean form, incapable of evolving. Is the divergent
development of the two kingdoms related to what one may
call the oblivion of each kingdom as regards one of the
two halves of the programme? Or rather, which is more
likely, was the very nature of the matter, that life found
confronting it on our planet, opposed to the possibility
of the two tendencies evolving very far together in the same
organism? What is certain is that the vegetable has
trended principally in the first direction and the animal
in the second. But if, from the very first, in making the
explosive, nature had for object the explosion, then it is
the evolution of the animal, rather than that of the vege-
table, that indicates, on the whole, the fundamental di-
rection of life.
The “harmony” of the two kingdoms, the comple- mentary characters they display, might then be due to the fact that they develop two tendencies which at first were fused in one. The more the single original tendency grows, the harder it finds it to keep united in the same living being those two elements which in the rudimentary state implied each other. Hence a parting in two, hence two divergent evolutions; hence also two series of char- acters opposed in certain points, complementary in others, but, whether opposed or complementary, always preserving an appearance of kinship. While the animal evolved, not without accidents along the way, toward a freer and freer expenditure of discontinuous energy, the plant per- fected rather its system of accumulation without moving. We shall not dwell on this second point. Suffice it to
II.) THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL 117
say that the plant must have been greatly benefited, in
its turn, by a new division, analogous to that between
plants and animals. While the primitive vegetable
cell had to fix by itself both its carbon and its nitrogen,
it became able almost to give up the second of these two
functions as soon as microscopic vegetables came forward
which leaned in this direction exclusively, and even special-
ized diversely in this still complicated business. The
microbes that fix the nitrogen of the air and those which
convert the ammoniacal compounds into nitrous ones,
and these again into nitrates, have, by the same splitting
up of a tendency primitively one, rendered to the whole
vegetable world the same kind of service as the vegetables
in general have rendered to animals. If a special kingdom
were to be made for these microscopic vegetables, it might
be said that in the microbes of the soil, the vegetables
and the animals, we have before us the analysis, carried
out by the matter that life found at its disposal on our
planet, of all that life contained, at the outset, in a state
of reciprocal implication. Is this, properly speaking, a
“division of labor’? These words do not give the exact
idea of evolution, such as we conceive it. Wherever there
is division of labor, there is association and also convergence
of effort. Now, the evolution we are speaking of is never
achieved by means of association, but by dissociation; it
never tends toward convergence, but toward divergence of
efforts. The harmony between terms that are mutually
complementary in certain points is not, in our opinion,
produced, in course of progress, by a reciprocal adapta-
tion; on the contrary, it is complete only at the start.
It arises from an original identity, from the fact that the
evolutionary process, splaying out like a sheaf, sunders,
in proportion to their simultaneous growth, terms which
at first completed each other so well that they coalesced.
118 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
Now, the elements into which a tendency splits up
are far from possessing the same importance, or, above
all, the same power to evolve. We have just distinguished
three different kingdoms, if one may so express it, in the
organized world. While the first comprises only micro-
organisms which have remained in the rudimentary state,
animals and vegetables have taken their flight toward
very lofty fortunes. Such, indeed, is generally the case
when a tendency divides. Among the divergent develop-
ments to which it gives rise, some go on indefinitely, others
come more or less quickly to the end of their tether. These
latter do not issue directly from the primitive tendency,
but from one of the elements into which it has divided;
they are residual developments made and left behind
on the way by some truly elementary tendency which
continues to evolve. Now, these truly elementary ten-
dencies, we think, bear a mark by which they may be
recognized.
This mark is like a trace, still visible in each, of what was in the original tendency of which they represent the elementary directions. The elements of a tendency are not like objects set beside each other in space and mutually exclusive, but rather like psychic states, each of which, although it be itself to begin with, yet partakes of others, and so virtually includes in itself the whole personality to which it belongs. There is no real manifestation of life, we said, that does not show us, in a rudimentary or latent state, the characters of other manifestations. Conversely, when we meet, on one line of evolution, a recollection, so to speak, of what is developed along other lines, we must conclude that we have before us dissociated elements of one and the same original tendency. In this sense, vegetables and animals represent the two great divergent developments of life. Though the plant is
11.) THE PLANT AND THE ANIMAL 119
distinguished from the animal by fixity and insensibility,
movement and consciousness sleep in it as recollections
which may waken. But, beside these normally sleeping
recollections, there are others awake and active, just those,
namely, whose activity does not obstruct the development
of the elementary tendency itself. We may then formulate
this law: When a tendency splits up in the course of its
development, each of the special tendencies which thus arise
tries to preserve and develop everything in the primitive
tendency that is not incompatible with the work for which
wt is specialized. This explains precisely the fact we
dwelt on in the preceding chapter, viz., the formation
of identical complex mechanisms on independent lines
of evolution. Certain deep-seated analogies between
the animal and the vegetable have probably no other
cause: sexual generation is perhaps only a luxury for
the plant, but to the animal it was a necessity, and the
plant must have been driven to it by the same impetus
which impelled the animal thereto, a primitive, original
impetus, anterior to the separation of the two kingdoms.
The same may be said of the tendency of the vegetable
towards a growing complexity. This tendency is essential
to the animal kingdom, ever tormented by the need of
more and more extended and effective action. But the
vegetable, condemned to fixity and insensibility, exhibits
the same tendency only because it received at the outset
the same impulsion. Recent experiments show that. it
varies at random when the period of “mutation” arrives;
whereas the animal must have evolved, we believe, in
much more definite directions. But we will not dwell
further on this original doubling of the modes of life. Let
us come to the evolution of animals, in which we are more
particularly interested.
120 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
What constitutes animality, we said, is the faculty
of utilizing a releasing mechanism for the conversion
of as much stored-up potential energy as possible into
“explosive” actions. In the beginning the explosion
is haphazard, and does not choose its direction. Thus
the amoeba thrusts out its pseudopodic prolongations
in all directions at once. But, as we rise in the animal
scale, the form of the body itself is observed to indicate
a certain number of very definite directions along which
the energy travels. These directions are marked by so
many chains of nervous elements. Now, the nervous
element has gradually emerged from the barely differentiat-
ed mass of organized tissue. It may, therefore, be sur-
mised that in the nervous element, as soon as it appears,
and also in its appendages, the faculty of suddenly freeing
the gradually stored-up energy is concentrated. No doubt,
every living cell expends energy without ceasing, in order
to maintain its equilibrium. The vegetable cell, torpid
from the start, is entirely absorbed in this work of main-
tenance alone, as if it took for end what must at first have
been only a means. But, in the animal, all points to action,
that is, to the utilization of energy for movements from
place to place. True, every animal cell expends a good
deal—often the whole—of the energy at its disposal in
keeping itself alive; but the organism as a whole tries
to attract as much energy as possible to those points where
the locomotive movements are effected. So that where a
nervous system exists, with its complementary sense-
organs and motor apparatus, everything should happen
as if the rest of the body had, as its essential function, to
prepare for these and pass on to them, at the moment
required, that force which they are to liberate by a sort
of explosion.
The part played a food cue the higher animals
1) ANIMAL LIFE — 121
is, indeed, extremely complex. In the first place it serves
to repair tissues, then it .provides the animal with the
heat necessary to render it as independent as possible
of changes in external temperature. Thus it preserves,
supports, and maintains the organism in whieh the nervous
system is set and on which the nervous elements have to
live. But these nervous elements would have no reason
for existence if the organism did not pass to them, and
especially to the muscles they control, a certain energy
to expend; and it may even be conjectured that there,
in the main, is the essential and ultimate destination of
food. This does not mean that the greater part of the food
is used in this work. A state may have to make enormous
expenditure to secure the return of taxes, and the sum
which it will have to dispose of, after deducting the cost
of collection, will perhaps be very small: that sum is,
none the less, the reason for the tax and for all that has
been spent to obtain its return. So it is with the energy
which the animal demands of its food.
Many facts seem to indicate that the nervous and mus- cular elements stand in this relation towards the rest of the organism. Glance first at the distribution of ali- mentary substances among the different elements of the living body. These substances fall into two classes, one the quaternary or albuminoid, the other the ternary, including the carbohydrates and the fats. The albumi- noids are properly plastic, destined to repair the tissues— although, owing to the carbon they contain, they are capable of providing energy on occasion. But the function of supplying energy has devolved more particularly on the second class of substances: these, being deposited in the cell rather than forming part of its substance, convey to it, in the form of chemical potential, an ex- pansive energy that may be directly converted into either
122 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
movement or heat. In short, the chief function of the
albuminoids is to repair the machine, while the function
of the other class of substances is to supply power. It
is natural that the albuminoids should have no specially
allotted destination, since every part of the machine has
to be maintained. But not so with the other substances.
The carbohydrates are distributed very unequally, and
this inequality of distribution seems to us in the highest
degree instructive.
Conveyed by the arterial blood in the form of glucose, these substances are deposited, in the form of glycogen, in the different cells forming the tissues. We know that one of the principal functions of the liver is to maintain at a constant level the quantity of glucose held by the blood, by means of the reserves of glycogen secreted by the hepatic cells. Now, in this circulation of glucose and accumulation of glycogen, it is easy to see that the effect is as if the whole effort of the organism were directed towards providing with potential energy the elements of both the muscular and the nervous tissues. The organ- ism proceeds differently in the two cases, but it arrives at the same result. In the first case, it provides the muscle- cell with a large reserve deposited in advance: the quantity of glycogen contained in the muscles is, indeed, enormous in comparison with what is found in the other tissues. In the nervous tissue, on the contrary, the reserve is small (the nervous elements, whose function is merely to liberate the potential energy stored in the muscle, never have to furnish much work at one time); but the remark- able thing is that this reserve is restored by the blood at the very moment that it is expended, so that the nerve is instantly recharged with potential energy. Muscular tissue and nervous tissue are, therefore, both privileged, the one in that it is stocked with a large reserve of energy,
11.) ANIMAL LIFE | 123
the other in that it is always served at the instant it is in
need and to the exact extent of its requirements.
More particularly, it is from the sensori-motor system that the call for glycogen, the potential energy, comes, as if the rest of the organism were simply there in order to transmit force to the nervous system and to the muscles which the nerves control. True, when we think of the part played by the nervous system (even the sensori- motor system) as regulator of the organic life, it may well be asked whether, in this exchange of good offices between it and the rest of the body, the nervous system is indeed a master that the body serves. But we shall already in- cline to this hypothesis when we consider, even in the static state only, the distribution of potential energy among the tissues; and we shall be entirely convinced of it when we reflect upon the conditions in which the energy is expended and restored. For suppose the sensori- motor system is a system like the others, of the same rank as the others. Borne by the whole of the organism, it will wait until an excess of chemical potential is supplied to it before it performs any work. In other words, it is the production of glycogen which will regulate the consumption by the nerves and muscles. On the con- trary, if the sensori-motor system is the actual master, the duration and extent of its action will be independent, to a certain extent at least, of the reserve of glycogen that it holds, and even of that contained in the whole of the organism. It will perform work, and the other tissues will have to arrange as they can to supply it with potential energy. Now, this is precisely what does take place, as is shown in particular by the experiments of Morat and Du- fourt.:. While the glycogenic function of the liver depends on the action of the excitory nerves which control it, the
1 Archives de physiologie, 1892.
124 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
action of these nerves is subordinated to the action of
those which stimulate the locomotor muscles—in this
sense, that the muscles begin by expending without cal-
culation, thus consuming glycogen, impoverishing the
blood of its glucose, and finally causing the liver, which
has had to pour into the impoverished blood some of
its reserve of glycogen, to manufacture a fresh supply.
From the sensori-motor system, then, everything starts;
on that system everything converges; and we may say,
without metaphor, that the rest of the organism is at its
service.
Consider again what happens in a prolonged fast. It is a remarkable fact that in animals that have died of hunger the brain is found to be almost unimpaired, while the other organs have lost more or less of their weight and their cells have undergone profound changes.. It seems as though the rest of the body had sustained the nervous system to the last extremity, treating itself simply as the means of which the nervous system is the end.
To sum up: if we agree, in short, to understand by “the sensori-motor system” the cerebro-spinal nervous system together with the sensorial apparatus in which it is prolonged and the locomotor muscles it controls, we may say that a higher organism is essentially a sensori- motor system installed on systems of digestion, respiration, circulation, secretion, etc., whose function it is to repair, cleanse and protect it, to create an unvarying internal environment for it, and above all to pass it potential
1 De Manacéine, ‘‘Quelques observations expérimentales sur |’in-
fluence de l’insomnie absolue’’ (Arch. ital. de biologie, t. xxi., 1894, pp.
322 ff.). Recently, analogous observations have been made on a man
who died of inanition after a fast of thirty-five days. See, on this
subject, in the Année biologique of 1898, p. 338, the résumé of an article
(in Russian) by Tarakevitch and Stchasny.
tr.) ANIMAL LIFE — 125
energy to convert into locomotive movement.' It is
true that the more the nervous function is perfected, the
more must the functions required to maintain it develop, and
the more exacting, consequently, they become for them-
selves. As the nervous activity has emerged from the
protoplasmic mass in which it was almost drowned, it
has had to summon around itself activities of all kinds for
its support. These could only be developed on other
activities, which again implied others, and so on indefinitely.
Thus it is that the complexity of functioning of the higher
organisms goes on to infinity. The study of one of these
organisms therefore takes us round in a circle, as if every-
thing was a means to everything else. But the circle
has a centre, none the less, and that is the system of nervous
elements stretching between the sensory organs and the
motor apparatus.
We will not dwell here on a point we have treated at length in a former work. Let us merely recall that the progress of the nervous system has been effected both in the direction of a more precise adaptation of movements and in that of a greater latitude left to the living being to choose between them. These two tendencies may appear antagonistic, and indeed they are so; but a nervous chain, even in its most rudimentary form, successfully reconciles them. On the one hand, it marks a well-de-
1 Cuvier said: ‘‘The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole animal; the other systems are there only to serve it.’’ (‘Sur un nouveau rapprochement a établir entre les classes qui composent le regne ani- mal,’’ Arch. du Muséum d’histoire naturelle, Paris, 1812, pp. 73-84.) Of course, it would be necessary to apply a great many restrictions to this formula—for example, to allow for the cases of degradation and retrogression in which the nervous system passes into the back- ground. And, moreover, with the nervous system must be included the sensorial apparatus on the one hand and the motor on the other,
between which it acts as intermediary. Cf. Foster, art. ‘‘ Physiology,’’
in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edinburgh, 1885, p. 17.
126 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
fined track between one point of the periphery and an-
other, the one sensory, the other motor. It has therefore
canalized an activity which was originally diffused in the
protoplasmic mass. But, on the other hand, the elements
that compose it are probably discontinuous; at any rate,
even supposing they anastomose, they exhibit a functional
discontinuity, for each of them ends in a kind of cross-
road where probably the nervous current may choose
its course. From the humblest Monera to the best endowed
insects, and up to the most intelligent vertebrates, the
progress realized has been above all a progress of the nervous
system, coupled at every stage with all the new construc-
tions and complications of mechanism that this progress
required. As we foreshadowed in the beginning of this
work, the réle of life is to insert some indetermination into
matter. Indeterminate, 7.e. unforeseeable, are the forms
it creates in the course of its evolution. More and more
indeterminate also, more and more free, is the activity
to which these forms serve as the vehicle. A nervous
system, with neurones placed end to end in such wise that,
at the extremity of each, manifold ways open in which
manifold questions present themselves, is a veritable
reservoir of indetermination. That the main energy of
the vital impulse has been spent in creating apparatus
of this kind is, we believe, what a glance over the organ-
ized world as a whole easily shows. But concerning the
vital impulse itself a few explanations are necessary.
It must not be forgotten that the force which is evolv-
ing throughout the organized world is a limited force,
which is always seeking to transcend itself and always
remains inadequate to the work it would fain produce.
The errors and puerilities of radical finalism are due to
the misapprehension of this point. It has represented
nj) DEVELOPMENT OF ANIMAL LIFE 127
the whole of the living world as a construction, and a
construction analogous to a human work. All the pieces
have been arranged with a view to the best possible func-
tioning of the machine. Each species has its reason for
existence, its part to play, its allotted place; and all join
together, as it were, in a musical concert, wherein the
seeming discords are really meant to bring out a funda-
mental harmony. In short, all goes on in nature as in
the works of human genius, where, though the result
may be trifling, there is at least perfect adequacy between
the object made and the work of making it.
Nothing of the kind in the evolution of life. There, the disproportion is striking between the work and the result. From the bottom to the top of the organized world we do indeed find one great effort; but most often this effort turns short, sometimes paralyzed by contrary forces, sometimes diverted from what it should do by what it does, absorbed by the form it is engaged in tak- ing, hypnotized by it as by a mirror. Even in its most perfect works, though it seems to have triumphed over external resistances and also over its own, it is at the mercy of the materiality which it has had to assume. It is what each of us may experience in himself. Our freedom, in the very movements by which it is affirmed, creates the growing habits that will stifle it if it fails to renew itself by a constant effort: it is dogged by automa- tism. The most living thought becomes frigid in the for- mula that expresses it. The word turns against the idea.
The letter kills the spirit. And our most ardent enthusi- asm, aS soon as it is externalized into action, is so naturally congealed into the cold calculation of interest or vanity, the one takes so easily the shape of the other, that we might confuse them together, doubt our own sincerity,
128 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
deny goodness and love, if we did not know that the dead
retain for a time the features of the living.
The profound cause of this discordance lies in an ir- remediable difference of rhythm. Life in general is mo- bility itself; particular manifestations of life accept this mobility reluctantly, and constantly lag behind. It is always going ahead; they want to mark time. Evolution in general would fain go on in a straight line; each special evolution is a kind of circle. Like eddies of dust raised by the wind as it passes, the living tarn upon themselves, borne up by the great blast of life. They are therefore relatively stable, and counterfeit immobility so well that we treat each of them as a thing rather than as a progress, forgetting that the very permanence of their form is only the outline of a movement. At times, how- ever, in a fleeting vision, the invisible breath that bears them is materialized before our eyes. We have this sudden illumination before certain forms of maternal love, so striking, and in most animals so touching, ob- servable even in the solicitude of the plant for its seed. This love, in which some have seen the great mystery of life, may possibly deliver us life’s secret. It shows us each generation leaning over the generation that shall follow. It allows us a glimpse of the fact that the living being is above all a thoroughfare, and that the essence of life is in the movement by which life is transmitted.
This contrast between life in general, and the forms in which it is manifested, has everywhere the same char- acter. It might be said that life tends toward the ut- most possible action, but that each species prefers to contribute the slightest possible effort. Regarded in what constitutes its true essence, namely, as a transition from species to species, life is a continually growing action. But each of the species, through which life passes, aims
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11.) DEVELOPMENT OF AN IMAL LIFE 129
only at its own convenience. It goes for that which
demands the least labor. Absorbed in the form it is
about to take, it falls into a partial sleep, in which it
ignores almost all the rest of life; it fashions itself so
as to take the greatest possible advantage of its immediate
environment with the least possible trouble. Accord-
ingly, the act by which life goes forward to the creation
of a new form, and the act by which this form is shaped,
are two different and often antagonistic movements.
The first is continuous with the second, but cannot con-
tinue in it without being drawn aside from its direction,
as would happen to a man leaping, if, in order to clear
the obstacle, he had to turn his eyes from it and look at
himself all the while.
Living forms are, by their very definition, forms that are able to live. In whatever way the adaptation of the organism to its circumstances is explained, it has necessa- rily been sufficient, since the species has subsisted. In this sense, each of the successive species that paleon- tology and zoology describes was a success carried off by life. But we get a very different impression when we refer each species to the movement that has left it behind on its way, instead of to the conditions into which it has been set. Often this movement has turned aside; very often, too, it has stopped short; what was to have been a thoroughfare has become a terminus. From this new point of view, failure seems the rule, success exceptional and always imperfect. We shall see that, of the four main directions along which animal life bent its course, two have led to blind alleys, and, in the other two, the effort has generally been out of proportion to the result.
Documents are lacking to reconstruct this history in detail, but we can make out its main lines. We have already said that animals and vegetables must have
130 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
separated soon from their common stock, the vegetable
falling asleep in immobility, the animal, on the con-
trary, becoming more and more awake and marching on
to the conquest of a nervous system. Probably the effort
of the animal kingdom resulted in creating organisms
still very simple, but endowed with a certain freedom
of action, and, above all, with a shape so undecided that
it could lend itself to any future determination. These
animals may have resembled some of our worms, but
with this difference, however, that the worms living to-
day, to which they could be compared, are but the empty
and fixed examples of infinitely plastic forms, pregnant
with an unlimited future, the common stock of the echino-
derms, molluscs, arthropods, and vertebrates.
One danger lay in wait for them, one obstacle which might have stopped the soaring course of animal life. There is one peculiarity with which we cannot help being struck when glancing over the fauna of primitive times, namely, the imprisonment of the animal in a more or less solid sheath, which must have obstructed and often even paralyzed its movements. The molluscs of that time had a shell more universally than those of to-day. The arthropods in general were provided with a carapace; most of them were crustaceans. The more ancient fishes had a bony sheath of extreme hardness.1 The explanation of this general fact should be sought, we believe, in a tendency of soft organisms to defend themselves against one another by making themselves, as far as possible, undevourable. Each species, in the act by which it comes into being, trends towards that which is most expedient. Just as among primitive organisms there were some that turned towards animal life by re-
1 See, on these different points, the work of Gaudry, Essai de paléon-
tologie philosophique, Paris, 1896, pp. 14-16 and 78-79.
11. DEVELOPMENT OF ANIMAL LIFE 131
fusing to manufacture organic out of inorganic material
and taking organic substances ready made from organ-
isms that had turned toward the vegetative life, so, among
the animal species themselves, many contrived to live
at the expense of other animals. For an organism that is
animal, that is to say mobile, can avail itself of its mobility
to go in search of defenseless animals, and feed on them
quite as well as on vegetables. So, the more species be-
came mobile, the more they became voracious and danger-
ous to one another. Hence a sudden arrest of the entire
animal world in its progress towards higher and higher
mobility; for the hard and calcareous skin of the echino-
derm, the shell of the mollusc, the carapace of the crustacean
and the ganoid breast-plate of the ancient fishes probably
all originated in a common effort of the animal species
to protect themselves against hostile species. But this
breast-plate, behind which the animal took shelter,
constrained it in its movements and sometimes fixed
it in one place. If the vegetable renounced consciousness
in wrapping itself in a cellulose membrane, the animal
that shut itself up in a citadel or in armor condemned
itself to a partial slumber. In this torpor the echinoderms
and even the molluscs live to-day. Probably arthropods
and vertebrates were threatened with ittoo. They escaped,
however, and to this fortunate circumstance is due the
expansion of the highest forms of life.
In two directions, in fact, we see the impulse of life to movement getting the upper hand again. The fishes exchanged their ganoid breast-plate for scales. Long before that, the insects had appeared, also disencumbered of the breast-plate that had protected their ancestors. Both supplemented the insufficiency of their protective covering by an agility that enabled them to escape their enemies, and also to assume the offensive, to choose the
132 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
place and the moment of encounter. We see a progress
of the same kind in the evolution of human armaments.
The first impulse is to seek shelter; the second, which is
the better, is to become as supple as possible for flight and
above all for attack—attack being the most effective
means of defense. So the heavy hoplite was supplanted
by the legionary; the knight, clad in armor, had to give
place to the light free-moving infantryman; and in a
general way, in the evolution of life, just as in the evo-
lution of human societies and of individual destinies, the
greatest successes have been for those who have accepted
the heaviest risks.
Evidently, then, it was to the animal’s interest to make itself more mobile. As we said when speaking of adaptation in general, any transformation of a species can be explained by its own particular interest. This will give the immediate cause of the variation, but often only the most superficial cause. The profound cause is the impulse which thrust life into the world, which made it divide into vegetables and animals, which shunted the animal on to suppleness of form, and which, at a certain moment, in the animal kingdom threatened with torpor, secured that, on some points at least, it should rouse itself up and move forward.
On the two paths along which the vertebrates and arthropods have separately evolved, development (apart from retrogressions connected with parasitism or any other cause) has consisted above aH in the progress of the sensori-motor nervous system. Mobility and sup- pleness were sought for, and also—through many experi- mental attempts, and not without a tendency to excess of substance and brute force at the start—variety of move- ments. But this quest itself took place in divergent directions. A glance at the nervous system of the arthro-
II.] DEVELOPMENT OF ANIMAL LIFE 133
pods and that of the vertebrates shows us the difference.
In the arthropods, the body is formed of a series more or
less long of rings set together; motor activity is thus
distributed amongst a varying—sometimes a considerable
—number of appendages, each of which has its special
function. In the vertebrates, activity is concentrated
in two pairs of members only, and these organs perform
functions which depend much less strictly on their form.+
The independence becomes complete in man, whose hand
is capable of any kind of work.
That, at least, is what we see. But behind what is seen there is what may be surmised—two powers, im- manent in life and originally intermingled, which were bound to part company in course of growth.
To define these powers, we must consider, in the evo- lution both of the arthropods and the vertebrates, the species which mark the culminating point of each. How is this point to be determined? Here again, to aim at geometrical precision will lead us astray. There is no single simple sign by which we can recognize that one species is more advanced than another on the same line of evolution. There are manifold characters, that must be compared and weighed in each particular case, in order to ascertain to what extent they are essential or acci- dental and how far they must be taken into account.
It is unquestionable, for example, that success is the most general criterion of superiority, the two terms being, up to a certain point, synonymous. By success must be understood, so far as the living being is concerned, an aptitude to develop in the most diverse environments, through the greatest possible variety of obstacles, so as to cover the widest possible extent of ground. A species
1 See, on this subject, Shaler, The Individual, New York, 1900, pp.
118-125.
134 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (OHAP.
which claims the entire earth for its domain is truly a
dominating and consequently superior species. Such
is the human species, which represents the culminating
point of the evolution of the vertebrates. But such also
are, in the series of the articulate, the insects and in partic-
ular certain hymenoptera. It has been said of the ants
that, as man is lord of the soil, they are lords of the sub-soil.
On the other hand, a group of species that has appeared late may be a group of degenerates; but, for that, some special cause of retrogression must have intervened. By right, this group should be superior to the group from which it is derived, since it would correspond to a more advanced stage of evolution. Now man is_ probably the latest comer of the vertebrates; and in the insect series no species is later than the hymenoptera, unless it be the lepidoptera, which are probably degenerates, living parasitically on flowering plants.
So, by different ways, we are led to the same conclusion. The evolution of the arthropods reaches its culminating point in the insect, and in particular in the hymenoptera, as that of the vertebrates in man. Now, since instinct is nowhere so developed as in the insect world, and in no group of insects so marvelously as in the hymenoptera, it may be said that the whole evolution of the animal king- dom, apart from retrogressions towards vegetative life, has taken place on two divergent paths, one of which led to instinct and the other to intelligence.
1 This point is disputed by M. René Quinton, who regards the car- nivorous and ruminant mammals, as well as certain birds, as subse- quent to man (R. Quinton, L’Hau de mer milieu organique, Paris, 1904, p. 435). We may say here that our general conclusions, although very different from M. Quinton’s, are not irreconcilable with them; for if evolution has really been such as we represent it, the vertebrates must have made an effort to maintain themselves in the most favor-
able conditions of activity—the very conditions, indeed, which life
had chosen in the beginning.
1.) DEVELOPMENT OF ANIMAL LIFE 135
Vegetative torpor, instinct, and intelligence—these,
then, are the elements that coincided in the vital impulsion
common to plants and animals, and which, in the course
of a development in which they were made manifest in
the most unforeseen forms, have been dissociated by the
very fact of their growth. The cardinal error which, from
Arvstotle onwards, has vitiated most of the philosophies of
nature, 1s to see in vegetative, instinctive and rational life,
three successive degrees of the development of one and the
same tendency, whereas they are three divergent directions
of an activity that has split up as it grew. The difference
between them is not a difference of intensity, nor, more
generally, of degree, but of kind.
It is important to investigate this point. We have
seen in the case of vegetable and animal life how they
are at once mutually complementary and mutually an-
tagonistic. Now we must show that intelligence and
instinct also are opposite and complementary. But
let us first explain why we are generally led to regard
them as activities of which one is superior to the other
and based upon it, whereas in reality they are not things
of the same order: they have not succeeded one another,
nor can we assign to them different grades.
It is because intelligence and instinct, having origin- ally been interpenetrating, retain something of their common origin. Neither is ever found in a pure state. We said that in the plant the consciousness and mobility of the animal, which lie dormant, can be awakened; and that the animal lives under the constant menace of being drawn aside to the vegetative life. The two tendencies —that of the plant and that of the animal—were so thor- oughly interpenetrating, to begin with, that there has never been a complete severance between them: they
136 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
haunt each other continually; everywhere we find them
mingled; it is the proportion that differs. So with in-
telligence and instinct. There is no intelligence in which
some traces of instinct are not to be discovered, more
especially no instinct that is not surrounded with a
fringe of intelligence. It is this fringe of intelligence
that has been the cause of so many misunderstandings.
From the fact that instinct is always more or less in-
telligent, it has been concluded that instinct and intelligence
are things of the same kind, that there is only a difference
of complexity or perfection between them, and, above all,
that one of the two is expressible in terms of the other.
In reality, they accompany each other only because they
are complementary, and they are complementary only
because they are different, what is instinctive in instinct
being opposite to what is intelligent in intelligence.
We are bound to dwell on this point. It is one of the utmost importance.
Let us say at the outset that the distinctions we are going to make will be too sharply drawn, just because we wish to define in instinct what is instinctive, and in intelli- gence what is intelligent, whereas all concrete instinct is mingled with intelligence, as all real intelligence is pene- trated by instinct. Moreover, neither intelligence nor instinct lends itself to rigid definition: they are tendencies, and not things. Also, it must not be forgotten that in the present chapter we are considering intelligence and instinct as going out of life which deposits them along its course. Now the life manifested by an organism is, in our view, a certain effort to obtain certain things from the material world. No wonder, therefore, if it is the diversity of this effort that strikes us in instinct and intelligence, and if we see in these two modes of psychical activity, above all else, two different methods of action on inert matter.
11.) INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 137
This rather narrow view of them has the advantage of
giving us an objective means of distinguishing them. In
return, however, it gives us, of intelligence in general
and of instinct in general, only the mean position above and
below which both constantly oscillate. For that reason
the reader must expect to see in what follows only a dia-
grammatic drawing, in which the respective outlines
of intelligence and instinct are sharper than they should
be, and in which the shading-off which comes from the
indecision of each and from their reciprocal encroachment
on one another is neglected. In a matter so obscure,
we cannot strive too hard for clearness. It will always be
easy afterwards to soften the outlines and to correct what
is too geometrical in the drawing—in short, to replace
the rigidity of a diagram by the suppleness of life.
To what date is it agreed to ascribe the appearance
of man on the earth? To the period when the first
weapons, the first tools, were made. The memorable
quarrel over the discovery of Boucher de Perthes in the
quarry of Moulin-Quignon is not forgotten. The question
was whether real hatchets had been found or merely
bits of flint accidentally broken. But that, supposing
they were hatchets, we were indeed in the presence of
intelligence, and more particularly of human intelligence,
no one doubted for an instant. Now let us open a col-
lection of anecdotes on the intelligence of animals: we
shall see that besides many acts explicable by imitation
or by the automatic association of images, there are some
that we do not hesitate to call intelligent: foremost among
them are those that bear witness to some idea of manu-
facture, whether the animal life succeeds in fashioning a
crude instrument or uses for its profit an object made by
man. The animals that rank immediately after man in
138 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
the matter of intelligence, the apes and elephants, are
those that can use an artificial instrument occasionally.
Below, but not very far from them, come those that
recognize a constructed object: for example, the fox, which
knows quite well that a trap is a trap. No doubt, there is
intelligence wherever there is inference; but inference,
which consists in an inflection of past experience in the
direction of present experience, is already a beginning
of invention. Invention becomes complete when it is
materialized in a manufactured instrument. Towards
that achievement the intelligence of animals tends as
towards an ideal. And though, ordinarily, it does not
yet succeed in fashioning artificial objects and in making
use of them, it is preparing for this by the very variations
which it performs on the instincts furnished by nature.
As regards human intelligence, it has not been sufficiently
noted that mechanical invention has been from the first
its essential feature, that even to-day our social life gravi-
tates around the manufacture and use of artificial instru-
ments, that the inventions which strew the road of progress
have also traced its direction. This we hardly realize,
because it takes us longer to change ourselves than to
change our tools. Our individual and even social habits
survive a good while the circumstances for which they were
made, so that the ultimate effects of an invention are not
observed until its novelty is already out of sight. A
century has elapsed since the invention of the steam-
engine, and we are only just beginning to feel the depths
of the shock it gave us. But the revolution it has effected
in industry has nevertheless upset human relations al-
together. New ideas are arising, new feelings are on the
way to flower. In thousands of years, when, seen from
the distance, only the broad lines of the present age will
still be visible, our wars and our revolutions will count for
I] INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 139
little, even supposing they are remembered at all; but the
steam-engine, and the procession of inventions of every
kind that accompanied it, will perhaps be spoken of as we
speak of the bronze or of the chipped stone of pre-historic
times: it will serve to define an age.:_ If we could rid our-
selves of all pride, if, to define our species, we kept strictly
to what the historic and the prehistoric periods show us
to be the constant characteristic of man and of intelli-
gence, we should say not Homo sapiens, but Homo faber.
In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its
original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial
objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely
varying the manufacture.
Now, does an unintelligent animal also possess tools or machines? Yes, certainly, but here the instrument forms a part of the body that uses it; and, correspond- ing to this instrument, there is an instinct that knows how to use it. True, it cannot be maintained that all instincts consist in a natural ability to use an inborn mechanism. Such a definition would not apply to the instincts which Romanes called “secondary”; and more than one “pri- mary” instinct would not come under it. But this defi- nition, like that which we have provisionally given of intelligence, determines at least the ideal limit toward which the very numerous forms of instinct are traveling. Indeed, it has often been pointed out that most instincts are only the continuance, or rather the consummation, of the work of organization itself. Where does the activity of instinct begin? and where does that of nature end? We cannot tell. In the metamorphoses of the larva into the
nymph and into the perfect insect, metamorphoses that
1M. Paul Lacombe has laid great stress on the important influence that great inventions have exercised on the evolution of humanity (P. Lacombe, De l’histoire considérée comme science, Paris, 1894. See, in particular, pp. 168-247).
140 ‘CREATIVE EVOLUTION (OHAP.
often require appropriate action and a kind of initiative
on the part of the larva, there is no sharp line of demarca-
tion between the instinct of the animal and the organizing
work of living matter. We may say, as we will, either that
instinct organizes the instruments it is about to use, or
that the process of organization is continued in the instinct
that has to use the organ. The most marvelous instincts
of the insect do nothing but develop its special structure
into movements: indeed, where social life divides the
labor among different individuals, and thus allots them
different instincts, a corresponding difference of structure
is observed: the polymorphism of ants, bees, wasps and
certain pseudoneuroptera is well known. Thus, if we
consider only those typical cases in which the complete
triumph of intelligence and of instinct is seen, we find
this essential difference between them: instinct perfected
is a faculty of using and even of constructing organized
instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making
and using unorganized instruments.
The advantages and drawbacks of these two modes of activity are obvious. Instinct finds the appropriate instrument at hand: this instrument, which makes and repairs itself, which presents, like all the works of nature, an infinite complexity of detail combined with a marvelous simplicity of function, does at once, when required, what it is called upon to do, without difficulty and with a per- fection that is often wonderful. In return, it retains an almost invariable structure, since a modification of it involves a modification of the species. Instinct is there- fore necessarily specialized, being nothing but the utili- zation of a specific instrument for a specific object. The instrument constructed intelligently, on the contrary, is an imperfect instrument. It costs an effort. It is generally troublesome to handle. But, as it is made of
II.) INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 141
unorganized matter, it can take any form whatsoever,
serve any purpose, free the living being from every new
difficulty that arises and bestow on it an unlimited number
of powers. Whilst it is inferior to the natural instrument
for the satisfaction of immediate wants, its advantage
over it is the greater, the less urgent the need. Above
all, it reacts on the nature of the being that constructs
it; for in calling on him to exercise a new function, it
confers on him, so to speak, a richer organization, being
an artificial organ by which the natural organism is ex-
tended. For every need that it satisfies, it creates a new
need; and so, instead of closing, like instinct, the round of
action within which the animal tends to move auto-
matically, it lays open to activity an unlimited field into
which it is driven further and further, and made more
and more free. But this advantage of intelligence over
instinct only appears at a late stage, when intelligence,
having raised construction to a higher degree, proceeds
to construct constructive machinery. At the outset, the
advantages and drawbacks of the artificial instrument and of
the natural instrument balance so well that it is hard to fore-
tell which of the two will secure to the living being the
greater empire over nature.
We may surmise that they began by being implied in each other, that the original psychical activity included both at once, and that, if we went far enough back into the past, we should find instincts more nearly approaching intelligence than those of our insects, intelligence nearer to instinct than that of our vertebrates, intelligence and instinct being, in this elementary condition, prisoners of a matter which they are not yet able to control. If the force immanent in life were an unlimited force, it might perhaps have developed instinct and intelligence together, and to any extent, ‘in the same organisms. But everything seems
142 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
to indicate that this force is limited, and that it soon
exhausts itself in its very manifestation. It is hard for
it to go far in several directions at once: it must choose.
Now, it has the choice between two modes of acting on
the material world: it can either effect this action directly
by creating an organized instrument to work with; or else
it can effect it indirectly through an organism which, in-
stead of possessing the required instrument naturally,
will itself construct it by fashioning inorganic matter.
Hence intelligence and instinct, which diverge more and
more as they develop, but which never entirely separate
from each other. On the one hand, the most perfect
instinct of the insect is accompanied by gleams of intelli-
gence, if only in the choice of place, time and materials
of construction: the bees, for example, when by exception
they build in the open air, invent new and really intelligent
arrangements to adapt themselves to such new con-
ditions... But, on the other hand, intelligence has even
more need of instinct than instinct has of intelligence;
for the power to give shape to crude matter involves al-
ready a superior degree of organization, a degree to which
the animal could not have risen, save on the wings of
instinct. So, while nature has frankly evolved in the di-
rection of instinct in the arthropods, we observe in almost
all the vertebrates the striving after rather than the ex-
pansion of intelligence. It is instinct still which forms
the basis of their psychical activity; but intelligence is
there, and would fain supersede it. Intelligence does not
yet succeed in inventing instruments; but at least it tries
to, by performing as many variations as possible on the
instinct which it would like to dispense with. It gains
complete self-possession only in man, and this triumph
1 Bouvier, “La Nidification des abeilles 4 l’air libre’ (C. R. de l’Ae.
des sciences, 7 mai 1906).
1.) INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 143
is attested by the very insufficiency of the natural means
at man’s disposal for defense against his enemies, against
cold and hunger. This insufficiency, when we strive to
fathom its significance, acquires the value of a prehistoric
document; it is the final leave-taking between intelli-
gence and instinct. But it is no less true that nature
must have hesitated between two modes of psychicai
activity—one assured of immediate success, but limited
in its effects; the other hazardous, but whose conquests,
if it should reach independence, might be extended in-
definitely. Here again, then, the greatest success was
achieved on the side of the greatest risk. Instinct and
intelligence therefore represent two divergent solutions,
equally fitting, of one and the same problem.
There ensue, it is true, profound differences of internal structure between instinct and intelligence. We shall dwell only on those that concern our present study. Let us say, then, that instinct and intelligence imply two radically different kinds of knowledge. But some ex- planations are first of all necessary on the subject of con- sciousness in general.
It has been asked how far instinct is conscious. Our reply is that there are a vast number of differences and degrees, that instinct is more or less conscious in certain cases, unconscious in others. The plant, as we shall see, has instincts; it is not likely that these are accompanied by feeling. Even in the animal there is hai: ly any com- plex instinct that is not unconscious in some part at least of its exercise. But here we must point out a difference, not often noticed, between two kinds of unconsciousness, viz., that in which consciousness is absent, and that in which consciousness is nullified. Both are equal to zero, but in one case the zero expresses the fact that there is nothing, in the other that we have two equal quantities of opposite
144 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
sign which compensate and neutralize each other. The
unconsciousness of a falling stone is of the former kind:
the stone has no feeling of its fall. Is it the same with
the unconsciousness of instinct, in the extreme cases in
which instinct is unconscious? When we mechanically
perform an habitual action, when the somnambulist
automatically acts his dream, unconsciousness may be
absolute; but this is merely due to the fact that the re-
presentation of the act is held in check by the performance
of the act itself, which resembles the idea so perfectly,
and fits it so exactly, that consciousness is unable to find
room between them. Representation is stopped up by
action. The proof of this is, that if the accomplishment
of the act is arrested or thwarted by an obstacle, con-
sciousness may reappear. It was there, but neutralized
by the action which fulfiled and thereby filled the repre-
sentation. The obstacle creates nothing positive; it simply
makes a void, removes a stopper. This inadequacy of act to
representation is precisely what we here call consciousness.
If we examine this point more closely, we shall find that consciousness is the light that plays around the zone of possible actions or potential activity which sur- rounds the action really performed by the living being. It signifies hesitation or choice. Where many equally possible actions are indicated without there being any real action (as in a deliberation that has not come to an end), consciousness is intense. Where the action performed is the only action possible (as in activity of the somnam- bulistic or more generally automatic kind), consciousness is reduced to nothing. Representation and knowledge exist none the less in the case if we find a whole series of systematized movements the last of which is already pre- figured in the first, and if, besides, consciousness can flash out of them at the shock of an obstacle. From this point
11. INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 145
of view, the consciousness of a living being may be defined as
an arithmetical difference between potential and real activity.
It measures the interval between representation and action.
It may be inferred from this that intelligence is likely to point towards consciousness, and instinct towards un- consciousness. For, where the implement to be used is organized by nature, the material furnished by nature, and the result to be obtained willed by nature, there is little left to choice; the consciousnesss inherent in the representation is therefore counterbalanced, whenever it tends to disengage itself, by the performance of the act, identical with the representation, which forms its counter- weight. Where consciousness appears, it does not so much light up the instinct itself as the thwartings to which instinct is subject; it is the deficit of instinct, the distance, between the act and the idea, that becomes consciousness so that consciousness, here, is only an accident. Es- sentially, consciousness only emphasizes the starting- point of instinct, the point at which the whole series of automatic movements is released. Deficit, on the con- trary, is the normal state of intelligence. Laboring under difficulties is its very essence. Its original function being to construct unorganized instruments, it must, in spite of numberless difficulties, choose for this work the place and the time, the form and the matter. And it can never satisfy itself entirely, because every new satisfaction creates new needs. In short, while instinct and intelli- gence both involve knowledge, this knowledge is rather acted and unconscious in the case of instinct, thought and conscious in the case of intelligence. But it is a difference rather of degree than of kind. So long as consciousness is all we are concerned with, we close our eyes to what is, from the psychological point of view, the cardinal difference between instinct and intelligence.
146 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
In order to get at this essential difference we must,
without stopping at the more or less brilliant light which
illumines these two modes of internal activity, go straight
to the two objects, profoundly different from each other,
upon which instinct and intelligence are directed.
When the horse-fly lays its eggs on the legs or shoulders of the horse, it acts as if it knew that its larva has to develop in the horse’s stomach and that the horse, in licking itself, will convey the larva into its digestive tract. When a paralyzing wasp stings its victim on just those points where the nervous centres lie, so as to render it motionless without killing it, it acts like a learned entomologist and a skilful surgeon rolled into one. But what shall we say of the little beetle, the Sitaris, whose story is so often quoted? This insect lays its eggs at the entrance of the under- ground passages dug by a kind of bee, the Anthophora. Its larva, after long waiting, springs upon the male Antho- phora as it goes out of the passage, clings to it, and re- mains attached until the “nuptial flight,’ when it seizes the opportunity to pass from the male to the female, and quietly waits until it lays its eggs. It then leaps on the egg, which serves as a support for it in the honey, devours the egg in a few days, and, resting on the shell, undergoes its first metamorphosis. Organized now to float on the honey, it consumes this provision of nourishment, and becomes a nymph, then a perfect insect. Everything happens as of the larva of the Sitaris, from the moment it was hatched, knew that the male Anthophora would first emerge from the passage; that the nuptial flight would give it the means of conveying itself to the female, who would take it to a store of honey sufficient to feed it after its transformation; that, until this transformation, it could gradually eat the egg of the Anthophora, in such a way that it could at the same time feed itself, maintain itself at the surface
II.] INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 147°
of the honey, and-also suppress the rival that otherwise
would have come out of the egg. And equally all this
happens as if the Sitaris itself knew that its larva would
know all these things. The knowledge, if knowledge there
be, is only implicit. It is reflected outwardly in exact
movements instead of being reflected inwardly in conscious-
ness. It is none the less true that the behavior of the insect
involves, or rather evolves, the idea of definite things
existing or being produced in definite points of space
and time, which the insect knows without having learned
them.
Now, if we look at intelligence from the same point of view, we find that it also knows certain things with- out having learned them. But the knowledge in the two cases is of a very different order. We must be careful here not to revive again the old philosophical dispute on the subject of innate ideas. So we will confine our- selves to the point on which every one is agreed, to wit, that the young child understands immediately things that the animal will never understand, and that in this sense intelligence, like instinct, is an inherited function, there- fore an innate one. But this innate intelligence, although it is a faculty of knowing, knows no object in particular. When the new-born babe seeks for the first time its mother’s breast, so showing that it has knowledge (unconscious, no doubt) of a thing it has never seen, we say, just because the innate knowledge is in this case of a definite object, that it belongs to instinct and not to intelligence. Intelli- gence does not then imply the innate knowledge of any object. And yet, if intelligence knows nothing by nature, it has nothing innate. What, then, if it be ignorant of all things, can it know? Besides things, there are relations. The new-born child, so far as intelligent, knows neither definite objects nor a definite property of any object;
148 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
but when, a little later on, he will hear an epithet being
applied to a substantive, he will immediately understand
what it means. The relation of attribute to subject is
therefore seized by him naturally, and the same might be
said of the general relation expressed by the verb, a re-
lation so immediately conceived by the mind that language
can leave it to be understood, as is instanced in rudimentary
languages which have no verb. Intelligence, therefore,
naturally makes use of relations of like with like, of con-
tent to container, of cause to effect, etc., which are implied
in every phrase in which there is a subject, an attribute and
a verb, expressed or understood. May one say that it has
innate knowledge of each of these relations in particular?
It is for logicians to discover whether they are so many
irreducible relations, or whether they can be resolved
into relations still more general. But, in whatever way
we make the analysis of thought, we always end with one
or several general categories, of which the mind possesses
innate knowledge since it makes a natural use of them.
Let us say, therefore, that whatever, in instinct and intelli-
gence, is innate knowledge, bears in the first case on things
and in the second on relations.
Philosophers distinguish between the matter of our knowledge and its form. The matter is what is given by the perceptive faculties taken in the elementary state. The form is the totality of the relations set up between these materials in order to constitute a systematic know- ledge. Can the form, without matter, be an object of knowledge? Yes, without doubt, provided that this knowledge is not like a thing we possess so much as like a habit we have contracted,—a direction rather than a state: it is, if we will, a certain natural bent of attention. The schoolboy, who knows that the master is going to dictate a fraction to him, draws a line before he knows
1I.} INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 149°
what numerator and what denominator are to come; he
therefore has present to his mind the general relation be-
tween the two terms although he does not know either of
them; he knows the form without the matter. So is it,
prior to experience, with the categories into which our
experience comes to be inserted. Let us adopt then words
sanctioned by usage, and give the distinction between
intelligence and instinct this more precise formula: I[n-
telligence, in so far as it is innate, is the knowledge of a form;
instinct implies the knowledge of a matter.
From this second point of view, which is that of know- ledge instead of action, the force immanent in life in general appears to us again as a limited principle, in which origin- ally two different and even divergent modes of knowing coexisted and intermingled. The first gets at definite objects immediately, in their materiality itself. It says, “This is what is.” The second gets at no object in particu- lar; it is only a natural power of relating an object to an object, or a part to a part, or an aspect to an aspect—in short, of drawing conclusions when in possession of the premisses, of proceeding from what has been learnt to what is still unknown. It does not say, “This 7s;” it says only that ‘if the conditions are such, such will be the conditioned.” In short, the first kind of knowledge, the instinctive, would be formulated in what philosophers call categorical propositions, while the second kind, the intellectual, would always be expressed hypothetically. Of these two faculties, the former seems, at first, much preferable to the other. And it would be so, in truth, if it extended to an endless number of objects. But, in fact, it applies only to one special object, and indeed only to a restricted part of that object. Of this, at least, its know- ledge is intimate and full; not explicit, but implied in the accomplished action. The intellectual faculty, on the
150 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
contrary, possesses naturally only an external and empty
knowledge; but it has thereby the advantage of supplying
a frame in which an infinity of objects may find room in
turn. It is as if the force evolving in living forms, being a
limited force, had had to choose between two kinds of
limitation in the field of natural or innate knowledge,
one applying to the extension of knowledge, the other to
its intension. In the first case, the knowledge may be
packed and full, but it will then be confined to one specific
object; in the second, it is no longer limited by its object,
but that is because it contains nothing, being only a form
without matter. The two tendencies, at first implied
in each other, had to separate in order to grow. ‘They
both went to seek their fortune in the world, and turned
out to be instinct and intelligence.
Such, then, are the two divergent modes of knowledge by which intelligence and instinct must be defined, from the standpoint of knowledge rather than that of action. But knowledge and action are here only two aspects of one and the same faculty. It is easy to see, indeed, that the second definition is only a new form of the first.
If instinct is, above all, the faculty of using an organized natural instrument, it must involve innate knowledge (potential or unconscious, it is true), both of this instru- ment and of the object to which it is applied. Instinct is therefore innate knowledge of a thing. But intelligence is the faculty of constructing unorganized—that is to say artificial—instruments. If, on its account, nature gives up endowing the living being with the instruments that may serve him, it is in order that the living being may be able to vary his construction according to circumstances. The essential function of intelligence is therefore to see the way out of a difficulty in any circumstances whatever, to find what is most suitable, what answers best the question
1.) INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 151
asked. Hence it bears essentially on the relations between
a given situation and the means of utilizing it. What is
innate in intellect, therefore, is the tendency to establish
relations, and this tendency implies the natural know-
ledge of certain very general relations, a kind of stuff
that the activity of each particular intellect will cut up
into more special relations. Where activity is directed
toward manufacture, therefore, knowledge necessarily
bears on relations. But this entirely formal knowledge
of intelligence has an immense advantage over the material
knowledge of instinct. A form, just because it is empty,
may be filled at will with any number of things in turn,
even with those that are of no use. So that a formal
knowledge is not limited to what is practically useful, al-
though it is in view of practical utility that it has made
its appearance in the world. An intelligent being bears
within himself the means to transcend his own nature.
He transcends himself, however, less than he wishes, less also than he imagines himself to do. The purely formal character of intelligence deprives it of the ballast necessary to enable it to settle itself on the objects that are of the most powerful interest to speculation. Instinct, on the contrary, has the desired materiality, but it is incapable of going so far in quest of its object; it does not speculate. Here we reach the point that most concerns our present inquiry. The difference that we shall now proceed to denote between instinct and intelligence is what the whole of this analysis was meant to bring out. We formulate it thus: There are things that intelligence alone ts able to seek, but which, by itself, it will never find. These things instinct alone could find; but it will never seek them.
It is necessary here to consider some preliminary de- tails that concern the mechanism of intelligence. We
152 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
have said that the function of intelligence is to establish
relations. Let us determine more precisely the nature
of these relations. On this point we are bound to be either
vague or arbitrary so long as we see in the intellect a faculty
intended for pure speculation. We are then reduced to
taking the general frames of the understanding for some-
thing absolute, irreducible and inexplicable. The under-
standing must have fallen from heaven with its form,
as each of us is born with his face. This form may be
defined, of course, but that is all; there is no asking why
it is what it is rather than anything else. Thus, it will be
said that the function of the intellect is essentially uni-
fication, that the common object of all its operations is to
introduce a certain unity into the diversity of phenomena,
and so forth. But, in the first place, “unification” is a
vague term, less clear than “relation” or even “thought,”
and says nothing more. And, moreover, it might be asked
if the function of intelligence is not to divide even more
than to unite. Finally, if the intellect proceeds as it does
because it wishes to unite, and if it seeks unification simply
- because it has need.of unifying, the whole of our knowledge
becomes relative to certain requirements of the mind
that probably might have been entirely different from
what they are: for an intellect differently shaped, know-
ledge would have been different. Intellect being no longer
dependent on anything, everything becomes dependent
on it; and so, having placed the understanding too high,
we end by putting too low the knowledge it gives us.
Knowledge becomes relative, as soon as the intellect is
made a kind of absolute-—We regard the human intellect,
on the contrary, as relative to the needs of action. Postu-
late action, and the very form of the intellect can be deduced
from it. This form is therefore neither irreducible nor
inexplicable. And, precisely because it is not independent,
11.1 INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT 153
knowledge cannot be said to depend on it: knowledge
ceases to be a product of the intellect and becomes, in a
- certain sense, part and parcel of reality.
Philosophers will reply that action takes place in an
ordered world, that this order is itself thought, and that
we beg the question when we explain the intellect by action,
which presupposes it. They would be right if our point
of view in the present chapter was to be our final one.
We should then be dupes of an illusion like that of Spencer,
who believed that the intellect is sufficiently explained as
the impression left on us by the general characters of matter:
as if the order inherent in matter were not intelligence
itself! But we reserve for the next chapter the question
up to what point and with what method philosophy can
attempt a real genesis of the intellect at the same time
as of matter. For the moment, the problem that engages
our attention is of a psychological order. We are asking
what is the portion of the material world to which our in-
tellect is specially adapted. To reply to this question,
there is no need to choose a system of philosophy: it is
enough to take up the point of view of common sense.
Let us start, then, from action, and lay down that the intellect aims, first of all, at constructing. This fabrication is exercised exclusively on inert matter, in this sense, that even if it makes use of organized material, it treats it as inert, without troubling about the life which animated it. And of inert matter itself, fabrication deals only with the solid; the rest escapes by its very fluidity. If, therefore, the tendency of the intellect is to fabricate, we may expect to find that whatever is fluid in the real will escape it in part, and whatever is life in the living will escape it altogether. Our intelligence, as it leaves the hands of nature, has for rts chief object the unorganized solid.
When we pass in review the intellectual functions,
154 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
we see that the intellect is never quite at its ease, never
entirely at home, except when it is working upon inert
matter, more particularly upon solids. What is the most
general property of the material world? It is extended:
it presents to us objects external to other objects, and, in
these objects, parts external to parts. No doubt, it is
useful to us, in view of our ulterior manipulation, to regard
each object as divisible into parts arbitrarily cut up, each
part being again divisible as we like, and so on ad infinitum.
But it is above all necessary, for our present manipulation,
to regard the real object in hand, or the real elements into
which we have resolved it, as provisionally final, and to
treat them as so many units. To this possibility of de-
composing matter as much as we please, and in any way
we please, we allude when we speak of the continuity of
material extension; but this continuity, as we see it, is
nothing else but our ability, an ability that matter allows
to us to choose the mode of discontinuity we shall find in
it. It is always, in fact, the mode of discontinuity once
chosen that appears to us as the actually real one and
that which fixes our attention, just because it rules our
action. Thus discontinuity is thought for itself; it is
thinkable in itself; we form an idea of it by a positive
act of our mind; while the intellectual representation of
continuity is negative, being, at bottom, only the refusal
of our mind, before any actually given system of decompo-
sition, to regard it as the only possible one. Of the
discontinuous alone does the intellect form a clear idea.
On the other hand, the objects we act on are certainly mobile objects, but the important thing for us to know is whither the mobile object is going and where it is at any moment of its passage. In other words, our interest is directed, before all, to its actual or future positions, and not to the progress by which it passes from one position
m1 THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT § 155
to another, progress which is the movement itself. In
our actions, which are systematized movements, what we
fix our mind on is the end or meaning of the movement,
its design as a whole—in a word, the immobile plan of its
execution. That which really moves in action interests
us only so far as the whole can be advanced, retarded, or
stopped by any incident that may happen on the way.
From mobility itself our intellect turns aside, because it
has nothing to gain in dealing with it. If the intellect were
meant for pure theorizing, it would take its place within
movement, for movement is reality itself, and immobility
is always only apparent or relative. But the intellect
is meant for something altogether different. Unless it
does violence to itself, it takes the opposite course; it
always starts from immobility, as if this were the ultimate
reality: when it tries to form an idea of movement, it
does so by constructing movement out of immobilities
puttogether. This operation, whose illegitimacy and danger
in the field of speculation we shall show later on (it leads
to dead-locks, and creates artificially insoluble philosophical
problems), is easily justified when we refer it to its proper
goal. Intelligence, in its natural state, aims at a practically
useful end. When it substitutes for movement immobilities
put together, it does not pretend to reconstitute the move-
ment such as it actually is; it merely replaces it with a
practical equivalent. It is the philosophers who are mis-
taken when they import into the domain of speculation
a method of thinking which is made for action. But of
this more anon. Suffice it now to say that to the stable
and unchangeable our intellect is attached by virtue of
its natural disposition. Of immobility alone does the in-
tellect form a clear idea.
Now, fabricating consists in carving out the form of an object in matter. What is the most important is
156 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
the form to be obtained. As to the matter, we choose
that which is most convenient; but, in order to choose
it, that is to say, in order to go and seek it among many
others, we must have tried, in imagination at least, to
endow every kind of matter with the form of the object
conceived. In other words, an intelligence which aims
at fabricating is an intelligence which never stops at the
actual form of things nor regards it as final, but, on the
contrary, looks upon all matter as if it were carvable at
will. Plato compares the good dialectician to the skilful
cook who carves the animal without breaking its bones,
by following the articulations marked out by nature.
An intelligence which always proceeded thus would really
be an intelligence turned toward speculation. But
action, and in particular fabrication, requires the opposite
mental tendency: it makes us consider every actual
form of things, even the form of natural things, as artificial
and provisional; it makes our thought efface from the object
perceived, even though organized and living, the lines
that outwardly mark its inward structure; in short, it
makes us regard its matter as indifferent to its form. The
whole of matter is made to appear to our thought as an
immense piece of cloth in which we can cut out what we
will and sew it together again as we please. Let us note,
in passing, that it is this power that we affirm when we say
that there is a space, that is to say, a homogeneous and
empty medium, infinite and infinitely divisible, lending
itself indifferently to any mode of decomposition whatso-
ever. A medium of this kind is never perceived; it is only
conceived. What is perceived is extension colored, re-
sistant, divided according to the lines which mark out the
boundaries of real bodies or of their real elements. But
when we think of our power over this matter, that is to Bay,
1 Plato, Phaearus, 265 E.
mu.) THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 157
of our faculty of decomposing and recomposing it as we
please, we project the whole of these possible decompositions
and recompositions behind real extension in the form of a
homogeneous space, empty and indifferent, which is
supposed to underlie it. This space is therefore, pre-
eminently, the plan of our possible action on things, al-
though, indeed, things have a natural tendency, as we
shall explain further on, to enter into a frame of this
kind. It is a view taken by mind. The animal has
probably no idea of it, even when, like us, it perceives ex-
tended things. It is an idea that symbolizes the tendency
of the human intellect to fabrication. But this point
must not detain us now. Suffice it to say that the intellect
is characterized by the unlimited power of decomposing ac-
cording to any law and of recomposing into any system.
We have now enumerated a few of the essential features of human intelligence. But we have hitherto considered the individual in isolation, without taking account of social life. In reality, man is a being who lives in society. If it be true that the human intellect aims at fabrication, we must add that, for that as well as for other purposes, it is associated with other intellects. Now, it is difficult to imagine a society whose members do not communicate by signs. Insect societies probably have a language, and this language must be adapted, like that of man, to the neces- sities of life in common. By language community of action is made possible. But the requirements of joint action are not at all the same in a colony of ants and in a human society. In insect societies there is generally polymor- phism, the subdivision of labor is natural, and each indi- vidual is riveted by its structure to the function it performs. In any case, these societies are based on instinct, and con- sequently on certain actions or fabrications that are more or less dependent on the form of the organs. So if the ants,
158 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
for instance, have a language, the signs which compose
it must be very limited in number, and each of them, once
the species is formed, must remain invariably attached to a
certain object or a certain operation: the sign is adherent
to the thing signified. In human society, on the contrary,
fabrication and action are of variable form, and, moreover,
each individual. must learn his part, because he is not
preordained to it by his structure. So a language is re-
quired which makes it possible to be always passing from
what is known to what is yet to be known. There must
be a language whose signs—which cannot be infinite in
number—are extensible to an infinity of things. This
tendency of the sign to transfer itself from one object to
another is characteristic of human language. It is ob-
servable in the little child as soon as he begins to speak.
Immediately and naturally he extends the meaning of
the words he learns, availing himself of the most accidental
connection or the most distant analogy to detach and
transfer elsewhere the sign that had been associated in
his hearing with a particular object. ‘Anything can
designate anything;” such is the latent principle of
infantine language. This tendency has been wrongly
confused with the faculty of generalizing. The animals
themselves generalize; and, moreover, a sign—even
an instinctive sign—always to some degree represents
a genus. But what characterizes the signs of human
language is not so much their generality as their mobility.
The instinctive sign is adherent, the intelligent sign is
mobile.
Now, this mobility of words, that makes them able to pass from one thing to another, has enabled them to be extended from things to ideas. Certainly, language would not have given the faculty of reflecting to an in- telligence entirely externalized and incapable of turn-
um.) THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 159
ing homeward. An intelligence which reflects is one
that originally had a surplus of energy to spend, over
and above practically useful efforts. It is a conscious-
ness that has virtually reconquered itself. But still the
virtual has to become actual. Without language, in-
telligence would probably have remained riveted to the
material objects which it was interested in considering.
It would have lived in a state of somnambulism, outside
itself, hypnotized on its own work. Language has greatly
contributed to its liberation. The word, made to pass
from one thing to another, is, in fact, by nature transferable
and free. It can therefore be extended, not only from one
perceived thing to another, but even from a perceived thing
to a recollection of that thing, from the precise recollection
to a more fleeting image, and finally from an image fleet-
ing, though still pictured, to the picturing of the act by
which the image is pictured, that is to say, to the idea.
Thus is revealed to the intelligence, hitherto always turned
outwards, a whole internal world—the spectacle of its
own workings. It required only this opportunity, at
length offered by language. It profits by the fact that the
word is an external thing, which the intelligence can catch
hold of and cling to, and at the same time an immaterial
thing, by means of which the intelligence can penetrate
even to the inwardness of its own work. Its first business
was indeed to make instruments, but this fabrication is
possible only by the employment of certain means which
are not cut to the exact measure of their object, but go
beyond it and thus allow intelligence a supplementary—
that is to say disinterested work. From the moment that
the intellect, reflecting upon its own doings, perceives itself
as a creator of ideas, as a faculty of representation in
general, there is no object of which it may not wish to have
the idea, even though that object be without direct re-
160 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
lation to practical action. That is why we said there are
things that intellect alone can seek. Intellect alone,
indeed, troubles itself about theory; and its theory would
fain embrace everything—not only inanimate matter,
over which it has a natural hold, but even life and
thought.
By what means, what instruments, in short by what method it will approach these problems, we can easily guess. Originally, it was fashioned to the form of matter. Language itself, which has enabled it to extend its field of operations, is made to designate things, and nought but things: it is only because the word is mobile, because it flies from one thing to another, that the intellect was sure to take it, sooner or later, on the wing, while it was not settled on anything, and apply it to an object which is not a thing and which, concealed till then, awaited the coming of the word to pass from darkness to light. But the word, by covering up this object, again converts it into a thing. So intelligence, even when it no longer operates upon its own object, follows habits it has con- tracted in that operation: it applies forms that are indeed those of unorganized matter. It is made for this kind of work. With this kind of work alone is it fully satisfied. And that is what intelligence expresses by saying that thus only it arrives at distunctness and clearness.
It must, therefore, in order to think itself clearly and distinctly, perceive itself under the form of discontinuity. Concepts, in fact, are outside each other, like objects in space; and they have the same stability as such objects, on which they have been modeled. Taken together, they constitute an “intelligible world,” that resembles the world of solids in its essential characters, but whose elements are lighter, more diaphanous, easier for the intellect to deal with than the image of concrete things:
mm.) THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 161
they are not, indeed, the perception itself of things, but
the representation of the act by which the intellect is
fixed on them. They are, therefore, not images, but
symbols. Our logic is the complete set of rules that must
be followed in using symbols. As these symbols are de-
rived from the consideration of solids, as the rules for com-
bining these symbols hardly do more than express the most
general relations among solids, our logic triumphs in that
science which takes the solidity of bodies for its object,
that is, in geometry. Logic and geometry engender each
other, as we shall see a little further on. It is from the
extension of a certain natural geometry, suggested by the
most general and immediately perceived properties of
solids, that natural logic has arisen; then from this natural
logic, in its turn, has sprung scientific geometry, which
extends further and further the knowledge of the external
properties of solids.1 Geometry and logic are strictly
applicable to matter; in it they are at home, and in it
they can proceed quite alone. But, outside this domain,
pure reasoning needs to be supervised by common sense,
which is an altogether different thing.
Thus, all the elementary forces of the intellect tend to transform matter into an instrument of action, that is, in the etymological sense of the word, into an organ. Life, not content with producing organisms, would fain give them as an appendage inorganic matter itself, con- verted into an immense organ by the industry of the living being. Such is the initial task it assigns to intelligence. That is why the intellect always behaves as if it were fascinated by the contemplation of inert matter. It is life looking outward, putting itself outside itself, adopting the ways of unorganized nature in principle, in order to direct them in fact. Hence its bewilderment when it
1 We shall return to these points in the next chapter.
162 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
turns to the living and is confronted with organization.
It does what it can, it resolves the organized into the un-
organized, for it cannot, without reversing its natural
direction and twisting about on itself, think true continuity,
real mobility, reciprocal penetration—in a word, that
creative evolution which is life.
Consider continuity. The aspect of life that is accessible
to our intellect—as indeed to our senses, of which our
intellect is the extension—is that which offers a hold to
our action. Now, to modify an object, we have to perceive
it as divisible and discontinuous. From the point of view
of positive science, an incomparable progress was realized
‘ when the organized tissues were resolved into cells. The
study of the cell, in its turn, has shown it to be an organism
whose complexity seems to grow, the more thoroughly
it is examined. The more science advances, the more
it sees the number grow of heterogeneous elements which
are placed together, outside each other, to make up a
living being. Does science thus get any nearer to life?
Does it not, on the contrary, find that what is really life
in the living seems to recede with every step by which
it pushes further the detail of the parts combined? There
is indeed already among scientists a tendency to regard
the substance of the organism as continuous, and the cell
as an artificial entity.. But, supposing this view were
finally to prevail, it could only lead, on deeper study, to
some other mode of analyzing of the living being, and so to
a new discontinuity—although less removed, perhaps,
from the real continuity of life. The truth is that this
continuity cannot be thought by the intellect while it
follows its natural movement. It implies at once the
multiplicity of elements and the interpenetration of
all by all, two conditions that can hardly be reconciled
1 We shall return to this point in chapter iii., p. 259.
um.) THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 163
in the field in which our industry, and consequently our
intellect, is engaged.
Just as we separate in space, we fix in time. The in- teilect is not made to think evolution, in the proper sense of the word—that is to say, the continuity of a change that is pure mobility. We shall not dwell here on this point, which we propose to study in a special chapter. Suffice it to say that the intellect represents becoming as a series of states, each of which is homogeneous with itself and consequently does not change. Is our attention called to the internal change of one of these states? At once we decompose it into another series of states which, reunited, will be supposed to make up this internal modi- fication. Each of these new states must be invariable, or else their internal change, if we are forced to notice it, must be resolved again into a fresh series of invariable states, and so on to infinity. Here again, thinking con- sists in reconstituting, and, naturally, it is with given elements, and consequently with stable elements, that we reconstitute. So that, though we may do our best to imitate the mobility of becoming by an addition that is ever going on, becoming itself slips through our fingers just when we think we are holding it tight.
Precisely because it is always trying to reconstitute, and to reconstitute with what is given, the intellect lets what is new in each moment of a history escape. It does not admit the unforeseeable. It rejects all creation. That definite antecedents bring forth a definite consequent, calculable as a function of them, is what satisfies our intellect. That a definite end calls forth definite means to attain it, is what we also understand. In both cases we have to do with the known which is combined with the known, in short, with the old which is repeated. Our intellect is there at its ease; and, whatever be the object,
164 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
it will abstract, separate, eliminate, so as to substitute for
the object itself, if necessary, an approximate equivalent
in which things will happen in this way. But that each
instant is a fresh endowment, that the new is ever upspring-
ing, that the form just come into existence (although,
when once produced, it may ‘be regarded as an effect de-
termined by its causes) could never have been foreseen—
because the causes here, unique in their kind, are part of
the effect, have come into existence with it, and are de-
termined by it as much as they determine it—all this we
can feel within ourselves and also divine, by sympathy,
outside ourselves, but we cannot think it, in the strict sense
of the word, nor express it in terms of pure understanding.
No wonder at that: we must remember what our intellect
is meant for. The causality it seeks and finds everywhere
expresses the very mechanism of our industry, in which
we. go on recomposing the same whole with the same parts,
repeating the same movements to obtain the same result.
The finality it understands best is the finality of our in-
dustry, in which we work on a model given in advance, that
is to say, old or composed of elements already known. As
to invention properly so called, which is, however, the point
of departure of industry itself, our intellect does not
succeed in grasping it in its upspringing, that is to say,
in its indivisibility, nor in its fervor, that is to say, in
its creativeness. Explaining it always consists in re-
solving it, it the unforeseeable and new, into elements
old or known, arranged in a different order. The intellect ©
can no more admit complete novelty than real becoming;
that is to say, here again it lets an essential aspect of life
escape, as if it were not intended to think such an object.
All our analyses bring us to this conclusion. But it is hardly necessary to go into such long details concerning the mechanism of intellectual working; it is enough to
m1 THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 165
eonsider the results. We see that the intellect, so skilful
in dealing with the inert, is awkward the moment it touches
the living. Whether it wants to treat the life of the body
or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigor, the stiff-
ness and the brutality of an instrument not designed for
such use. The history of hygiene or of pedagogy teaches
us much in this matter. When we think of the cardinal,
urgent and constant need we have to preserve our bodies
and to raise our souls, of the special facilities given to each
of us, in this field, to experiment continually on ourselves
and on others, of the palpable injury by which the wrong-
ness of a medical or pedagogical practise is both made
manifest and punished at once, we are amazed at the stu-
pidity and especially at the persistence of errors. We
may easily find their origin in the natural obstinacy with
which we treat the living like the lifeless and think all
reality, however fluid, under the form of the sharply defined
solid. We are at ease only in the discontinuous, in the
immobile, in the dead. The intellect is characterized by a
natural inability to comprehend life.
Instinct, on the contrary, is molded on the very form
of life. While intelligence treats everything mechanically,
instinct proceeds, so to speak, organically. If the con-
sciousness that slumbers in it should awake, if it were
wound up into knowledge instead of being wound off into
action, if we could ask and it could reply, it would give up
to us the most intimate secrets of life. For it only carries
out further the work by which life organizes matter—
so that we cannot say, as has often been shown, where
organization ends and where instinct begins. When the
little chick is breaking its shell with a peck of its beak,
it is acting by instinct, and yet it does but carry on the
movement which has borne it through embryonic life.
166 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
Inversely, in the course of embryonic life itself (especially
when the embryo lives freely in the form of a larva), many
of the acts accomplished must be referred to instinct.
The most essential of the primary instincts are really,
therefore, vital processes. The potential consciousness
that accompanies them is generally actualized only at the
outset of the act, and leaves the rest of the process to go on
by itself. It would only have to expand more widely,
and then dive into its own depth completely, to be one
with the generative force of life.
When we see in a living body thousands of cells work- ing together to a common end, dividing the task between them, living each for itself at the same time as for the others, preserving itself, feeding itself, reproducing itself, respond- ing to the menace of danger by appropriate defensive reactions, how can we help thinking of so many instincts? And yet these are the natural functions of the cell, the constitutive elements of its vitality. On the other hand, when we see the bees of a hive forming a system so strictly organized that no individual can live apart from the others beyond a certain time, even though furnished with food and shelter, how can we help recognizing that the hive is really, and not metaphorically, a single organism, of which each bee is a cell united to the others by invisible bonds? The instinct that animates the bee is indistinguish- able, then, from the force that animates the cell, or is only a prolongation of that force. In extreme cases like this, instinct coincides with the work of organization.
Of course there are degrees of perfection in the same instinct. Between the humble-bee, and the honey-bee, for instance, the distance is great; and we pass from one to the other through a great number of intermediaries, which correspond to so many complications of the social life. But the same diversity is found in the functioning
a
- 3 THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 167
of histological elements belonging to different tissues more
or less akin. In both cases there are manifold variations
on one and the same theme. The constancy of the theme
is manifest, however, and the variations only fit it to the
diversity of the circumstances.
Now, in both cases, in the instinct of the animal and in the vital properties of the cell, the same knowledge and the same ignorance are shown. All zoes on as if the cell knew, of the other cells, what concerns itself; as if the animal knew, of the other animals, what it can utilize—all else remaining in shade. It seems as if life, as soon as it has become bound up in a species, is cut off from the rest of its own work, save at one or two points that are of vital concern to the species just arisen. Is it not plain that life goes to work here exactly like conscious- ness, exactly like memory? We trail behind us, unawares, the whole of our past; but our memory pours into the present only the odd recollection or two that in some way complete our present situation. Thus the instinctive knowledge which one species possesses of another on a certain particular point has its root in the very unity of life, which is, to use the expression of an ancient philoso- pher, a “whole sympathetic to itself.”’ It is impossible to consider some of the special instincts of the animal and of the plant, evidently arisen in extraordinary circumstances, without relating them to those recollections, seemingly forgotten, which spring up suddenly under the pressure of an urgent need.
No doubt many secondary instincts, and also many varieties of primary instinct, admit of a scientific ex- planation. Yet it is doubtful whether science, with its present methods of explanation, will ever succeed in analyzing instinct completely. The reason is that in- stinct and intelligence are two divergent developments
168 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
of one and the same principle, which in the one case re-
mains within itself, in the other steps out of itself and
becomes absorbed in the utilization of inert matter. This
gradual divergence testifies to a radical incompatibility,
and points to the fact that it is impossible for intelligence
to re-absorb instinct. That which is instinctive in instinct
cannot be expressed in terms of intelligence, nor, conse-
quently, can it be analyzed.
A man born blind, who had lived among others born blind, could not be made to believe in the possibility of perceiving a distant object without first perceiving all the objects in between. Yet vision performs this miracle. In a certain sense the blind man is right, since vision, hav- ing its origin in the stimulation of the retina, by the vi- brations of the light, is nothing else, in fact, but a retinal touch. Such is indeed the scientific explanation, for the function of science is just to express all perceptions in terms of touch. But we have shown elsewhere that the philosophical explanation of perception (if it may still be called an explanation) must be of another kind... Now instinct also is a knowledge at a distance. It has the same relation to intelligence that vision has to touch. Science cannot do otherwise than express it in terms of intelligence; but in so doing it constructs an imitation of instinct rather than penetrates within it.
Any one can convince himself of this by studying the ingenious theories of evolutionist biology. They may be reduced to two types, which are often intermingled. One type, following the principles of neo-Darwinism, regards instinct as a sum of accidental differences preserved by selection: such and such a useful behavior, naturally adopted by the individual in virtue of an accidental pre- disposition of the germ, has been transmitted from germ
1 Matiére et mémoire, chap. i.
It.) THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 169
to germ, waiting for chance to add fresh improvements
to it by the same method. The other type regards instinct
as lapsed intelligence: the action, found useful by the
species or by certain of its representatives, is supposed
to have engendered a habit, which, by hereditary trans-
mission, has become an instinct. Of these two types of
theory, the first has the advantage of being able to bring
in hereditary transmission without raising grave objection;
for the accidental modification which it places at the
origin of the instinct is not supposed to have been acquired
by the individual, but to have been inherent in the germ.
But, on the other hand, it is absolutely incapable of ex-
plaining instincts as sagacious as those of most insects.
These instincts surely could not have attained, all at once,
their present degree of complexity; they have probably
evolved; but, in a hypothesis like that of the neo-Darwin-
ians, the evolution of instinct could have come to pass only
by the progressive addition of new pieces which, in some
way, by happy accidents, came to fit into the old. Now
it is evident that, in most cases, instinct could not have
perfected itself by simple accretion: each new piece really
requires, if all is not to be spoiled, a complete recasting
of the whole. How could mere chance work a recast-
ing of the kind? I agree that an accidental modifica-
tion of the germ may be passed on hereditarily, and may
somehow wait for fresh accidental modifications to come
and complicate it. I agree also that natural selection
may eliminate all those of the more complicated forms
of instinct that are not fit to survive. Still, in order that
the life of the instinct may evolve, complications fit to
survive have to be produced. Now they will be produced
only if, in certain cases, the addition of a new element
brings about the correlative change of all the old elements.
No one will maintain that chance could perform such a
170 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
miracle: in one form or another we shall appeal to in-
telligence. We shall suppose that it is by an effort, more
or less conscious, that the living being develops a higher
instinet. But then we shall have to admit that an acquired
habit can become hereditary, and that it does so regularly
enough to ensure an evolution. The thing is doubtful,
to put it mildly. Even if we could refer the instincts of
animals to habits intelligently acquired and hereditarily
transmitted, it is not clear how this sort of explanation
could be extended to the vegetable world, where effort
is never intelligent, even supposing it is sometimes con-
scious. And yet, when we see with what sureness and
precision climbing plants use their tendrils, what mar-
velously combined manceuvres the orchids perform to
procure their fertilization by means of insects,: how can
we help thinking that these are so many instincts?
This is not saying that the theory of the neo-Darwinians must be altogether rejected, any more than that of the neo-Lamarckians. The first are probably right in holding that evolution takes place from germ to germ rather than from individual to individual; the second are right in saying that at the origin of instinct there is an effort (although it is something quite different, we believe, from an intelligent effort). But the former are probably wrong when they make the evolution of instinct an accidental evolution, and the latter when they regard the effort from which instinct proceeds as an individual effort. The effort by which a species modifies its instinct, and modifies itself as well, must be a much deeper thing, dependent solely neither on circumstances nor on individuals. It is not purely accidental, although accident has a large place in it; and it does not depend solely on the initia-
1 See the two works of Darwin, Climbing Plants and The Fertili-
zation of Orchids by Insects.
SS
eae Se
11.) THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 171
tive of individuals, although individuals collaborate in it.
Compare the different forms of the same instinct in different species of hymenoptera. The impression de- rived is not always that of an increasing complexity made of elements that have been added together one after the other. Nor does it suggest the idea of steps up a ladder. Rather do we think, in many cases at least, of the circum- ference of a circle, from different points of which these different varieties have started, all facing the same centre, all making an effort in that direction, but each approach- ing it only to the extent of its means, and to the extent also to which this central point has been illumined for it. In other words, instinct is everywhere complete, but it is more or less simplified, and, above all, simplified differently. On the other hand, in cases where we do get the impression of an ascending scale, as if one and the same instinct had gone on complicating itself more and more in one direction and along a straight line, the species which are thus ar- ranged by their instincts into a linear series are by no means always akin. Thus, the comparative study, in recent years, of the social instinct in the different apidae proves that the instinct of the meliponines is intermediary in complexity between the still rudimentary tendency of the humble bees and the consummate science of the true bees; yet there can be no kinship between the bees and the meliponines.t Most likely, the degree of complexity of these different societies has nothing to do with any greater or smaller number of added elements. We seem rather to be before a musical theme, which had first been transposed, the theme as a whole, into a certain number of tones. and on which, still the whole theme, different variations had been played, some very simple, others very skilful.
1 Buttel-Reepen, ‘‘Die phylogenetische Entstehung des Bienen-
staates” (Biol. Centralblatt, xxiii. 1903), p. 108 in particular.
172 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
As to the original theme, it is everywhere and nowhere.
It is in vain that we try to express it in terms of any idea:
it must have been, originally, felt rather than thought. We
get the same impression before the paralyzing instinct
of certain wasps. We know that the different species
of hymenoptera that have this paralyzing instinct lay their
‘eggs in spiders, beetles or caterpillars, which, having first
been subjected by the wasp to a skilful surgical operation,
will go on living motionless a certain number of days, and
thus provide the larvae with fresh meat. In the sting
which they give to the nerve-centres of their victim, in
order to destroy its power of moving without killing it,
these different species of hymenoptera take into account,
so to speak, the different species of prey they respectively
attack. The Scolia, which attacks a larva of the rose-
beetle, stings it in one point only, but in this point the
motor ganglia are concentrated, and those ganglia alone:
the stinging of other ganglia might cause death and putre-—
faction, which it must avoid.: The yellow-winged Sphex,
which has chosen the cricket for its victim, knows that the
cricket has three nerve-centres which serve its three pairs
of legs—or at least it acts as if it knew this. . It stings
the insect first under the neck, then behind the prothorax, — and then where the thorax joins the abdomen.? The Ammophila Hirsuta gives nine successive strokes of its sting upon nine nerve-centres of its caterpillar, and then seizes the head and squeezes it in its mandibles, enough to cause paralysis without death.* The general theme is “the necessity of paralyzing without killing”; the vari- ations are subordinated to the structure of the victim on
which they are played. No doubt the operation is not
1 Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques, 3° série, Paris, 1890, pp. 1-69.
2 Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques, 1° série, 3° édition, Paris, 1894, |
pp. 93 ff.
3 Fabre, Nouveaux souvenirs entomologiques, Paris, 1882, pp. 34 ff.
11.) THE NATURE OF INSTINCT 173
always perfect. It has recently been shown that the
Ammophila sometimes kills the caterpillar instead of
paralyzing it, that sometimes also it paralyzes it incom-
pletely.. But, because instinct is, like intelligence, fallible,
because it also shows individual deviations, it does not at
all follow that the instinct of the Ammophila has been
acquired, as has been claimed, by tentative intelligent
experiments. Even supposing that the Ammophila has
come in course of time to recognize, one after another,
by tentative experiment, the points of its victim which
must be stung to render it motionless, and also the special
treatment that must be inflicted on the head to bring about
paralysis without death, how can we imagine that elements
so special of a knowledge so precise have been regularly
transmitted, one by one, by heredity? If, in all our present
experience, there were a single indisputable example of
a transmission of this kind, the inheritance of acquired
characters would be questioned by no one. As a matter
of fact, the hereditary transmission of a contracted habit
is effected in an irregular and far from precise manner,
supposing it is ever really effected at all.
But the whole difficulty comes from our desire to ex- press the knowledge of the hymenoptera in terms of in- telligence. It is this that compels us to compare the Ammophila with the entomologist, who knows the cater- pillar as he knows everything else—from the outside, and without having on his part a special or vital interest. The Ammophila, we imagine, must learn, one by one, like the entomologist, the positions of the nerve-centres of the caterpillar—must acquire at least the practical knowledge of these positions by trying the effects of its sting. But there is no need for such a view if we suppose a sympathy (in the etymological sense of the word) between
1 Peckham, Wasps, Solitary and Social, Westminster, 1905, pp. 28 ff.
174 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
the Ammophila and its victim, which teaches it from
within, so to say, concerning the vulnerability of the
caterpillar. This feeling of vulnerability might owe noth-
ing to outward perception, but result from the mere presence
together of the Ammophila and the caterpillar, considered
no longer as two organisms, but as two activities. It
would express, in a concrete form, the relation of the one
to the other. Certainly, a scientific theory cannot appeal
to considerations of this kind. It must not put action
before organization, sympathy before perception and know-
ledge. But, once more, either philosophy has nothing
to see here, or its réle begins where that of science ends.
Whether it makes instinct a ‘compound reflex,” or
a habit formed intelligently that has become automatism,
or a sum of small accidental advantages accumulated
and fixed by selection, in every case science claims to
resolve instinct completely either into ztelligent actions,
or into mechanisms built up piece by piece like those
combined by our intelligence. I agree indeed that science
is here within its function. It gives us, in default of a real
analysis of the object, a translation of this object in terms
of intelligence. But is it not plain that science itself
invites philosophy to consider things in another way?
If our biology was still that of Aristotle, if it regarded the
series of living beings as unilinear, if it showed us the whole
of life evolving towards intelligence and passing, to that
end, through sensibility and instinct, we should be right,
we, the intelligent beings, in turning back towards the
earlier and consequently inferior manifestations of life
and in claiming to fit them, without deforming them, into
the molds of our understanding. But one of the clearest
results of biology has been to show that evolution has
taken place along divergent lines. It is at the extremity
of two of these lines—the two principal—that we find
oe THE NATURE OF INSTINCT ‘175
intelligence and instinct in forms almost pure. Why,
then, should instinct be resolvable into intelligent elements?
Why, even, into terms entirely intelligible? Is it not
obvious that to think here of the intelligent, or of the abso-
lutely intelligible, is to go back to the Aristotelian theory
of nature? No doubt it is better to go back to that than
to stop short before instinct as before an unfathomable
mystery. But, though instinct is not within the domain
of intelligence, it is not situated beyond the limits of mind.
In the phenomena of feeling, in unreflecting sympathy
and antipathy, we experience in ourselves—though under
a much vaguer form, and one too much penetrated with
intelligence—something of what must happen in the
consciousness of an insect acting by instinct. Evolu-
tion does but sunder, in order to develop them to the end,
elements which, at their origin, interpenetrated each
other. More precisely, intelligence is, before anything
else, the faculty of relating one point of space to another,
one material object to another; it applies to all things,
but remains outside them; and of a deep cause it perceives
only the effects spread out side by side. Whatever be
the force that is at work in the genesis of the nervous
system of the caterpillar, to our eyes and our intelligence
it is only a juxtaposition of nerves and nervous centres.
It is true that we thus get the whole outer effect of it. The
Ammophila, no doubt, discerns but a very little of that
force, just what concerns itself; but at least it discerns
it from within, quite otherwise than by a process of know-
ledge—by an intuition (lived rather than represented),
which is probably like what we call divining sympathy.
A very significant fact is the swing to and fro of scientific
theories of instinct, from regarding it as intelligent to
regarding it as simply intelligible, or, shall I say, between
likening it to an intelligence “lapsed” and reducing it
176 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
to a pure mechanism. Hach of these systems of explana-
tion triumphs in its criticism of the other, the first when
it shows us that instinct cannot be a mere reflex, the other
when it declares that instinct is something different from
intelligence, even fallen into unconsciousness. What can
this mean but that they are two symbolisms, equally
acceptable in certain respects, and, in other respects,
equally inadequate to their object? The concrete explana-
tion, no longer scientific, but metaphysical, must be sought
along quite another path, not in the direction of intelligence,
but in that of “sympathy.”
Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could extend
its object and also reflect upon itself, it would give us
the key to vital operations—just as intelligence, developed
and disciplined, guides us into matter. For—we cannot
too often repeat it—intelligence and instinct are turned
in opposite directions, the former towards inert matter,
the latter towards life. Intelligence, by means of science,
which is its work, will deliver up to us more and more
completely the secret of physical operations; of life it
brings us, and moreover only claims to bring us, a transla-
tion in terms of inertia. It goes all round life, taking from
outside the greatest possible number of views of it, draw-
ing it into itself instead of entering into it. But it is to
the very inwardness of life that intwition leads us—by
intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested,
self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of
enlarging it indefinitely.
That an effort of this kind is not impossible, is proved
1 See, in particular, among recent works, Bethe, ‘‘Diirfen wir den
Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitiiten zuschreiben?’’ (Arch. 7. d.
ges. Physiologie, 1898), and Forel, ‘‘Un Apergu de psychologie com-
parée’’ (Année psychologique, 1895).
11.) LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 177
by the existence in man of an aesthetic faculty along with
normal perception. Our eye perceives the features of
the living being, merely as assembled, not as mutually
organized. The intention of life, the simple movement
that runs through the lines, that binds them together and
gives them significance, escapes it. This intention is
just what the artist tries to regain, in placing himself
back within the object by a kind of sympathy, in breaking
down, by an effort of intuition, the barrier that space
puts up between him and his model. It is true that this
aesthetic intuition, like external perception, only attains
the individual. But we can conceive an inquiry turned
in the same direction as art, which would take life in general
for its object, just as physical science, in following to the
end the direction pointed out by external perception, pro-
longs the individual facts into general laws. No doubt
this philosophy will never obtain a knowledge of its object
comparable to that which science has of its own. In-
telligence remains the luminous nucleus around which
instinct, even enlarged and purified into intuition, forms
only a vague nebulosity. But, in default of knowledge
properly so called, reserved to pure intelligence, intuition
may enable us to grasp what it is that intelligence fails
to give us, and indicate the means of supplementing it.
On the one hand, it will utilize the mechanism of intelli-
gence itself to show how intellectual molds cease to be
strictly applicable; and on the other hand, by its own work,
it will suggest to us the vague feeling, if nothing more, of
what must take the place of intellectual molds. Thus,
intuition may bring the intellect to recognize that life
does not quite go into the category of the many nor yet
into that of the one; that neither mechanical causality
nor finality can give a sufficient interpretation of the vital
process. Then, by the sympathetic communication which
that has come the push that has made it rise to the point it has reached. Without intelligence, it would hav
object of its practical interest, and turned outward by |
into movements of locomotion. Bi
How theory of knowledge must take account of th ost
two faculties, intellect and intuition, and how also, fo: want of establishing a sufficiently clear distinction between — them, it becomes involved in inextricable difficulties, creat- ing phantoms of ideas to which there cling phantoms o: problems, we shall endeavor to show a little further on We shall see that the problem of knowledge, from this point of view, is one with the metaphysical problem, and tha both one and the other depend upon experience. On th one hand, indeed, if intelligence is charged with matter an instinct with life, we must squeeze them both in order to get the double essence from them; metaphysics is therefore dependent upon theory of knowledge. But on the other hand, if consciousness has thus split up int¢ intuition and intelligence, it is because of the need it had t apply itself to matter at the same time as it had to follow the stream of life. The double form of consciousness is - then due to the double form of the real, and theory of — knowledge must be dependent upon metaphysics. In fact, each of these two lines of thought leads to the other; they form a circle, and there can be no other centre to
the circle but the empirical study of evolution. It is only
in seeing consciousness run through matter, lose itself
there and find itself there again, divide and reconstitute
1 an idea of the aiienal ipmition
two tothe: as also, perhaps, of their common origin.
ut, on the other hand, by dwelling on this opposition
f the two elements and on this identity of origin, perhaps
e shall bring out more clearly the meaning of evolution
‘Such will be the aim of our next chapter. But the
cts that we have just noticed must have already sug-
oS dl to us the idea that life is connected either with
onsciousness or with something that resembles it.
Throughout the whole extent of the animal kingdom, e have said, consciousness seems proportionate to the ving being’s power of choice. It lights up the zone f potentialities that surrounds the act. It fills the interval between what is done and what might be done. Looked
- from without, we may regard it as a simple aid to action,
a light that action kindles, a momentary spark flying up rom the friction of real action against possible actions. Sut. we must also point out that things would go on in just 1e same way if consciousness, instead of being the effect, rere the cause. We might suppose that consciousness, even in the most rudimentary animal, covers by right an enormous field, but is compressed in fact in a kind of vise: each advance of the nervous centres, by giving the organism a choice between a larger number of actions, calls forth the - potentialities that are capable of surrounding the real, thus opening the vise wider and allowing consciousness to pass more freely. In this second hypothesis, as in the first, consciousness is still the instrument of action; ~ but it is even more true to say that action is the fitrument of consciousness; for the complicating of action with action, and the opposing of action to action, are for the imprisoned consciousness the only possible means to set itself free. How, then, shall we choose between the two hypotheses?
180 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
If the first is true, consciousness must express exactly,
at each instant, the state of the brain; there is strict
parallelism (so far as intelligible) between the psychical
and the cerebral state. On the second hypothesis, on
the contrary, there is indeed solidarity and interdependence
between the brain and consciousness, but not parallelism:
the more complicated the brain becomes, thus giving the
organism greater choice of possible actions, the more
does consciousness outrun its physical concomitant. Thus,
the recollection of the same spectacle probably modifies
in the same way a dog’s brain and a man’s brain, if the
perception has been the same; yet the recollection must
be very different in the man’s consciousness from what
it is in the dog’s. In the dog, the recollection remains
the captive of perception; it is brought back to conscious-
ness only when an analogous perception recalls it by re-
producing the same spectacle, and then it is manifested
by the recognition, acted rather than thought, of the present
perception much more than by an actual reappearance
of the recollection itself. Man, on the contrary, is capable
of calling up the recollection at will, at any moment, in-
dependently of the present perception. He is not limited
to playing his past life again; he represents and dreams it.
The local modification of the brain to which the recollection
is attached being the same in each case, the psychological
difference between the two recollections cannot have its
ground in a particular difference of detail between the two
cerebral mechanisms, but in the difference between the
two brains taken each as a whole. The more complex
of the two, in putting a greater number of mechanisms in
opposition to one another, has enabled consciousness
to disengage itself from the restraint of one and all and to
reach independence. That things do happen in this way,
that the second of the two hypotheses is that which must
I] LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS _181
be chosen, is what we have tried to prove, in a former
work, by the study of facts that best bring into relief
the relation of the conscious state to the cerebral state,
the facts of normal and pathological recognition, in particu-
lar the forms of aphasia. But it could have been proved
by pure reasoning, before even it was evidenced by facts.
We have shown on what self-contradictory postulate,
on what confusion of two mutually incompatible symbol-
isms, the hypothesis of equivalence between the cerebral
state and the psychic state rests.’
The evolution of life, looked at from this point, receives a clearer meaning, although it cannot be subsumed under any actual idea. It is as if a broad current of conscious- ness had penetrated matter, loaded, as all consciousness is, with an enormous multiplicity of interwoven potential- ities. It has carried matter along to organization, but its movement has been at once infinitely retarded and in- finitely divided. On the one hand, indeed, consciousness has had to fall asleep, like the chrysalis in the envelope in which it is preparing for itself wings; and, on the other hand, the manifold tendencies it contained have been distributed among divergent series of organisms which, moreover, express these tendencies outwardly in move- ments rather than internally in representations. In the course of this evolution, while some beings have fallen more and more asleep, others have more and more complete- ly awakened, and the torpor of some has served the activity of others. But the waking could be effected in two different ways. Life, that is to say consciousness launched into matter, fixed its attention either on its own movement or on the matter it was passing through; and it has thus
1 Matiére et mémoire, chaps. ii. and iii.
2 “Te Paralogisme psycho-physiologique’’ (Revue de métaphysique, Nov. 1904).
182 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
been turned either in the direction of intuition or in that of
intellect. Intuition, at first sight, seems far preferable
to intellect, since in it life and consciousness remain within
themselves. But a glance at the evolution of living beings
shows us that intuition could not go very far. On the
side of intuition, consciousness found itself so restricted
by its envelope that intuition had to shrink into instinct,
that is, to embrace only the very small portion of life that
interested it; and this it embraces only in the dark, touch-
ing it while hardly seeing it. On this side, the horizon
was soon shut out. On the contrary, consciousness, in
shaping itself into intelligence, that is to say in concentrat-
ing itself at first on matter, seems to externalize itself in
relation to itself; but, just because it adapts itself thereby
to objects from without, it succeeds in moving among
them and in evading the barriers they oppose to it, thus
opening to itself an unlimited field. Once freed, more-
over, it can turn inwards on itself, and awaken the po-
tentialities of intuition which still slumber within it.
From this point of view, not only does consciousness appear as the motive principle of evolution, but also, among conscious beings themselves, man comes to occupy a privileged place. Between him and the animals the dif- ference is no longer one of degree, but of kind. We shall show how this conclusion is arrived at in our next chapter. Let us now show how the preceding analyses suggest it.
A noteworthy fact is the extraordinary disproportion between the consequences of an invention and the invention itself. We have said that intelligence is modeled on matter and that it aims in the first place at fabrication. But does it fabricate in order to fabricate or does it not pursue involuntarily, and even unconsciously, something entirely different? Fabricating consists in shaping matter, in making it supple and in bending it, in converting it into
11.) LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 183
an instrument in order to become master of it. It is.
this mastery that profits humanity, much more even than
the material result of the invention itself. Though we
derive an immediate advantage from the thing made, as
an intelligent animal might do, and though this advantage
be all the inventor sought, it is a slight matter compared
with the new ideas and new feelings that the invention
may give rise to in every direction, as if the essential part
of the effect were to raise us above ourselves and enlarge
our horizon. Between the effect and the cause the dis-
proportion is so great that it is difficult to regard the cause
as producer of its effect. It releases it, whilst settling,
indeed, its direction. Everything happens as though
the grip of intelligence on matter were, in its main intention,
to let something pass that matter is holding back.
The same impression arises when we compare the brain of man with that of the animals. The difference at first appears to be only a difference of size and complexity. But, judging by function, there must be something else besides. In the animal, the motor mechanisms that the brain succeeds in setting up, or, in other words, the habits contracted voluntarily, have no other object nor effect than the accomplishment of the movements marked out in these habits, stored in these mechanisms. But, in man, the motor habit may have a second result, out of proportion to the first: it can hold other motor habits in check, and thereby, in overcoming automatism, set consciousness free. We know what vast regions in the human brain language occupies. The cerebral mechanisms that corre- spond to the words have this in particular, that they can be made to grapple with other mechanisms, those, for instance, that correspond to the things themselves, or even be made to grapple with one another. Meanwhile consciousness, which would have been dragged down and
184 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
. drowned in the accomplishment of the act, is restored
and set free.
The difference must therefore be more radical than a superficial examination would lead us to suppose. It is the difference between a mechanism which engages the attention and a mechanism from which it can be diverted. The primitive steam-engine, as Newcomen conceived it, required the presence of a person exclusively employed to turn on and off the taps, either to let the steam into the cylinder or to throw the cold spray into it in order to con- dense the steam. It is said that a boy employed on this work, and very tired of having to do it, got the idea of tying the handles of the taps, with cords, to the beam of the engine. Then the machine opened and closed the taps itself; it worked all alone. Now, if an observer had com- pared the structure of this second machine with that of the first without taking into account the two boys left to watch over them, he would have found only a slight difference of complexity. That is, indeed, all we can per- ceive when we look only at the machines. But if we cast a glance at the two boys, we shall see that whilst one is wholly taken up by the watching, the other is free to go and play as he chooses, and that, from this point of view, the difference between the two machines is radical, the first holding the attention captive, the second setting it at liberty. A difference of the same kind, we think, would be found between the brain of an animal and the human brain.
If, now, we should wish to express this in terms of
1 A geologist whom we have already had occasion to cite, N. S.
Shaler, well says that ‘‘when we come to man, it seems as if we find
the ancient subjection of mind to body abolished, and the intellectual
parts develop with an extraordinary rapidity, the structure of the
body remaining identical in essentials’ (Shaier, The Interpretation
ef Nature, Boston, 1899, p. 187).
I1.] LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 185
finality, we should have to say that consciousness, after
having been obliged, in order to set itself free, to divide
organization into two complementary parts, vegetables
on one hand and animals on the other, has sought an
issue in the double direction of instinct and of intelligence.
It has not found it with instinct, and it has not obtained
it on the side of intelligence except by a sudden leap
from the animal to man. So that, in the last analysis,
man might be considered the reason for the existence of
the entire organization of life on our planet. But this
would be only a manner of speaking. There is, in reality,
only a current of existence and the opposing current;
thence proceeds the whole evolution of life. We must
now grasp more closely the opposition of these two currents.
Perhaps we shall thus discover for them a common source.
By this we shall also, no doubt, penetrate the most obscure
regions of metaphysics. However, as the two directions
we have to follow are clearly marked, in intelligence on the
one hand, in instinct and intuition on the other, we are not
afraid of straying. A survey of the evolution of life
suggests to us a certain conception of knowledge, and also a
certain metaphysics, which imply each other. Once made
clear, this metaphysics and this critique may throw some
light, in their turn, on evolution as a whole.
CHAPTER III ON THE MEANING OF LIFE—THE ORDER OF NATURE AND THE FORM OF INTELLIGENCE
In the course of our first chapter we traced a line of de- marcation between the inorganic and the organized, but we pointed out that the division of unorganized matter into separate bodies is relative to our senses and to our intellect, and that matter, looked at as an undivided whole, must be a flux rather than a thing. In this we were preparing the way for a reconciliation between the inert and the living.
On the other side, we have shown in our second chapter that the same opposition is found again between instinct and intelligence, the one turned to certain determinations of life, the other molded on the configuration of matter. But instinct and intelligence, we have also said, stand out from the same background, which, for want of a better name, we may call consciousness in general, and which must be coextensive with universal life. In this way, we have disclosed the possibility of showing the genesis of intelligence in setting out from general consciousness, which embraces it.
We are now, then, to attempt a genesis of intellect at the same time as a genesis of material bodies—two enterprises that are evidently correlative, if it be true that the main lines of our intellect mark out the general form of our action on matter, and that the detail of matter
is ruled by the requirements of our action. Intellectuality
186
IIt.t THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY 187
and materiality have been constituted, in detail, by
reciprocal adaptation. Both are derived from a wider
and higher form of existence. It is there that we must
replace them, in order to see them issue forth.
Such an attempt may appear, at first, more daring than the boldest speculations of metaphysicians. It claims to go further than psychology, further than cos- mology, further than traditional metaphysics; for psy- chology, cosmology and metaphysics take intelligence, in all that is essential to it, as given, instead of, as we now propose, engendering it in its form and in its matter. The enterprise is in reality much more modest, as we are going to show. But let us first say how it differs from others.
To begin with psychology, we are not to believe that it engenders intelligence when it follows the progressive development of it through the animal series. Comparative psychology teaches us that the more an anjmal is intelligent, the more it tends to reflect on the actions by which it makes use of* things, and thus to approximate to man. But its actions have already by themselves adopted the principal lines of human action; they have made out the same general directions in the material world as we have; they depend upon the same objects bound together by the same relations; so that animal intelligence, although it does not form concepts properly so called, already moves in a conceptual atmosphere. Absorbed at every instant by the actions it performs and the attitudes it must adopt, drawn outward by them and so externalized in relation to itself, it no doubt plays rather than thinks its ideas; this play none the less already corresponds, in the main, to the general plan of human intelligence. To explain the intelligence of man by that of the animal consists
1 We have developed this point in Matiére et mémoire, chaps. ii. and
iii., notably pp. 78-80 and 169-186.
188 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
then simply in following the development of an embryo
of humanity into complete humanity. We show how a
certain direction has been followed further and further
by beings more and more intelligent. But the moment
we admit the direction, intelligence is given.
In a cosmogony like that of Spencer, intelligence is taken for granted, as matter also at the same time. We are shown matter obeying laws, objects connected with objects and facts with facts by constant relations, con- sciousness receiving the imprint of these relations and laws, and thus adopting the general configuration of nature and shaping itself into intellect. But how can we fail to see that intelligence is supposed when we admit objects and facts? A priori and apart from any hypothesis on the nature of the matter, it is evident that the material- ity of a body does not stop at the point at which we touch it: a body is present wherever its influence is felt; its attractive force, to speak only of that, is exerted on the sun, on the planets, perhaps on the entire universe. The more physics advances, the more it effaces the individuality of bodies and even of the particles into which the scientific imagination began by decomposing them: bodies and corpuscles tend to dissolve into a universal interaction. Our perceptions give us the plan of our eventual action on things much more than that of things themselves, The outlines we find in objects simply mark what we can attain-and modify in them. The lines we see traced through matter are just the paths on which we are called to move. Outlines and paths have declared themselves in the measure and proportion that consciousness has prepared for action on unorganized matter—that is to say, in the measure and proportion that intelligence has been formed. It is doubtful whether animals built on a different plan—a molluse or an insect, for instance—cut matter up
um.) THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY 189
along the same articulations. It is not indeed necessary
that they should separate it into bodies at all. In order to
follow the indications of instinct, there is no need to per-
ceive objects, it is enough to distinguish properties. In-
telligence, on the contrary, even in its humblest form,
already aims at getting matter to act on matter. If on
one side matter lends itself to a division into active and
passive bodies, or more simply into coexistent and distinct
fragments, it is from this side that intelligence will regard
it; and the more it busies itself with dividing, the more it
will spread out in space, in the form of extension adjoining
extension, a matter that undoubtedly itself has a tendency
to spatiality, but whose parts are yet in a state of reciprocal
implication and interpenetration. Thus the same move-
ment by which the mind is brought to form itself into
intellect, that is to say, into distinct concepts, brings
matter to break itself up into objects excluding one another.
The more consciousness is intellectualized, the more 1s matter
spatialized. So that the evolutionist philosophy, when it
imagines in space a matter cut up on the very lines that
our action will follow, has given itself in advance, ready
made, the intelligence of which it claims to show the genesis.
Metaphysics applies itself to a work of the same kind, though subtler and more self-conscious, when it deduces a priori the categories of thought. It compresses intellect, reduces it to its quintessence, holds it tight in a principle so simple that it can be thought empty: from this principle we then draw out what we have virtually put into it. In this‘way we may no doubt show the coherence of intelli- gence, define intellect, give its formula, but we do not trace its genesis. An enterprise like that of Fichte, al- though more philosophical than that of Spencer, in that it pays more respect to the true order of things, hardly leads us any further. Fichte takes thought in a concentrated
190 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
state, and expands it into reality; Spencer starts from
external reality, and condenses it into intellect. But,
in the one case as in the other, the intellect must be taken
at the beginning as given—either condensed or expanded,
grasped in itself by a direct vision or perceived by reflection
in nature, aS in a mirror.
The agreement of most philosophers on this point comes from the fact that they are at one in affirming the unity of nature, and in representing this unity under an abstract and geometrical form. Between the organized and the unorganized they do not see and they will not see the cleft. Some start from the inorganic, and, by com- pounding it with itself, claim to form the living; others place life first, and proceed towards matter by a skilfully managed decrescendo; but, for both, there are only dif- ferences of degree in nature—degrees of complexity in the first hypothesis, of intensity in the second, Once this principle is admitted, intelligence becomes as vast as reality; for it is unquestionable that whatever is geometrical in things is entirely accessible to human intelligence, and if the continuity between geometry and the rest is per- fect, all the rest must indeed be equally intelligible, equally intelligent. Such is the postulate of most systems. Any one can easily be convinced of this by comparing doctrines that seem to have no common point, no common measure, those of Fichte and Spencer for instance, two names that we happen to have just brought together.
At the root of these speculations, then, there are the two convictions correlative and complementary, that nature is one and that the function of intellect is to embrace it in its entirety. The faculty of knowing being supposed coextensive with the whole of experience, there can no longer be any question of engendering it. It is already given, and we merely have to use it, as we use our sight to
um.) THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY 191
take in the horizon. It is true that opinions differ as to
the value of the result. For some, it is reality itself that
the intellect embraces; for others, it is only a phantom.
But, phantom or reality, what intelligence grasps is thought
to be all that can be attained.
Hence the exaggerated confidence of philosophy in the powers of the individual mind. Whether it is dog- matic or critical, whether it admits the relativity of our knowledge or claims to be established within the absolute, a philosophy is generally the work of a philosopher, a single and unitary vision of the whole. It is to be taken or left.
More modest, and also alone capable of being completed and perfected, is the philosophy we advocate. Human intelligence, as we represent it, is not at all what Plato taught in the allegory of the cave. Its function is not to look at passing shadows nor yet to turn itself round and contemplate the glaring sun. It has something else to do. Harnessed, like yoked oxen, to a heavy task, we feel the play of our muscles and joints, the weight of the plow and the resistance of the soil. To act and to know that we are acting, to come into touch with reality and even to live it, but only in the measure in which it concerns the work that is being accomplished and the furrow that is being plowed, such is the function of human intelligence. Yet a beneficent fluid bathes us, whence we draw the very force to labor and to live. From this ocean of life, in which we are immersed, we are continually drawing something, and we feel that our being, or at least the intellect that guides it, has been formed therein by a kind of local con- centration. Philosophy can only be an effort to dissolve again into the Whole. Intelligence, reabsorbed into its principle, may thus live back again its own genesis. But the enterprise cannot be achieved in one stroke; it is
192 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
necessarily collective and progressive. It consists in an
interchange of impressions which, correcting and adding
to each other, will end by expanding the humanity in
us and making us even transcend it.
But this method has against it the most inveterate habits of the mind. It at once suggests the idea of a vicious circle. In vain, we shall be told, you claim to’ go beyond intelligence: how can you do that except by intelligence? All that is clear in your consciousness is intelligence. You are inside your own thought; you cannot get out of it. Say, if you like, that the intellect is capable of progress, that it will see more and more clearly into a greater and greater number of things; but do not speak of engendering it, for it is with your intellect itself that you would have to do the work.
The objection presents itself naturally to the mind. But the same reasoning would prove also the impossibility of acquiring any new habit. It is of the essence of reason- ing to shut us up in the circle of the given. But action breaks the circle. If we had never seen a man swim, we might say that swimming is an impossible thing, inasmuch as, to learn to swim, we must begin by holding ourselves up in the water and, consequently, already know how to swim. Reasoning, in fact, always nails us down to the solid ground. But if, quite simply, I throw myself into the water without fear, I may keep myself up well enough at first by merely struggling, and gradually adapt myself to the new environment: I shall thus have learnt to swim. So, in theory, there is a kind of absurdity in trying to know otherwise than by intelligence; but if the risk be frankly accepted, action will perhaps cut the knot that reasoning has tied and will not unloose.
Besides, the risk will appear to grow less, the more our point of view is adopted. We have shown that in-
Ii.) THE METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY | 193
tellect has detached itself from a vastly wider reality,
but that there has never been a clean cut between the two;
all around conceptual thought there remains an indistinct
fringe which recalls its origin. And further we compared
the intellect to a solid nucleus formed by means of con-
densation. This nucleus does not differ radically from the
fluid surrounding it. It can only be reabsorbed in it be-
cause it is made of the same substance. He who throws
himself into the water, having known only the resistance
of the solid earth, will immediately be drowned if he does
not struggle against the fluidity of the new environment:
he must perforce still cling to that solidity, so to speak,
which even water presents. Only on this condition can
he get used to the fluid’s fluidity. So of our thought,
when it has decided to make the leap.
But leap it must, that is, leave its own environment. Reason, reasoning on its powers, will never succeed in extending them, though the extension would not appear at all unreasonable once it were accomplished. Thousands and thousands of variations on the theme of walking will never yield a rule for swimming: come, enter the water, and when you know how to swim, you will under- stand how the mechanism of swimming is connected with that of walking. Swimming is an extension of walk- ing, but walking would never have pushed you on to swimming. So you may speculate as intelligently as you will on the mechanism of intelligence; you will never, by this method, succeed in going beyond it, You may get something more complex, but not something higher nor even something different. You must take things by storm: you must thrust intelligence outside itself by an act of will.
So the vicious circle is only apparent. It is, on the contrary, real, we think, in every other method of philoso- phy. This we must try to show in a few words, if only
194 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
to prove that philosophy cannot and must not accept
the relation established by pure intellectualism between
the theory of knowledge and the theory of the known,
between metaphysics and science.
At first sight, it may seem prudent to leave the consider-
ation of facts to positive science, to let physics and chemis-
try busy themselves with matter, the biological and psy-
chological sciences with life. The task of the philosopher
is then clearly defined. He takes facts and laws from the
scientists’ hand; and whether he tries to go beyond them
in order to reach their deeper causes, or whether he thinks
it impossible to go further and even proves it by the analysis
of scientific knowledge, in both cases he has for the facts
and relations, handed over by science, the sort of respect
that is due to a final verdict. To this knowledge he adds
a critique of the faculty of knowing, and also, if he thinks
proper, a metaphysic; but the matter of knowledge he
regards as the affair of science and not of philosophy.
But how does he fail to see that the real result of this so-called division of labor is to mix up everything and con- fuse everything? The metaphysic or the critique that the philosopher has reserved for himself he has to receive, ready-made, from positive science, it being already con- tained in the descriptions and analyses, the whole care of which he left to the scientists. For not having wished — to intervene, at the beginning, in questions of fact, he finds himself reduced, in questions of principle, to formulating purely and simply in more precise terms the unconscious and consequently inconsistent metaphysic and critique which the very attitude of science to reality marks out. Let us not be deceived by an apparent analogy between natural things and human things. Here we are not in the judiciary domain, where the description of fact and the
mm.) SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY - 195
judgment on the fact are two distinct things, distinct
for the very simple reason that above the fact, and in-
dependent of it, there is a law promulgated by a legislator.
Here the laws are internal to the facts and relative to the
lines that have been followed in cutting the real intc
distinct facts. We cannot describe the outward appearance
of the object without prejudging its inner nature and its
organization. Form is no longer entirely isolable from
matter, and he who has begun by reserving to philos-
ophy questions of principle, and who has thereby tried
to put philosophy above the sciences, as a “court of cassa-
tion” is above the courts of assizes and of appeal, will
gradually come to make no more of philosophy than a
registration court, charged at most with wording more
precisely the sentences that are brought to it, pronounced
and irrevocable.
Positive science is, in fact, a work of pure intellect. Now, whether our conception of the intellect be accepted or rejected, there is one point on which everybody will agree with us, and that is that the intellect is at home in the presence of unorganized matter. This matter it makes use of more and more by mechanical inventions, and mechanical inventions become the easier to it the more it thinks matter as mechanism. The intellect bears within itself, in the form of natural logic, a latent geometrism that is set free in the measure and proportion that the intellect penetrates into the inner nature of inert matter. Intelligence is in tune with this matter, and that is why the physics and metaphysics of inert matter are so near each other. Now, when the intellect undertakes the study of life, it necessarily treats the living like the inert, applying the same forms to this new object, carrying over into this new field the same habits that have succeeded so well in the old; and it is right to do so, for only on such
196 CREATIVE EVOLUTIO? [CHAP.
terms does the living offer to our action the same hold as
inert matter. But the truth we thus arrive at becomes
altogether relative to our faculty of action. It is no more
than a symbolic verity. It cannot have the same value
as the physical verity, being only an extension of physics
to an object which we are a priori agreed to look at only
in its external aspect. The duty of philosophy should be
to intervene here actively, to examine the living without
any reservation as to practical utility, by freeing itself
from forms and habits that are strictly intellectual.
Its own special object is to speculate, that is to say, to
see; its attitude toward the living should not be that of
science, which aims only at action, and which, being able
to act only by means of inert matter, presents to itself
the rest of reality in this single respect. What must the
result be, if it leave biological and psychological facts
to positive science alone, as it has left, and rightly left,
physical facts? It will accept a priori a mechanistic
conception of all nature, a conception unreflected and even
unconscious, the outcome of the material need. It will
a priort accept the doctrine of the simple unity of know-
ledge and of the abstract unity of nature.
The moment it does so, its fate is sealed. The philoso- pher has no longer any choice save between a metaphysical dogmatism and a metaphysical skepticism, both of which rest, at bottom, on the same postulate, and neither of which adds anything to positive science. He may hypostasize the unity of nature, or, what comes to the same thing, the unity of science, in a being who is nothing since he does nothing, an ineffectual God who simply sums up in himself all the given; or in an eternal Matter from whose womb have been poured out the properties of things and the laws of nature; or, again, in a pure Form which en- deavors to seize an unseizable multiplicity, and which is,
II.) SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 197
as we will, the form of nature or the form of thought.
All these philosophies tell us, in their different languages,
that science is right to treat the living as the inert, and that
there is no difference of value, no distinction to be made
between the results which intellect arrives at in applying
its categories, whether it rests on inert matter or attacks
life.
In many cases, however, we feel the frame cracking. But as we did not begin by distinguishing between the inert and the living, the one adapted in advance to the frame in which we insert it, the other incapable of be- ing held in the frame otherwise than by a convention which eliminates from it all that is essential, we find our- selves, in the end, reduced to regarding everything the frame contains with equal suspicion. To a metaphysical dogmatism, which has erected into an absolute the factitious unity of science, there succeeds a skepticism or a relativism that universalizes and extends to all the results of science the artificial character of some among them. So philosophy swings to and fro between the doctrine that regards ab- solute reality as unknowable and that which, in the idea it gives us of this reality, says nothing more than science has said. For having wished to prevent all conflict be- tween science and philosophy, we have sacrificed philosophy without any appreciable gain to science. And for having tried to avoid the seeming vicious circle which consists in using the intellect to transcend the intellect, we find ourselves turning in a real circle, that which consists in laboriously rediscovering by metaphysics a unity that we began by positing a priori, a unity that we admitted blindly and unconsciously by the very act of abandoning the whole of experience to science and the whole of reality to the pure understanding.
Let us begin, on the contrary, by tracing a line of de-
198 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
marcation between the inert and the living. We shall
find that the inert enters naturally into the frames of the
intellect, but that the living is adapted to these frames
only artificially, so that we must adopt a special attitude
towards it and examine it with other eyes than those of
positive science. Philosophy, then, invades the domain
of experience. She busies herself with many things which
hitherto have not concerned her. Science, theory of know-
ledge, and metaphysics find themselves on the same ground.
At first there may be a certain confusion. All three may
think they have lost something. But all three will profit
from the meeting.
Positive science, indeed, may pride itself on the uniform value attributed to its affirmations in the whole field of experience. But, if they are all placed on the same foot- ing, they are all tainted with the same relativity. It is not so, if we begin by making the distinction which, in our view, is forced upon us. The understanding is at home in the domain of unorganized matter. On this matter human action is naturally exercised; and action, as we said above, cannot be set in motion in the unreal. Thus, of physics—so long as we are considering only its general form and not the particular cutting out of matter in which it is manifested—we may say that it touches the absolute. On the contrary, it is by accident—chance or convention, as you please—that science obtains a hold on the living analogous to the hold it has on matter. Here the use of conceptual frames is no longer natural. I do not wish to say that it is not legitimate, in the scientific mean- ing of the term. [If science is to extend our action on things, and if we can act only with inert matter for in- strument, science can and must continue to treat the living as it has treated the inert. But, in doing so, it must be understood that the further it penetrates the
III.] SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 199
depths of life, the more symbolic, the more relative to
the contingencies of action, the knowledge it supplies
to us becomes. On this new ground philosophy ought
then to follow science, in order to superpose on scientific
truth a knowledge of another kind, which may be called
metaphysical. Thus combined, all our knowledge, both
scientific and metaphysical, is heightened. In the absolute
we live and move and have our being. The knowledge
we possess of it is incomplete, no doubt, but not external
or relative. It is reality itself, in the profoundest meaning
of the word, that we reach by the combined and pro-
gressive development of science and of philosophy.
Thus, in renouncing the factitious unity which the understanding imposes on nature from outside, we shall perhaps find its true, inward and living unity. For the effort we make to transcend the pure understanding in- troduces us into that more vast something out of which our understanding is cut, and from which it has detached itself. And, as matter is determined by intelligence, as there is between them an evident agreement, we cannot make the genesis of the one without making the genesis of the other. An identical process must have cut out matter and the intellect, at the same time, from a stuff that contained both. Into this reality we shall get back more and more completely, in proportion as we compel ourselves to transcend pure intelligence.
Let us then concentrate attention on that which we
have that is at the same time the most removed from
externality and the least penetrated with intellectuality.
Let us seek, in the depths of our experience, the point
where we feel ourselves most intimately within our own
life. It is into pure duration that we then plunge back,
a duration in which the past, always moving on, is swelling
200 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
unceasingly with a present that is absolutely new. But,
at the same time, we feel the spring of our will strained
to its utmost limit. We must, by a strong recoil of our
personality on itself, gather up our past which is slipping
away, in order to thrust it, compact and undivided, into a
present which it will create by entering. Rare indeed are
the moments when we are self-possessed to this extent:
it is then that our actions are truly free. And even at
these moments we do not completely possess ourselves.
Our feeling of duration, I should say the actual coinciding
of ourself with itself, admits of degrees. But the more
the feeling is deep and the coincidence complete, the
more the life in which it replaces us absorbs intellectuality
by transcending it. For the natural function of the in-
tellect is to bind like to like, and it is only facts that can
be repeated that are entirely adaptable to intellectual
conceptions. Now, our intellect does undoubtedly grasp
the real moments of real duration after they are past;
we do so by reconstituting the new state of consciousness
out of a series of views taken of it from the outside, each
of which resembles as much as possible something already
known; in this sense we may say that the state of con-
sciousness contains intellectuality implicitly. Yet the
state of consciousness overflows the intellect; it is indeed
incommensurable with the intellect, being itself indivisible
and new.
Now let us relax the strain, let us interrupt the effort to crowd as much as possible of the past into the present. If the relaxation were complete, there would no longer be either memory or will—which amounts to saying that, in fact, we never do fall into this absolute passivity, any more than we can make ourselves absolutely free. But, in the limit, we get a glimpse of an existence made of a present which recommences unceasingly—devoid of real
Ul.} INTELLECT AND MATERIALITY 201
duration, nothing but the instantaneous which dies and
is born again endlessly. Is the existence of matter of
this nature? Not altogether, for analysis resolves it into
elementary vibrations, the shortest of which are of very
slight duration, almost vanishing, but not nothing. It
may be presumed, nevertheless, that physical existence
inclines in this second direction, as psychical existence
in the first.
Behind “spirituality” on the one hand, and “ materiality” with intellectuality on the other, there are then two pro- cesses opposite in their direction, and we pass from the first to the second by way of inversion, or perhaps even by simple interruption, if it is true that inversion and in- terruption are two terms which in this case must be held to be synonymous, as we shall show at more length later on. This presumption is confirmed when we consider things from the point of view of extension, and no longer from that of duration alone.
The more we succeed in making ourselves conscious of our progress in pure duration, the more we feel the different parts of our being enter into each other, and our whole personality concentrate itself in a point, or rather a sharp edge, pressed against the future and cutting into it unceasingly. It is in this that life and action are free. But suppose we let ourselves go and, instead of acting, dream. At once the self is scattered; our past, which till then was gathered together into the indivisible impulsion it communicated to us, is broken up into a thousand recollections made external to one another. They give up interpenetrating in the degree that they become fixed. Our personality thus descends in the direction of space. It coasts around it continually in sensation. We will not dwell here on a point we have studied elsewhere. Let us merely recall that extension
202 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
admits of degrees, that all sensation is extensive in a certain
measure, and that the idea of unextended sensations,
artificially localized in space, is a mere view of the mind, .
suggested by an unconscious metaphysic much more
than by psychological observation.
No doubt we make only the first steps in the direction of the extended, even when we let ourselves go as much as we can. But suppose for a moment that matter con- sists in this very movement pushed further, and that physics is simply psychics inverted. We shall now under-- stand why the mind feels at its ease, moves about naturally in space, when matter suggests the more distinct idea of it. This space it already possessed as an implicit idea in its own eventual detension, that is to say, of its own possible extension. The mind finds space in things, but could have got it without them if it had had imagination strong enough to push the inversion of its own natural movement to the end. On the other hand, we are able to explain how matter accentuates still more its materiality, when viewed by the mind. Matter, at first, aided mind to run down its own incline; it gave the impulsion. But, the impulsion once received, mind continues its course. The idea that it forms of pure space is only the schema of the limit at which this movement would end. Once in possession of the form of space, mind uses it like a net with meshes that can be made and unmade at will, which, thrown over matter, divides it as the needs of our action demand. Thus, the space of our geometry and the spatiality of things are mutually engendered by the reciprocal action and reaction of two terms which are essentially the same, but which move each in the direction inverse of the other. Neither is space so foreign to our nature as we imagine, nor is matter as completely extended in space as our senses and intellect represent it.
mt) INTELLECT AND MATERIALITY 203
We have treated of the first point elsewhere. As to
the second, we will limit ourselves to pointing out that
perfect spatiality would consist in a perfect externality
of parts in their relation to one another, that is to say,
in a complete reciprocal independence. Now, there is no
material point that does not act on every other material
point. When we observe that a thing really is there where
it acts, we shall be led to say (as Faraday: was) that all
the atoms interpenetrate and that each of them fills the
world. On such a hypothesis, the atom or, more generally,
the material point, becomes simply a view of the mind,
a view which we come to take when we continue far enough
the work (wholly relative to our faculty of acting) by
which we subdivide matter into bodies. Yet it is undeniable
that matter lends itself to this subdivision, and that, in
supposing it breakable into parts external to one another,
we are constructing a science sufficiently representative
of the real. It is undeniable that if there be no entirely
isolated system, yet science finds means of cutting up the
universe into systems relatively independent of each other,
and commits no appreciable error in doing so. What else
can this mean but that matter extends itself in space with-
out being absolutely extended therein, and that in regarding
matter as decomposable into isolated systems, in attribut-
ing to it quite distinct elements which change in relation to
each other without changing in themselves (which are
“displaced,” shall we say, without being “‘altered’’), in
short, in conferring on matter the properties of pure
space, we are transporting ourselves to the terminal point
of the movement of which matter simply indicates the
direction?
What the Transcendental Aesthetic of Kant appears
1 Faraday, A Speculation concerning Electric Conduction (Philosophi-
cal Magazine, 3d. series, vol. xxiv.).
204 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
to have established once for all is that extension is not
a material attribute of the same kind as others. We
cannot reason indefinitely on the notions of heat, color,
or weight: in order to know the modalities of weight or
of heat, we must have recourse to experience. Not so
of the notion of space. Supposing even that it is given
empirically by sight and touch (and Kant has not questioned
the fact) there is this about it that is remarkable that our
mind, speculating on it with its own powers alone, cuts
out in it, @ priori, figures whose properties we determine
a priori: experience, with which we have not kept in touch,
yet follows us through the infinite complications of our
reasonings and invariably justifies them. That is the fact.
Kant has set it in clear light. But the explanation of the
fact, we believe, must be sought in a different direction
to that which Kant followed.
Intelligence, as Kant represents it to us, is bathed in an atmosphere of spatiality to which it is as inseparably united as the living body to the air it breathes. Our perceptions reach us only after having passed through this atmosphere. They have been impregnated in ad- vance by our geometry, so that our faculty of thinking only finds again in matter the mathematical properties which our faculty of perceiving has already deposed there. We are assured, therefore, of seeing matter yield itself with docility to our reasonings; but this matter, in all that it has that is intelligible, is our own work; of the reality “in itself’ we know nothing and never shall know anything, since we only get its refraction through the forms of our faculty of perceiving. So that if we claim to affirm some- thing of it, at once there rises the contrary affirmation, equally demonstrable, equally plausible. The ideality of space is proved directly by the analysis of knowledge indirectly by the antinomies to which the opposite theory
IIl.] INTELLECT AND MATERIALITY 205
leads. Such is the governing idea of the Kantian criticism.
It has inspired Kant with a peremptory refutation of
“empiricist” theories of knowledge. It is, in our opinion,
definitive in what it denies. But, in what it affirms, does
it give us the solution of the problem?
With Kant, space is given as a ready-made form of our perceptive faculty—a veritable deus ex machina, of which we see neither how it arises, nor why it is what it is rather than anything else. ‘‘Things-in-themselves” are also given, of which he claims that we can know noth- ing: by what right, then, can he affirm their existence, even as “problematic”? If the unknowable reality pro- jects into our perceptive faculty a “sensuous manifold” capable of fitting into it exactly, is it not, by that very fact, in part known? And when we examine this exact fitting, shall we not be led, in one point at least, to suppose a pre-established harmony between things and our mind— an idle hypothesis, which Kant was right in wishing to avoid? At bottom, it is for not having distinguished degrees in spatiality that he has had to take space ready- made as given—whence the question how the ‘‘sensuous manifold” is adapted to it. It is for the same reason that he has supposed matter wholly developed into parts absolutely external to one another;—whence antinomies, of which we may plainly see that the thesis and antithesis suppose the perfect coincidence of matter with geometrical space, but which vanish the moment we cease to extend to matter what is true only of pure space. Whence, finally, the conclusion that there are three alternatives, and three only, among which to choose a theory of know- ledge: either the mind is determined by things, or things are determined by the mind, or between mind and things we must suppose a mysterious agreement.
But the truth is that there is a fourth, which does not
206 CREATIVE EVOLUTION — (CHAP.
seem to have occurred to Kant—in the first place because
he did not think that the mind overflowed the intellect,
and in the second place (and this is at bottom the same thing)
because he did not attribute to duration an absolute exist-
ence, having put time, a priort, on the same plane as space.
This alternative consists, first of all, in regarding the intel-
lect as a special function of the mind, essentially turned
toward inert matter; then in saying that neither does mat-
ter determine the form of the intellect, nor does the in-
tellect impose its form on matter, nor have matter and
intellect been regulated in regard to one another by we
know not what pre-established harmony, but that intellect
and matter have progressively adapted themselves one to
the other in order to attain at last a common form. This
adaptation has, moreover, been brought about quite naturally,
because it is the same inversion of the same movement which
creates at once the intellectuality of mind and the materiality
of things.
From this point of view the knowledge of matter that our perception on one hand and science on the other give to us appears, no doubt, as approximative, but not as relative. Our perception, whose réle it is to hold up a light to our actions, works a dividing up of matter that is always too sharply defined, always subordinated to practi- cal needs, consequently always requiring revision. Our science, which aspires to the mathematical form, over- accentuates the spatiality of matter; its formulae are, in general, too precise, and ever need remaking. For a scientific theory to be final, the mind would have to em- brace the totality of things in block and place each thing in its exact relation to every other thing; but in reality we are obliged to consider problems one by one, in terms which are, for that very reason, provisional, so that the solution of each problem will have to be corrected indefi-
II.] INTELLECT AND MATERIALITY 207
nitely by the solution that will be given to the problems
that will follow: thus, science as a whole is relative to
the particular order in which the problems happen to have
been put. It is in this meaning, and to this degree, that
science must be regarded as conventional. But it is a
conventionality of fact so to speak, and not of right.
In principle, positive science bears on reality itself, pro-
vided it does not overstep the limits of its own domain,
which is inert matter.
Scientific knowledge, thus regarded, rises to a higher plane. In return, the theory of knowledge becomes an infinitely difficult enterprise, and which passes the powers of the intellect alone. It is not enough to deter- mine, by careful analysis, the categories of thought; we must engender them. As regards space, we must, by an effort of mind sui generis, follow the progression or rather the regression of the extra-spatial degrading itself into spatiality. When we make ourselves self- conscious in the highest possible degree and then let our- selves fall back little by little, we get the feeling of ex- tension: we have an extension of the self into recollections that are fixed and external to one another, in place of the tension it possessed as an indivisible active will. But this is only a beginning. Our consciousness, sketching the movement, shows us its direction and reveals to us the possibility of continuing it to the end; but conscious- ness itself does not go so far. Now, on the other hand, if we consider matter, which seems to us at first coincident with space, we find that the more our attention is fixed on it, the more the parts which we said were laid side by side enter into each other, each of them undergoing the action of the whole, which is consequently somehow present in it. Thus, although matter stretches itself out in the direction of space, it does not completely attain it; whence
208 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
we may conclude that it only carries very much further
the movement that consciousness is able to sketch within
us in its nascent state. We hold, therefore, the two ends
of the chain, though we do not succeed in seizing the inter-
mediate links. Will they always escape us? We must
remember that philosophy, as we define it, has not yet be-
come completely conscious of itself. Physics understands
its réle when it pushes matter in the direction of spatiality ;
but has metaphysics understood its rdle when it has simply
trodden in the steps of physics, in the chimerical hope of
going further in the same direction? Should not its own
task be, on the contrary, to remount the incline that
physics descends, to bring back matter to its origins, and
to build up progressively a cosmology which would be,
so to speak, a reversed psychology? All that which seems
positive to the physicist and to the geometrician would
become, from this new point of view, an interruption or
inversion of the true positivity, which would have to be
defined in psychological terms.
When we consider the admirable order of mathematics,
the perfect agreement of the objects it deals with, the
immanent logic in numbers and figures, our certainty
of always getting the same conclusion, however diverse
and complex our reasonings on the same subject, we
hesitate to see in properties apparently so positive a system
of negations, the absence rather than the presence of a true
reality. But we must not forget that our intellect, which
finds this order and wonders at it, is directed in the same
line of movement that leads to the materiality and spatial-
ity of its object. The more complexity the intellect puts
into its object by analyzing it, the more complex is the order
it finds there. And this order and this complexity neces-
sarily appear to the intellect as a positive reality, since
m1 THE GEOMETRICAL ORDER 209
reality and intellectuality are turned in the same direction.
When a poet reads me his verses, I can interest myself enough in him to enter into his thought, put myself into his feelings, live over again the simple state he has broken into phrases and words. I sympathize then with his inspiration, I follow it with a continuous movement which is, like the inspiration itself, an undivided act. Now, I need only relax my attention, let go the tension that there is in me, for the sounds, hitherto swallowed up in the sense, to appear to me distinctly, one by one, in their materiality. For this I have not to do anything; it is enough to withdraw - something. In proportion as I let myself go, the successive sounds will become the more individualized; as the phrases were broken into words, so the words will scan in syllables which I shall perceive one after another. Let me go farther still in the direction of dream: the letters them- selves will become loose and will be seen to dance along, hand in hand, on some fantastic sheet of paper. I shall then admire the precision of the interweavings, the mar- velous order of the procession, the exact insertion of the letters into the syllables, of the syllables into the words and of the words into the sentences. The farther I pursue this quite negative direction of relaxation, the more ex- tension and complexity I shall create; and the more the complexity in its turn increases, the more admirable will seem to be the order which continues to reign, undisturbed, among the elements. Yet this complexity and extension represent nothing positive; they express a deficiency of will. And, on the other hand, the order must grow with the complexity, since it is only an aspect of it. The more we perceive, symbolically, parts in an indivisible whole, the more the number of the relations that the parts have between themselves necessarily increases, since the same undividedness of the real whole continues to hover over
210 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
the growing multiplicity of the symbolic elements into
which the scattering of the attention has decomposed
it. A comparison of this kind will enable us to understand,
in some measure, how the same suppression of positive
reality, the same inversion of a certain original movement,
can create at once extension in space and the admirable
order which mathematics finds there. There is, of course,
this difference between the two cases, that words and letters
have been invented by a positive effort of humanity, while
space arises automatically, as the remainder of a sub-
traction arises once the two numbers are posited.: But,
in the one case as in the other, the infinite complexity
of the parts and their perfect codrdination among them-
selves are created at one and the same time by an inversion
which is, at bottom, an interruption, that is to say, a
diminution of positive reality.
All the operations of our intellect tend to geometry,
as to the goal where they find their perfect fulfilment.
1 Our comparison does no more than develop the content of the term
Adyos, as Plotinus understands it. For while the Adyos of this phi-
losopher is a generating and informing power, an aspect or a fragment
of the guy7#, on the other hand Plotinus sometimes speaks of it as of a
discourse. More generally, the relation that we establish in the present
chapter between “extension”? and “detension’’ resembles in some
aspects that which Plotinus supposes (some developments of which
must have inspired M. Ravaisson) when he makes extension not indeed
an inversion of original Being, but an enfeeblement of its essence, one
of the last stages of the procession, (see in particular, Enn. IV. iii. 9-11,
and III. vi. 17-18). Yet ancient philosophy did not see what con-
sequenees would result from this for mathematics, for Plotinus, like
Plato, erected mathematical essences into absolute realities. Above
all, it suffered itself to be deceived by the purely superficial analogy
of duration with extension. It treated the one as it treated the other,
regarding change as a degradation of immutability, the sensible as a
fall from the intelligible. Whence, as we shall show in the next chapter,
a philosophy which fails to recognize the real function and scope of the
intellect.
Part} THE GEOMETRICAL ORDER 211
But, as geometry is necessarily prior to them (since these
operations have not as their end to construct space and
cannot do otherwise than take it as given) it is evident
that it is a latent geometry, immanent in our idea of space,
which is the main spring of our intellect and the cause of its
working. We shall be convinced of this if we consider
the two essential functions of intellect, the facuity of de-
duction and that of induction.
Let us begin with deduction. The same movement by which I trace a figure in space engenders its properties: they are visible and tangible in the movement itself; I feel, I see in space the relation of the definition to its consequences, of the premisses to the conclusion. All the other concepts of which experience suggests the idea to me are only in part constructible a priori; the definition of them is therefore imperfect, and the deductions into which these concepts enter, however closely the conclusion is linked to the premisses, participate in this imperfection. But when I trace roughly in the sand the base of a tri- angle, as I begin to form the two angles at the base, I know positively, and understand absolutely, that if these two angles are equal the sides will be equal also, the figure being then able to be turned over on itself without there being any change whatever. I know it before I have learnt geometry. Thus, prior to the science of geometry, there is a natural geometry whose clearness and evidence surpass the clearness and evidence of other deductions. Now, these other deductions bear on qualities, and not on magnitudes purely. They are, then, likely to have been formed on the model of the first, and to borrow their force from the fact that, behind quality, we see magnitude vaguely showing through. We may notice, as a fact, that questions of situation and of magnitude are the first that present themselves to our activity, those which in-
212 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
telligence externalized in action resolves even before
reflective intelligence has appeared. The savage under-
stands better than the civilized man how to judge distances,
to determine a direction, to retrace by memory the often
complicated plan of the road he has traveled, and so to
return in a straight line to his starting-point... If the
animal does not deduce explicitly, if he does not form
explicit concepts, neither does he form the idea of a homo-
geneous space. You cannot present this space to your-
self without introducing, in the same act, a virtual geometry
which will, of itself, degrade itself into logic. All the re-
pugnance that philosophers manifest towards this manner
of regarding things comes from this, that the logical work
of the intellect represents to their eyes a positive spiritual
effort. But, if we understand by spirituality a progress
to ever new creations, to conclusions incommensurable
with the premisses and indeterminable by relation to them,
we must say of an idea that moves among relations of
necessary determination, through premisses which contain
their conclusion in advance, that it follows the inverse
direction, that of materiality. What appears, from the
point of view of the intellect, as an effort, is in itself a
letting go. And while, from the point of view of the
intellect, there is a petitio principw in making geometry
arise automatically from space, and logic from geometry—
on the contrary, if space is the ultimate goal of the mind’s
movement of detension, space cannot be given without
positing also logic and geometry, which are along the course
of the movement of which pure spatial intuition is the goal.
It has not been enough noticed how feeble is the reach of deduction in the psychological and moral sciences. From a proposition verified by facts, verifiable consequences can here be drawn only up to a certain point, only in a
1 Bastian, The Brain as an Organ of the Mind, pp. 214-16.
III.) GEOMETRY AND DEDUCTION 213
certain measure. Very soon appeal has to be made to
common sense, that is to say, to the continuous experience
of the real, in order to inflect the consequences deduced
and bend them along the sinuosities of life. Deduction
succeeds in things moral only metaphorically, so to speak,
and just in the measure in which the moral is transposable
into the physical, I should say translatable into spatial
symbols. The metaphor never goes very far, any more
than a curve can long be confused with its tangent. Must
we not be struck by this feebleness of deduction as some-
thing very strange and even paradoxical? Here is a pure
operation of the mind, accomplished solely by the power
of the mind. It seems that, if anywhere it should feel
at home and evolve at ease, it would be among the things
of the mind, in the domain of the mind. Not at all;
it is there that it is immediately at the end of its tether.
On the contrary, in geometry, in astronomy, in physics,
where we have to do with things external to us, deduction
is all-powerful! Observation and experience are un-
doubtedly necessary in these sciences to arrive at the
principle, that is, to discover the aspect under which
things must be regarded; but, strictly speaking, we might,
by good luck, have hit upon it at once; and, as soon as we
possess this principle, we may draw from it, at any length,
consequences which experience will always verify. Must
we not conclude, therefore, that deduction is an operation
governed by the properties of matter, molded on the
mobile articulations of matter, implicitly given, in fact,
with the space that underlies matter? As long as it turns
upon space or spatialized time, it has only to let itself
go. It is duration that puts spokes in its wheels.
Deduction, then, does not work unless there be spatial
intuition behind it. But we may say the same of induction.
214 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
It is not necessary indeed to think geometrically, nor even
to think at all, in order to expect from the same conditions
a repetition of the same fact. The consciousness of the
animal already does this work, and indeed, independently
of all consciousness, the living body itself is so constructed
that it can extract from the successive situations in which
it finds itself the similarities which interest it, and so
respond to the stimuli by appropriate reactions. But
it is a far cry from a mechanical expectation and reaction
of the body, to induction properly so called, which is
an intellectual operation. Induction rests on the belief
that there are causes and effects, and that the same effects
follow the same causes. Now, if we examine this double
belief, this is what we find. It implies, in the first place,
that reality is decomposable into groups, which can be
practically regarded as isolated and independent. If I
boil water in a kettle on a stove, the operation and the
objects that support it are, in reality, bound up with a
multitude of other objects and a multitude of other oper-
ations; in the end, I should find that our entire solar
system is concerned in what is being done at this particular
point of space. But, in a certain measure, and for the
special end I am pursuing, I may admit that things happen
as if the group water-kettle-stove were an independent
microcosm. That is my first affirmation. Now, when I
say that this microcosm will always behave in the same
way, that the heat will necessarily, at the end of a certain
time, cause the boiling of the water, I admit that it is
sufficient that a certain number of elements of the system
be given in order that the system should be complete;
it completes itself automatically, I am not free to complete
it in thought as I please. The stove, the kettle and the
water being given, with a certain interval of duration,
it seems to me that the boiling, which experience showed
1.) GEOMETRY AND INDUCTION 215
me yesterday to be the only thing wanting to complete
the system, will complete it to-morrow, no matter when
to-morrow may be. What is there at the base of this
belief? Notice that the belief is more or less assured,
according as the case may be, but that it is forced upon the
mind as an absolute necessity when the microcosm con-
sidered contains only magnitudes. If two numbers be
given, I am not free to choose their difference. If two
sides of a triangle and the contained angle are given, the
third side arises of itself and the triangle completes itself
automatically. I can, it matters not where and it matters
not when, trace the same two sides containing the same
angle: it is evident that the new triangles so formed can be
superposed on the first, and that consequently the same
third side will come to complete the system. Now, if
my certitude is perfect in the case in which I reason on
pure space determinations, must I not suppose that, in
the other cases, the certitude is greater the nearer it ap-
proaches this extreme case? Indeed, may it not be
the limiting case which is seen through all the others
and which colors them, accordingly as they are more or
less transparent, with a more or less pronounced tinge
of geometrical necessity?! In fact, when I say. that
the water on the fire will boil to-day as it did yesterday,
and that this is an absolute necessity, I feel vaguely that
my imagination is placing the stove of yesterday on that
of to-day, kettle on kettle, water on water, duration on
duration, and it seems then that the rest must coincide
also, for the same reason that, when two triangles are
superposed and two of their sides coincide, their third
sides coincide also. But my imagination acts thus only
because it shuts its eyes to two essential points. For the
1 We have dwelt on this point in a former work. See the Essai sur les
données immédiates de la conscience, Paris, 1889, pp. 155-160,
216 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
system of to-day actually to be superimposed on that of
yesterday, the latter must have waited for the former,
time must have halted, and everything become simultane-
ous: that happens in geometry, but in geometry alone.
Induction therefore implies first that, in the world of the
physicist as in that of the geometrician, time does not
count. But it implies also that qualities can be superposed
on each other like magnitudes. If, in imagination, I
place the stove and fire of to-day on that of yesterday, I
find indeed that the form has remained the same; it suffices,
for that, that the surfaces and edges coincide; but what
is the coincidence of two qualities, and how can they be
superposed one on another in order to ensure that they
are identical? Yet I extend to the second order of reality
all that applies to the first. The physicist legitimates
this operation later on by reducing, as far as possible,
differences of quality to differences of magnitude; but,
prior to all science, I incline to liken qualities to quantities,
as if I perceived behind the qualities, as through a trans-
parency, a geometrical mechanism.! The more complete
this transparency, the more it seems to me that in the same
conditions there must be a repetition of the same fact.
Our inductions are certain, to our eyes, in. the exact degree
in which we make the qualitative differences melt into
the homogeneity of the space which subtends them,
so that geometry is the ideal limit of our inductions as
well as of our deductions. The movement at the end of
which is spatiality lays down along its course the faculty
of induction as well as that of deduction, in fact, intel-
lectuality entire.
It creates them in the mind. But it creates also, in
things, the ‘‘order’ which our induction, aided by de-
1Op. cit. chaps. i. and ii. passim.
m1. PHYSICAL LAWS i,
duction, finds there. This order, on which our action
leans and in which our intellect recognizes itself, seems to
us marvelous. Not only do the same general causes al-
ways produce the same general effects, but beneath the
visible causes and effects our science discovers an infinity
of infinitesimal changes which work more and more exactly
into one another, the further we push the analysis: so
much so that, at the end of this analysis, matter becomes,
it seems to us, geometry itself. Certainly, the intellect
is right in admiring here the growing order in the growing
complexity; both the one and the other must have a
positive reality for it, since it looks upon itself as positive.
But things change their aspect when we consider the whole
of reality as an undivided advance forward to successive
creations. It seems to us, then, that the complexity of
the material elements and the mathematical order that
binds them together must arise automatically when within
the whole a partial interruption or inversion is produced.
Moreover, as the intellect itself is cut out of mind by a
process of the same kind, it is attuned to this order and
complexity, and admires them because it recognizes
itself in them. But what is admirable in itself, what really
deserves to provoke wonder, is the ever-renewed creation
which reality, whole and undivided, accomplishes in ad-
vancing; for no complication of the mathematical order
with itself, however elaborate we may suppose it, can in-
troduce an atom of novelty into the world, whereas this
power of creation once given (and it exists, for we are
conscious of it in ourselves, at least when we act freely)
has only to be diverted from itself to relax its tension, only
to relax its tension to extend, only to extend for the mathe-
matical order of the elements so distinguished and the in-
flexible determinism connecting them to manifest the inter-
ruption of the creative act: in fact, inflexible determinism
218 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
and mathematical order are one with this very interruption.
It is this merely negative tendency that the particular laws of the physical world express. None of them, taken separately, has objective reality; each is the work of an investigator who has regarded things from a certain bias, isolated certain variables, applied certain conventional units of measurement. And yet there is an order ap- proximately mathematical immanent in matter, an ob- jective order, which our science approaches in proportion to its progress. For if matter is a relaxation of the in- extensive into the extensive and, thereby, of liberty into necessity, it does not indeed wholly coincide with pure homogeneous space, yet is constituted by the movement which leads to space, and is therefore on the way to ge- ometry. It is true that laws of mathematical form will never apply to it completely. For that, it would have to be pure space and step out of duration.
We cannot insist too strongly that there is something artificial in the mathematical form of a physical law, and consequently in our scientific knowledge of things.! Our standards of measurement are conventional, and, so to say, foreign to the intentions of nature: can we suppose that nature has related all the modalities of heat to the expansion of the same mass of mercury, or to the change of pressure of the same mass of air kept at a constant volume? But we may go further. In a general way, measuring is a wholly human operation, which implies that we really or ideally superpose two objects one on another a certain number of times. Nature did not dream of this superposition. It does not measure, nor does it count. Yet physics counts, measures, re- lates ‘quantitative’ variations to one another to obtain
laws, and it sueceeds. Its success would be inexplicable,
1Cf. especially the profound studies of M. Ed. Le Roy in the Revue
de métaph. et de morale.
a} PHYSICAL LAWS 919
if the movement which constitutes materiality were not
the same movement which, prolonged by us to its end,
that is to say, to homogeneous space, results in making
us count, measure, follow in their respective variations terms
that are functions one of another. To effect this prolong-
ation of the movement, our intellect has only to let itself
go, for it runs naturally to space and mathematics, in-
tellectuality and materiality being of the same nature and
having been produced in the same way.
If the mathematical order were a positive thing, if there were, immanent in matter, laws comparable to those of our codes, the success of our science would have in it something of the miraculous. What chances should we have indeed of finding the standard of nature and of isolating exactly, in order to determine their reciprocal relations, the very variables which nature has chosen? But the success of a science of mathematical form would be no less incomprehensible, if matter did not already possess everything necessary to adapt itself to our formulae. One hypothesis only, therefore, remains plausible, namely, that the mathematical order is nothing positive, that it is the form toward which a certain interruption tends of itself, and that materiality consists precisely in an inter- ruption of this kind. We shall understand then why our science is contingent, relative to the variables it has chosen, relative to the order in which it has successively put the problems, and why nevertheless it succeeds. It might have been, as a whole, altogether different, and yet have succeeded. This is so, just because there is no definite system of mathematical laws, at the base of nature, and because mathematics in general represents simply the side to which matter inclines. Put one of those little cork dolls with leaden feet in any posture, lay it on its back, turn it up on its head, throw it into the air: it will always
220 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
stand itself up again, automatically. So likewise with
matter: we can take it by any end and handle it in any
way, it will always fall back into some one of our mathe-
matical formulae, because it is weighted with geometry.
But the philosopher will perhaps refuse to found a
theory of knowledge on such considerations. They will
be repugnant to him, because the mathematical order, ©
being order, will appear to him to contain something
positive. It is in vain that we assert that this order
produces itself automatically by the interruption of the
inverse order, that it is this very interruption. The idea
persists, none the less, that there might be no order aé all,
and that the mathematical order of things, being a con-
quest over disorder, possesses a positive reality. In
examining this point, we shall see what a prominent
part the idea of disorder plays in problems relative to
the theory of knowledge. It does not. appear explicitly,
and that is why it escapes our attention. It is, however,
with the criticism of this idea that a theory of knowledge
ought to begin, for if the great problem is to know why and
how reality submits itself to an order, it is because the
absence of every kind of order appears possible or con-
ceivable. It is this absence of order that realists and
idealists alike believe they are thinking of—the realist
when he speaks of the regularity that “objective” laws
actually impose on a virtual disorder of nature, the idealist
when he supposes a “sensuous manifold” which is co-
ordinated (and consequently itself without order) under
the organizing influence of our understanding. The idea
of disorder, in the sense of absence of order, is then what
must be analyzed first. Philosophy borrows it from daily
life. And it is unquestionable that, when ordinarily we speak
of disorder, we are thinking of something. But of what?
iI.) THE IDEA OF DISORDER 221
It will be seen in the next chapter how hard it is to
determine the content of a negative idea, and what illu-
sions one is liable to, what hopeless difficulties philosophy
falls into, for not having undertaken this task. Diff-
culties and illusions are generally due to this, that we
accept as final a manner of expression essentially pro-
_visional. They are due to our bringing into the domain
of speculation a procedure made for practice. If I choose
a volume in my library at random, I may put it back on
the shelf after glancing at it and say, “This is not verse.”
Is this what I have really seen in turning over the leaves
of the book? Obviously not. I have not seen, I never
shall see, an absence of verse. I have seen prose. But
as it is poetry I want, I express what I find as a function
of what I am looking for, and instead of saying, “This is
prose,” I say, ‘This is not verse.” In the same way, if
the fancy takes me to read prose, and I happen on a
volume of verse, I shall say, “This is not prose,” thus ex-
pressing the data of my perception, which shows me verse,
in the language of my expectation and attention, which
are fixed on the idea of prose and will hear of nothing else.
Now, if Mons. Jourdain heard me, he would infer, no
doubt, from my two exclamations that prose and poetry
are two forms of language reserved for books, and that these
learned forms have come and overlaid a language which
was neither prose nor verse. Speaking of this thing
which is neither verse nor prose, he would suppose, more-
over, that he was thinking of it: it would be only a pseudo-
idea, however. Let us go further still: the pseudo-
idea would create a pseudo-problem, if M. Jourdain were
to ask his professor of philosophy how the prose form and
the poetry form have been superadded to that which
possessed neither the one nor the other, and if he wished
the professor to construct a theory of the imposition of
222 CREATIVE EVOLUTION {OHAP.
these two forms upon this formless matter. His question
would be absurd, and the absurdity would lie in this, that
he was hypostasizing as the substratum of prose and poetry
the simultaneous negation of both, forgetting that the
negation of the one consists in the affirmation of the other.
Now, suppose that there are two species of order, and that these two orders are two contraries within one and the same genus. Suppose also that the idea of disorder arises in our mind whenever, seeking one of the two kinds of order, we find the other. The idea of disorder would then have a clear meaning in the current practice of life: it would objectify, for the convenience of language, the disappointment of a mind that finds before it an order different from what it wants, an order with which it is not concerned at the moment, and which, in this sense, does not exist for it. But the idea would not admit a theoreti- cal use. So if we claim, notwithstanding, to introduce it into philosophy, we shall inevitably lose sight of its true meaning. It denotes the absence of a certain order, but to the profit of another (with which we are not con- cerned); only, as it applies to each of the two in turn, and as it even goes and comes continually between the two, we take it on the way, or rather on the wing, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, and treat it as if it represented, not the absence of the one or other order as the case may be, but the absence of both together—a thing that is neither perceived nor conceived, a simple verbal entity. So there arises the problem how order is imposed on disorder, form on matter. In analyzing the idea of disorder thus subtilized, we shall see that it represents nothing at all, and at the same time the problems that have been raised around it will vanish.
It is true that we must begin by distinguishing, and even by opposing one to the other, two kinds of order
Ut] THE IDEA OF DISORDER 223
which we generally confuse. As this confusion has created
the principal difficulties of the problem of knowledge,
it will not be useless to dwell once more on the marks by
which the two orders are distinguished.
In a general way, reality is ordered exactly to the degree in which it satisfies our thought. Order is there- fore a certain agreement between subject and object. It is the mind finding itself again in things. But the mind, we said, can go in two opposite ways. Sometimes it follows its natural direction: there is then progress in the form of tension, continuous creation, free activity. Sometimes it inverts it, and this inversion, pushed to the end, leads to extension, to the necessary reciprocal determination of elements externalized each by relation to the others, in short, to geometrical mechanism. Now, whether experience seems to us to adopt the first direction or whether it is drawn in the direction of the second, in both cases we say there is order, for in the two processes the mind finds itself again. The confusion between them is therefore natural. To escape it, different names would have to be given to the two kinds of order, and that is not easy, because of the variety and variability of the forms they take. The order of the second kind may be defined as geometry, which is its extreme limit; more generally, it is that kind of order that is concerned whenever a relation of necessary determination is found between causes and effects. It evokes ideas of inertia, of passivity, of automa- tism. As to the first kind of order, it oscillates no doubt ' around finality; and yet we cannot define it as finality, for it is sometimes above, sometimes below. In its highest forms, it is more than finality, for of a free action or a work of art we may say that they show a perfect order, and yet they can only be expressed in terms of ideas approximately, and after the event. Life in its entirety, regarded as a
224 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
creative evolution, is something analogous; it transcends
finality, if we understand by finality the realization of an
idea conceived or conceivable in advance. The category
of finality is therefore too narrow for life in its entirety.
It is, on the other hand, often too wide for a particular
manifestation of life taken separately. Be that as it
may, it is with the vital that we have here to do, and the
whole present study strives to prove that the vital is
in the direction of the voluntary. We may say then
that this first kind of order is that of the vital or of the
willed, in opposition to the second, which is that of the
inert and the automatic. Common sense instinctively
distinguishes between the two kinds of order, at least
in the extreme cases; instinctively, also, it brings them
together. We say of astronomical phenomena . that
they manifest an admirable order, meaning by this that
they can be foreseen mathematically. And we find an
order no less admirable in a symphony of Beethoven,
which is genius, originality, and therefore unforeseeability
itself.
But it is exceptional for order of the first kind to take so distinct a form. Ordinarily, it presents features that we have every interest in confusing with those of the opposite order. It is quite certain, for instance, that if we could view the evolution of life in its entirety, the spontaneity of its movement and the unforeseeability of its procedures would thrust themselves on our at- tention. But what we meet in our daily experience is a certain determinate living being, certain special mani- festations of life, which repeat, almost, forms and facts already known; indeed, the similarity of structure that we find everywhere between what generates and what is generated—a similarity that enables us to include any number of living individuals in the same group—is to our
Il. LAWS AND GENERA 225
eyes the very type of the generic: the inorganic genera
seem to us to take living genera as models. Thus the
vital order, such as it is offered to us piecemeal in experi-
ence, presents the same character and performs the same
function as the physical order: both cause experience to
repeat itself, both enable our mind to generalize. In reality,
this character has entirely different origins in the two
cases, and even opposite meanings. In the second case,
the type of this character, its ideal limit, as also its founda-
tion, is the geometrical necessity in virtue of which the
same components give the same resultant. In the first
case, this character involves, on the contrary, the interven-
tion of something which manages to obtain the same
total effect although the infinitely complex elementary
causes may be quite different. We insisted on this last
point in our first chapter, when we showed how identical
structures are to be met with on independent lines of evo-
lution. But, without looking so far, we may presume
that the reproduction only of the type of the ancestor
by his descendants is an entirely different thing from the
repetition of the same composition of forces which yields
an identical resultant. When we think of the infinity
of infinitesimal elements and of infinitesimal causes that
concur in the genesis of a living being, when we reflect
that the absence or the deviation of one of them would
spoil everything, the first impulse of the mind is to consider
this army of little workers as watched over by a skilled
foreman, the “vital principle,’ which is ever repairing
faults, correcting effects of neglect or absentmindedness,
putting things back in place: this is how we try to express
the difference between the physical and the vital order,
the former making the same combination of causes give
the same combined effect, the latter securing the con-
stancy of the effect even when there is some wavering
226 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
in the causes. But that is only a comparison; on re-
flection, we find that there can be no foreman, for the
very simple reason that there are no workers. The causes
and elements that physico-chemical analysis discovers
are real causes and elements, no doubt, as far as the facts
of organic destruction are concerned; they are then
limited in number. But vital phenomena, properly so
called, or facts of organic creation open up to us, when we
analyze them, the perspective of an analysis passing away
to infinity: whence it may be inferred that the manifold
causes and elements are here only views of the mind, at-
tempting an ever closer and closer imitation of the operation
of nature, while the operation imitated is an indivisible
act. The likeness between individuals of the same species
has thus an entirely different meaning, an entirely different
origin, to that of the likeness between complex effects ob-
tained by the same composition of the same causes. But
in the one case as in the other, there is likeness, and
consequently possible generalization. And as that is
all that interests us in practice, since our daily life is and
must be an expectation of the same things and the same
situations, it is natural that this common character,
essential from the point of view of our action, should bring
the two orders together, in spite of a merely internal
diversity between them which interests speculation only.
Hence the idea of a general order of nature, everywhere the
same, hovering over life and over matter alike. Hence
our habit of designating by the same word and represent-
ing in the same way the existence of laws in the domain
of inert matter and that of genera in the domain of life.
Now, it will be found that this confusion is the origin
of most of the difficulties raised by the problem of know-
ledge, among the ancients as well as among the moderns.
The generality of laws and that of genera having been
III.) LAWS AND GENERA 227
designated by the same word and subsumed under the same
idea, the geometrical order and the vital order are accord-
ingly confused together. According to the point of view,
the generality of laws is explained by that of genera, or
that of genera by that of laws. The first view is character-
istic of ancient thought; the second belongs to modern
philosophy. But in both ancient and modern philosophy
the idea of “generality” is an equivocal idea, uniting in its
denotation and in its connotation incompatible objects
and elements. In both there are grouped under the same
concept two kinds of order which are alike only in the
facility they give to our action on things. We bring
together the two terms in virtue of a quite external like-
ness, which justifies no doubt their designation by the
same word for practice, but which does not authorize
us at all, in the speculative domain, to confuse them in
the same definition.
The ancients, indeed, did not ask why nature submits to laws, but why it is ordered according to genera. The idea of genus corresponds more especially to an objective reality in the domain of life, where it expresses an un- questionable fact, heredity. Indeed, there can only be genera where there are individual objects; now, while the organized being is cut out from the general mass of matter by his very organization, that is to say naturally, it is our perception which cuts inert matter into distinct bodies. It is guided in this by the interests of action, by the nascent reactions that our body indicates—that is, as we have shown elsewhere, by the potential genera that are trying to gain existence. In this, then, genera and individuals determine one another by a semi-artificial operation entirely relative to our future action on things. Nevertheless the ancients did not hesitate to put all genera
1 Matiére et mémoire, chapters iii. and iv.
228 E€REATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
in the same rank, to attribute the same absolute existence
to all of them. Reality thus being a system of genera,
it is to the generality of the genera (that is, in effect, to
the generality expressive of the vital order) that the
generality of laws itself had to be brought. It is interest-
ing, in this respect, to compare the Aristotelian theory
of the fall of bodies with the explanation furnished by
Galileo. Aristotle is concerned solely with the concepts
“high” and “low,” ‘own proper place” as distinguished
from “place occupied,” ‘natural movement” and “forced
movement; the physical law in virtue of which the stone
falls expresses for him that the stone regains the “natural
place” of all stones, to wit, the earth. The stone, in his
view, is not quite stone so long as it is not in its normal
place; in falling back into this place it aims at complet-
ing itself, like a living being that grows, thus realizing
fully the essence of the genus stone.? If this concep-
tion of the physical law were exact, the law would no
longer be a mere relation established by the mind; the
subdivision of matter into bodies would no longer be
relative to our faculty of perceiving; all bodies would
have the same individuality as living bodies, and the
laws of the physical universe would express relations
of real kinship between real genera. We know what
kind of physics grew out of this, and how, for having
believed in a science unique and final, embracing the
totality of the real and at one with the absolute, the
ancients were confined, in fact, to a more or less clumsy
interpretation of the physical in terms of the vital.
But there is the same confusion in the moderns, with
this difference, however, that the relation between the
1 See in particular, Phys., iv. 215 a 2; v. 230 b 12; viii. 255. 2; and
De Caelo, iv. 1-5; ii. 296 b 27; iv. 308 a 34.
2 De Caelo, iv. 310 a 34 10 0'eés tov.aitod tonov pépebae Exaotov td
e¢s tO adtod e20ds gate pepso0ac.
11.) LAWS AND GENERA 229
two terms is inverted: laws are no longer reduced to genera,
but genera to laws; and science, still supposed to be
‘uniquely one, becomes altogether relative, instead of
being, as the ancients wished, altogether at one with
the absolute. A noteworthy fact is the eclipse of the
problem of genera in modern philosophy. Our theory
of knowledge turns almost entirely on the question of
laws: genera are left to make shift with laws as best
they can. The reason is, that modern philosophy has
its point of departure in the great astronomical and physical
discoveries of modern times. The laws of Kepler and of
Galileo have remained for it the ideal and unique type
of all knowledge. Now, a law is a relation between things
or between facts. More precisely, a law of mathematical
form expresses the fact that a certain magnitude is a
function of one or several other variables appropriately
chosen. Now, the choice of the variable magnitudes,
the distribution of nature into objects and into facts, has
already something of the contingent and the conventional.
But, admitting that the choice is hinted at, if not prescribed,
by experience, the law remains none the less a relation,
and a relation is essentially a comparison; it has objective
reality only for an intelligence that represents to itself
several terms at the same time. This intelligence may be
neither mine nor yours: a science which bears on laws may
therefore be an objective science, which experience con-
tains in advance and which we simply make it disgorge;
but it is none the less true that a comparison of some kind
must be effected here, impersonally if not by any one
in particular, and that an experience made of laws, that
is, of terms related to other terms, is an experience made of
comparisons, which, before we receive it, has already had to
pass through an atmosphere of intellectuality. The idea
of a science and of an experience entirely relative to the
230 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP. .
human understanding was therefore implicitly contained
in the conception of a science one and integral, composed
of laws: Kant only brought it to light. But this con-
ception is the result of an arbitrary confusion between the
generality of laws and that of genera. Though an in-
telligence be necessary to condition terms by relation to
each other, we may conceive that in certain cases the terms
themselves may exist independently. And if, beside
relations of term to term, experience also presents to us
independent terms, the living genera being something
quite different from systems of laws, one half, at least,
of our knowledge bears on the “‘thing-in-itself,” the very
reality. This knowledge may be very difficult, just be-
cause it no longer builds up its own object and is obliged,
on the contrary, to submit to it; but, however little it cuts
into its object, it is into the absolute itself that it bites.
We may go further: the other half of knowledge is no
longer so radically, so definitely relative as certain philoso-
phers say, if we can establish that it bears on a reality
of inverse order, a reality which we always express in
mathematical laws, that is to say in relations that imply
comparisons, but which lends itself to this work only
because it is weighted with spatiality and consequently
with geometry. Be that as it may, it is the confusion of
two kinds of order that lies behind the relativism of the
moderns, as it lay behind the dogmatism of the ancients.
We have said enough to mark the origin of this con- fusion. It is due to the fact that the “vital” order, which is essentially creation, is manifested to us less in its essence than in some of its accidents, those which imitate the physical and geometrical order; like it, they present to us repetitions that make generalization possible, and in that we have all that interests us. There is no doubt that life as a whole is an evolution, that is, an unceasing
any LAWS AND GENERA 231
transformation. But life can progress only by means of
the living, which are its depositaries. Innumerable living
beings, almost alike, have to repeat each other in space
and in time for the novelty they are working out to grow
and mature. It is like a book that advances towards a
new edition by going through thousands of reprints with
thousands of copies. There is, however, this difference
between the two cases, that the successive impressions
are identical, as well as the simultaneous copies of the
same impression, whereas representatives of one and
the same species are never entirely the same, either in
different points of space or at different moments of time.
Heredity does not only transmit characters; it transmits
also the impetus in virtue of which the characters are
modified, and this impetus is vitality itself. That is why
we say that the repetition which serves as the base of our
generalizations is essential in the physical order, accidental
in the vital order. The physical order is ‘“automatic;”
the vital order is, I will not say voluntary, but analogous
to the order “ willed.”
Now, as soon as we have clearly distinguished be- tween the order that is “willed” and the order that is “automatic,” the ambiguity that underlies the idea of disorder is dissipated, and, with it, one of the principal difficulties of the problem of knowledge.
The main problem of the theory of knowledge is to know how science is possible, that is to say, in effect, why there is order and not disorder in things. That order exists is a fact. But, on the other hand, disorder, which appears to us to be less than order, is, it seems, of right. The existence of order is then a mystery to be cleared up, at any rate a problem to be solved. More simply, when we undertake to found order, we regard it as contingent, if not in things, at least as viewed by
232 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
the mind: of a thing that we do not judge to be contingent
we do not require an explanation. If order did not appear
to us as a conquest over something, or as an addition to
something (which something is thought to be the “ab-
sence of order’), ancient realism would not have spoken
of a “matter” to which the Idea superadded itself, nor
would modern idealism have supposed a “sensuous mani-
fold” that the understanding organizes into nature. Now,
it is unquestionable that all order is contingent, and
conceived as such. But contingent in relation to what?
The reply, to our thinking, is not doubtful. An order is contingent, and seems so, in relation to the inverse order, as verse is contingent in relation to prose and prose in relation to verse. But, just as all speech which is not prose is verse and necessarily conceived as verse, just as all speech which is not verse is prose and necessarily con- ceived as prose, so any state of things that is not one of the two orders is the other and is necessarily conceived as the other. But it may happen that we do not realize what we are actually thinking of, and perceive the idea really present to our mind only through a mist of affective states. Any one can be convinced of this by considering the use we make of the idea of disorder in daily life. When I enter a room and pronounce it to be “‘in disorder,” what doImean? The position of each object is explained by the automatic movements of the person who has slept in the room, or by the efficient causes, whatever they may be, that have caused each article of furniture, clothing, etc., to be where it is: the order, in the second sense of the word, is perfect. But it is order of the first kind that I am expecting, the order that a methodical person con- sciously puts into his life, the willed order and not the automatic: so I call the absence of this order “disorder.” At bottom, all there is that is real, perceived and even
01) THE TWO KINDS OF ORDER 233
conceived, in this absence of one of the two kinds of order,
is the presence of the other. But the second is indifferent
to me, I am interested only in the first, and I express the
presence of the second as a function of the first, instead
of expressing it, so to speak, as a function of itself, by
saying it is disorder. Inversely, when we affirm that we
are imagining a chaos, that is to say a state of things in
which the physical world no longer obeys laws, what are we
thinking of? We imagine facts that appear and disappear
capriciously. First we think of the physical universe as
we know it, with effects and causes well proportioned to
each other; then, by a series of arbitrary decrees, we aug-
ment, diminish, suppress, so as to obtain what we call
disorder. In reality we have substituted will for the
mechanism of nature; we have replaced the ‘automatic
order’ by a multitude of elementary wills, just to the extent
that we imagine the apparition or vanishing of phenomena.
No doubt, for all these little wills to constitute a “willed
order,” they must have accepted the direction of a higher
will. But, on looking closely at them, we see that that is
just what they do: our own will is there, which objectifies
itself in each of these capricious wills in turn, and takes
good care not to connect the same with the same, nor to
permit the effect to be proportional to the cause—in fact
makes one simple intention hover over the whole of the
elementary volitions. Thus, here again, the absence
of one of the two orders consists in the presence of the
other. In analyzing the idea of chance, which is closely
akin to the idea of disorder, we find the same elements.
When the wholly mechanical play of the causes which stop
the wheel on a number makes me win, and consequently
acts like a good genius, careful of my interests, or when
the wholly mechanical force of the wind tears a tile off
the roof and throws it on to my head, that is to say acts like
234 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
a bad genius, conspiring against my person: in both cases
I find a mechanism where I should have looked for, where,
indeed, it seems as if I ought to have found, an intention.
That is what I express in speaking of chance. And of an
anarchical world, in which phenomena succeed each other
capriciously, I should say again that it is a realm of chance,
meaning that I find before me wills, or rather decrees,
when what I am expecting is mechanism. Thus is ex-
plained the singular vacillation of the mind when it tries
to define chance. Neither efficient cause nor final cause
can furnish the definition sought. The mind swings to
and fro, unable to rest, between the idea of an absence of
final cause and that of an absence of efficient cause, each
of these definitions sending it back to the other. The
problem remains insoluble, in fact, so long as the idea of
chance is regarded as a pure idea, without mixture of feel-
ing. But, in reality, chance merely objectifies the state
of mind of one who, expecting one of the two kinds of
order, finds himself confronted with the other. Chance
and disorder are therefore necessarily conceived as relative.
So if we wish to represent them to ourselves as absolute,
we perceive that we are going to and fro like a shuttle
between the two kinds of order, passing into the one just
at the moment at which we might catch ourself in the
other, and that the supposed absence of all order is really
the presence of both, with, besides, the swaying of a mind
that cannot rest finally in either. Neither in things
nor in our idea of things can there be any question of
presenting this disorder as the substratum of order, since
it implies the two kinds of order and is made of their
combination.
But our intelligence is not stopped by this. By a simple sic jubeo it posits a disorder which is an ‘“‘absence of order.” In so doing it thinks a word or a set of words,
III. THE TWO KINDS OF ORDER | 235
nothing more. If it seeks to attach an idea to the word,
it finds that disorder may indeed be the negation of order,
but that this negation is then the implicit affirmation of the
presence of the opposite order, which we shut our eyes to
because it does not interest us, or which we evade by deny-
ing the second order in its turn—that is, at bottom, by
re-establishing the first. How can we speak, then, of an
incoherent diversity which an understanding organizes?
It is no use for us to say that no one supposes this inco-
herence to be realized or realizable: when we speak of it,
we believe we are thinking of it; now, in analyzing the
idea actually present, we find, as we said before, only the
disappointment of the mind confronted with an order that
does not interest it, or a swaying of the mind between
two kinds of order, or, finally, the idea pure and simple
of the empty word that we have created by joining a
negative prefix to a word which itself signifies some-
thing. But it is this analysis that we neglect to make.
We omit it, precisely because it does not occur to us to
distinguish two kinds of order that are irreducible to one
another.
We said, indeed, that all order necessarily appears as contingent. If there are two kinds of order, this con- tingency of order is explained: one of the forms is con- tingent in relation to the other. Where I find the geo- metrical order, the vital was possible; where the order is vital, it might have been geometrical. But suppose that the order is everywhere of the same kind, and simply admits of degrees which go from the geometrical to the vital: if a determinate order still appears to me to be contingent, and can no longer be so by relation to an order of another ° kind, I shall necessarily believe that the order is contingent by relation to an absence of itself, that is to say by relation to a state of things “in which there is no order at all.”
236 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
And this state of things I shall believe that I am think-
ing of, because it is implied, it seems, in the very con-
tingency of order, which is an unquestionable fact. I
shall therefore place at the summit of the hierarchy the
vital order; then, as a diminution or lower complication
of it, the geometrical order; and finally, at the bottom of
all, an absence of order, incoherence itself, on which order
is superposed. This is why incoherence has the effect
on me of a word behind which there must be something
real, if not in things, at least in thought. But if I observe
that the state of things implied by the contingency of a
determinate order is simply the presence of the contrary
order, and if by this very fact I posit two kinds of order,
each the inverse of the other, I perceive that no inter-
mediate degrees can be imagined between the two orders,
and that there is no going down from the two orders to
the “incoherent.” Hither the incoherent is only a word,
devoid of meaning, or, if I give it a meaning, it is on con-
dition of putting incoherence midway between the two
orders, and not below both of them. There is not first
the incoherent, then the geometrical, then the vital;
there is only the geometrical and the vital, and then, by a
swaying of the mind between them, the idea of the in-
coherent. To speak of an uncodrdinated diversity to
which order is superadded is therefore to commit a veritable
petitto principw; for in imagining the uncodrdinated we
really posit an order, or rather two.
This long analysis was necessary to show how the real
can pass from tension to extension and from freedom to
-mechanical necessity by way of inversion. It was not
enough to prove that this relation between the two terms
is suggested to us, at once, by consciousness and by sensible
experience. It was necessary to prove that the geometrical
ae IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 237
order has no need of explanation, being purely and simply
the suppression of the inverse order. And, for that, it
was indispensable to prove that suppression is always a
substitution and is even necessarily conceived as such:
it is the requirements of practical life alone that suggest
to us here a way of speaking that deceives us both as to
what happens in things and as to what is present to our
thought. We must now examine more closely the in-
version whose consequences we have just described.
What, then, is the principle that has only to let go its
tension—may we say to detend—in order to eztend, the
interruption of the cause here being equivalent to a re-
versal of the effect?
For want of a better word we have called it consciousness. But we do not mean the narrowed consciousness that functions in each of us. Our own consciousness is the con- sciousness of a certain living being, placed in a certain point of space; and though it does indeed move in the same direction as its principle, it is continually drawn the op- posite way, obliged, though it goes forward, to look be- hind. This retrospective vision is, as we have shown, the natural function of the intellect, and consequently of distinct consciousness. In order that our consciousness shall coincide with something of its principle, it must detach itself from the already-made and attach itself to the being-made. It needs that, turning back on itself and twisting on itself, the faculty of seeing should be made to be one with the act of willing—a painful effort which we can make suddenly, doing violence to our nature, but cannot sustain more than a few moments. In free action, when we contract our whole being in order to thrust it forward, we have the more or less clear consciousness of motives and of impelling forces, and even, at rare mo- ments, of the becoming by which they are organized into
238 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
an act: but the pure willing, the current that runs through
this matter, communicating life to it, is a thing which we
hardly feel, which at most we brush lightly as it passes.
Let us try, however, to instal ourselves within it, if only for
a moment; even then it is an individual and fragmentary
will that we grasp. To get to the principle of all life, as
also of all materiality, we must go further still. Is it
impossible? No, by no means; the history of philosophy
is there to bear witness. There is no durable system that
is not, at least in some of its parts, vivified by intuition.
Dialectic is necessary to put intuition to the proof, necessary
also in order that intuition should break itself up into
concepts and so be propagated to other men; but all it
does, often enough, is to develop the result of that intuition
which transcends it. The truth is, the two procedures —
are of opposite direction: the same effort, by which ideas
are connected with ideas, causes the intuition which the
ideas were storing up to vanish. The philosopher is
obliged to abandon intuition, once he has received from
it the impetus, and to rely on himself to carry on the
movement by pushing the concepts one after another.
But he soon feels he has lost foothold; he must come
into touch with intuition again; he must undo most of
what he has done. In short, dialectic is what ensures
the agreement of our thought with itself. But by dia-
lectic—which is only a relaxation of intuition—many
different agreements are possible, while there is only
one truth. Intuition, if it could be prolonged beyond
a few instants, would not only make the philosopher
agree with his own thought, but also all philosophers
with each other. Such as it is, fugitive and incomplete,
it is, in each system, what is worth more than the system
and survives it. The object of philosophy would be
reached if this intuition could be sustained, generalized
m1} IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 239
and, above all, assured of external points of reference in
order not to go astray. To that end a continual coming
and going is necessary between nature and mind.
When we put back our being into our will, and our will itself into the impulsion it prolongs, we understand, we feel, that reality is a perpetual growth, a creation pursued without end. Our will already performs this miracle. Every human work in which there is invention, every voluntary act in which there is freedom, every movement of an organism that manifests spontaneity, brings something new into the world. True, these are only creations of form. How could they be anything else? We are not the vital current itself; we are this current already loaded with matter, that is, with con- gealed parts of its own substance which it carries along its course. In the composition of a work of genius, as in a simple free decision, we do, indeed, stretch the spring of our activity to the utmost and thus create what no mere assemblage of materials could have given (what assemblage of curves already known can ever be equivalent to the pencil-stroke of a great artist?) but there are, none the less, elements here that pre-exist and survive their or- ganization. But if a simple arrest of the action that generates form could constitute matter (are not the original lines drawn by the artist themselves already the fixation and, as it were, congealment of a movement?), a creation of matter would be neither incomprehensible nor inad- missible. For we seize from within, we live at every instant, a creation of form, and it is just in those cases in which the form is pure, and in which the creative current is momentarily interrupted, that there is a creation of matter. Consider the letters of the alphabet that enter into the composition of everything that has ever been written: we do not conceive that new letters spring up
240 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
and come to join themselves to the others in order to
make a new poem. But that the poet creates the poem
and that human thought is thereby made richer, we under-
stand very well: this creation is a simple act of the mind,
and action has only to make a pause, instead of continuing
into a new creation, in order that, of itself, it may break
up into words which dissociate themselves into letters
which are added to all the letters there are already in the
world. Thus, that the number of atoms composing the
material universe at a given moment should increase runs
counter to our habits of mind, contradicts the whole of
our experience; but that a reality of quite another order,
which contrasts with the atom as the thought of the poet
with the letters of the alphabet, should increase by sudden
additions, is not inadmissible; and the reverse of each
addition might indeed be a world, which we then represent
to ourselves, symbolically, as an assemblage of atoms. _
The mystery that spreads over the existence of the universe comes in great part from this, that we want the genesis of it to have been accomplished at one stroke or the whole of matter to be eternal. Whether we speak of creation or posit an uncreated matter, it is the totality of the universe that we are considering at once. At the root of this habit of mind lies the prejudice which we will analyze in our next chapter, the idea, common to materialists and to their opponents, that there is no really acting duraton, and that the absolute—matter or mind— can have no place in concrete time, in the time which we feel to be the very stuff of our life. From which it follows that everything is given once for all, and that it is necessary to posit from all eternity either material multiplicity it- self, or the act creating this multiplicity, given in block in the divine essence. Once this prejudice is eradicated, the idea of creation becomes more clear, for it is merged
0} IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 241
in that of growth. But it is no longer then of the universe
in its totality that we must speak.
Why should we speak of it? The universe is an as- semblage of solar systems which we have every reason to believe analogous to our own. No doubt they are not absolutely independent of one another. Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet, and, on the other hand, our entire solar system is moving in a definite direction as if it were drawn. There is, then, a bond between the worlds. But this bond may be regarded as infinitely loose in comparison with the mutual dependence which unites the parts of the same world among them- selves; so that it is not artificially, for reasons of mere convenience, that we isolate our solar system: nature itself invites us to isolate it. As living beings, we depend on the planet on which we are, and on the sun that pro- vides for it, but on nothing else. As thinking beings, we may apply the laws of our physics to our own world, and extend them to each of the worlds taken separately; but nothing tells us that they apply to the entire universe, nor even that such an affirmation has any meaning; for the universe is not made, but is being made continually. It is growing, perhaps indefinitely, by the addition of new worlds.
Let us extend, then, to the whole of our solar system the two most general laws of our science, the principle of conservation of energy and that of its degradation— limiting them, however, to this relatively closed system and to other systems relatively closed. Let us see what will follow. We must remark, first of all, that these two principles have not the same metaphysical scope. The first is a quantitative law, and consequently relative, in part, to our methods of measurement. It says that, in a system presumed to be closed, the total energy, that
242 CREATIVE EVOLUTION ~ [OHAP.
is to say the sum of its kinetic and potential energy, re-
mains constant. Now, if there were only kinetic energy
in the world, or even if there were, besides kinetic energy,
only one single kind of potential energy, but no more, the
artifice of measurement would not make the law artificial.
The law of the conservation of energy would express indeed
that something is preserved in constant quantity. But
there are, in fact, energies of various kinds,! and the meas-
urement of each of them has evidently been so chosen as
to justify the principle of conservation of energy. Con-
vention, therefore, plays a large part in this principle,
although there is undoubtedly, between the variations
of the different energies composing one and the same
system, a mutual dependence which is just what has
made the extension of the principle possible by measure-
ments suitably chosen. If, therefore, the philosopher
applies this principle to the solar system complete, he
must at least soften its outlines. The law of the con-
servation of energy cannot here express the objective
permanence of a certain quantity of a certain thing,
but rather the necessity for every change that is brought
about to be counterbalanced in some way by a change
in an opposite direction. That is to say, even if it governs
the whole of our solar system, the law of the conservation
of energy is concerned with the relationship of a fragment
of this world to another fragment rather than with the
nature of the whole.
It is otherwise with the second principle of thermo- dynamics. The law of the degradation of energy does not bear essentially on magnitudes. No doubt the first idea of it arose, in the thought of Carnot, out of cer- tain quantitative considerations on the yield of thermic
1 On these differences of quality see the work of Duhem, L’Evolution
de la mécanique, Paris, 1905, pp. 197 ff.
iI.) IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 243
machines. Unquestionably, too, the terms in which
Clausius generalized it were mathematical, and a cal-
culable magnitude, “entropy,” was, in fact, the final
conception to which he was led. Such precision is necessary
for practical applications. But the law might have been
vaguely conceived, and, if absolutely necessary, it might
have been roughly formulated, even though no one had
ever thought of measuring the different energies of the
physical world, even though the concept of energy had
not been created. Essentially, it expresses the fact that
all physical changes have a tendency to be degraded into
heat, and that heat tends to be distributed among bodies
in a uniform manner. In this less precise form, it becomes
independent of any convention; it is the most metaphysi-
cal of the laws of physics since it points out without inter-
posed symbols, without artificial devices of measurements,
the direction in which the world is going. It tells us that
changes that are visible and heterogeneous will be more and
more diluted into changes that are invisible and homo-
geneous, and that the instability to which we owe the rich-
ness and variety of the changes taking place in our solar
system will gradually give way to the relative stability
of elementary vibrations continually and perpetually
repeated. Just so with a man who keeps up his strength
as he grows old, but spends it less and less in actions, and
comes, in the end, to employ it entirely in making his lungs
breathe and his heart beat.
From this point of view, a world like our solar system is seen to be ever exhausting something of the muta- bility it contains. In the beginning, it had the maximum of possible utilization of energy: this mutability has gone on diminishing unceasingly. Whence does it come? We might at first suppose that it has come from some other point of space, but the difficulty is only set back, and for
244 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
this external source of mutability the same question springs
up. True, it might be added that the number of worlds
capable of passing mutability to each other is unlimited,
that the sum of mutability contained in the universe is in-
finite, that there is therefore no ground on which to seek its
origin or to foresee its end. A hypothesis of this kind is as
irrefutable as it is indemonstrable; but to speak of an infinite
universe is to admit a perfect coincidence of matter with
abstract space, and consequently an absolute externality
of all the parts of matter in relation to one another. We
have seen above what we must think of this theory, and
how difficult it is to reconcile with the idea of a reciprocal
influence of all the parts of matter on one another, an
influence to which indeed it itself makes appeal. Again it
might be supposed that the general instability has arisen
from a general state of stability; that the period in
which we now are, and in which the utilizable energy is
diminishing, has been preceded by a period in which
the mutability was increasing, and that the alternations
of increase and diminution succeed each other for ever.
This hypothesis is theoretically conceivable, as has been
demonstrated quite recently; but, according to the cal-
culations of Boltzmann, the mathematical improbabil-
ity of it passes all imagination and practically amounts
to absolute impossibility... In reality, the problem re-
mains insoluble as long as we keep on the ground of physics,
for the physicist is obliged to attach energy to extended
particles, and, even if he regards the particles only as
reservoirs of energy, he remains in space: he would belie
his réle if he sought the origin of these energies in an extra-
spatial process. It is there, however, in our opinion, that
it must be sought.
Is it extension in general that we are considering in
1 Boltzmann, Vorlesungen uber Gastheorie, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 253 ff.
II. IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 245
abstracto? Extension, we said, appears only as a tension
which is interrupted. Or, are we considering the con-
crete reality that fills this extension? The order which
reigns there, and which is manifested by the laws of nature,
is an order which must be born of itself when the inverse
order is suppressed; a detension of the will would produce
precisely this suppression. Lastly, we find that the
direction, which this reality takes, suggests to us the idea
of a thing unmaking itself; such, no doubt, is one of the
essential characters of materiality. What conclusion are
we to draw from all this, if not that the process by which
this thing makes itself is directed in a contrary way to that
of physical processes, and that it is therefore, by its very
definition, immaterial? The vision we have of the material
world is that of a weight which falls: no image drawn from
matter, properly so called, will ever give us the idea of the
weight rising. But this conclusion will come home to us
with still greater force if we press nearer to the concrete
reality, and if we consider, no longer only matter in general,
but, within this matter, living bodies.
All our analyses show us, in life, an effort to re-mount the incline that matter descends. In that, they reveal to us the possibility, the necessity even of a process the inverse of materiality, creative of matter by its in- terruption alone. The life that evolves on the surface of our planet is indeed attached to matter. If it were pure consciousness, a fortior: if it were supraconscious- ness, it would be pure creative activity. In fact, it is riveted to an organism that subjects it to the general laws of inert matter. But everything happens as if it were doing its utmost to set itself free from these laws. It has not the power to reverse the direction of physical changes, such as the principle of Carnot determines it. It does, however, behave absolutely as a force would
246 CREATIVE EVOLUTION ICHAP.
behave which, left to itself, would work in the inverse
direction. Incapable of stopping the course of material
changes downwards, it succeeds in retarding it. The
evolution of life really continues, as we have shown,
an initial impulsion: this impulsion, which has deter-
mined the development of the chlorophyllian function
in the plant and of the sensori-motor system in the ani-
mal, brings life to more and more efficient acts by the
fabrication and use of more and more powerful explosives.
Now, what do these explosives represent if not a storing-
up of the solar energy, the degradation of which energy
is thus provisionally suspended on some of the points
where it was being poured forth? The usable energy which
the explosive conceals will be expended, of course, at the
moment of the explosion; but it would have been expended
sooner if an organism had not happened to be there to
arrest its dissipation, in order to retain it and save it up.
As we see it to-day, at the point to which it was brought
by a scission of the mutually complementary tendencies
which it contained within itself, life is entirely dependent
on the chlorophyllian function of the plant. This means
that, looked at in its initial impulsion, before any scission,
life was a tendency to accumulate in a reservoir, as do
especially the green parts of vegetables, with a view
to an instantaneous effective discharge, like that which
an animal brings about, something that would have
otherwise flowed away. It is like an effort to raise the
weight which falls. True, it succeeds only in retarding
the fall. But at least it can give us an idea of what the
raising of the weight was.!
1 In a book rich in facts and inideas (La Dissolution opposée a l’évolution,
Paris, 1899), M. André Lalande shows us everything going towards
death, in spite of the momentary resistance which organisms seem
to oppose.—But, even from the side of unorganized matter, have we
the right to extend to the entire universe considerations drawn from
I11.} IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 247
Let us imagine a vessel full of steam at a high pressure,
and here and there in its sides a crack through which the
- steam is escaping in a jet. The steam thrown into the air
is nearly all condensed into little drops which fall back, and
this condensation and this fall represent simply the loss
of something, an interruption, a deficit. But a small
part of the jet of steam subsists, uncondensed, for some
seconds; it is making an effort to raise the drops which
are falling; it succeeds at most in retarding their fall.
So, from an immense reservoir of life, jets must be gushing
out unceasingly, of which each, falling back, is a world.
The evolution of living species within this world repre-
sents what subsists of the primitive direction of the
original jet, and of an impulsion which continues itself
in a direction the inverse of materiality. But let us
not carry too far this comparison. It gives us but a
feeble and even deceptive image of reality, for the crack,
the jet of steam, the forming of the drops, are deter-
mined necessarily, whereas the creation of a world is
a free act, and the life within the material world partici-
pates in this liberty. Let us think rather of an action
like that of raising the arm; then let us suppose that
the arm, left to itself, falls back, and yet that there sub-
sists in it, striving to raise it up again, something of the
will that animates it. In this image of a creative action
which unmakes itself we have already a more exact re-
the present state of our solar system? Beside the worlds which are dying, there are without doubt worlds that are being born. On the other hand, in the organized world, the death of individuals does not seem at all like a diminution of ‘‘life in general,” or like a necessity which life submits to reluctantly. As has been more than once re- marked, life has never made an effort to prolong indefinitely the exist- ence of the individual, although on so many other points it has made so many successful efforts. Everything is as ij this death had been willed, or at least accepted, for the greater progress of life in general.
248 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
presentation of matter. In vital activity we see, then,
that which subsists of the direct movement in the inverted
movement, a reality which is making itself in a reality
which is unmaking itself.
Everything is obscure in the idea of creation if we think of things which are created and a thing which creates, as we habitually do, as the understanding cannot help doing. We shall show the origin of this illusion in our next chapter. It is natural to our intellect, whose function is essentially practical, made to present to us things and states rather than changes and acts. But things and states are only views, taken by our mind, of becoming. . There are no things, there are only actions. More particu- larly, if I consider the world in which we live, I find that the automatic and strictly determined evolution of this well-knit whole is action which is unmaking itself, and that the unforeseen forms which life cuts out in it, forms capable of being themselves prolonged into unforeseen movements, represent the action that is making itself. Now, I have every reason to believe that the other worlds are analogous to ours, that things happen there in the same way. And I know they were not all constructed at the same time, since observation shows me, even to-day, nebulae in course of concentration. Now, if the same kind of action is going on everywhere, whether it is that which is unmaking itself or whether it is that which is striving to remake itself, I simply express this probable similitude when I speak of a centre from which worlds shoot out like rockets in a fire-works display—provided, however, that I do not present this centre as a thing, but as a continuity of shoot- ing out. God thus defined, has nothing of the already made; He is unceasing life, action, freedom. Creation, so conceived, is not a mystery; we experience it in our- selves when we act freely. That new things can join
Il.] IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 249
things already existing is absurd, no doubt, since the
thing results from a solidification performed by our under-
standing, and there are never any things other than those
that the understanding has thus constituted. To speak .
of things creating themselves would therefore amount
to saying that the understanding presents to itself more
than it presents to itself—a self-contradictory affirmation,
an empty and vain idea. But that action increases as it
goes on, that it creates in the measure of its advance,
is what each of us finds when he watches himself act.
Things are constituted by the instantaneous cut which
the understanding practices, at a given moment, on a flux
of this kind, and what is mysterious when we eompare
the cuts together becomes clear when we relate them to
the flux. Indeed, the modalities of creative action, in so
far as it is still going on in the organization of living forms,
are much simplified when they are taken in this way.
Before the complexity of an organism and the practically
infinite multitude of interwoven analyses and syntheses
it presupposes, our understanding recoils disconcerted.
That the simple play of physical and chemical forces,
left to themselves, should have worked this marvel, we
find hard to believe. And if it is a profound science
which is at work, how are we to understand the influence
exercised on this matter without form by this form without
matter? But the difficulty arises from this, that we
represent statically ready-made material particles juxta-
posed to one another, and, also statically, an external
cause which plasters upon them a skilfully contrived
organization. In reality, life is a movement, materiality
is the inverse movement, and each of these two movements
is simple, the matter which forms a world being an un-
divided flux, and undivided also the life that runs through
it, cutting out in it living beings all along its track. Of
250 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
these two currents the second runs counter to the first,
but the first obtains, all the same, something from the
second. There results between them a modus vivendi,
which is organization. This organization takes, for our
senses and for our intellect, the form of parts entirely
external to other parts in space and in time. Not only
do we shut our eyes to the unity of the impulse which,
passing through generations, links individuals with in-
dividuals, species with species, and makes of the whole
series of the living one single immense wave flowing over
matter, but each individual itself seems to us as an aggre-
gate, aggregate of molecules and aggregate of facts. The
reason of this lies in the structure of our intellect, which
is formed to act on matter from without, and which suc-
ceeds by making, in the flux of the real, instantaneous
cuts, each of which becomes, in its fixity, endlessly de-
composable. Perceiving, in an organism, only parts
external to parts, the understanding has the choice
between two systems of explanation only: either to
regard the infinitely complex (and thereby infinitely
well-contrived) organization as a fortuitous concatena-
tion of atoms, or to relate it to the incomprehensible
influence of an external force that has grouped its ele-
ments together. But this complexity is the work of
the understanding; this incomprehensibility is also its
work. Let us try to see, no longer with the eyes of
the intellect alone, which grasps only the already made
and which looks from the outside, but with the spirit,
I mean with that faculty of seeing which is immanent
in the faculty of acting and which springs up, somehow,
by the twisting of the will on itself, when action is turned
into knowledge, like heat, so to say, into light. To
movement, then, everything will be restored, and into
movement everything will be resolved. Where the un-
III.} IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 251
derstanding, working on the image supposed to be fixed
of the progressing action, shows us parts infinitely mani-
fold and an order infinitely well contrived, we catch a
glimpse of a simple process, an action which is making
itself across an action of the same kind which is unmaking
itself, like the fiery path torn by the last rocket of a fire-
works display through the black cinders of the spent
rockets that are falling dead.
From this point of view, the general considerations
we have presented concerning the evolution of life will
be cleared up and completed. We will distinguish more
sharply what is accidental from what is essential in this
evolution.
The impetus of life, of which we are speaking, consists in a need of creation. It cannot create absolutely, be- cause it is confronted with matter, that is to say with the movement that is the inverse of its own. But it seizes upon this matter, which is necessity itself, and strives to introduce into it the largest possible amount of indeter- mination and liberty. How does it go to work?
An animal high in the scale may be represented in a general way, we said, as a sensori-motor nervous system imposed on digestive, respiratory, circulatory systems, etc. The function of these latter is to cleanse, repair and protect the nervous system, to make it as independent as possible of external circumstances, but, above all, to furnish it with energy to be expended in movements. The increasing complexity of the organism is therefore due theoretically (in spite of innumerable exceptions due to accidents of evolution) to the necessity of complexity in the nervous system. No doubt, each complication of any part of the organism involves many others in ad- dition, because this part itself must live, and every change
252 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
in one point of the body reverberates, as it were, through-
out. The complication may therefore go on to infinity
in all directions; but it is the complication of the nervous
system which conditions the others in right, if not always
_ in fact. Now, in what does the progress of the nervous
system itself consist? In a simultaneous development
of automatic activity and of voluntary activity, the first
furnishing the second with an appropriate instrument.
Thus, in an organism such as ours, a considerable number
of motor mechanisms are set up in the medulla and in the
spinal cord, awaiting only a signal to release the correspond-
ing act: the will is employed, in some cases, in setting up
the mechanism itself, and in the others in choosing the
mechanisms to be released, the manner of combining them
and the moment of releasing them. The will of an animal
is the more effective and the more intense, the greater
the number of the mechanisms it can choose from, the
more complicated the switchboard on which all the motor
paths cross, or, in other words, the more developed its
brain. Thus, the progress of the nervous system assures
to the act increasing precision, increasing variety, in-
creasing efficiency and independence. The organism be-
haves more and more like a machine for action, which
reconstructs itself entirely for every new act, as if it were
made of india-rubber and could, at any moment, change
the shape of all its parts. But, prior to the nervous
system, prior even to the organism properly so called,
already in the undifferentiated mass of the amoeba,
this essential property of animal life is found. The amoeba
deforms itself in varying directions; its entire mass does
what the differentiation of parts will localize in a sensori-
motor system in the developed animal. Doing it only
in a rudimentary manner, it is dispensed from the com-
plexity of the higher organisms; there is no need here of
II.) THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION. 253
the auxiliary elements that pass on to motor elements
the energy to expend; the animal moves as a whole, and,
as a whole also, procures energy by means of the organic
substances it assimilates. Thus, whether low or high in
the animal scale, we always find that animal life consists
(1) in procuring a provision of energy; (2) in expending it,
by means of a matter as supple as possible, in directions
variable and unforeseen.
_ Now, whence comes the energy? From the ingested
food, for food is a kind of explosive, which needs only the spark to discharge the energy it stores. Who has made this explosive? The food may be the flesh of an animal nourished on animals and so on; but, in the end it is to the vegetable we always come back. Vegetables alone gather in the solar energy, and the animals do but borrow it from them, either directly or by some passing it on to others. How then has the plant stored up this energy? Chiefly by the chlorophyllian function, a chem- icism sui generis of which we do not possess the key, and which is probably unlike that of our laboratories. The process consists in using solar energy to fix the carbon of carbonic acid, and thereby to store this energy as we should store that of a water-carrier by employing him to fill an elevated reservoir: the water, once brought up, can set in motion a mill or a turbine, as we will and when we will. Each atom of carbon fixed represents something like the elevation of the weight of water, or like the stretch- ing of an elastic thread uniting the carbon to the oxygen in the carbonic acid. The elastic is relaxed, the weight falls back again, in short the energy held in reserve is restored, when, by a simple release, the carbon is per- mitted to rejoin its oxygen.
So that all life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to accumulate energy and then to let it
7 aed CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
flow into flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the
end of which it will accomplish infinitely varied kinds
of work. That is what the vital impetus, passing through
matter, would fain do all at once. It would succeed,
no doubt, if its power were unlimited, or if some reinforce-
ment could come to it from without. But the impetus
is finite, and it has been given once for all. It cannot
overcome all obstacles. The movement it starts is some-
times turned aside, sometimes divided, always opposed;
and the evolution of the organized world is the unrolling
of this conflict. The first great scission that had to be
effected was that of the two kingdoms, vegetable and
animal, which thus happen to be mutually complementary,
without, however, any agreement having been made
between them. It is not for the animal that the plant
accumulates energy, it is for its own consumption; but
its expenditure on itself is less discontinuous, and less
concentrated, and therefore less efficacious, than was
required by the initial impetus of life, essentially directed
toward free actions: the same organism could not with
equal force sustain the two functions at once, of gradual
storage and sudden use. Of themselves, therefore, and
without any external intervention, simply by the effect
of the duality of the tendency involved in the original
impetus and of the resistance opposed by matter to this
impetus, the organisms leaned some in the first direction,
others in the second. To this scission there succeeded
many others. Hence the diverging lines of evolution,
at least what is essential in them. But we must take into
account retrogressions, arrests, accidents of every kind.
And we must remember, above all, that each species
behaves as if the general movement of life stopped at it
instead of passing through it. It thinks only of itself,
it lives only for itself. Hence the numberless struggles.
SSS OS
III.) THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 255
that we behold in nature. Hence a discord, striking
and terrible, but for which the original principle of life
must not be held responsible.
The part played by contingency in evolution is there- fore great. Contingent, generally, are the forms adopted, or rather invented. Contingent, relative to the obstacles encountered in a given place and at a given moment, is the dissociation of the primordial tendency into such and such complementary tendencies which create divergent lines of evolution. Contingent the arrests and set-backs; contingent, in large measure, the adaptations. Two things only are necessary: (1) a gradual accumulation of energy; (2) an elastic canalization of this energy in variable and indeterminable directions, at the end of which are free acts.
This twofold result has been obtained in a particular _ way on our planet. But it might have been obtained by entirely different means. It was not necessary that life should fix its choice mainly upon the carbon of car- bonic acid. What was essential for it was to store solar energy; but, instead of asking the sun to separate, for instance, atoms of oxygen and carbon, it might (theoret- ically at least, and, apart from practical difficulties possibly insurmountable) have put forth other chemical elements, which would then have had to be associated or dissociated by entirely different physical means. And if the element characteristic of the substances that supply energy to the organism had been other than carbon, the element char- acteristic of the plastic substances would probably have been other than nitrogen, and the chemistry of living bodies would then have been radically different from what it is. The result would have been living forms without any analogy to those we know, whose anatomy would have been different, whose physiology also would have been
256 CREATIVE EVCLUTION (CHAP.
different. Alone, the sensori-motor function would have
been preserved, if not in its mechanism, at least in its
effects. It is therefore probable that life goes on in other
planets, in other solar systems also, under forms of which
we have no idea, in physical conditions to which it seems to
us, from the point of view of our physiology, to be ab-
solutely opposed. If its essential aim is to catch up
usable energy in order to expend it in explosive actions,
it probably chooses, in each solar system and on each
planet, as it does on the earth, the fittest means to get
this result in the circumstances with which it is con-
fronted. That is at least what reasoning by analogy leads
to, and we use analogy the wrong way when we declare
life to be impossible wherever the circumstances with
which it is confronted are other than those on the earth.
The truth is that life is possible wherever energy descends
the incline indicated by Carnot’s law and where a cause
of inverse direction can retard the descent—that is to say,
probably, in all the worlds suspended from all the stars.
We go further: it is not even necessary that life should be
concentrated and determined in organisms properly so
called, that is, in definite bodies presenting to the flow of
energy ready-made though elastic canals. It can be con-
ceived (although it can hardly be imagined) that energy
might be saved up, and then expended on varying lines
running across a matter not yet solidified. Every es-
sential of life would still be there, since there would still
be slow accumulation of energy and sudden release. There
would hardly be more difference between this vitality,
vague and formless, and the definite vitality we know,
than there is, in our psychical life, between the state of
dream and the state of waking. Such may have been the
condition of life in our nebula before the condensation of
matter was complete, if it be true that life springs forward
1.3 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 257
at the very moment when, as the effect of an inverse move-
ment, the nebular matter appears.
It is therefore conceivable that life might have assumed a totally different outward appearance and designed forms very different from those we know. With another chemical substratum, in other physical conditions, the impulsion would have remained the same, but it would have split up very differently in course of progress; and the whole would have traveled another road—whether shorter or longer who can tell? In any case, in the entire series of living beings no term would have been what it now is. Now, was it necessary that there should be a series, or terms? Why should not the unique impetus have been impressed on a unique body, which might have gone on evolving?
This question arises, no doubt, from the comparison of life to an impetus. And it must be compared to an impetus, because no image borrowed from the physical world can give more nearly the idea of it. But it is only an image. In reality, life is of the psychological order, and it is of the essence of the psychical to enfold a confused plurality of interpenetrating terms. In space, and in space only, is distinct multiplicity possible: a point is absolutely external to another point. But pure and empty unity, also, is met with only in space; it is that of a mathematical point. Abstract unity and abstract multiplicity are determinations of space or categories of the understanding, whichever we will, spatiality and in- tellectuality being molded on each other. But what is of psychical nature cannot entirely correspond with space, nor enter perfectly into the categories of the understanding. Is my own person, at a given moment, one or manifold? If I declare it one, inner voices arise and protest—those of the sensations, feelings, ideas, among which my in-
258 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
dividuality is distributed. But, if I make it distinctly
manifold, my consciousness rebels quite as strongly; it
affirms that my sensations, my feelings, my thoughts
are abstractions which I effect on myself, and that each
of my states implies all the others. I am then (we must
adopt the language of the understanding, since only
the understanding has a language) a unity that is multiple
and a multiplicity that is one;: but unity and multiplicity
are only views of my personality taken by an understand-
ing that directs its categories at me; I enter neither into
one nor into the other nor into both at once, although
both, united, may give a fair imitation of the mutual
interpenetration and continuity that I find at the base of
my own self. Such is my inner life, and such also is life
in general. While, in its contact with matter, life is
comparable to an impulsion or an impetus, regarded in
itself it is an immensity of potentiality, a mutual encroach-
ment of thousands and thousands of tendencies which
nevertheless are “thousands and thousands” only when
once regarded as outside of each other, that is, when
spatialized. Contact with matter is what determines
this dissociation. Matter divides actually what was but
potentially manifold; and, in this sense, individuation
is in part the work of matter, in part the result of life’s
own inclination. Thus, a poetic sentiment, which bursts
into distinct verses, lines and words, may be said to have
already contained this multiplicity of individuated ele-
ments, and yet, in fact, it is the materiality of language
that creates it.
But through the words, lines and verses runs the simple inspiration which is the whole poem. So, among the
1 We have dwelt on this point in an article entitled ‘‘ Introduction
& la métaphysique” (Revue de métaphysique et de morale, January, 1903,
pp. 1-25).
IiI.} THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 259
dissociated individuals, one life goes on moving: every-
where the tendency to individualize is opposed and at
the same time completed by an antagonistic and com-
plementary tendency to associate, as if the manifold
unity of life, drawn in the direction of multiplicity, made
so much the more effort to withdraw itself on to itself.
A part is no sooner detached than it tends to reunite
itself, if not to all the rest, at least to what is nearest
to it. Hence, throughout the whole realm of life, a balanc-
ing between individuation and association. Individuals
join together into a society; but the society, as soon as
formed, tends to melt the associated individuals into a new
organism, so as to become itself an individual, able in
its turn to be part and parcel of a new association. At the
lowest degree of the scale of organisms we already find
veritable associations, microbial colonies, and in these
associations, according to a recent work, a tendency to
individuate by the constitution of a nucleus... The same
tendency is met with again at a higher stage, in the proto-
phytes, which, once having quitted the parent cell by way of
division, remain united to each other by the gelatinous
substance that surrounds them—also in those protozoa
which begin by mingling their pseudopodia and end by
welding themselves together. The ‘colonial’ theory
of the genesis of higher organisms is well known. The
protozoa, consisting of one single cell, are supposed to
have formed, by assemblage, aggregates which, relating
themselves together in their turn, have given rise to
aggregates of aggregates; so organisms more and more
complicated, and also more and more differentiated,
are born of the association of organisms barely differ-
entiated and elementary. In this extreme form, the
1Cf. a paper written (in Russian) by Serkovski, and reviewed in the
Année biologique, 1898, p. 317.
2 Ed. Perrier, Les Colonies animales, Paris, 1897 (2nd edition).
260 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
theory is open to grave objections: more and more the
idea seems to be gaining ground, that polyzoism is an
exceptional and abnormal fact.:. But it is none the less
true that things happen as if every higher organism was
born of an association of cells that have subdivided the
work between them. Very probably it is not the cells
that have made the individual by means of association;
it is rather the individual that has made the cells by means
of dissociation.? But this itself reveals to us, in the genesis
of the individual, a haunting of the social form, as if the
individual could develop only on the condition that its sub-
stance should be split up into elements having themselves
an appearance of individuality and united among them-
selves by an appearance of sociality. There are numerous
cases in which nature seems to hesitate between the two
forms, and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an
individual. The slightest push is enough, then, to make
the balance weigh on one side or the other. If we take
an infusorian sufficiently large, such as the Stentor, and
cut it into two halves each containing a part of the nu-
cleus, each of the two halves will generate an independent
Stentor; but if we divide it incompletely, so that a pro-
toplasmic communication is left between the two halves,
we shall see them execute, each from its side, correspond-
ing movements: so that in this case it is enough that a
thread should be maintained or cut in order that life
should affect the social or the individual form. Thus,
in rudimentary organisms consisting of a single cell, we
already find that the apparent individuality of the whole
1 Delage, L’Hérédité, 2nd edition, Paris, 1903, p.97. Cf. by the same author, ‘‘La Conception polyzoique des étres” (Revue scientifique, 1896, pp. 641-653).
2 This is the theory maintained by Kunstler, Delage, Sedgwick, Labbé,
etc. Its development, with bibliographical references, will be found in
the work of Busquet, Les étres vivants, Paris, 1899.
Ht} THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 261
is the composition of an undefined number of potential
individualities potentially associated. But, from top to
bottom of the series of living beings, the same law is mani-
fested. And it is this that we express when we say that
unity and multiplicity are categories of inert matter,
that the vital impetus is neither pure unity nor pure
multiplicity, and that if the matter to which it communi-
cates itself compels it to choose one of the two, its choice
will never be definitive: it will leap from one to the other
indefinitely. The evolution of life in the double direction
of individuality and association has therefore nothing
accidental about it: it is due to the very nature of life.
Essential also is the progress to reflextion. If our analysis is correct, it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, that is at the origin of life. Consciousness, or supra- consciousness, is the name for the rocket whose extin- guished fragments fall back as matter; consciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them up into organisms. But this consciousness, which is a need of creation, is made manifest to itself only where creation is possible. It lies dormant when life is con- demned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the possi- bility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of the switch- board on which the paths called sensory and the paths called motor intersect—that is, of the brain. How must this solidarity between the organism and consciousness be understood?
We will not dwell here on a point that we have dealt with in former works. Let us merely recall that a theory
262 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
such as that according to which consciousness is attached
to certain neurons, and is thrown off from their work like
a phosphorescence, may be accepted by the scientist for the
detail of analysis; it is a convenient mode of expression.
But it is nothing else. In reality, a living being is a centre
of action. It represents a certain sum of contingency
entering into the world, that is to say, a certain quantity
of possible action—a quantity variable with individuals
and especially with species. The nervous system of
an animal marks out the flexible lines on which its action
will run (although the potential energy is accumulated
in the muscles rather than in the nervous system itself);
its nervous centres indicate, by their development and their
configuration, the more or less extended choice it will
have among more or less numerous and complicated
actions. Now, since the awakening of consciousness in a
living creature is the more complete, the greater the
latitude of choice allowed to it and the larger the amount
of action bestowed upon it, it is clear that the development
of consciousness will appear to be dependent on that of
the nervous centres. On the other hand, every state of
consciousness being, in one aspect of it, a question put
to the motor activity and even the beginning of a reply,
there is no psychical event that does not imply the entry
into play of the cortical mechanisms. Everything seems,
therefore, to happen as if consciousness sprang from the
brain, and as if the detail of conscious activity were mod-
eled on that of the cerebral activity. In reality, conscious-
ness does not spring from the brain; but brain and con-
sciousness correspond because equally they measure, the
one by the complexity of its structure and the other by
the intensity of its awareness, the quantity of choice that
the living being has at its disposal.
It is precisely because a cerebral state expresses simply
If. THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 263
what there is of nascent action in the corresponding
psychical state, that the psychical state tells us more
than the cerebral state. The consciousness of a living
being, as we have tried to prove elsewhere, is inseparable
from its brain in the sense in which a sharp knife is in-
separable from its edge: the brain is the sharp edge by
which consciousness cuts into the compact tissue of events,
but the brain is no more coextensive with consciousness
than the edge is with the knife. Thus, from the fact that
two brains, like that of the ape and that of the man, are
very much alike, we cannot conclude that the correspond-
ing consciousnesses are comparable or commensurable.
But the two brains may perhaps be less alike than we suppose. How can we help being struck by the fact that, while man is capable of learning any sort of exer- cise, of constructing any sort of object, in short of ac- quiring any kind of motor habit whatsoever, the faculty of combining new movements is strictly limited in the best-endowed animal, even in the ape? The cerebral characteristic of man is there. The human brain is made, like every brain, to set up motor mechanisms and to enable us to choose among them, at any instant, the one we shall put in motion by the pull of a trigger. But it differs from other brains in this, that the number of mechanisms it can set up, and consequently the choice that it gives as to which among them shall be released, is unlimited. Now, from the limited to the unlimited there is all the distance between the closed and the open. It is not a difference of degree, but of kind.
Radical therefore, also, is the difference between ani- mal consciousness, even the most intelligent, and human consciousness. For consciousness corresponds exactly to the living being’s power of choice; it is co-extensive with the fringe of possible action that surrounds the real action:
264 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
consciousness is synonymous with invention and with
freedom. Now, in the animal, invention is never any-
thing but a variation on the theme of routine. Shut up
in the habits of the species, it succeeds, no doubt, in en-
larging them by its individual initiative; but it escapes
automatism only for an instant, for just the time to create
a new automatism. The gates of its prison close as soon
as they are opened; by pulling at its chain it succeeds only
in stretching it. With man, consciousness breaks the
chain. In man, and in man alone, it sets itself free. The
whole history of life until man has been that of the effort of
consciousness to raise matter, and of the more or less com-
plete overwhelming of consciousness by the matter which
has fallen back on it. The enterprise was paradoxical,
if, indeed, we may speak here otherwise than by metaphor
of enterprise and of effort. It was to create with matter,
which is necessity itself, an instrument of freedom, to
make a machine which should triumph over mechanism,
and to use the determinism of nature to pass through
the meshes of the net which this very determinism had
spread. But, everywhere except in man, consciousness
has let itself be caught in the net whose meshes it tried
to pass through: it has remained the captive of the
mechanisms it has set up. Automatism, which it tries
to draw in the direction of freedom, winds about it and
drags it down. It has not the power to escape, because
the energy it has provided for acts is almost all employed
in maintaining the infinitely subtle and essentially unstable
equilibrium into which it has brought matter. But man
not only maintains his machine, he succeeds in using it as
he pleases. Doubtless he owes this to the superiority of
his brain, which enables him to build an unlimited number
of motor mechanisms, to oppose new habits to the old
ones unceasingly, and, by dividing automatism against
I. THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 265
itself, to rule it. He owes it to his language, which
furnishes consciousness with an immaterial body in which
to incarnate itself and thus exempts it from dwelling
exclusively on material bodies, whose flux would soon
drag it along and finally swallow it up. He owes it to
social life, which stores and preserves efforts as language
stores thought, fixes thereby a mean level to which in-
dividuals must raise themselves at the outset, and by this
initial stimulation prevents the average man from slum-
bering and drives the superior man to mount still higher.
But our brain, our society, and our language are only the
external and various signs of one and the same internal
superiority. They tell, each after its manner, the unique,
exceptional success which life has won at a given moment
of its evolution. They express the difference of kind,
and not only of degree, which separates man from the rest
of the animal world. They let us guess that, while at the
end of the vast spring-board from which life has taken its
leap, all the others have stepped down, finding the cord
stretched too high, man alone has cleared the obstacle.
It is in this quite special sense that man is the ‘term’
and the ‘“‘end” of evolution. Life, we have said, transcends
finality as it transcends the other categories. It is es-
sentially a current sent through matter, drawing from it
what it can. There has not, therefore, properly speaking,
been any project or plan. On the other hand, it is abun-
dantly evident that the rest of nature is not for the sake of
man: we struggle like the other species, we have struggled
against other species. Moreover, if the evolution of life
had encountered other accidents in its course, if, thereby,
the current of life had been otherwise divided, we should
have been, physically and morally, far different from what
we are. For these various reasons it would be wrong to
regard humanity, such as we have it before our eyes, as
266 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
pre-figured in the evolutionary movement. It cannot
even be said to be the outcome of the whole of evolution,
for evolution has been accomplished on several divergent
lines, and while the human species is at the end of one of
them, other lines have been followed with other species
at their end. It is in a quite different sense that we hold
humanity to be the ground of evolution.
From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave which, starting from a centre, spreads outwards, and which on almost the whole of its circum- ference is stopped and converted into oscillation: at one single point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has passed freely. It is this freedom that the human form registers. Everywhere but in man, consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone it has kept on its way. Man, then, continues the vital movement in- definitely, although he does not draw along with him all that life carries in itself. On other lines of evolution there have traveled other tendencies which life implied, and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man has, doubt- less, kept something, but of which he has kept only very little. Jt is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we will, man or superman, had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way. The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above the accidents of evolution.
From this point of view, the discordances of which nature offers us the spectacle are singularly weakened. The organized world as a whole becomes as the soil on which was to grow either man himself or a being who morally must resemble him. The animals, however distant they may be from our species, however hostile
III.} THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 267
to it, have none the less been useful traveling companions,
on whom consciousness has unloaded whatever encum-
brances it was dragging along, and who have enabled it to
rise, in man, to heights from which it sees an unlimited
horizon open again before it.
It is true that it has not only abandoned cumbersome baggage on the way; it has also had to give up valuable goods. Consciousness, in man, is pre-eminently intellect. It might have been, it ought, so it seems, to have been also intuition. Intuition and intellect represent two opposite directions of the work of consciousness: intuition goes in the very direction of life, intellect goes in the in- verse direction, and thus finds itself naturally in accordance with the movement of matter. A complete and perfect humanity would be that in which these two forms of con- scious activity should attain their full development. And, between this humanity and ours, we may conceive any number of possible stages, corresponding to all the degrees imaginable of intelligence and of intuition. In this lies the part of contingency in the mental structure of our species. A different evolution might have led to a humanity either more intellectual still or more intuitive. In the humanity of which we are a part, intuition is, in fact, almost completely sacrificed to intellect. It seems that to conquer matter, and to reconquer its own self, consciousness has had to exhaust the best part of its power. This conquest, in the particular conditions in which it has been accomplished, has required that consciousness should adapt itself to the habits of matter and concentrate all its attention on them, in fact determine itself more espe- cially as intellect. Intuition is there, however, but vague and above all discontinuous. It is a lamp almost ex- tinguished, which only glimmers now and then, for a few moments at most. But it glimmers wherever a vital
268 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
interest is at stake. On our personality, on our liberty,
on the place we occupy in the whole of nature, on our
origin and perhaps also on our destiny, it throws a light
feeble and vacillating, but which none the less pierces the
darkness of the night in which the intellect leaves us.
These fleeting intuitions, which light up their object only at distant intervals, philosophy ought to seize, first to sustain them, then to expand them and so unite them together. The more it advances in this work, the more will it perceive that intuition is mind itself, and, in a certain sense, life itself: the intellect has been cut out of it by a process resembling that which has generated matter. Thus is revealed the unity of the spiritual life. We recog- nize it only when we place ourselves in intuition in order to go from intuition to the intellect, for from the intellect we shall never pass to intuition.
Philosophy introduces us thus into the spiritual life. And it shows us at the same time the relation of the life of the spirit to that of the body. The great error of the doctrines on the spirit has been the idea that by isolating the spiritual life from all the rest, by suspending it in space as high as possible above the earth, they were placing it beyond attack, as if they were not thereby simply exposing it to be taken as an effect of mirage! Certainly they are right to listen to conscience when conscience affirms human freedom; but the intellect is there, which says that the cause determines its effect, that like conditions like, that all is repeated and that all is given. They are right to believe in the absolute reality of the person and in his independence toward matter; but science is there, which shows the interdependence of conscious life and cerebral activity. They are right to attribute to man a privileged place in nature, to hold that the distance is infinite be- tween the animal and man; but the history of life is there,
iL) THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 269
which makes us witness the genesis of species by gradual
transformation, and seems thus to reintegrate man in ani-
mality. When a strong instinct assures the probability
of personal survival, they are right not to close their ears
to its voice; but if there exist “souls” capable of an in-
dependent life, whence do they come? When, how and
why do they enter into this body which we see arise,
quite naturally, from a mixed cell derived from the bodies
of its two parents? All these questions will remain un-
answered, a philosophy of intuition will be a negation
of science, will be sooner or later swept away by science,
if it does not resolve to see the life of the body just where
it really is, on the road that leads to the life of the spirit.
But it will then no longer have to do with definite living
beings. Life as a whole, from the initial impulsion that
thrust it into the world, will appear as a wave which rises,
and which is opposed by the descending movement of
matter. On the greater part of its surface, at different
heights, the current is converted by matter into a vortex.
At one point alone it passes freely, dragging with it the
obstacle which will weigh on its progress but will not stop
it. At this point is humanity; it is our privileged situation.
On the other hand, this rising wave is consciousness,
and, like all consciousness, it includes potentialities with-
out number which interpenetrate and to which con-
sequently neither the category of unity nor that of multi-
plicity is appropriate, made as they both are for inert
matter. The matter that it bears along with it, and in
the interstices of which it inserts itself, alone can divide
it into distinct individualities. On flows the current,
running through human generations, subdividing itself
into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated
in it, but could not have been made clear without matter.
Thus souls are continually being created, which, never-
270 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
theless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing
else than the little rills into which the great river of life
divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity.
The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed,
although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness
is distinct from the organism it animates, although it
must undergo its vicissitudes. As the possible actions
which a state of consciousness indicates are at every
instant beginning to be carried out in the nervous centres,
the brain underlines at every instant the motor indications
of the state of consciousness; but the interdependency of
consciousness and brain is limited to this; the destiny
of consciousness is not bound up on that account with the
destiny of cerebral matter. Finally, consciousness is
essentially free; it is freedom itself; but it cannot pass
through matter without settling on it, without adapting
itself to it: this adaptation is what we call intellectuality;
and the intellect, turning itself back toward active, that
is to say free, consciousness, naturally makes it enter into
the conceptual forms into which it is accustomed to see
matter fit. It will therefore always perceive freedom
in the form of necessity; it will always neglect the part
of novelty or of creation inherent in the free act; it will
always substitute for action itself an imitation artificial,
approximative, obtained by compounding the old with the
old and the same with the same. Thus, to the eyes of a
philosophy that attempts to reabsorb intellect in intuition,
many difficulties vanish or become light. But such a
doctrine does not only facilitate speculation; it gives us
also more power to act and to live. For, with it, we feel
ourselves no longer isolated in humanity, humanity no
longer seems isolated in the nature that it dominates.
As the smallest grain of dust is bound up with our entire
solar system, drawn along with it in that undivided move-
I.) THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 271
ment of descent which is materiality itself, so all organized
beings, from the humblest to the highest, from the first
origins of life to the time in which we are, and in all places
as in all times, do but evidence a single impulsion, the
inverse of the movement of matter, and in itself indivisible.
All the living hold together, and all yield to the same
tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the
plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity,
in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside
and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming
charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the
most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.
CHAPTER IV THE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND THE MECHANISTIC ILLUSION—-A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF SYSTEMS*—REAL BECOMING AND FALSE EVOLUTIONISM.
Ir remains for us to examine in themselves two theoretical illusions which we have frequently met with before, but whose consequences rather than principle have hitherto concerned us. Such is the object of the present chapter. It will afford us the opportunity of removing certain objections, of clearing up certain misunderstandings, and, above all, of defining more precisely, by contrasting it with others, a philosophy which sees in duration the very stuff of reality.
Matter or mind, reality has appeared to us as a per- petual becoming. It makes itself or it unmakes itself, but it is never something made. Such is the intuition that we have of mind when we draw aside the veil which is interposed between our consciousness and _ ourselves. This, also, is what our intellect and senses themselves would show us of matter, if they could obtain a direct and disinterested idea of it. But, preoccupied before
everything with the necessities of action, the intellect,
1 The part of this chapter which treats of the history of systems, par- ticularly of the Greek philosophy, is only the very succinct résumé of views that we developed at length, from 1900 to 1904, in our lectures at the Collége de France, especially in a course on the History of the Idea of Time (1902-1903). We then compared the mechanism of con- ceptual thought to that of the cinematograph. We believe the comparison will be useful here.
Iv] THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ . 273
liké the senses, is limited to taking, at intervals, views that are instantaneous and by that very fact immobile of the becoming of matter. Consciousness, being in its turn formed on the intellect, sees clearly of the inner life what is already made, and only feels confusedly the making. Thus, we pluck out of duration those moments that interest us, and that we have gathered along its course. These alone we retain. And we are right in so doing, while action only is in question. But when, in speculating on the nature of the real, we go on regarding it as our practi- cal interest requires us to regard it, we become unable to perceive the true evolution, the radical becoming. Of becoming we perceive only states, of duration only in- stants, and even when we speak of duration and of becom- ing, it is of another thing that we are thinking. Such is the most striking of the two illusions we wish to examine. It consists in supposing that we can think the unstable by means of the stable, the moving by means of the im- mobile.
The other illusion is near akin to the first. It has the same origin, being also due to the fact that we import into speculation a procedure made for practice. All action aims at getting something that we feel the want of, or at creating something that does not yet exist. In this very special sense, it fills a void, and goes from the empty to the full, from an absence to a presence, from the unreal to the real. Now the unreality which is here in question is purely relative to the direction in which our attention is engaged, for we are immersed in realities and cannot pass out of them; only, if the present reality is not the one we are seeking, we speak of the absence of this sought- for reality wherever we find the presence of another. We thus express what we have as a function of what we want. This is quite legitimate in the sphere of action. But,
274 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
whether we will or no, we keep to this way of speaking,
and also of thinking, when we speculate on the nature
of things independently of the interest they have for
us. Thus arises the second of the two illusions. We
propose to examine this first. It is due, like the other,
to the static habits that our intellect contracts when it
prepares our action on things. Just as we pass through
the immobile to go to the moving, so we make use of
the void in order to think the full.
We have met with this illusion already in dealing with the fundamental problan of knowledge. The question, we then said, is to know why there is order, and not dis- order, in things. But the question has meaning only if we suppose that disorder, understood as an absence of order, is possible, or imaginable, or conceivable. Now, it is only order that is real; but, as order can take two forms, and as the presence of the one may be said to consist in the absence of the other, we speak of disorder whenever we have before us that one of the two orders for which we are not looking. The idea of disorder is then entirely practical. It corresponds to the disappointment of a certain expectation, and it does not denote the absence of all order, but only the presence of that order which does not offer us actual interest. So that whenever we try to deny order completely, absolutely, we find that we are leap- ing from one kind of order to the other indefinitely, and that the supposed suppression of the one and the other implies the presence of the two. Indeed, if we go on, and persist in shutting our eyes to this movement of the mind and all it involves, we are no longer dealing with an idea; all that is left of disorder is a word. Thus the problem of knowledge is complicated, and possibly made insoluble, by the idea that order fills a void and that its actual presence is superposed on its virtual absence. We
se ee ee ee ee
IV.J THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 275
go from absence to presence, from the void to the full, in
virtue of the fundamental illusion of our understanding.
That is the error of which we noticed one consequence in
our last chapter. As we then anticipated, we must come
to close quarters with this error, and finally grapple with
it. We must face it in itself, in the radically false con-
ception which it implies of negation, of the void and of the
nought.' |
Philosophers have paid little attention to the idea of the nought. And yet it is often the hidden spring, the invisible mover of philosophical thinking. From the first awakening of reflection, it is this that pushes to the fore, right under the eyes of consciousness, the torturing problems, the questions that we cannot gaze at without feeling giddy and bewildered. I have no sooner commenced to philosophize than I ask myself why I exist; and when I take account of the intimate connection in which I stand to the rest of the universe, the difficulty is only pushed back, for I want to know why the universe exists; and if I refer the universe to a Principle immanent or transcendent that supports it or creates it, my thought rests on this principle only a few moments, for the same problem recurs, this time in its full breadth and generality: Whence comes it, and how can it be understood, that anything exists? Even here, in the present work, when matter has been defined as a kind of descent, this descent as the interruption of a rise, this rise itself as a growth, when finally a Principle of creation has been put at the base of things, the same question springs up: How—why does this principle exist rather than nothing?
Now, if I push these questions aside and go straight
1 The analysis of the idea of the nought which we give here (pp. 275-
298) has appeared before in the Revue philosophique (November 1906).
276 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
to what hides behind them, this is what I find:—Exist-
ence appears to me like a conquest over nought. I say
to myself that there might be, that indeed there ought to
be, nothing, and I then wonder that there is something.
Or I represent all reality extended on nothing as on a
carpet: at first was nothing, and being has come by super-
addition to it. Or, yet again, if something has always
existed, nothing must always have served as its substratum
or receptacle, and is therefore eternally prior. A glass
may have always been full, but the liquid it contains never-
theless fills a void. In the same way, being may have
always been there, but the nought which is filled, and, as .
it were, stopped up by it, pre-exists for it none the less, if
not in fact at least in right. In short, I cannot get rid of
the idea that the full is an embroidery on the canvas
of the void, that being is superimposed on nothing, and
that in the idea of “nothing” there is less than in that of
“something.” Hence all the mystery.
It is necessary that this mystery should be cleared up. It is more especially necessary, if we put duration and free choice at the base of things. For the disdain of metaphysics for all reality that endures comes precisely from this, that it reaches being only by passing through ‘“not-being,” and that an existence which endures seems to it not strong enough to conquer non-existence and itself posit itself. It is for this reason especially that it is in- clined to endow true being with a logical, and not a psy- chological nor a physical existence. For the nature of a purely logical existence is such that it seems to be self- sufficient and to posit itself by the effect alone of the force immanent in truth. If I ask myself why bodies or minds exist rather than nothing, I find no answer; but that a logical principle, such as A=A, should have the power of creating itself, triumphing over the nought through-
IV.] THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 277
out eternity, seems to me natural. A circle drawn with
chalk on a blackboard is a thing which needs explanation:
this entirely physical existence has not by itself where-
with to vanquish non-existence. But the ‘logical essence”
of the circle, that is to say, the possibility of drawing it
according to a certain law—in short, its definition—is a
thing which appears to me eternal: it has neither place
nor date; for nowhere, at no moment, has the drawing
of a circle begun to be possible. Suppose, then, that the
principle on which all things rest, and which all things
manifest possesses an existence of the same nature as that
of the definition of the circle, or as that of the axiom
A=A: the mystery of existence vanishes, for the being
that is at the base of everything posits itself then in eternity,
as logic itself does. True, it will cost us rather a heavy
sacrifice: if the principle of all things exists after the
manner of a logical axiom or of a mathematical defini-
tion, the things themselves must go forth from this principle
like the applications of an axiom or the consequences of a
definition, and there will no longer be place, either in the
things nor in their principle, for efficient causality under-
stood in the sense of a free choice. Such are precisely
the conclusions of a doctrine like that of Spinoza, or even
that of Leibniz, and such indeed has been their genesis.
Now, if we could prove that the idea of the nought, in the sense in which we take it when we oppose it to that of existence, is a pseudo-idea, the problems that are raised around it would become pseudo-problems. The hypothesis of an absolute that acts freely, that in an eminent sense endures, would no longer raise up intel- lectual prejudices. The road would be cleared for a philosophy more nearly approaching intuition, and which would no longer ask the same sacrifices of common sense.
278 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
Let us then see what we are thinking about when we
speak of “Nothing.” To represent “Nothing,” we must
either imagine it or conceive it. Let us examine what
this image or this idea may be. First, the image.
I am going to close my eyes, stop my ears, extinguish one by one the sensations that come to me from the outer world. Now it is done; all my perceptions vanish, the material universe sinks into silence and the night.—I subsist, however, and cannot help myself subsisting. I am still there, with the organic sensations which come to me from the surface and from the interior of my body, with the recollections which my past perceptions have left behind them—nay, with the impression, most positive and full, of the void I have just made about me. How can I suppress all this? How eliminate myself? I can even, it may be, blot out and forget my recollections up to my immediate past; but at least I keep the consciousness of my present reduced to its extremest poverty, that is to say, of the actual state of my body. I will try, howéver, to do away even with this consciousness itself. I will reduce more and more the sensations my body sends in to me: now they are almost gone; now they are gone, they have disappeared in the night where all things else have already died away. But no! At the very instant that my consciousness is extinguished, another consciousness lights up—or rather, it was already alight: it had arisen the instant before, in order to witness the extinction of the first; for the first could disappear only for another and in the presence of another. I see myself annihilated only if I have already resuscitated myself by an act which is positive, however involuntary and unconscious. So, do what I will, I am always perceiving something, either from without or from within. When I no longer know anything of external objects, it is because I have taken refuge in
1 THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ _— 279
the consciousness that I have of myself. IfI abolish this
inner self, its very abolition becomes an object for an
imaginary self which now perceives as an external object
the self that is dying away. Be it external or internal,
some object there always is that my imagination is repre-
senting. My imagination, it is true, can go from one to
the other, I can by turns imagine a nought of external
perception or a nought of internal perception, but not both
at once, for the absence of one consists, at bottom, in the
exclusive presence of the other. But, from the fact that
two relative noughts are imaginable in turn, we wrongly
conclude that they are imaginable together: a conclusion
the absurdity of which must be obvious, for we cannot
imagine a nought without perceiving, at least confusedly,
that we are imagining it, consequently that we are acting,
that we are thinking, and therefore that something still
subsists.
The image, then, properly so called, of a suppression of everything is never formed by thought. The effort by which we strive to create this image simply ends in making us swing to and fro between the vision of an outer and that of an inner reality. In this coming and going of our mind between the without and the within, there is a point, at equal distance from both, in which it seems to us that we no longer perceive the one, and that we do not yet perceive the other: it is there that the image of “Nothing” is formed. In reality, we then perceive both, having reached the point where the two terms come to- gether, and the image of Nothing, so defined, is an image full of things, an image that includes at once that of the subject and that of the object and, besides, a perpetual leaping from one to the other and the refusal ever to come to rest finally on either. Evidently this is not the nothing that we can oppose to being, and put before or be-
280 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
neath being, for it already includes existence in general.
But we shall be told that, if the representation of Noth- ing, visible or latent, enters into the reasonings of philoso- phers, it is not as an image, but as an idea. It may be agreed that we do not imagine the annihilation of every- thing, but it will be claimed that we can conceive it. We conceive a polygon with a thousand sides, said Descartes, although we do not see it in imagination: it is enough that we can clearly represent the possibility of constructing it. So with the idea of the annihilation of everything. Noth- ing simpler, it will be said, than the procedure by which we construct the idea of it. There is, in fact, not a single object of our experience that we cannot suppose annihilated. Extend this annihilation of a first object to a second, then to a third, and so on as long as you please: the nought is the limit toward which the operation tends. And the nought so defined is the annihilation of everything. That is the theory. We need only consider it in this form to see the absurdity it involves.
An idea constructed by the mind is an idea only if its pieces are capable of coexisting; it is reduced to a mere word if the elements that we bring together to com- pose it are driven away as fast as we assemble them. When I have defined the circle, I easily represent a black or a white circle, a circle in cardboard, iron, or brass, a transparent or an opaque circle—but not a square circle, because the law of the generation of the circle excludes the possibility of defining this figure with straight lines. So my mind can represent any existing thing whatever as annihilated;—but if the annihilation of anything by the mind is an operation whose mechanism implies that it works on a part of the whole, and not on the whole itself, then the extension of such an operation to the totality of things becomes self-contradictory and absurd, and the
IV.1 THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 281
idea of an annihilation of everything presents the same
character as that of a square circle: it is not an idea, it
is only a word. So let us examine more closely the
mechanism of the operation.
In fact, the object suppressed is either external or internal: it is a thing or it is a state of consciousness. Let us consider the first case. I annihilate in thought an external object: in the place where it was, there is no longer anything—No longer anything of that object, of course, but another object has taken its place: there is no absolute void in nature. But admit that an absolute void is possible : it is not of that void that I am thinking when I say that the object, once annihilated, leaves its place unoccupied; for by the hypothesis it is a place, that is a void limited by precise outlines, or, in other words, a kind of thing. The void of which I speak, therefore, is, at bottom, only the absence of some definite object, which was here at first, is now elsewhere and, in so far as it is no longer in its former place, leaves behind it, so to speak, the void of itself. A being unendowed with memory or prevision would not use the words “void” or “nought;” he would express only what is and what is perceived; now, what is, and what is perceived, is the presence of one thing or of another, never the absence of anything. There is absence only for a being capable of remem- bering and expecting. He remembered an object, and perhaps expected to encounter it again; he finds another, and he expresses the disappointment of his expectation (an expectation sprung from recollection) by saying that he no longer finds anything, that he encounters “nothing.” Even if he did not expect to encounter the object, it is a possible expectation of it, it is still the falsification of his eventual expectation that he expresses by saying that the object is no longer where it was. What he perceives in
282 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
reality, what he will succeed in effectively thinking of,
is the presence of the old object in a new place or that of a
new object in the old place; the rest, all that is expressed
negatively by such words as ‘‘nought”’ or the “void,” is
not so much thought as feeling, or, to speak more exactly,
it is the tinge that feeling gives to thought. The idea
of annihilation or of partial nothingness is therefore
formed here in the course of the substitution of one
thing for another, whenever this substitution is thought
by a mind that would prefer to keep the old thing in
the place of the new, or at least conceives this prefer-
ence as possible. The idea implies on the subjective
side a preference, on the objective side a substitution,
and is nothing else but a combination of, or rather an
interference between, this feeling of preference and this
idea of substitution.
Such is the mechanism of the operation by which our mind annihilates an object and succeeds in represent- ing in the external world a partial nought. Let us now see how it represents it within itself. We find in our- selves phenomena that are produced, and not phenomena that are not produced. I experience a sensation or an emotion, I conceive an idea, I form a resolution: my consciousness perceives these facts, which are so many presences, and there is no moment in which facts of this kind are not present to me. I can, no doubt, interrupt by thought the course of my inner life; I may suppose that I sleep without dreaming or that I have ceased to exist; but at the very instant when I make this supposi- tion, I conceive myself, I imagine myself watching over my slumber or surviving my annihilation, and I give up per- ceiving myself from within only by taking refuge in the perception of myself from without. That is to say that here again the full always succeeds the full, and that an
wa THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 283
intelligence that was only intelligence, that had neither
regret nor desire, whose movement was governed by
the movement of its object, could not even conceive an
absence or a void. The conception of a void arises
here when consciousness, lagging behind itself, remains
attached to the recollection of an old state when another
state is already present. It is only a comparison be-
tween what is and what could or ought to be, between
the full and the full. In a word, whether it be a void of
matter or a void of consciousness, the representation of
the void is always a representation which is full and which
resolves itself on analysis into two positive elements: the idea,
distinct or confused, of a substitution, and the feeling, ex-
pervenced or imagined, of a desire or a regret.
It follows from this double analysis that the idea of the absolute nought, in the sense of the annihilation of everything, is a self-destructive idea, a pseudo-idea, a mere word. If suppressing a thing consists in replacing it by another, if thinking the absence of one thing is only possible by the more or less explicit representation of the presence of some other thing, if, in short, anni- hilation signifies before anything else substitution, the idea of an “annihilation of everything” is as absurd as that of a square circle. The absurdity is not obvious, because there exists no particular object that cannot be supposed annihilated; then, from the fact that there is nothing to prevent each thing in turn being suppressed in thought, we conclude that it is possible to suppose them sup- pressed altogether. We do not see that suppressing each thing in turn consists precisely in replacing it in proportion and degree by another, and therefore that the suppression of absolutely everything implies a downright contradic- tion in terms, since the operation consists in destroy- ing the very condition that makes the operation possible.
284 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
But the illusion is tenacious. Though suppressing
one thing consists 7m fact in substituting another for it,
we do not conclude, we are unwilling to conclude, that
the annihilation of a thing in thought implies the sub-
stitution in thought of a new thing for the old. We
agree that a thing is always replaced by another thing,
and even that our mind cannot think the disappearance
of an object, external or internal, without thinking—
under an indeterminate and confused form, it is true—
that another object is substituted for it. But we add
that the representation of a disappearance is that of a
phenomenon that is produced in space or at least in time,
that consequently it still implies the calling up of an
image, and that it is precisely here that we have to free
ourselves from the imagination in order to appeal to
the pure understanding. “Let us therefore no longer
speak,” it will be said, “of disappearance or annihilation;
these are physical operations. Let us no longer repre-
sent the object A as annihilated or absent. Let us say
simply that we think it “non-existent.” To annihilate
it is to act on it in time and perhaps also in space; it
is to accept, consequently, the condition of spatial and
temporal existence, to accept the universal connection
that binds an object to all others, and prevents it from
disappearing without being at the same time replaced.
But we can free ourselves from these conditions; all
that is necessary is that by an effort of abstraction we
should call up the idea of the object A by itself, that
we should agree first to consider it as existing, and then,
by a stroke of the intellectual pen, blot out the clause.
The object will then be, by our decree, non-existent.”
Very well, let us strike out the clause. We must not suppose that our pen-stroke is self-sufficient—that it can be isolated from the rest of things. We shall see
Iv.) THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 285
that it carries with it, whether we will or no, all that we
tried to abstract from. Let us compare together the two
ideas—the object A supposed to exist, and the same
object supposed ‘‘ non-existent.”
The idea of the object A, supposed existent, is the representation pure and simple of the object A, for we cannot represent an object without attributing to it, by the very fact of representing it, a certain reality. Be- tween thinking an object and thinking it existent, there is absolutely no difference. Kant has put this point in clear light in his criticism of the ontological argument. Then, what is it to think the object A non-existent? To represent it non-existent cannot consist in withdrawing from the idea of the object A the idea of the attribute “existence,” since, I repeat, the representation of the existence of the object is inseparable from the representation of the object, and indeed is one with it. To represent the object A non-existent can only consist, therefore, in adding something to the idea of this object: we add to it, in fact, the idea of an exclusion of this particular object by actual reality in general. To think the object A as non- existent is first to think the object and consequently to think it existent; it is then to think that another reality, with which it is incompatible, supplants it. Only, it is useless to represent this latter reality explicitly; we are not concerned with what it is; it is enough for us to know that it drives out the object A, which alone is of interest to us. That is why we think of the expulsion rather than of the cause which expels. But this cause is none the less present to the mind; it is there in the implicit state, that which expels being inseparable from the expulsion as the hand which drives the pen is inseparable from the pen-stroke. The act by which we declare an object unreal therefore posits the existence of the real in general.
286 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
In other words, to represent an object as unreal cannot
consist in depriving it of every kind of existence, since the
representation of an object is necessarily that of the object
existing. Such an act consists simply in declaring that the
existence attached by our mind to the object, and in-
separable from its representation, is an existence wholly
ideal—that of a mere possible. But the “ideality” of an
object, and the ‘‘simple possibility” of an object, have
meaning only in relation to a reality that drives into the
region of the ideal, or of the merely possible, the object
which is incompatible with it. Suppose the stronger and
more substantial existence annihilated: it is the attenuated
and weaker existence of the merely possible that becomes
the reality itself, and you will no longer be representing
the object, then, as non-existent. In other words, and
however strange our assertion may seem, there is more,
and not less, in the idea of an object conceived as ‘‘not exist-
ing’ than in the idea of this same object conceived as “ exist-
ung’; for the idea of the object “‘not existing” is necessarily
the idea of the object ‘‘existing’”’ with, in addition, the repre-
sentation of an exclusion of this object by the actual reality
taken in block.
But it will be claimed that our idea of the non-existent is not yet sufficiently cut loose from every imaginative element, that it is not negative enough. “No matter,” we shall be told, ‘though the unreality of a thing consist in its exclusion by other things; we want to know nothing about that. Are we not free to direct our attention where we please and how we please? Well then, after having called up the idea of an object, and thereby, if you will have it so, supposed it existent, we shall merely couple to our affirmation a ‘not,’ and that will be enough to make us think it non-existent. This is an operation entirely intellectual, independent of what happens outside the
IV.) THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 287
mind. So let us think of anything or let us think of the
totality of things, and then write in the margin of our
thought the ‘not,’ which prescribes the rejection of what it
contains: we annihilate everything mentally by the
mere fact of decreeing its annihilation.”—Here we have
it! The very root of all the difficulties and errors with
which we are confronted is to be found in the power ascribed
here to negation. We represent negation as exactly
symmetrical with affirmation. We imagine that negation,
like affirmation, is self-sufficient. So that negation, like
affirmation, would have the power of creating ideas, with
this sole difference that they would be negative ideas.
By affirming one thing, and then another, and so on ad
infinitum, I form the idea of “All;’ so, by denying one
thing and then other things, finally by denying All, I
arrive at the idea of Nothing.—But it is just this assimila-
tion which is arbitrary. We fail to see that while affirma-
tion is a complete act of the mind, which can succeed in
building up an idea, negation is but the half of an intel-
lectual act, of which the other half is understood, or rather
put off to an indefinite future. We fail to see that while
affirmation is a purely intellectual act, there enters into
negation an element which is not intellectual, and that it
is precisely to the intrusion of this foreign element that
negation owes its specific character.
To begin with the second point, let us note that to deny always consists in setting aside a possible affirma- tion.. Negation is only an attitude taken by the mind toward an eventual affirmation. When I say, “This table is black,” I am speaking of the table; I have seen
1 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd edition, p. 737: ‘‘ From the point
of view of our knowledge in general . . . the peculiar function of
negative propositions is simply to prevent error.” Cf. Sigwart, Logik,
2nd edition, vol. i. pp. 150 ff.
288 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
it black, and my judgment expresses what I have seen.
But if I say, “This table is not white,” I surely do not
express something I have perceived, for I have seen black,
and not an absence of white. It is therefore, at bottom,
not on the table itself that I bring this judgment to bear,
but rather on the judgment that would declare the table
white. I judge a judgment and not the table. The
proposition, ‘‘This table is not white,” implies that you
might believe it white, that you did believe it such, or that
I was going to believe it such. I warn you or myself that
this judgment is to be replaced by another (which, it is
true, I leave undetermined). Thus, while affirmation
bears directly on the thing, negation aims at the thing only
indirectly, through an interposed affirmation. An affirma-
tive proposition expresses a judgment on an object; a
negative proposition expresses a judgment on a judgment.
Negation, therefore, differs from affirmation properly so
called in that it is an affirmation of the second degree:
wt affirms something of an affirmation which itself affirms
something of an object.
But it follows at once from this that negation is not the work of pure mind, I should say of a mind placed before objects and concerned with them alone. When we deny, we give a lesson to others, or it may be to our- selves. We take to task an interlocutor, real or possible, whom we find mistaken and whom we put on his guard. He was affirming something: we tell him he ought to affirm something else (though without specifying the affirmation which must be substituted). There is no longer then, simply, a person and an object; there is, in face of the object, a person speaking to a person, oppos- ing him and aiding him at the same time; there is a be- ginning of society. Negation aims at some one, and not only, like a purely intellectual operation, at some thing.
IV.] THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ | 289
It is of a pedagogical and social nature. It sets straight
or rather warns, the person warned and set straight being
possibly, by a kind of doubling, the very person that
speaks.
So much for the second point; now for the first. We said that negation is but the half of an intellectual act, of which the other half is left indeterminate. If I pro- nounce the negative proposition, ‘‘ This table is not white,” I mean that you ought to substitute for your judgment, “The table is white,” another judgment. I give you an admonition, and the admonition refers to the necessity of a substitution. As to what you ought to substitute for your affirmation, I tell you nothing, it is true. This may be because I do not know the color of the table; but it is also, it is indeed even more, because the white color is that alone that interests us for the moment, so that I only need to tell you that some other color will have to be substituted for white, without having to say which. A negative judgment is therefore really one which indicates a need of substituting for an affirmative judgment another affirmative judgment, the nature of which, however, is not specified, sometimes because it is not known, more often because it fails to offer any actual interest, the attention bearing only on the substance of the first.
Thus, whenever I add a “not” to an affirmation, when- ever I deny, I perform two very definite acts: (1) I interest myself in what one of my fellow-men affirms, or in what he was going to say, or in what might have been said by an- other Me, whom I anticipate; (2) I announce that some other affirmation, whose content I do not specify, will have to be substituted for the one I find before me. Now, in neither of these two acts is there anything but affirma- tion. The sui generis character of negation is due to superimposing the first of these acts upon the second.
290 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
It is in vain, then, that we attribute to negation the power
of creating ideas sui generis, symmetrical with those that
affirmation creates, and directed in a contrary sense. No
idea will come forth from negation, for it has no other
content than that of the affirmative judgment which it
judges.
-To be more precise, let us consider an existential, in- stead of an attributive, judgment. If I say, ‘The object A does not exist,” I mean by that, first, that we might believe that the object A exists: how, indeed, can we think of the object A without thinking it existing, and, once again, what difference can there be between the idea of the object A existing and the idea pure and simple of the object A? Therefore, merely by saying “The object A,” I attribute to it some kind of existence, though it be that of a mere possible, that is to say, of a pure idea. And consequently, in the judgment “The object A is not,” there is at first an affirmation such as “The object A has been,” or ‘The object A will be,” or, more generally, “The object A exists at least as a mere possible.” Now, when I add the two words “‘is not,” I can only mean that if we go further, if we erect the possible object into a real object, we shall be mistaken, and that the possible of which I am speaking is excluded from the actual reality as incompatible with it. Judgments that posit the non- existence of a thing are therefore judgments that formu- late a contrast between the possible and the actual (that is, between two kinds of existence, one thought and the other found), where a person, real or imaginary, wrongly believes that a certain possible is realized. Instead of this possible, there is a reality that differs from it and re- jects it: the negative judgment expresses this contrast, but it expresses the contrast in an intentionally incomplete form, because it is addressed to a person who is sup-
IV.) THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 291
posed to be interested exclusively in the possible that is
indicated, and is not concerned to know by what kind
of reality the possible is replaced. The expression of
the substitution is therefore bound to be cut short. In-
stead of affirming that a second term is substituted for
the first, the attention which was originally directed to
the first term will be kept fixed upon it, and upon # alone.
And, without going beyond the first, we shall implicitly
affirm that a second term replaces it in saying that the
first “is not.” We shall thus judge a judgment instead
of judging a thing. We shall warn others or warn our-
selves of a possible error instead of supplying positive
information. Suppress every intention of this kind, give
knowledge back its exclusively scientific or philosophical
character, suppose in other words that reality comes itself
to inscribe itself on a mind that cares only for things and
is not interested in persons: we shall affirm that such or
such a thing is, we shall never affirm that a thing is not.
How comes it, then, that affirmation and negation
are so persistently put on the same level and endowed
with an equal objectivity? How comes it that we have
so much difficulty in recognizing that negation is sub-
jective, artificially cut short, relative to the human mind
and still more to the social life? The reason is, no doubt,
that both negation and affirmation are expressed in propo-
sitions, and that any proposition, being formed of words,
which symbolize concepts, is something relative to social
life and to the human intellect. Whether I say “The
ground is damp” or “The ground is not damp,” in both
cases the terms “ground” and “damp” are concepts more
or less artificially created by the mind of man—extracted,
by his free initiative, from the continuity of experience.
In both cases the concepts are represented by the same
conventional words. In both cases we can say indeed
292 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
that the proposition aims at a social and pedagogical end,
since the first would propagate a truth as the second would
prevent an error. From this point of view, which is
that of formal logic, to affirm and to deny are indeed
two mutually symmetrical acts, of which the first estab-
lishes a relation of agreement and the second a relation
of disagreement between a subject and an attribute.
But how do we fail to see that the symmetry is altogether
external and the likeness superficial? Suppose language
fallen into disuse, society dissolved, every intellectual
initiative, every faculty of self-reflection and of self-
judgment atrophied in man: the dampness of the ground
will subsist none the less, capable of inscribing itself auto-
matically in sensation and of sending a vague idea to the
deadened intellect. The intellect will still affirm, in implicit
terms. And consequently, neither distinct concepts, nor
words, nor the desire of spreading the truth, nor that of
bettering oneself, are of the very essence of the affirmation.
But this passive intelligence, mechanically keeping step
with experience, neither anticipating nor following the
course of the real, would have no wish to deny. It could
not receive an imprint of negation; for, once again, that
which exists may come to be recorded, but the non-ex-
istence of the non-existing cannot. For such an intellect
to reach the point of denying, it must awake from its torpor,
formulate the disappointment of a real or possible expect-
ation, correct an actual or possible error—in short, propose
to teach others or to teach itself.
It is rather difficult to perceive this in the example we have chosen, but the example is indeed the more in- structive and the argument the more cogent on that account. If dampness is able automatically to come and record itself, it is the same, it will be said, with non-damp- ness; for the dry as well as the damp can give impressions
IV.] THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 293
to sense, which will transmit them, as more or less distinct
ideas, to the intelligence. In this sense the negation
of dampness is as objective a thing, as purely intellectual,
as remote from every pedagogical intention, as affirmation.
—But let us look at it more closely: we shall see that the
negative proposition, “The ground is not damp,” and the
affirmative proposition, “The ground is dry,” have en-
tirely different contents. The second implies that we
know the dry, that we have experienced the specific
sensations, tactile or visual for example, that are at the
base of this idea. The first requires nothing of the sort;
it could equally well have been formulated by an intelligent
fish, who had never perceived anything but the wet. It
would be necessary, it is true, that this fish should have
risen to the distinction between the real and the possible,
and that he should care to anticipate the error of his
fellow-fishes, who doubtless consider as alone possible
the condition of wetness in which they actually live. Keep
strictly to the terms of the proposition, “The ground is
not damp,” and you will find that it means two things:
(1) that one might believe that the ground is damp, (2)
that the dampness is replaced in fact by a certain quality z.
This quality is left indeterminate, either because we have
no positive knowledge of it, or because it has no actual
interest for the person to whom the negation is addressed.
To deny, therefore, always consists in presenting in
an abridged form a system of two affirmations: the one
determinate, which applies to a certain possible; the
other indeterminate, referring to the unknown or in-
different reality that supplants this possibility. The
second affirmation is virtually contained in the judgment
we apply to the first, a judgment which is negation it-
self. And what gives negation its subjective character
is precisely this, that in the discovery of a replacement
294 CREATIVE EVOLUTION | (CHAP.
it takes account only of the replaced, and is not con-
cerned with what replaces. The replaced exists only
as a conception of the mind. It is necessary, in order
to continue to see it, and consequently in order to speak
of it, to turn our back on the reality, which flows from the
past to the present, advancing from behind. It is this
that we do when we deny. We discover the change,
or more generally the substitution, as a traveller would
see the course of his carriage if he looked out behind, and
only knew at each moment the point at which he had
ceased to be; he could never determine his actual position
except by relation to that which he had just quitted, in-
stead of grasping it in itself.
To sum up, for a mind which: should follow purely and simply the thread of experience, there would be no void, no nought, even relative or partial, no possible negation. Such a mind would see facts succeed facts, states succeed states, things succeed things. What it would note at each moment would be things existing, states appearing, events happening. It would live in the actual, and, if it were capable of judging, it would never affirm anything except the existence of the present.
Endow this mind with memory, and especially with the desire to dwell on the past; give it the faculty of dissociating and. of distinguishing: it will no longer only note the present state of the passing reality; it will repre- sent the passing as a change, and therefore as a contrast between what has been and what is. And as there is no essential difference between a past that we remember and a past that we imagine, it will quickly rise to the idea of the “‘ possible’ in general.
It will thus be shunted on to the siding of negation. And especially it will be at the point of representing a disappearance. But it will not yet have reached it.
Iv] THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 295
To represent that a thing has disappeared, it is not enough
to perceive a contrast between the past and the present;
it is necessary besides to turn our back on the present,
to dwell on the past, and to think the contrast of the past
with the present in terms of the past only, without letting
the present appear in it.
The idea of annihilation is therefore not a pure idea; it implies that we regret the past or that we conceive it as regrettable, that we have some reason to linger over it. The idea arises when the phenomenon of substitition is cut in two by a mind which considers only the first half, because that alone interests it. Suppress all interest, all feeling, and there is nothing left but the reality that flows, together with the knowledge ever renewed that it impresses on us of its present state.
From annihilation to negation, which is a more general operation, there is now only a step. All that is necessary is to represent the contrast of what is, not only with what ~ has been, but also with all that might have been. And we must express this contrast as a function of what might have been, and not of what is; we must affirm the existence of the actual while looking only at the possible. The formula we thus obtain no longer expresses merely a disappointment of the individual; it is made to correct or guard against an error, which is rather supposed to be the error of another. In this sense, negation has a peda- gogical and social character.
Now, once negation is formulated, it presents an aspect symmetrical with that of affirmation; if affirmation affirms an objective reality, it seems that negation must affirm a non-reality equally objective, and, so to say, equally real. In which we are both right and wrong: wrong, because negation cannot be objectified, in so far as it is negative; right, however, in that the negation of a thing
296 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
implies the latent affirmation of its replacement by some-
thing else, which we systematically leave on one side.
But the negative form of negation benefits by the affirma-
tion at the bottom of it. Bestriding the positive solid
reality to which it is attached, this phantom objectifies
itself. Thus is formed the idea of the void or of a partial
nought, a thing being supposed to be replaced, not by
another thing, but by a void which it leaves, that is, by
the negation of itself. Now, as this operation works on
anything whatever, we suppose it performed on each thing
in turn, and finally on all things in block. We thus obtain
the idea of absolute Nothing. If now we analyze this idea
of Nothing, we find that it is, at bottom, the idea of
Everything, together with a movement of the mind that
keeps jumping from one thing to another, refuses to stand
still, and concentrates all its attention on this refusal by
never determining its actual position except by relation
to that which it has just left. It is therefore an idea
eminently comprehensive and full, as full and compre-
hensive as the idea of All, to which it is very closely akin.
How then can the idea of Nought be opposed to that
of All? Is it not plain that this is to oppose the full to
the full, and that the question, “Why does something
exist?’ is consequently without meaning, a pseudo-
problem raised about a pseudo-idea? Yet we must say
once more why this phantom of a problem haunts the mind
with such obstinacy. In vain do we show that in the
idea of an “annihilation of the real” there is only the image
of all realities expelling one another endlessly, in a circle;
in vain do we add that the idea of non-existence is only
that of the expulsion of an imponderable existence, or a
“merely possible” existence, by a more substantial ex-
istence which would then be the true reality; in vain do we
find in the suz generis form of negation an element which
W.) THE IDEA OF ‘NOTHING’ 297
is not intellectual—negation being the judgment of a
judgment, an admonition given to some one else or to
oneself, so that it is absurd to attribute to negation the
power of creating ideas of a new kind, viz. ideas without
content ;—in spite of all, the conviction persists that before
things, or at least under things, there is “Nothing.” If
we seek the reason of this fact, we shall find it precisely
in the feeling, in the social and, so to speak, practical
element, that gives its specific form to negation. The
greatest philosophic difficulties arise, as we have said,
from the fact that the forms of human action venture
outside of their proper sphere. We are made in order
to act as much as, and more than, in order to think—
or rather, when we follow the bent of our nature, it is in
order to act that we think. It is therefore no wonder
that the habits of action give their tone to those of thought,
and that our mind always perceives things in the same
order in which we are accustomed to picture them when we
propose to act on them. Now, it is unquestionable, as
we remarked above, that every human action has its
starting-point in a dissatisfaction, and thereby in a feeling
of absence. We should not act if we did not set before
ourselves an end, and we seek a thing only because we feel
the lack of it. Our action proceeds thus from “nothing”
to “something,” and its very essence is to embroider
“something” on the canvas of “nothing.” The truth
is that the “nothing” concerned here is the absence not
so much of a thing as of a utility. If I bring a visitor
into a room that I have not yet furnished, I say to him
that ‘there is nothing in it.” Yet I know the room is
full of air; but, as we do not sit on air, the room truly
contains nothing that at this moment, for the visitor
and for myself, counts for anything. In a general way,
human work consists in creating utility; and, as long as
298 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
the work is not done, there is ‘‘nothing”—nothing that we
want. Our life is thus spent in filling voids, which our
intellect conceives under the influence, by no means
intellectual, of desire and of regret, under the pressure of
vital necessities; and if we mean by void an absence of
utility and not of things, we may say, in this quite relative
sense, that we are constantly going from the void to the
full: such is the direction which our action takes. Our
speculation cannot help doing the same; and, naturally,
it passes from the relative sense to the absolute sense,
since it is exercised on things themselves and not on the
utility they have for us. Thus is implanted in us the idea
that reality fills a void, and that Nothing, conceived as
an absence of everything, pre-exists before all things in
right, if not in fact. It is this illusion that we have tried
to remove by showing that the idea of Nothing, if we try
to see in it that of an annihilation of all things, is self-
destructive and reduced to a mere word; and that if, on
the contrary, it is truly an idea, then we find in it as much
matter as in the idea of All.
This long analysis has been necessary to show that
a self-sufficient reality 1s not necessarily a reality foreign
to duration. If we pass (consciously or unconsciously)
through the idea of the nought in order to reach that
of being, the being to which we come is a logical or mathe-
matical essence, therefore non-temporal. And, conse-
quently, a static conception of the real is forced on us:
everything appears given once for all, in eternity. But
we must accustom ourselves to think being directly,
without making a detour, without first appealing to
the phantom of the nought which interposes itself be-
tween it and us. We must strive to see in order to see,
and no longer to see in order to.act. Then the Absolute
VI.) FORM AND BECOMING ~ 299
is revealed very near us and, in a certain measure, in us.
It is of psychological and not of mathematical nor logical
essence. It lives with us. Like us, but in certain aspects
infinitely more concentrated and more gathered up in
itself, it endures.
But do we ever think true duration? Here again a direct taking possession is necessary. It is no use trying to approach duration: we must install ourselves within it straight away. This is what the intellect gener- ally refuses to do, accustomed as it is to think the moving by means of the unmovable.
The function of the intellect is to preside over actions. Now, in action, it is the result that interests us; the means matter little provided the end is attained. Thence it comes that we are altogether bent on the end to be realized, generally trusting ourselves to it in order that the idea may become an act; and thence it comes also that only the goal where our activity will rest is pictured explicitly to our mind: the movements constituting the action itself either elude our consciousness or reach it only confusedly. Let us consider a very simple act, like that of lifting the arm. Where should we be if we had to imagine beforehand all the elementary contractions and tensions this act involves, or even to perceive them, one by one, as they are accomplished? But the mind is carried immediately to the end, that is to say, to the schematic and simplified vision of the act supposed accomplished. Then, if no antagonistic idea neutralizes the effect of the first idea, the appropriate movements come of themselves to fill out the plan, drawn in some way by the void of its gaps. The intellect, then, only represents to the activity ends to attain, that is to say, points of rest. And, from one end attained to another end attained, from one rest to another rest, our activity is carried by a series of leaps, during
300 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
which our consciousness is turned away as much as possible
from the movement going on, to regard only the anticipated
image of the movement accomplished.
Now, in order that it may represent as unmovable the result of the act which is being accomplished, the intellect must perceive, as also unmovable, the surround- ings in which this result is being framed. Our activity is fitted into the material world. If matter appeared to us as a perpetual flowing, we should assign no termina- tion to any of our actions. We should feel each of them dissolve as fast as it was accomplished, and we should not anticipate an ever-fleeting future. In order that our activity may leap from an act to an act, it is necessary that matter should pass from a state to a state, for it is only into a state of the material world that action can fit a result, so as to be accomplished. But is it thus that matter presents itself? 7
A priort we may presume that our perception manages to apprehend matter with this bias. Sensory organs and motor organs are in fact codrdinated with each other. Now, the first symbolize our faculty of perceiving, as the second our faculty of acting. The organism thus evidences, in a visible and tangible form, the perfect accord of per- ception. and action. So if our activity always aims at a result into which it is momentarily fitted, our perception must retain of the material world, at every moment, only a state in which it is provisionally placed. This is the most natural hypothesis. And it is easy to see that experience confirms it.
From our first glance at the world, before we even make our bodies in it, we distinguish qualities. Color succeeds to color, sound to sound, resistance to resist- ance, etc. Each of these qualities, taken separately, is a state that seems to persist as such, immovable until an-
IV.) FORM AND BECOMING 301
other replaces it. Yet each of these qualities resolves
itself, on analysis, into an enormous number of elementary
movements. Whether we see in it vibrations or whether .
we represent it in any other way, one fact is certain, it
is that every quality is change. In vain, moreover, shall
we seek beneath the change the thing which changes:
it is always provisionally, and in order to satisfy our
imagination, that we attach the movement to a mobile.
The mobile flies for ever before the pursuit of science,
which is concerned with mobility alone. In the smallest
discernible fraction of a second, in the almost instantaneous
perception of a sensible quality, there may be trillions
of oscillations which repeat themselves. The permanence
of a sensible quality consists in this repetition of move-
ments, as the persistence of life consists in a series of pal-
pitations. The primal function of perception is precisely
to grasp a series of elementary changes under the form of
a quality or of a simple state, by a work of condensation.
The greater the power of acting bestowed upon an animal
species, the more numerous, probably, are the elementary
changes that its faculty of perceiving concentrates into
one of its instants. And the progress must be continuous,
in nature, from the beings that vibrate almost in unison
with the oscillations of the ether, up to those that embrace
trillions of these oscillations in the shortest of their simple
perceptions. The first feel hardly anything but move-
ments; the others perceive quality. The first are almost
caught up in the running-gear of things; the others react,
and the tension of their faculty of acting is probably pro-
portional to the concentration of their faculty of per-
ceiving. The progress goes on even in humanity itself.
A man is so much the more a “man of action” as he can
embrace in a glance a greater number of events: he who
perceives successive events one by one will allow himself
302 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
to be led by them; he who grasps them as a whole will
dominate them. In short, the qualities of matter are so
many stable views that we take of its instability.
Now, in the continuity of sensible qualities we mark off the boundaries of bodies. Each of these bodies really changes at every moment. In the first place, it resolves itself into a group of qualities, and every quality, as we said, consists of a succession of elementary movements. But, even if we regard the quality as a stable state, the body is still unstable in that it changes qualities without ceasing. The body pre-eminently—that which we are most justified in isolating within the continuity of matter, because it constitutes a relatively closed system—is the living body; it is, moreover, for it that we cut out the others within the whole. Now, life is an evolution. We concentrate a period of this evolution in a stable view which we call a form, and, when the change has become considerable enough to overcome the fortunate inertia of our per- ception, we say that the body has changed its form. But in reality the body is changing form at every moment; or rather, there is no form, since form is immobile and the reality is movement. What is real is the continual change of form: form ts only a snapshot view of a transition. There- fore, here again, our perception manages to solidify into discontinuous images the fluid continuity of the real. When the successive images do not differ from each other too much, we consider them all as the waxing and waning of a single mean image, or as the deformation of this image in different directions. And to this mean we really allude when we speak of the essence of a thing, or of the thing itself.
Finally things, once constituted, show on the surface, by their changes of situation, the profound changes that are being accomplished within the Whole. We say then
Vv. FORM AND BECOMING — 308
that they act on one another. This action appears to
us, no doubt, in the form of movement. But from the
mobility of the movement we turn away as much as we
can; what interests us is, as we said above, the unmovable
plan of the movement rather than the movement itself.
Is it a simple movement? We ask ourselves where it is
going. It is by its direction, that is to say, by the position
of its provisional end, that we represent it at every moment.
Is it a complex movement? We would know above all
what is going on, what the movement is doing—in other
words, the result obtained or the presiding intention.
Examine closely what is in your mind when you speak
of an action in course of accomplishment. The idea of
change is there, I am willing to grant, but it is hidden in
the penumbra. In the full light is the motionless plan
of the act supposed accomplished. It is by this, and by
this only, that the complex act is distinguished and defined.
We should be very much embarrassed if we had to imagine
the movements inherent in the actions of eating, drinking,
fighting, etc. It is enough for us to know, in a general
and indefinite way, that all these acts are movements.
Once that side of the matter has been settled, we simply
seek to represent the general plan of each of these complex
movements, that is to say the motionless design that under-
lies them. Here again knowledge bears on a state rather
than on a change. It is therefore the same with this third
case as with the others. Whether the movement be
qualitative or evolutionary or extensive, the mind manages
to take stable views of the instability. And thence the
mind derives, as we have just shown, three kinds of repre-
sentations: (1) qualities, (2) forms of essences, (3) acts.
To these three ways of seeing correspond three categories of words: adjectives, substantives, and verbs, which are the primordial elements of language. Adjectives and sub-
304 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
stantives therefore symbolize states. But the verb it-
self, if we keep to the clear part of the idea it calls up,
hardly expresses anything else.
Now, if we try to characterize more precisely our natural
attitude towards Becoming, this is what we find. Be-
coming is infinitely varied. That which goes from yellow
to green is not like that which goes from green to blue:
they are different qualitative movements. That which
goes from flower to fruit is not like that which goes from
larva to nymph and from nymph to perfect insect: they
are different evoluttonary movements. The action of eat-
ing or of drinking is not like the action of fighting: they are
different extensive movements. And these three kinds
of movement themselves—qualitative, evolutionary, ex-
tensive—differ profoundly. The trick of our perception,
like that of our intelligence, like that of our language,
consists in extracting from these profoundly different
becomings the single representation of becoming in general,
undefined becoming, a mere abstraction which by itself
says nothing and of which, indeed, it is very rarely that we
think. To this idea, always the same, and always obscure
or unconscious, we then join, in each particular case, one or
several clear images that represent states and which serve
to distinguish all becomings from each other. It is this
composition of a specified and definite state with change
general and undefined that we substitute for the specific
change. An infinite multiplicity of becomings variously
colored, so to speak, passes before our eyes: we manage so
that we see only differences of color, that is to say, differ-
ences of state, beneath which there is supposed to flow,
hidden from our view, a becoming always and every-
where the same, invariably colorless.
Suppose we wish to portray on a screen a living picture,
IV.] FORM AND BECOMING | 305
such as the marching past of a regiment. There is one
way in which it might first occur to us to do it. That
would be to cut out jointed figures representing the soldiers,
to. give to each of them the movement of marching, a
movement varying from individual to individual although
common to the human species, and to throw the whole
on the screen. We should need to spend on this little
game an enormous amount of work, and even then we
should obtain but a very poor result: how could it, at its
best, reproduce the suppleness and variety of life? Now,
there is another way of proceeding, more easy and at
the same time more effective. It is to take a series of
snapshots of the passing regiment and to throw these
instantaneous views on the screen, so that they replace
each other very rapidly. This is what the cinematograph
does. With photographs, each of which represents the
regiment in a fixed attitude, it reconstitutes the mobility
of the regiment marching. It is true that if we had to do
with photographs alone, however much we might look at
them, we should never see them animated: with immobility
set beside immobility, even endlessly, we could never make
movement. In order that the pictures may be animated,
there must be movement somewhere. The movement
does indeed exist here; it is in the apparatus. It is be-
cause the film of the cinematograph unrolls, bringing
in turn the different photographs of the scene to continue
each other, that each actor of the scene recovers his mobil-
ity; he strings all his successive attitudes on the invisible
movement of the film. The process then consists in ex-
tracting from all the movements peculiar to all the figures
an impersonal movement abstract and simple, movement
in general, so to speak: we put this into the apparatus, and
we reconstitute the individuality of each particular move-
ment by combining this nameless movement with the per-
306 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
sonal attitudes. Such is the contrivance of the cinemato-
graph. And such is also that of our knowledge. Instead
of attaching ourselves to the inner becoming of things,
we place ourselves outside them in order to recompose
their becoming artificially. We take snapshots, as it were,
of the passing reality, and, as these are characteristic of
the reality, we have only to string them on a becoming,
abstract, uniform and invisible, situated at the back of
the apparatus of knowledge, in order to imitate what
there is that is characteristic in this becoming itself.
Perception, intellection, language so proceed in general.
Whether we would think becoming, or express it, or
even perceive it, we hardly do anything else than set
going a kind of cinematograph inside us. We may there-
fore sum up what we have been saying in the conclusion
that the mechanism of our ordinary knowledge is of a cine-
matographical kind.
Of the altogether practical character of this operation there is no possible doubt. Each of our acts aims at a certain insertion of our will into the reality. There is, between our body and other bodies, an arrangement like that of the pieces of glass that compose a kaleido- scopic picture. Our activity goes from an arrangement to a re-arrangement, each time no doubt giving the kaleido- scope a new shake, but not interesting itself in the shake, and seeing only the new picture. Our knowledge of the operation of nature must be exactly symmetrical, there- fore, with the interest we take in our own operation. In this sense we may say, if we are not abusing this kind of illustration, that the cinematographical character of our knowledge of things 1s due to the kaleidoscopic character of our adaptation to them.
The cinematographical method is therefore the only practical method, since it consists in making the general
IV.} FORM AND BECOMING 307
character of knowledge form itself on that of action,
while expecting that the detail of each act should depend
in its turn on that of knowledge. In order that action
may always be enlightened, intelligence must always be
present in it; but intelligence, in order thus to accompany
the progress of activity and ensure its direction, must
begin by adopting its rhythm. Action is discontinuous,
like every pulsation of life; discontinuous, therefore, is
knowledge. The mechanism of the faculty of knowing
has been constructed on this plan. Essentially practical,
can it be of use, such as it is, for speculation? Let us try
with it to follow reality in its windings, and see what will
happen.
I take of the continuity of a particular becoming a series of views, which I connect together by “becoming in general.’ But of course I cannot stop there. What is not determinable is not representable: of “becoming in general’ I have only a verbal knowledge. As the letter x designates a certain unknown quantity, what- ever it may be, so my “becoming in general,” always the same, symbolizes here a certain transition of which I have taken some snapshots; of the transition itself it teaches me nothing. Let me then concentrate myself wholly on the transition, and, between any two snap- shots, endeavor to realize what is going on. As I apply the same method, I obtain the same result; a third view merely slips in between the two others. I may begin again as often as I will, I may set views alongside of views for ever, I shall obtain nothing else. The application of the cinematographical method therefore leads to a perpet- ual recommencement, during which the mind, never able to satisfy itself and never finding where to rest, persuades itself, no doubt, that it imitates by its instability the very movement of the real. But though, by straining itself
308 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
to the point of giddiness, it may end by giving itself the
illusion of mobility, its operation has not advanced it a
step, since it remains as far as ever from its goal. In order
to advance with the moving reality, you must replace
yourself within it. Install yourself within change, and you
will grasp at once both change itself and the successive
states in which i might at any instant be immobilized.
But with these successive states, perceived from without
as real and no longer as potential immobilities, you will
never reconstitute movement. Call them qualities, forms,
positions, or intentions, as the case may be, multiply the
number of them as you will, let the interval between
two consecutive states be infinitely small: before the
intervening movement you will always experience the
disappointment of the child who tries by clapping his
hands together to crush the smoke. The movement
slips through the interval, because every attempt to re-
constitute change out of states implies the absurd propo-
sition, that movement is made of immobilities.
Philosophy perceived this as soon as it opened its eyes. The arguments of Zeno of Elea, although formulated with a very different intention, have no other meaning.
Take the flying arrow. At every moment, says Zeno, it is motionless, for it cannot have time to move, that is, to occupy at least two successive positions, unless at least two moments are allowed it. At a given moment, therefore, it is at rest at a given point. Motionless in each point of its course, it is motionless during all the time that it is moving.
Yes, if we suppose that the arrow can ever be in a point of its course. Yes again, if the arrow, which is moving, ever coincides with a position, which is motionless. But the arrow never is in any point of its course. The most we can say is that it might be there, in this sense, that it
1.1 FORM AND BECOMING 309
passes there and might stop there. It is true that if it
did stop there, it would be at rest there, and at this point
it is no longer movement that we should have to do with.
The truth is that if the arrow leaves the point A to fall
down at the point B, its movement AB is as simple, as
indecomposable, in so far as it is movement, as the tension
of the bow that shoots it. As the shrapnel, bursting before
it falls to the ground, covers the explosive zone with an
indivisible danger, so the arrow which goes from A to B
displays with a single stroke, although over a certain extent
of duration, its indivisible mobility. Suppose an elastic
stretched from A to B, could you divide its extension?
The course of the arrow is this very extension; it is equally
simple and equally undivided. It is a single and unique
bound. You fix a point C in the interval passed, and say
that at a certain moment the arrow was in C. If it had
been there, it would have been stopped there, and you
would no longer have had a flight from A to B, but two
flights, one from A to C and the other from C to B, with an
interval of rest. A single movement is entirely, by the
hypothesis, a movement between two stops; if there are
intermediate stops, it is no longer a single movement.
At bottom, the illusion arises from this, that the movement,
once effected, has laid along its course a motionless tra-
jectory on which we can count as many immobilities as
we will. From this we conclude that the movement,
whilst being effected, lays at each instant beneath it a position
with which it coincides. We do not see that the trajectory
is created in one stroke, although a certain time is re-
quired for it; and that though we can divide at will the
trajectory once created, we. cannot divide its creation,
which is an act in progress and not a thing. To suppose
that the moving body 7s at a point of its course is to cut
the course in two by a snip of the scissors at this point,
310 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
and to substitute two trajectories for the single trajectory
which we were first considering. It is to distinguish
two successive acts where, by the hypothesis, there is
only one. In short, it is to attribute to the course itself
of the arrow everything that can be said of the interval
that the arrow has traversed, that is to say, to admit
a priori the absurdity that movement coincides with
immobility.
We shall not dwell here on the three other arguments of Zeno. We have examined them elsewhere. It is enough to point out that they all consist in applying the movement to the line traversed, and supposing that what is true of the line is true of the movement. The line, for example, may be divided into as many parts as we wish, of any length that we wish, and it is always the same line. From this we conclude that we have the right to suppose the movement articulated as we wish, and that it is always the same movement. We thus obtain a series of absurdi- ties that all express the same fundamental absurdity. But the possibility of applying the movement to the line tra- versed exists only for an observer who, keeping outside the movement and seeing at every instant the possibility of a stop, tries to reconstruct the real movement with these possible immobilities. The absurdity vanishes as soon as we adopt by thought the continuity of the real move- ment, a continuity of which every one of us is conscious whenever he lifts an arm or advances a step. We feel then indeed that the line passed over between two stops is described with a single indivisible stroke, and that we seek in vain to practice on the movement, which traces the line, divisions corresponding, each to each, with the divisions arbitrarily chosen of the line once it has been traced. The line traversed by the moving body lends itself to any kind of division, because it has no internal organization. But
ON a ee ee
ow FORM AND BECOMING 311
all movement is articulated inwardly. It is either an
indivisible bound (which may occupy, nevertheless, a
very long duration) or a series of indivisible bounds.
Take the articulations of this movement into account,
or give up speculating on its nature.
When Achilles pursues the tortoise, each of his steps must be treated as indivisible, and so must each step of the tortoise. After a certain number of steps, Achilles will have overtaken the tortoise. There is nothing more simple. If you insist on dividing the two motions further, distinguish both on the one side and on the other, in the course of Achilles and in that of the tortoise, the sub- multiples of the steps of each of them; but respect the natural articulations of the two courses. As long as you respect them, no difficulty will arise, because you will follow the indications of experience. But Zeno’s device is to reconstruct the movement of Achilles according to a law arbitrarily chosen. Achilles with a first step is sup- posed to arrive at the point where the tortoise was, with a second step at the point which it has moved to while he was making the first, and so on. In this case, Achilles would always have a new step to take. But obviously, to overtake the tortoise, he goes about it in quite another way. The movement considered by Zeno would only be the equivalent of the movement of Achilles if we could treat the movement as we treat the interval passed through, decomposable and recomposable at will. Once you sub- scribe to this first absurdity, all the others follow.:
1 That is, we do not consider the sophism of Zeno refuted by the fact that the geometrical progression a(1 ++ 4 + 5 -+ 3 + ..., ete.)—in which a designates the initial distance between Achilles and the tortoise, and n the relation of their respective velocities—has a finite sum if n is greater than 1. On this point we may refer to the arguments of
F. Evellin, which we regard as conclusive (see Evellin, Infinit et quantité,
Paris, 1880, pp. 63-97; cf. Revue philosophique, vol. xi., 1881, pp. 564-
312 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
Nothing would be easier, now, than to extend Zeno’s
argument to qualitative becoming and to evolutionary
becoming. We should find the same contradictions
in these. That the child can become a youth, ripen to
maturity and decline to old age, we understand when we
consider that vital evolution is here the reality itself.
Infancy, adolescence, maturity, old age, are mere views
of the mind, possible stops imagined by us, from without,
along the continuity of a progress. On the contrary, let
childhood, adolescence, maturity and old age be given as
integral parts of the evolution, they become real stops, and
we can no longer conceive how evolution is possible, for
rests placed beside rests will never be equivalent to a
movement. How, with what is made, can we reconsti-
tute what is being made? How, for instance, from child-
hood once posited as a thing, shall we pass to adolescence,
when, by the hypothesis, childhood only is given? If we
look at it closely, we shall see that our habitual manner of
speaking, which is fashioned after our habitual manner
of thinking, leads us to actual logical deadlocks—dead-
locks to which we allow ourselves to be led without anxiety,
because we feel confusedly that we can always get out of
them if we like: all that we have to do, in fact, is to give
up the cinematographical habits of our intellect. When
we say “The child becomes a man,” let us take care not to
fathom too deeply the literal meaning of the expression,
or we shall find that, when we posit the subject “child,”
the attribute “man” does not yet apply to it, and that,
568). The truth is that mathematics, as we have tried to show in a former work, deals and can deal only with lengths. It has therefore had to seek devices, first, to transfer to the movement, which is not a length, the divisibility of the line passed over, and then to reconcile with experience the idea (contrary to experience and full of absurdities) of a movement that is a length, that is, of a movement placed upon its trajectory and arbitrarily decomposable like it. 4
IV.] FORM AND BECOMING . 313
when we express the attribute “man,” it applies no more
to the subject “child.” The reality, which is the transition
_ from childhood to manhood, has slipped between our
fingers. We have only the imaginary stops “child” and
“man,” and we are very near to saying that one of these
stops is the other, just as the arrow of Zeno 7s, according
to that philosopher, at all the points of the course. The
truth is that if language here were molded on reality, we
should not say “The child becomes the man,” but ‘‘There
is becoming from the child to the man.” In the first
proposition, “‘ becomes’ is a verb of indeterminate meaning,
intended to mask the absurdity into which we fall when we
attribute the state “man” to the subject “child.” It
behaves in much the same way as the movement, always
the same, of the cinematographical film, a movement
hidden in the apparatus and whose function it is to super-
pose the successive pictures on one another in order to
imitate the movement of the real object. In the second
proposition, “becoming” is a subject. It comes to the
front. It is the reality itself; childhood and manhood
are then only possible stops, mere views of the mind;
we now have to do with the objective movement itself,
and no longer with its cinematographical imitation. But
the first manner of expression is alone conformable to
our habits of language. We must, in order to adopt
the second, escape from the cinematographical mechanism
of thought.
We must make complete abstraction of this mechan- ism, if we wish to get rid at one stroke of the theoretical absurdities that the question of movement raises. All is obscure, all is contradictory when we try, with states, to build up a transition. The obscurity is cleared up, the contradiction vanishes, as soon as we place ourselves along the transition, in order to distinguish states in it
314 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
by making cross cuts therein in thought. The reason
is that there is more in the transition than the series of
states, that is to say, the possible cuts—more in the move-
ment than the series of positions, that is to say, the possible
stops. Only, the first way of looking at things is con-
formable to the processes of the human mind; the second
requires, on the contrary, that we reverse the bent of our
intellectual habits. No wonder, then, if philosophy at first
recoiled before such an effort. The Greeks trusted to nature,
trusted the natural propensity of the mind, trusted language
above all, in so far as it naturally externalizes thought.
Rather than lay blame on the attitude of thought and
language toward the course of things, they preferred to
pronounce the course of things itself to be wrong.
Such, indeed, was the sentence passed by the philoso- phers of the Eleatic school. And they passed it with- out any reservation whatever. As becoming shocks the habits of thought and fits ill into the molds of language, they declared it unreal. In spatial movement and in change in general they saw only pure illusion. This con-
clusion could be softened down without changing the
premisses, by saying that the reality changes, but that it
ought not to change. Experience confronts us with be-
coming: that is sensible reality. But the intelligible reality,
that which ought to be, is more real still, and that reality
does not change. Beneath the qualitative becoming,
beneath the evolutionary becoming, beneath the extensive
becoming, the mind must seek that which defies change,
the definable quality, the form or essence, the end. Such
was the fundamental principle of the philosophy which
developed throughout the classic age, the philosophy of
Forms, or, to use a term more akin to the Greek, the philoso-
phy of Ideas.
The word «dos, which we translate here by “Idea,” has,
EE ee ee
a
IV.] PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 315
in fact, this threefold meaning. It denotes (1) the quality,
(2) the form or essence, (3) the end or design (in the sense
of intention) of the act being performed, that is to say, at
bottom, the design (in the sense of drawing) of the act sup-
posed accomplished. These three aspects are those of the
adjective, substantive and verb, and correspond to the three
essential categories of language. After the explanations
we have given above, we might, and perhaps we ought to,
translate «os by “view” or rather by “moment.” For
etdos is the stable view taken of the instability of things:
the quality, which is a moment of becoming; the form, which
is a moment of evolution; the essence, which is the mean
form above and below which the other forms are arranged
as alterations of the mean; finally, the intention or mental
design which presides over the action being accomplished,
and which is nothing else, we said, than the material design,
traced out and contemplated beforehand, of the action
accomplished. To reduce things to Ideas is therefore to
resolve becoming into its principal moments, each of these
being, moreover, by the hypothesis, screened from the laws
of time and, as it were, plucked out of eternity. That is to
say that we end in the philosophy of Ideas when we apply
the cinematographical mechanism of the intellect to the
analysis of the real.
But, when we put immutable Ideas at the base of the moving reality, a whole physics, a whole cosmology, a whole theology follows necessarily. We must insist on the point. Not that we mean to summarize in a few pages a philosophy so complex and so comprehensive as that of the Greeks. But, since we have described the cinematographical mech- anism of the intellect, it is important that we should show to what idea of reality the play of this mechanism leads. It is the very idea, we believe, that we find in the ancient philosophy. The main lines of the doctrine that was
316 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
developed from Plato to Plotinus, passing through Aristotle
(and even, in a certain measure, through the Stoics), have
nothing accidental, nothing contingent, nothing that must
be regarded as a philosopher’s fancy. They indicate the
vision that a systematic intellect obtains of the universal
becoming when regarding it by means of snapshots, taken
at intervals, of its flowing. So that, even to-day, we shall
philosophize in the manner of the Greeks, we shall re-
discover, without needing to know them, such and such
of their general conclusions, in the exact proportion that
we trust in the cinematographical instinct of our thought.
We said there is more in a movement than in the suc-
cessive positions attributed to the moving object, more
in a becoming than in the forms passed through in turn,
more in the evolution of form than the forms assumed one
after another. Philosophy can therefore derive terms of
the second kind from those of the first, but not the first
from the second: from the first terms speculation must
take its start. But the intellect reverses the order of the
two groups; and, on this point, ancient philosophy pro-
ceeds as the intellect does. It installs itself in the im-
mutable, it posits only Ideas. Yet becoming exists: it
is a fact. How, then, having posited immutability alone,
shall we make change come forth from it? Not by the
addition of anything, for, by the hypothesis, there exists
nothing positive outside Ideas. It must therefore be by a
diminution. So at the base of ancient philosophy lies
necessarily this postulate: that there is more in the motion-
less than in the moving, and that we pass from immuta-
bility to becoming by way of diminution or attenuation.
It is therefore something negative, or zero at most, that must be added to Ideas to obtain change. In that consists the Platonic ‘“‘non-being,” the Aristotelian ‘“‘matter”’—a
IV.) PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 317
metaphysical zero which, joined to the Idea, like the arith-
metical zero to unity, multiplies it in space and time. By
it the motionless and simple Idea is refracted into a move-
ment spread out indefinitely. In right, there ought to be
nothing but immutable Ideas, immutably fitted to each
other. In fact, matter comes to add to them its void, and
thereby lets loose the universal becoming. It is an elusive
nothing, that creeps between the Ideas and creates endless
agitation, eternal disquiet, like a suspicion insinuated be-
tween two loving hearts. Degrade the immutable Ideas:
you obtain, by that alone, the perpetual flux of things.
The Ideas or Forms are the whole of intelligible reality, that
is to say, of truth, in that they represent, all together, the
theoretical equilibrium of Being. As to sensible reality,
it is a perpetual oscillation from one side to the other of
this point of equilibrium.
Hence, throughout the whole philosophy of Ideas there is a certain conception of duration, as also of the relation of time to eternity. He who installs himself in becoming sees in duration the very life of things, the fundamental reality. The Forms, which the mind isolates and stores up in concepts, are then only snapshots of the changing reality. They are moments gathered along the course of time; and, just because we have cut the thread that binds them to time, they no longer endure. They tend to withdraw into their own definition, that is to say, into the artificial reconstruction and symbolical expression which is their intellectual equivalent. They enter into eternity, if you will; but what is eternal in them is just what is un- real. On the contrary, if we treat becoming by the cine- matographical method, the Forms are no longer snapshots taken of the change, they are its constitutive elements, they represent all that is positive in Becoming. Eternity no longer hovers over time, as an abstraction; it underlies
318 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
time, as @ reality. Such is exactly, on this point, the atti-
tude of the philosophy of Forms or Ideas. It establishes
between eternity and time the same relation as between
a piece of gold and the small change—change so small that
payment goes on for ever without the debt being paid off.
The debt could be paid at once with the piece of gold. It
is this that Plato expresses in his magnificent language
when he says that God, unable to make the world eternal,
gave it Time, “a moving image of eternity.’”!
Hence also arises a certain conception of extension, which is at the base of the philosophy of Ideas, although it has not been so explicitly brought out. Let us imagine a mind placed alongside becoming, and adopting its move- ment. Each successive state, each quality, each form, in short, will be seen by it as a mere cut made by thought in the universal becoming. It will be found that form is essentially extended, inseparable as it is from the extensity of the becoming which has materialized it in the course of its flow. Every form thus occupies space, as it occupies time. But the philosophy of Ideas follows the inverse direction. It starts from the Form; it sees in the Form the very essence of reality. It does not take Form as a snap- shot of becoming; it posits Forms in the eternal; of this motionless eternity, then, duration and becoming are sup- posed to be only the degradation. Form thus posited, in- dependent of time, is then no longer what is found in a perception; it is a concept. And, as a reality of the con- ceptual order occupies no more of extension than it does of duration, the Forms must be stationed outside space as well as above time. Space and time have therefore neces- sarily, in ancient philosophy, the same origin and the same value. The same diminution of being is expressed both by extension in space and detention in time. Both of these
1 Plato, Timaeus, 37 pb.
Iv.1 PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 319
are but the distance between what is and what ought to be.
From the standpoint of ancient philosophy, space and
time can be nothing but the field that an incomplete reality,
or rather a reality that has gone astray from itself, needs in
order to run in quest of itself. Only it must be admitted
that the field is created as the hunting progresses, and that
the hunting in some way deposits the field beneath it.
Move an imaginary pendulum, a mere mathematical point,
from its position of equilibrium: a perpetual oscillation
is started, along which points are placed next to points,
and moments succeed moments. The space and time
which thus arise have no more “ positivity” than the move-
ment itself. They represent the remoteness of the position
artificially given to the pendulum from its normal position,
what it lacks in order to regain its natural stability. Bring
it back to its normal position: space, time and motion
shrink to a mathematical point. Just so, human reason-
ings are drawn out into an endless chain, but are at once
swallowed up in the truth seized by intuition, for their
extension in space and time is only the distance, so to speak,
between thought and truth.: So of extension and duration
in relation to pure Forms or Ideas. The sensible forms are
before us, ever about to recover their ideality, ever pre-
vented by the matter they bear in them, that is to say, by
their inner void, by the interval between what they are and
what they ought to be. They are for ever on the point
of recovering themselves, for ever occupied in losing them-
selves. An inflexible law condemns them, like the rock of
Sisyphus, to fall back when they are almost touching the
summit, and this law, which has projected them into space
and time, is nothing other than the very constancy of their
1 We have tried to bring out what is true and what is false in this idea,
so far as spatiality is concerned (see Chapter III.). It seems to us
radically false as regards duration.
ee
320 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
original insufficiency. The alternations of generation and
decay, the evolutions ever beginning over and over again,
the infinite repetition of the cycles of celestial spheres—
this all represents merely a certain fundamental deficit,
in which materiality consists. Fill up this deficit: at once
you suppress space and time, that is to say, the endlessly
renewed oscillations around a stable equilibrium always
aimed at, never reached. Things re-enter into each other.
What was extended in space is contracted into pure Form.
And past, present, and future shrink into a single moment,
which is eternity.
This amounts to saying that physics is but logic spoiled. In this proposition the whole philosophy of Ideas is sum- marized. And in it also is the hidden principle of the philosophy that is innate in our understanding. If im- mutability is more than becoming, form is more than change, and it is by a veritable fall that the logical system of Ideas, rationally subordinated and codrdinated among themselves, is scattered into a physical series of objects and events accidentally placed one after another. The genera- tive idea of a poem is developed in thousands of imaginations which are materialized in phrases that spread themselves out in words. And the more we descend from the motion- less idea, wound on itself, to the words that unwind it, the more room is left for contingency and choice. Other metaphors, expressed by other words, might have arisen; an image is called up by an image, a word by a word. All these words run now one after another, seeking in vain, by themselves, to give back the simplicity of the generative idea. Our ear only hears the words: it therefore per- ceives only accidents. But our mind, by successive bounds, leaps from the words to the images, from the images to the original idea, and so gets back, from the perception of words—accidents called up by aceidents—to the con-
Vv.) PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 321
ception cof the Idea that posits its own being. So the
philosopher proceeds, confronted with the universe. Ex-
perience makes to pass before his eyes phenomena which
run, they also, one behind another in an accidental order
determined by circumstances of time and place. This
physical order—a degeneration of the logical order—is
nothing else but the fall of the logical into space and time.
But the philosopher, ascending again from the percept to
the concept, sees condensed into the logical all the positive
reality that the physical possesses. His intellect, doing
away with the materiality that lessens being, grasps being
itself in the immutable system of Ideas. Thus Science
is obtained, which appears to us, complete and ready-made,
as soon as we put back our intellect into its true place,
correcting the deviation that separated it from the in-
telligible. Science is not, then, a human construction.
It is prior to our intellect, independent of it, veritably the
generator of Things.
And indeed, if we hold the Forms to be simply snapshots taken by the mind of the continuity of becoming, they must be relative to the mind that thinks them, they can have no independent existence. At most we might say that each of these Ideas is an ideal. But it is in the opposite hypothe- sis that we are placing ourselves. Ideas must then exist by themselves. Ancient philosophy could not escape this conclusion. Plato formulated it, and in vain did Aristotle strive to avoid it. Since movement arises from the de- gradation of the immutable, there could be no movement, consequently no sensible world, if there were not, some- where, immutability realized. So, having begun by refus- ing to Ideas an independent existence, and finding himself nevertheless unable to deprive them of it, Aristotle pressed them into each other, rolled them up into a ball, and set above the physical world a Form that was thus found to be
322 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [(OHAP.
the Form of Forms, the Idea of Ideas, or, to use his own
words, the Thought of Thought. Such is the God of
Aristotle—necessarily immutable and apart from what is
happening in the world, since he is only the synthesis of
all concepts in a single concept. It is true that no one
of the manifold concepts could exist apart, such as it isin
the divine unity: in vain should we look for the ideas of
Plato within the God of Aristotle. But if only we im-
agine the God of Aristotle in a sort of refraction of him-
self, or simply inclining toward the world, at once the
Platonic Ideas are seen to pour themselves out of him,
as if they were involved in the unity of his essence: so rays
stream out from the sun, which nevertheless did not contain
them. It is probably this possibility of an outpouring of
Platonic Ideas from the Aristotelian God that is meant,
in the philosophy of Aristotle, by the active intellect, the
vods that has been called zoentexés—that is, by what is
essential and yet unconscious in human intelligence. The
vods zoentexés is Science entire, posited all at once, which
the conscious, discursive intellect is condemned to re-
construct with difficulty, bit by bit. There is then with-
in us, or rather behind us, a possible vision of God, as
the Alexandrians said, a vision always virtual, never
actually realized by the conscious intellect. In this in-
tuition we should see God expand in Ideas. This it is
that “does everything,”: playing in relation to the dis-
cursive intellect, which moves in time, the same réle as the
motionless Mover himself plays in relation to the movement
of the heavens and the course of things.
There is, then, immanent in the philosophy of Ideas, a particular conception of causality, which it is important
1 Aristotle, De anima, 420 a 14 xaé Eotey 6 pév tocovtos voids t@ ndvta
z ~ > ' 2 a
vivecOac, 6 de TH névta mocetv, ws xs tes, ofov 16 pds. Todxov yap
~— % “ £. 2 , A
Teva Ka Td Ys more? ta Ouvduse Ovta yowpata evepyeta ypwpata.
IV.} PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 323
to bring into full light, because it is that which each of us
will reach when, in order to ascend to the origin of things,
he follows to the end the natural movement of the intellect.
True, the ancient philosophers never formulated it ex-
plicitly. They confined themselves to drawing the con-
sequences of it, and, in general, they have marked but
points of view of it rather than presented it itself. Some-
times, indeed, they speak of an attraction, sometimes of an
impulsion exercised by the prime mover on the whole of the
world. Both views are found in Aristotle, who shows us
in the movement of the universe an aspiration of things
toward the divine perfection, and consequently an ascent
toward God, while he describes it elsewhere as the effect
of a contact of God with the first sphere and as descending,
consequently, from God to things. The Alexandrians, we
think, do no more than follow this double indication when
they speak of procession and conversion. Everything is
derived from the first principle, and everything aspires to
return to it. But these two conceptions of the divine
causality can only be identified together if we bring them,
both the one and the other, back to a third, which we hold
to be fundamental, and which alone will enable us to under-
stand, not only why, in what sense, things move in space
and time, but also why there is space and time, why there
is movement, why there are things.
This conception, which more and more shows through the reasonings of the Greek philosophers as we go from Plato to Plotinus, we may formulate thus: The affirmation of a reality implies the simultaneous affirmation of all the degrees of reality intermediate between it and nothing. The principle is evident in the case of number: we cannot affirm the number 10 without thereby affirming the exis- tence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, . . ., etc.—in short, of the whole interval between 10 and zero. But here our mind passes
394 CREATIVE EVOLUTION make
naturally from the sphere of quantity to that of quality.
It seems to us that, a certain perfection being given, the
whole continuity of degradations is given also between this
perfection, on the one hand, and the nought, on the other
hand, that we think we conceive. Let us then posit the
God of Aristotle, thought of thought—that is, thought
making a circle, transforming itself from subject to object
and from object to subject by an instantaneous, or rather
an eternal, circular process: as, on the other hand, the
nought appears to posit itself, and as, the two extremities
being given, the interval between them is equally given,
it follows that all the descending degrees of being, from the
divine perfection down to the ‘absolute nothing,” are
realized automatically, so to speak, when we have posited
God.
Let us then run through this interval from top to bottom. First of all, the slightest diminution of the first principle will be enough to precipitate Being into space and time; but duration and extension, which represent this first diminution, will be as near as possible to the divine inex- tension and eternity. We must therefore picture to our- selves this first degradation of the divine principle as a sphere turning on itself, imitating, by the perpetuity of its circular movement, the eternity of the circle of the divine thought; creating, moreover, its own place, and thereby place in general, since it includes without being included and moves without stirring from the spot; creating also its own duration, and thereby duration in general, since its movement is the measure of all motion.» Then, by de-
1 De caelo, ii. 287 a 12 ths éoydtys mepepoods obte kevdv Eotey Ewev oute Toros. Phys. iv. 212 a 34 td dé nay Eote fev Ws Keviostae Ete d'ws ob. @s pay Tap diov, dya coy tonov ov petaBGdrec. KbKhw 0: Kevijoetar, TOY poptwy yap odtos 6 tonos.
- De caelo, i. 279 a 12 ovde zpovos é éotiv Ew tod odpavod. Phys. viii.
251 b 27 6 ypdvos mdBos te Kevicews.
a eT
rv.) PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 325
grees, we shall see the perfection decrease, more and more,
down to our sublunary world, in which the cycle of birth,
growth and decay imitates and mars the original circle for
the last time. So understood, the causal relation between
God and the world is seen as an attraction when regarded
from below, as an impulsion or a contact when regarded
from above, since the first heaven, with its circular move-
ment, is an imitation of God and all imitation is the re-
ception of aform. Therefore, we perceive God as efficient
cause or as final cause, according to the point of view.
And yet neither of these two relations is the ultimate
causal relation. The true relation is that which is found
between the two members of an equation, when the first
member is a single term and the second a sum of an end-
less number of terms. It is, we may say, the relation of
the gold-piece to the small change, if we suppose the change
to offer itself automatically as soon as the gold piece is
presented. Only thus can we understand why Aristotle
has demonstrated the necessity of a first motionless mover,
not by founding it on the assertion that the movement
of things must have had a beginning, but, on the contrary,
by affirming that this movement could not have begun and
can never come to an end. If movement exists, or, in
other words, if the small change is being counted, the gold-
piece is to be found somewhere. And if the counting goes
on for ever, having never begun, the single term that is
eminently equivalent to it must be eternal. A perpetuity
of mobility is possible only if it is backed by an eternity
of immutability, which it unwinds in a chain without be-
ginning or end.
Such is the last word of the Greek philosophy. We have not attempted to reconstruct it a priori. It has manifold origins. It is connected by many invisible threads to the soul of ancient Greece. Vain, therefore, the effort
326 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
to deduce it from a simple principle... But if everything
that has come from poetry, religion, social life and a still
rudimentary physics and biology be removed from it, if
we take away all the light material that may have been
used in the construction of the stately building, a solid
framework remains, and this framework marks out the
main lines of a metaphysic which is, we believe, the natural
metaphysic of the human intellect. We come to a philoso-
phy of this kind, indeed, whenever we follow to the end,
the cinematographical tendency of perception and thought.
Our perception and thought begin by substituting for the
continuity of evolutionary change a series of unchangeable
forms which are turn by turn, “caught on the wing,” like
the rings at a merry-go-round, which the children unhook
with their little stick as they are passing. Now, how can
the forms be passing, and on what “stick” are they strung?
As the stable forms have been obtained by extracting from
change everything that is definite, there is nothing left,
to characterize the instability on which the forms are laid,
but a negative attribute, which must be indetermination
itself. Such is the first proceeding of our thought: it
dissociates each change into two elements—the one stable,
definable for each particular case, to wit, the Form; the
other indefinable and always the same, Change in general.
And such, also, is the essential operation of language.
Forms are all that it is capable of expressing. It is reduced
to taking as understood or is limited to suggesting a mo-
bility which, just because it is always unexpressed, is
thought to remain in all cases the same.—Then comes in a
philosophy that holds the dissociation thus effected by
thought and language to be legitimate. What can it do,
! Especially have we left almost entirely on one side those admirable
but somewhat fugitive intuitions that Plotinus was later to seize, to
study and to fix.
vi PLATO AND ARISTOTLE —3397
except objectify the distinction with more force, push it
to its extreme consequences, reduce it into a system? It
will therefore construct the real, on the one hand, with
definite Forms or immutable elements, and, on the other,
with a principle of mobility which, being the negation of
the form, will, by the hypothesis, escape all definition and be
the purely indeterminate. The more it directs its attention
to the forms delineated by thought and expressed by
language, the more it will see them rise above the sensible
and become subtilized into pure concepts, capable of enter-
ing one within the other, and even of being at last massed
together into a single concept, the synthesis of all reality,
the achievement of all perfection. The more, on the con-
trary, it descends toward the invisible source of the uni-
versal mobility, the more it will feel this mobility sink
beneath it and at the same time become void, vanish into
what it will call the “non-being.” Finally, it will have
on the one hand the system of ideas, logically codrdinated
together or concentrated into one only, on the other a
quasi-nought, the Platonic ‘“‘non-being” or the Aristotelian
“matter.”—But, having cut your cloth, you must sew it.
With supra-sensible Ideas and an infra-sensible non-being,
you now have to reconstruct the sensible world. You can
do so only if you postulate a kind of metaphysical necessity
in virtue of which the confronting of this All with this
Zero is equivalent to the affirmation of all the degrees of
reality that measure the interval between them—just as an
undivided number, when regarded as a difference between
itself and zero, is revealed as a certain sum of units, and
with its own affirmation affirms all the lower numbers.
That is the natural postulate. It is that also that we per-
ceive as the base of the Greek philosophy. In order then
to explain the specific characters of each of these degrees
of intermediate reality, nothing more is necessary than
398 CREATIVE EVOLUTION Ne.
to measure the distance that separates it from the integral
reality. Each lower degree consists in a diminution of
the higher, and the sensible newness that we perceive in it
is resolved, from the point of view of the intelligible, into a
new quantity of negation which is superadded to it. The
smallest possible quantity of negation, that which is found
already in the highest forms of sensible reality, and con-
sequently a fortiori in the lower forms, is that which is
expressed by the most general attributes of sensible reality,
extension and duration. By increasing degradations we
will obtain attributes more and more special. Here the
philosopher’s fancy will have free scope, for it is by an
arbitrary decree, or at least a debatable one, that a particu-
lar aspect of the sensible world will be equated with a
particular diminution of being. We shall not necessarily
end, as Aristotle did, in a world consisting of concentric
spheres turning on themselves. But we shall be led to an
analogous cosmology—I mean, to a construction whose
pieces, though all different, will have none the less the same
relations between them. And this cosmology will be
ruled by the same principle. The physical will be defined
by the logical. Beneath the changing phenomena will
appear to us, by transparence, a closed system of concepts
subordinated to and codrdinated with each other. Science,
understood as the system of concepts, will be more real
than the sensible reality. It will be prior to human know-
ledge, which is only able to spell it letter by letter; prior
also to things, which awkwardly try to imitate it. It
would only have to be diverted an instant from itself
in order to step out of its eternity and thereby coincide
with all this knowledge and all these things. Its immu-
tability is therefore, indeed, the cause of the universal
becoming.
Such was the point of view of ancient philosophy in
Wv. MODERN SCIENCE 329
regard to change and duration. That modern philosophy
has repeatedly, but especially in its beginnings, had the
wish to depart from it, seems to us unquestionable. But
an irresistible attraction brings the intellect back to its
natural movement, and the metaphysic of the moderns
to the general conclusions of the Greek metaphysic. We
must try to make this point clear, in order to show by what
invisible threads our mechanistic philosophy remains
bound to the ancient philosophy of Ideas, and how also it
responds to the requirements, above all practical, of our
understanding.
Modern, like ancient, science proceeds according to the
cinematographical method. It cannot do otherwise; all
science is subject to this law. For it is of the essence of
science to handle signs, which it substitutes for the objects
themselves. These signs undoubtedly differ from those
of language by their greater precision and their higher
efficacy; they are none the less tied down to the general
condition of the sign, which is to denote a fixed aspect of
the reality under an arrested form. In order to think
movement, a constantly renewed effort of the mind is
necessary. Signs are made to dispense us with this effort
by substituting, for the moving continuity of things, an
artificial reconstruction which is its equivalent in practice
and has the advantage of being easily handled. But let
us leave aside the means and consider only the end. What
is the essential object of science? It is to enlarge our
influence over things. Science may be speculative in its
form, disinterested in its immediate ends; in other words
we may give it as long a credit as it wants. But, however
long the day of reckoning may be put off, some time or
other the payment must be made. It is always then, in
short, practical utility that science has in view. Even
330 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
when it launches into theory, it is bound to adapt its be-
havior to the general form of practice. However high
it may rise, it must be ready to fall back into the field of
action, and at once to get on its feet. This would not be
possible for it, if its rhythm differed absolutely from that
of action itself. Now action, we have said, proceeds by
leaps. To act is to re-adapt oneself. To know, that is to
say, to foresee in order to act, is then to go from situation
to situation, from arrangement to rearrangement. Science
may consider rearrangements that come closer and closer
to each other; it may thus increase the number of moments
that it isolates, but it always isolates moments. As to
what happens in the interval between the moments, science
is no more concerned with that than are our common in-
telligence, our senses and our language: it does not bear
on the interval, but only on the extremities. So the cine-
matographical method forces itself upon our science, as it
did already on that of the ancients.
Wherein, then, is the difference between the two sciences? We indicated it when we said that the ancients reduced the physical order to the vital order, that is to say, laws to genera, while the moderns try to resolve genera into laws. But we have to look at it in another aspect, which, more- over, is only a transposition, of the first. Wherein consists the difference of attitude of the two sciences toward change? We may formulate it by saying that ancient science thinks it knows its object sufficiently when it has noted of it some privileged moments, whereas modern science considers the object at any moment whatever.
The forms or ideas of Plato or of Aristotle correspond to privileged or salient moments in the history of things— those, in general, that have been fixed by language. They are supposed, like the childhood or the old age of a living being, to characterize a period of which they express the
IV.] MODERN SCIENCE 331
quintessence, all the rest of this period being filled by the
passage, of no interest in itself, from one form to another
form. Take, for instance, a falling body. It was thought
that we got near enough to the fact when we characterized
it as a whole: it was a movement downward; it was the
tendency toward a centre; it was the natural movement
of a body which, separated from the earth to which it be-
longed, was now going to find its place again. They noted,
then, the final term or culminating point (téAos, dk) and
set it up as the essential moment: this moment, that
language has retained in order to express the whole of
the fact, sufficed also for science to characterize it. In the
physics of Aristotle, it is by the concepts “high” and “low,”
spontaneous displacement and forced displacement, own
place and strange place, that the movement of a body shot
into space or falling freely is defined. But Galileo thought
there was no essential moment, no privileged instant. To
study the falling body is to consider it at it matters not
what moment in its course. The true science of gravity
is that which will determine, for any moment of time what-
ever, the position of the body in space. For this, indeed,
signs far more precise than those of language are required.
We may say, then, that our physics differs from that of the ancients chiefly in the indefinite breaking up of time. For the ancients, time comprises as many undivided periods as our natural perception and our language cut out in it successive facts, each presenting a kind of individuality. For that reason, each of these facts admits, in their view, of only a ¢otal definition or description. If, in describing it, we are led to distinguish phases in it, we have several facts instead of a single one, several undivided periods in- stead of a single period; but time is always supposed to be divided into determinate periods, and the mode of division to be forced on the mind by apparent crises of the real,
332 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
comparable to that of puberty, by the apparent release of a
new form.—For a Kepler or a Galileo, on the contrary,
time is not divided objectively in one way or another by
the matter that fills it. It has no natural articulations.
We can, we ought to, divide it as we please. All moments
count. None of them has the right to set itself up as a
moment that represents or dominates the others. And,
consequently, we know a change only when we are able
to determine what it is about at any one of its moments.
The difference is profound. In fact, in a certain aspect it is radical. But, from the point of view from which we are regarding it, it is a difference of degree rather than of kind. The human mind has passed from the first kind of knowledge to the second through gradual perfecting, simply by seeking a higher precision. There is the same relation between these two sciences as between the noting of the phases of a movement by the eye and the much more complete recording of these phases by instantaneous pho- tography. It is the same cinematographical mechanism in both cases, but it reaches a precision in the second that it cannot have in the first. Of the gallop of a horse our eye perceives chiefly a characteristic, essential or rather sche- matic attitude, a form that appears to radiate over a whole period and so fill up a time of gallop. It is this attitude that sculpture has fixed on the frieze of the Parthenon. But instantaneous photography isolates any moment; it puts them all in the same rank, and thus the gallop of a horse spreads out for it into as many successive attitudes as it wishes, instead of massing itself into a single attitude, which is supposed to flash out in a privileged moment and to illuminate a whole period.
From this original difference flow all the others. A science that considers, one after the other, undivided periods of duration, sees nothing but phases succeeding phases,
IV.] MODERN SCIENCE . 333
forms replacing forms; it is content with a qualitative de-
scription of objects, which it likens to organized beings.
But when we seek to know what happens within one of
these periods, at any moment of time, we are aiming at
something entirely different. The changes which are pro-
duced from one moment to another are no longer, by the
hypothesis, changes of quality; they are quantitative vari-
ations, it may be of the phenomenon itself, it may be of its
elementary parts. We were right then to say that modern
science is distinguishable from the ancient in that it applies
to magnitudes and proposes first and foremost to measure
them. The ancients did indeed try experiments, and on
the other hand Kepler tried no experiment, in the proper
sense of the word, in order to discover a law which is the
very type of scientific knowledge as we understand it.
What distinguishes modern science is not that it is experi-
mental, but that it experiments and, more generally, works
only with a view to measure.
For that reason it is right, again, to say that ancient science applied to concepts, while modern science seeks laws—constant relations between variable magnitudes. The concept of circularity was sufficient to Aristotle to define the movement of the heavenly bodies. But, even with the more accurate concept of elliptical form, Kepler did not think he had accounted for the movement of planets. He had to get a law, that is to say, a constant relation be- tween the quantitative variations of two or several elements of the planetary movement.
Yet these are only consequences —differences that follow from the fundamental difference. It did happen to the ancients accidentally to experiment with a view to measur- ing, as also to discover a law expressing a constant relation between magnitudes. The principle of Archimedes is a true experimental law. It takes into account three variable
334 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
magnitudes: the volume of a body, the density of the liquid
in which the body is immersed, the vertical pressure that
is being exerted. And it states indeed that one of these
three terms is a function of the other two.
The essential, original difference must therefore be sought elsewhere. It is the same that we noticed first. The science of the ancients is static. Either it considers in block the change that it studies, or, if it divides the change into periods, it makes of each of these periods a block in its turn: which amounts to saying that it takes no account of time. But modern science has been built up around the discoveries of Galileo and of Kepler, which immediately furnished it with a model. Now, what do the laws of Kepler say? They lay down a relation between the areas described by the heliocentric radius-vector of a planet and the time employed in describing them, a relation between the longer axis of the orbit and the tame taken up by the course. And what was the principle discovered by Galileo? A law which connected the space traversed by a falling body with the time occupied by the fall. Furthermore, in what did the first of the great transformations of geometry in modern times consist, if not in introducing—in g veiled form, it is true—time and movement even in the considera- tion of figures? For the ancients, geometry was a purely static science. Figures were given to it at once, completely finished, like the Platonic Ideas. But the essence of the Cartesian geometry (although Descartes did not give it this form) was to regard every plane curve as described by the movement of a point on a movable straight line which is displaced, parallel to itself, along the axis of the abscissae—the displacement of the movable straight line being supposed to be uniform and the abscissa thus be- coming representative of the time. The curve is then defined if we can state the relation connecting the space
V1 MODERN SCIENCE 335
traversed on the movable straight line to the time employed
in traversing it, that is, if we are able to indicate the po-
sition of the movable point, on the straight line which it
traverses, at any moment whatever of its course. This
relation is just what we call the equation of the curve. To
substitute an equation for a figure consists, therefore, in
seeing the actual position of the moving points in the tra-
cing of the curve at any moment whatever, instead of re-
garding this tracing all at once, gathered up in the unique
moment when the curve has reached its finished state.
Such, then, was the directing idea of the reform by which
both the science of nature and mathematics, which serves
as its instrument, were renewed. Modern science is the
daughter of astronomy; it has come down from heaven
to earth along the inclined plane of Galileo, for it is through
Galileo that Newton and his successors are connected with
Kepler. Now, how did the astronomical problem present
itself to Kepler? The question was, knowing the respective
positions of the planets at a given moment, how to calculate
their positions at any other moment. So the same question
presented itself, henceforth, for every material system.
Each material point became a rudimentary planet, and the
main question, the ideal problem whose solution would
yield the key to all the others was, the positions of these
elements at a particular moment being given, how to de-
termine their relative positions at any moment. No doubt
the problem cannot be put in these precise terms except
in very simple cases, for a schematized reality; for we
never know the respective positions of the real elements
of matter, supposing there are real elements; and, even if
we knew them at a given moment, the calculation of their
positions at another moment would generally require a
mathematical effort surpassing human powers. But it is
enough for us to know that these elements might be known,
336 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
that their present positions might be noted, and that a
superhuman intellect might, by submitting these data to
mathematical operations, determine the positions of the
elements at any other moment of time. This conviction
is at the bottom of the questions we put to ourselves on
the subject of nature, and of the methods we employ to
solve them. That is why every law in static form seems
to us as a provisional instalment or as a particular view
of a dynamic law which alone would give us whole and
definitive knowledge.
Let us conclude, then, that our science is not only dis- tinguished from ancient science in this, that it seeks laws, nor even in this, that its laws set forth relations between magnitudes: we must add that the magnitude to which we wish to be able to relate all others is time, and that modern science must be defined pre-eminently by its aspiration to take time as an independent variable. But with what time has it to do?
We have said before, and we cannot repeat too often, that the science of matter proceeds like ordinary know- ledge. It perfects this knowledge, increases its precision and its scope, but it works in the same direction and puts the same mechanism into play. If, therefore, ordinary knowledge, by reason of the cinematographical mechanism to which it is subjected, forbears to follow becoming in so far as becoming is moving, the science of matter renounces it equally. No doubt, it distinguishes as great a number of moments as we wish in the interval of time it considers. However small the intervals may be at which it stops, it authorizes us to divide them again if necessary. In con- trast with ancient science, which stopped at certain so- called essential moments, it is occupied indifferently with any moment whatever. But it always considers moments, always virtual stopping-places, always, in short, immobili-
- —<—--
v1 MODERN SCIENCE 337
ties. Which amounts to saying that real time, regarded as
a flux, or, in other words, as the very mobility of being,
escapes the hold of scientific knowledge. We have already
tried to establish this point in a former work. We alluded to
it again in the first chapter of this book. But it is necessary
to revert to it once more, in order to clear up misunder-
standings.
When positive science speaks of time, what it refers to is the movement of a certain mobile T on its trajectory. This movement has been chosen by it as representative of time, and it is, by definition, uniform. Let us call T,, T,, T;, . - - ete., points which divide the trajectory of the mobile into equal parts from its origin T,. We shall say that 1, 2, 3, . . . units of time have flowed past, when the mobile is at the points T,, T,, T,, . . . of the line it traverses. Accordingly, to consider the state of the universe at the end of a certain time ¢, is to examine where it will be when T is at the point T, of its course. But of the flux itself of time, still less of its effect on consciousness, there is here no question; for there enter into the calculation only the points T,, T,, T,;, . . . taken on the flux, never the flux itself. We may narrow the time considered as much as we will, that is, break up at will the interval be- tween two consecutive divisions T, and T,,_,; but it is always with points, and with points only, that we are deal- ing. What we retain of the movement of the mobile T are positions taken on its trajectory. What we retain of all the other points of the universe are their positions on their respective trajectories. To each virtual stop of the moving body T at the points of division T,, Tz, Ts, . . . we make correspond a virtual stop of all the other mobiles at the points where they are passing. And when we say that a movement or any other change has occupied a time é, we mean by it that we have noted a number ¢ of corre-
338 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
spondences of this kind. We have therefore counted
simultaneities; we have not concerned ourselves with the
flux that goes from one to another. The proof of this is
that I can, at discretion, vary the rapidity of the flux of
the universe in regard to a consciousness that is independent
of it and that would perceive the variation by the quite
qualitative feeling that it would have of it: whatever the
variation had been, since the movement of T would partici-
pate in this variation, I should have nothing to change in
my equations nor in the numbers that figure in them.
Let us go further. Suppose that the rapidity of the flux becomes infinite. Imagine, as we said in the first pages of this book, that the trajectory of the mobile T is given at once, and that the whole history, past, present and future, of the material universe is spread out instantaneously in space. The same mathematical correspondences will subsist between the moments of the history of the world unfolded like a fan, so to speak, and the divisions T,, T,, T3,
. of the line which will be called, by definition, “the course of time.”’ In the eyes of science nothing will have changed. But if, time thus spreading itself out in space and succession becoming juxtaposition, science has noth- ing to change in what it tells us, we must conclude that, in what it tells us, it takes account neither of succession in what of it is specific nor of time in what there is in it that is fluent. It has no sign to express what strikes our con- sciousness in succession and duration. It no more applies to becoming, so far as that is moving, than the bridges thrown here and there across the stream follow the water that flows under their arches.
Yet succession exists; I am conscious of it; it is a fact. When a physical process is going on before my eyes, my perception and my inclination have nothing to do with accelerating or retarding it. What is important to the
IV.] MODERN SCIENCE 339
physicist is the number of units of duration the process
fills; he does not concern himself about the units themselves
and that is why the successive states of the world might
be spread out all at once in space without his having to
change anything in his science or to cease talking about
time. But for us, conscious beings, it is the units that
matter, for we do not count extremities of intervals, we
feel and live the intervals themselves. Now, we are con-
scious of these intervals as of definite intervals. Let me
come back again to the sugar in my glass of water:' why
must I wait for it to melt? While the duration of the
phenomenon is relative for the physicist, since it is reduced
to a certain number of units of time and the units them-
selves are indifferent, this duration is an absolute for my
consciousness, for it coincides with a certain degree of
impatience which is rigorously determined. Whence
comes this determination? What is it that obliges me to
wait, and to wait for a certain length of psychical duration
which is forced upon me, over which I have no power?
If succession, in so far as distinct from mere juxtaposition,
has no real efficacy, if time is not a kind of force, why does
the universe unfold its successive states with a velocity
which, in regard to my consciousness, is a veritable abso-
lute? Why with this particular velocity rather than any
other? Why not with an infinite velocity? Why, in other
words, is not everything given at once, as on the film of the
cinematograph? The more I consider this point, the more
it seems to me that, if the future is bound to succeed the
present instead of being given alongside of it, it is because
the future is not altogether determined at the present
moment, and that if the time taken up by this succession
is something other than a number, if it has for the con-
sciousness that is installed in it absolute value and reality,
1See page 10.
340 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
it is because there is unceasingly being created in it, not
indeed in any such artificially isolated system as a glass
of sugared water, but in the concrete whole of which every
such system forms part, something unforeseeable and new.
This duration may not be the fact of matter itself, but that
of the life which reascends the course of matter; the two
movements are none the less mutually dependent upon each
other. The duration of the universe must therefore be one
with the latitude of creation which can find place in it.
When a child plays at reconstructing a picture by putting together the separate pieces in a puzzle game, the more he practices, the more and more quickly he succeeds. The reconstruction was, moreover, instantaneous, the child found it ready-made, when he opened the box on leaving the shop. The operation, therefore, does not require a definite time, and indeed, theoretically, it does not require any time. That is because the result is given. It is be- cause the picture is already created, and because to obtain it requires only a work of recomposing and rearranging— a work that can be supposed going faster and faster, and even infinitely fast, up to the point of being instantaneous. But, to the artist who creates a picture by drawing it from the depths of his soul, time is no longer an accessory; it is not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened with- out the content being altered. The duration of his work is part and parcel of his work. To contract or to dilate it would be to modify both the psychical evolution that fills it and the invention which is its goal. The time taken up by the invention, is one with the invention itself. It is the progress of a thought which is changing in the degree and measure that it is taking form. It is a vital process, something like the ripening of an idea.
The painter is before his canvas, the colors are on the palette, the model is sitting—all this we see, and also we
IV.] MODERN SCIENCE , 341
know the painter’s style: do we foresee what will appear
on the canvas? We possess the elements of the problem;
we know in an abstract way, how it will be solved, for the
portrait will surely resemble the model and will surely
resemble also the artist; but the concrete solution brings
with it that unforeseeable nothing which is everything
in a work of art. And it is this nothing that takes time.
Nought as matter, it creates itself as form. The sprouting
and flowering of this form are stretched out on an un-
shrinkable duration, which is one with their essence. So
of the works of nature. Their novelty arises from an inter-
nal impetus which is progress or succession, which confers
on succession a peculiar virtue or which owes to succes-
sion the whole of its virtue—which, at any rate, makes
succession, or continuity of interpenetration in time, irre-
ducible to a mere instantaneous juxtaposition in space.
This is why the idea of reading in a present state of the
material universe the future of living forms, and of unfold-
ing now their history yet to come, involves a veritable
absurdity. But this absurdity is difficult to bring out,
because our memory is accustomed to place alongside of
each other, in an ideal space, the terms it perceives in turn,
because it always represents past succession in the form of
juxtaposition. It is able to do so, indeed, just because the
past belongs to that which is already invented, to the dead,
and no longer to creation and to life. Then, as the succes-
sion to come will end by being a succession past, we per-
suade ourselves that the duration to come admits of the
same treatment as past duration, that it is, even now, un-
rollable, that the future is there, rolled up, already painted
on the canvas. An illusion, no doubt, but an illusion that
is natural, ineradicable, and that will last as long as the
human mind!
Time is invention or it is nothing at all. But of time-
342 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
invention physics can take no account, restricted as it is
to the cinematographical method. It is limited to count-
ing simultaneities between the events that make up this
time and the positions of the mobile T on its trajectory.
It detaches these events from the whole, which at every
moment puts on a new form and which communicates to
them something of its novelty. It considers them in the
abstract, such as they would be outside of the living whole,
that is to say, in a time unrolled in space. It retains only
the events or systems of events that can be thus isolated
without being made to undergo too profound a deformation,
because only these lend themselves to the application of
its method. Our physics dates from the day when it was
known how to isolate such systems. To sum up, while
modern physics is distinguished from ancient physics by the
fact that it considers any moment of time whatever, rt rests
altogether on a substitution of time-length for time-invention.
It seems then that, parallel to this physics, a second kind of knowledge ought to have grown up, which could have retained what physics allowed to escape. On the flux itself of duration science neither would nor could lay hold, bound as it was to the cinematographical method. This second kind of knowledge would have set the cinemato- graphical method aside. It would have called upon the mind to renounce its most cherished habits. It is within becoming that it would have transported us by an effort of sympathy. We should no longer be asking where a mov- ing body will be, what shape a system will take, through what state a change will pass at a given moment: the mo- ments of time, which are only arrests of our attention, would no longer exist; it is the flow of time, it is the very flux of the real that we should be trying to follow. The first kind of knowledge has the advantage of enabling us to foresee the future and of making us in some measure masters
IV.] MODERN SCIENCE 343
of events; in return, it retains of the moving reality only
eventual immobilities, that is to say, views taken of it by
our mind. It symbolizes the real and transposes it into
the human rather than expresses it. The other knowledge,
if it is possible, is practically useless, it will not extend
our empire over nature, it will even go against certain
natural aspirations of the intellect; but, if it succeeds, it is
reality itself that it will hold in a firm and final embrace.
Not only may we thus complete the intellect and its know-
ledge of matter by accustoming it to install itself within
the moving, but by developing also another faculty, com-
plementary to the intellect, we may open a perspective on
the other half of the real. For, as soon as we are con-
fronted with true duration, we see that it means creation,
and that if that which is being unmade endures, it can only
be because it is inseparably bound to what is making itself.
Thus will appear the necessity of a continual growth of the
universe, I should say of a life of the real. And thus will
be seen in a new light the life which we find on the surface
of our planet, a life directed the same way as that of the
universe, and inverse of materiality. To intellect, in short,
there will be added intuition.
The more we reflect on it, the more we shall find that this conception of metaphysics is that which modern science suggests.
For the ancients, indeed, time is theoretically negligible, because the duration of a thing only manifests the degra- dation’ of its essence: it is with this motionless essence that science has to deal. Change being only the effort of a form toward its own realization, the realization is all that it concerns us to know. No doubt the realization is never complete: it is this that ancient philosophy expresses by saying that we do not perceive form without matter. But if we consider the changing object at a certain essential
344 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
moment, at its apogee, we may say that there it just touches
its intelligible form. This intelligible form, this ideal and,
so to speak, limiting form, our science seizes upon. And
- possessing in this the gold-piece, it holds eminently the
small money which we call becoming or change. This
change is less than being. The knowledge that would take
it for object, supposing such knowledge were possible,
would be less than science.
But, for a science that places all the moments of time in the same rank, that admits no essential moment, no culminating point, no apogee, change is no longer a dimin- ution of essence, duration is not a dilution of eternity. The flux of time is the reality itself, and the things which we study are the things which flow. It is true that of this flowing reality we are limited to taking instantaneous views. But, just because of this, scientific knowledge must appeal to another knowledge to complete it. While the ancient conception of scientific knowledge ended in making time a degradation, and change the diminution of a form given from all eternity—on the contrary, by following the new conception to the end, we should come to see in time a progressive growth of the absolute, and in the evolution of things a continual invention of forms ever new.
It is true that it would be to break with the metaphysics of the ancients. They saw only one way of knowing defi- nitely. Their science consisted in a scattered and frag- mentary metaphysics, their metaphysics in a concentrated and systematic science. Their science and metaphysics were, at most, two species of one and the same genus. In our hypothesis, on the contrary, science and metaphysics are two opposed although complementary ways of knowing, the first retaining only moments, that is to say, that which does not endure, the second bearing on duration itself. Now, it was natural to hesitate between so novel a con-
gn Maa > ot o. Oa ie | e bed he
or DESCARTES _ | 345
ception of metaphysics and the traditional conception.
The temptation must have been strong to repeat with the
new science what had been tried on the old, to suppose
our scientific knowledge of nature completed at once, to
unify it entirely, and to give to this unification, as the
Greeks had already done, the name of metaphysics. So,
beside the new way that philosophy might have prepared,
the old remained open, that indeed which physics trod.
And, as physics retained of time only what could as well be
spread out all at once in space, the metaphysics that chose
the same direction had necessarily to proceed as if time
created and annihilated nothing, as if duration had no
efficacy. Bound, like the physics of the moderns and the
metaphysics of the ancients, to the cinematographical
method, it ended with the conclusion, implicitly admitted
at the start and immanent in the method itself: All is
given.
That metaphysics hesitated at first between the two paths seems to us unquestionable. . The indecision is visible in Cartesianism. On the one hand, Descartes affirms uni- versal mechanism: from this point of view movement would be relative,: and, as time has just as much reality as movement, it would follow that past, present and future are given from all eternity. But, on the other hand (and that is why the philosopher has not gone to these extreme consequences), Descartes believes in the free will of man. He superposes on the determinism of physical phenomena the indeterminism of human actions, and, consequently, on time-length a time in which there is invention, creation, true succession. This duration he supports on a God who is unceasingly renewing the creative act, and who, being thus tangent to time and becoming, sustains them, communicates to them necessarily something of his absolute
1 Descartes, Principes, ii. § 29.
346 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP
reality. When he places himself at this second point of
view, Descartes speaks of movement, even spatial, as of an
absolute.: |
He therefore entered both roads one after the other, hav- ing resolved to follow neither of them to the end. The first would have led him to the denial of free will in man and of real will in God. It was. the suppression of all efficient duration, the likening of the universe to a thing given, which a superhuman intelligence would embrace at once in a moment or in eternity. In following the second, on the contrary, he would have been led to all the conse- quences which the intuition of true duration implies. Cre- ation would have appeared not simply as continued, but also as continuous. The universe, regarded as a whole, would really evolve. The future would no longer be deter- minable by the present; at most we might say that, once realized, it can be found again in its antecedents, as the sounds of a new language can be expressed with the letters of an old alphabet if we agree to enlarge the value of the letters and to attribute to them, retro-actively, sounds which no combination of the old sounds could have pro- duced beforehand. Finally, the mechanistic explanation might have remained universal in this, that it can indeed be extended to as many systems as we choose to cut out in the continuity of the universe; but mechanism would then have become a method rather than a doctrine. It would have expressed the fact that science must proceed after the cinematographical manner, that the function of science is to scan the rhythm of the flow of things and not to fit itself into that flow —Such were the two opposite con- ceptions of metaphysics which were offered to philosophy.
It chose the first. ‘The reason of this choice is undoubt- edly the mind’s tendency to follow the cinematographical
1 Descartes, Principes, ii. §§ 36 ff.
v) SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ «B47
method, a method so natural to our intellect, and so well
adjusted also to the requirements of our science, that we
must feel doubly sure of its speculative impotence to re-
nounce it in metaphysics. But ancient philosophy also
influenced the choice. Artists for ever admirable, the
Greeks created a type of suprasensible truth, as of sensible
beauty, whose attraction is hard to resist. As soon as we
incline to make metaphysics a systematization of science,
we glide in the direction of Plato and of Aristotle. And,
once in the zone of attraction in which the Greek philoso-
phers moved, we are drawn along in their orbit.
Such was the case with Leibniz, as also with Spinoza. We are not blind to the treasures of originality their doc- trines contain. Spinoza and Leibniz have poured into them the whole content of their souls, rich with the in- ventions of their genius and the acquisitions of modern thought. And there are in each of them, especially in Spinoza, flashes of intuition that break through the system. But if we leave out of the two doctrines what breathes life into them, if we retain the skeleton only, we have before us the very picture of Platonism and Aristotelianism. seen through Cartesian mechanism. They present to us a systematization of the new physics, constructed on the model of the ancient metaphysics.
What, indeed, could the unification of physics be? The inspiring idea of that science was to isolate, within the uni- verse, systems of material points such that, the position of each of these points being known at a given moment, we could then calculate it for any moment whatever. As, moreover, the systems thus defined were the only ones on which the new science had hold, and as it could not be known beforehand whether a system satisfied or did not satisfy the desired condition, it was useful to proceed always and everywhere as if the condition was realized. There
348 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
was in this a methodological rule, a very natural rule—
so natural, indeed, that it was not even necessary to formu-
late it. For simple common sense tells us that when we
are possessed of an effective instrument of research, and
are ignorant of the limits of its applicability, we should
act as if its applicability were unlimited; there will always
be time to abate it. But the temptation must have been
great for the philosopher to hypostatize this hope, or rather
this impetus, of the new science, and to convert a general
rule of method into a fundamental law of things. So he
transported himself at once to the limit ; he supposed physics
to have become complete and to embrace the whole of the
sensible world. The universe became a system of points,
the position of which was rigorously determined at each
instant by relation to the preceding instant and theoretically
calculable for any moment whatever. The result, in short,
was universal mechanism. But it was not enough to
formulate this mechanism; what was required was to
found it, to give the reason for it and prove its necessity.
And the essential affirmation of mechanism being that of a
reciprocal mathematical dependence of all the points of
the universe, as also of all the moments of the universe,
the reason of mechanism had to be discovered in the unity
of a principle into which could be contracted all that is
juxtaposed in space and successive in time. Hence, the
whole of the real was supposed to be given at once. The
reciprocal determination of the juxtaposed appearances in
space was explained by the indivisibility of true being, and
the inflexible determinism of successive phenomena in time
simply expressed that the whole of being is given in the
eternal.
The new philosophy was going, then, to be a reeommence- ment, or rather a transposition, of the old. The ancient philosophy had taken each of the concepts into which a
IV.] SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ 349
becoming is concentrated or which mark its apogee: it
supposed them all known, and gathered them up into a
single concept, form of forms, idea of ideas, like the God
of Aristotle. The new philosophy was going to take each
of the laws which condition a becoming in relation to others
and which are as the permanent substratum of phenomena:
it would suppose them all known, and would gather them
up into a unity which also would express them eminently,
but which, like the God of Aristotle and for the same
reasons, must remain immutably shut up in itself.
True, this return to the ancient philosophy was not with- out great difficulties. When a Plato, an Aristotle, or a Plotinus melt all the concepts of their science into a single one, in so doing they embrace the whole of the real, for concepts are supposed to represent the things themselves, and to possess at least as much positive content. But a law, in general, expresses only a relation, and physical laws in particular express only quantitative relations be- tween concrete things. So that if a modern philosopher works with the laws of the new science as the Greek philoso- pher did with the concepts of the ancient science, if he makes all the conclusions of a physics supposed omniscient con- verge on a single point, he neglects what is concrete in the phenomena—the qualities perceived, the perceptions them- selves. His synthesis comprises, it seems, only a fraction of reality. In fact, the first result of the new science was to cut the real into two halves, quantity and quality, the former being credited to the account of bodies and the latter to the account of souls. The ancients had raised no such barriers either between quality and quantity or between soul and body. For them, the mathematical concepts were concepts like the others, related to the others and fitting quite naturally into the hierarchy of the Ideas. Neither was the body then defined by geometrical extension,
350 _ CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
nor the soul by consciousness. If the ¢uyf of Aristotle,
the entelechy of a living body, is less spiritual than our
“soul,” it is because his o@ya, already impregnated with the
Idea, is less corporeal than our “body.” The scission was
not yet irremediable between the two terms. It has be-
come so, and thence a metaphysic that aims at an abstract
unity must resign itself either to comprehend in its synthe-
sis only one half of the real, or to take advantage of the
absolute heterogeneity of the two halves in order to con-
sider one as a translation of the other. Different phrases
will express different things if they belong to the same
language, that is to say, if there is a certain relationship
of sound between them. But if they belong to two different
languages, they might, just because of their radical di-
versity of sound, express the same thing. So of quality
-and quantity, of soul and body. It is for having cut all
connection between the two terms that philosophers have
been led to establish between them a rigorous parallelism,
of which the ancients had not dreamed, to regard them as
translations and not as inversions of each other; in short,
to posit a fundamental identity as a substratum to their
duality. The synthesis to which they rose thus became
capable of embracing everything. A divine mechanism
made the phenomena of thought to correspond to those of
extension, each to each, qualities to quantities, souls to
bodies.
It is this parallelism that we find both in Leibniz and in Spinoza—in different forms, it is true, because of the un- equal importance which they attach to extension. With Spinoza, the two terms Thought and Extension are placed, in principle at least, in the same rank. They are, there- fore, two translations of one and the same original, or, as Spinoza says, two attributes of one and the same substance, which we must call God. And these two translations,
Pilly ce net A ia ec a
abe SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ - 351
as also an infinity of others into languages which we know
not, are called up and even forced into existence by the
original, just as the essence of the circle is translated auto-
matically, so to speak, both by a figure and by an equation.
For Leibniz, on the contrary, extension is indeed still a
translation, but it is thought that is the original, and
thought might dispense with translation, the translation
being made only for us. In positing God, we necessarily
posit also all the possible views of God, that is to say, the
monads. But we can always imagine that a view has been
taken from a point of view, and it is natural for an imperfect
mind like ours to class views, qualitatively different, ac-
cording to the order and position of points of view, quali-
tatively identical, from which the views might have been
taken. In reality the points of view do not exist, for there
are only views, each given in an indivisible block and
representing in its own way the whole of reality, which is
God. But we need to express the plurality of the views,
that are unlike each other, by the multiplicity of the points
of view that are exterior to each other; and we also need
to symbolize the more or less close relationship between
the views by the relative situation of the points of view to
one another, their nearness or their distance, that is to say,
by a magnitude. That is what Leibniz means when he
says that space is the order of coexistents, that the per-
ception of extension is a confused perception (that is to say,
a perception relative to an imperfect mind), and that
nothing exists but monads, expressing thereby that the
- real Whole has no parts, but is repeated to infinity, each
time integrally (though diversely) within itself, and that all these repetitions are complementary to each other. In just the same way, the visible relief of an object is equiva-
- lent to the whole set of stereoscopic views taken of it from
all points, so that, instead of seeing in the relief a juxta-
352 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
position of solid parts, we might quite as well look upon it
as made of the reciprocal complementarity of these whole
views, each given in block, each indivisible, each different
from all the others and yet representative of the same thing.
The Whole, that is to say, God, is this very relief for Leibniz,
and the monads are these complementary plane views;
for that reason he defines God as ‘“‘the substance that has
no point of view,” or, again, as “the universal harmony,”
that is to say, the reciprocal complementarity of monads.
In short, Leibniz differs from Spinoza in this, that he looks
upon the universal mechanism as an aspect which reality
takes for us, whereas, Spinoza makes of it an aspect which
reality takes for itself.
It is true that, after having concentrated in God the whole of the real, it became difficult for them to pass from God to things, from eternity to time. The difficulty was even much greater for these philosophers than an Aristotle or a Plotinus. The God of Aristotle, indeed, had been obtained by the compression and reciprocal compene- tration of the Ideas that represent, in their finished state or in their culminating point, the changing things of the world. He was, therefore, transcendent to the world, and the duration of things was juxtaposed to His eternity, of which it was only a weakening. But in the principle to which we are led by the consideration of universal mechanism, and which must serve as its substratum, it is not. concepts or things, but laws or relations that are condensed. Now, a relation does not exist separately. A law connects changing terms and is immanent in what it governs. The principle in which all these relations are ultimately summed up, and which is the basis of the unity of nature, cannot, therefore, be transcendent to sensible reality; it is immanent in it, and we must suppose that it is at once both in and out of time, gathered up in the
es
IV.] SPINOZA AND LEIBNIZ 353
unity of its substance and yet condemned to wind it off in
an endless chain. Rather than formulate so appalling a
contradiction, the philosophers were necessarily led to
sacrifice the weaker of the two terms, and to regard the
temporal aspect of things as a mere illusion. Leibniz says
so in explicit terms, for he makes of time, as of space, a
confused perception. While the multiplicity of his monads
expresses only the diversity of views taken of the whole,
the history of an isolated monad seems to be hardly any-
thing else than the manifold views that it can take of its
own substance: so that time would consist in all the points
of view that each monad can assume towards itself, as
space consists in all the points of view that all monads
can assume towards God. But the thought of Spinoza
is much less clear, and this philosopher seems to have sought
to establish, between eternity and that which has duration,
the same difference as Aristotle made between essence and
accidents: a most difficult undertaking, for the vdy of
Aristotle was no longer there to measure the distance and
explain the passage from the essential to the accidental,
Descartes having eliminated it for ever. However that
may be, the deeper we go into the Spinozistic conception
of the “inadequate,” as related to the “adequate,” the
more we feel ourselves moving in the direction of Aristote-
lianism—just as the Leibnizian monads, in proportion as
they mark themselves out the more clearly, tend to ap-
proximate to the Intelligibles of Plotinus.: The natural
trend of these two philosophies brings them back to the
conclusions of the ancient philosophy.
To sum up, the resemblances of this new metaphysic to that of the ancients arise from the fact that both suppose
1 In a course of lectures on Plotinus, given at the Collége de France in
1897-1898, we tried to bring out these resemblances. They are numerous
and impressive. The analogy is continued even in the formulae em-
ployed on each side.
354 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
ready-made—the former above the sensible, the latter
within the sensible—a science one and complete, with
which any reality that the sensible may contain is believed
to coincide. for both, reality as well as truth are integrally —
given im eternity. Both are opposed to the idea of a reality
that creates itself gradually, that is, at bottom, to an ab-
solute duration.
Now, it might easily be shown that the conclusions of
this metaphysic, springing from science, have rebounded
upon science itself, as it were, by ricochet. They penetrate
the whole of our so-called empiricism. Physics and chem-
istry study only inert matter; biology, when it treats the
living being physically and chemically, considers only
the inert: side of the living: hence the mechanistic expla-
nations, in spite of their development, include only a small
part of the real. To suppose a priori that the whole of
the real is resolvable into elements of this kind, or at least
that mechanism can give a complete translation of what
happens in the world, is to pronounce for a certain meta-
physic—the very metaphysic of which Spinoza and Leib-
niz have laid down the principles and drawn the conse-
quences. Certainly, the psycho-physiologist who affirms
the exact equivalence of the cerebral and the psychical
state, who imagines the possibility, for some superhuman
intellect, of reading in the brain what is going on in con-
sciousness, believes himself very far from the metaphysi-
cians of the seventeenth century, and very near to experi-
ence. Yet experience pure and simple tells us nothing of the
kind. It shows us the interdependence of the mental and
the physical, the necessity of a certain cerebral substratum
for the psychical state—nothing more. From the fact
that two things are mutually dependent, it does not follow
that they are equivalent. Because a certain screw is
1V.1 PARALLELISM AND MONISM ~ 355
necessary to a certain machine, because the machine works
when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken
away, we do not say that the screw is the equivalent of
the machine. For correspondence to be equivalence,
it would be necessary that to any part of the machine a
definite part of the screw should correspond—as in a literal
translation in which each chapter renders a chapter, each
sentence a sentence, each word a word. Now, the re-
lation of the brain to consciousness seems to be entirely
different. Not only does the hypothesis of an equivalence
between the psychical state and the cerebral state imply a
downright absurdity, as we have tried to prove in a former
essay,! but the facts, examined without prejudice, cer-
tainly seem to indicate that the relation of the psychical
to the physical is just that of the machine to the screw.
To speak of an equivalence between the two is simply
to curtail, and make almost unintelligible, the Spinozis-
tic or Leibnizian metaphysic. It is to accept this philos-
ophy, such as it is, on the side of Extension, but to mutilate
it on the side of Thought. With Spinoza, with Leibniz,
we suppose the unifying synthesis of the phenomena of
matter achieved, and everything in matter explained
mechanically. But, for the conscious facts, we no longer
push the synthesis to the end. We stop half-way. We
suppose consciousness to be coextensive with a certain
part of nature and not with all of it. We are thus led,
sometimes to an “epiphenomenalism” that associates
consciousness with certain particular vibrations and puts
it here and there in the world in a sporadic state, and some-
times to a “monism” that scatters consciousness into as
many tiny grains as there are atoms; but, in either case,
it is to an incomplete Spinozism or to an incomplete Leib-
“Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique” (Revue de métaphysique et de morale, Nov. 1904, pp. 895-908). Cf. Matiere et mémoire, Paris, 1896, chap. i.
356 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
nizianism that we come back. Between this conception
of nature and Cartesianism we find, moreover, intermediate
historical stages. The medical philosophers of the eight-
eenth century, with their cramped Cartesianism, have had a
great part in the genesis of the ‘‘epiphenomenalism” and
““monism”’ of the present day.
These doctrines are thus found to fall short of the Kantian
criticism. Certainly, the philosophy of Kant is also im-
bued with the belief in a science single and complete, em-
bracing the whole of the real. Indeed, looked at from one
aspect, it is only a continuation of the metaphysics of the
moderns and a transposition of the ancient metaphysics.
Spinoza and Leibniz had, following Aristotle, hypostatized
in God the unity of knowledge. The Kantian criticism,
on one side at least, consists in asking whether the whole
of this hypothesis is necessary to modern science as it was
to ancient science, or if part of the hypothesis is not suf-
ficient. For the ancients, science applied to concepts,
that is to say, to kinds of things. In compressing all con-
cepts into one, they therefore necessarily arrived at a
being, which we may call Thought, but which was rather
thought-object than thought-subject. When Aristotle
defined God the vonsews vorfacs, it is probably on voyjoews,
and not on »djocs that he put the emphasis. God was
the synthesis of all concepts, the idea of ideas. But
modern science turns on laws, that is, on relations. Now,
a relation is a bond established by a mind between two
or more terms. A relation is nothing outside of the in-
tellect that relates. The universe, therefore, can only
be a system of laws if phenomena have passed beforehand
through the filter of an intellect. Of course, this intellect
might be that of a being infinitely superior to man, who
would found the materiality of things at the same time that
Iv.) THE KANTIAN CRITICISM - 357
he bound them together: such was the hypothesis of Leib-
niz and of Spinoza. But it is not necessary to go so far,
and, for the effect we have here to obtain, the human
intellect is enough: such is precisely the Kantian solution.
Between the dogmatism of a Spinoza or a Leibniz and the
criticism of Kant there is just the same distance as between
“it may be maintained that—” and “‘it suffices that—.”
Kant stops this dogmatism on the incline that was making
it slip too far toward the Greek metaphysics; he reduces
to the strict minimum the hypothesis which is necessary
in order to suppose the physics of Galileo indefinitely ex-
tensible. True, when he speaks of the human intellect, he
means neither yours nor mine: the unity of nature comes
indeed from the human understanding that unifies, but
the unifying function that operates here is impersonal.
It imparts itself to our individual consciousnesses, but it
transcends them. It is much less than a substantial God;
it is, however, a little more than the isolated work of a man
or even than the collective work of humanity. It does not
exactly lie within man; rather, man lies within it, as in
an atmosphere of intellectuality which his consciousness
breathes. It is, if we will, a formal God, something that
in Kant is not yet divine, but which tends to become so.
It became so, indeed, with Fichte. With Kant, however,
its principal rdle was to give to the whole of our science
a relative and human character, although of a humanity
already somewhat deified. From this point of view, the
criticism of Kant consisted chiefly in limiting the dog-
matism of his predecessors, accepting their conception
of science and reducing to a minimum the metaphysic
it implied.
But it is otherwise with the Kantian distinction between the matter of knowledge and its form. By regarding in- telligence as pre-eminently a faculty of establishing re-
358 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
lations, Kant attributed an extra-intellectual origin to the
terms between which the relations are established. He
affirmed, against his immediate predecessors, that know-
ledge is not entirely resolvable into terms of intelligence.
He brought back into philosophy—while modifying it
and carrying it on to another plane—that essential element
of the philosophy of Descartes which had been abandoned
by the Cartesians.
Thereby he prepared the way for a new philosophy, which might have established itself in the extra-intellectual matter of knowledge by a higher effort of intuition. Co- inciding with this matter, adopting the same rhythm and the same movement, might not consciousness, by two efforts of opposite direction, raising itself and lowering itself by turns, become able to grasp from within, and no longer perceive only from without, the two forms of reality, body and mind? Would not this twofold effort make us, as far as that is possible, re-live the absolute? Moreover, as, in the course of this operation, we should see intellect spring up of itself, cut itself out in the whole of mind, in- tellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited, but not relative.
Such was the direction that Kantianism might have pointed out to a revivified Cartesianism. But in this direction Kant himself did not go.
He would not, because, while assigning to knowledge an extra-intellectual matter, he believed this matter to be either co-extensive with intellect or less extensive than intellect. Therefore he could not dream of cutting out intellect in it, nor, consequently, of tracing the genesis of the understanding and its categories. The molds of the understanding and the understanding itself had to be accepted as they are, already made. Between the matter presented to our intellect and this intellect itself there was
IV.) THE KANTIAN CRITICISM - 359
no relationship. The agreement between the two was due
to the fact that intellect imposed its form on matter. So
that not only was it necessary to posit the intellectual
form of knowledge as a kind of absolute and give up the
quest of its genesis, but the very matter of this knowledge
seemed too ground down by the intellect for us to be able
to hope to get it back in its original purity. It was not
the “thing-in-itself,” it was only the refraction of it through
our atmosphere.
If now we inquire why Kant did not believe that the matter of our knowledge extends beyond its form, this is what we find. The criticism of our knowledge of nature that was instituted by Kant consisted in ascertaining what our mind must be and what Nature must be 7 the claims of our science are justified; but of these claims themselves Kant has not made the criticism. I mean that he took for granted the idea of a science that is one, capable of bind- ing with the same force all the parts of what is given, and of co-ordinating them into a system presenting on all sides an equal solidity. He did not consider, in his Critique of Pure Reason, that science became less and less objective, more and more symbolical, to the extent that it went from the physical to the vital, from the vital to the psychical. Experience does not move, to his view, in two different and perhaps opposite ways, the one conformable to the direction of the intellect, the other contrary to it. There is, for him, only one experience, and the intellect covers its whole ground. This is what Kant expresses by saying that all our intuitions are sensuous, or, in other words, infra-intellectual. And this would have to be admitted, indeed, if our science presented in all its parts an equal objectivity. But suppose, on the contrary, that science is less and less objective, more and more symbolical, as it goes from the physical to the psychical, passing through
360 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [OHAP.
the vital: then, as it is indeed necessary to perceive a
thing somehow in order to symbolize it, there would be an
intuition of the psychical, and more generally of the vital,
which the intellect would transpose and translate, no
doubt, but which would none the less transcend the in-
tellect. There would be, in other words, a supra-intel-
lectual intuition. If this intuition exist, a taking possession
of the spirit by itself is possible, and no longer only a know-
ledge that is external and phenomenal. What is more,
if we have an intuition of this kind (I mean an ultra-in-
tellectual intuition) then sensuous intuition is likely to
be in continuity with it through certain intermediaries,
as the infra-red is continuous with the ultra-violet. Sen-
suous intuition itself, therefore, is promoted. It will
no longer attain only the phantom of an unattainable
thing-in-itself. It is (provided we bring to it certain
indispensable corrections) into the absolute itself that it
will introduce us. So long as it was regarded as the only
material of our science, it reflected back on all science
something of the relativity which strikes a scientific know-
ledge of spirit; and thus the perception of bodies, which is
the beginning of the science of bodies, seemed itself to
be relative. Relative, therefore, seemed to be sensuous
intuition. But this is not the case if distinctions are made
between the different sciences, and if the scientific knowledge
of the spiritual (and also, consequently, of the vital) be
regarded as the more or less artificial extension of a certain
manner of knowing which, applied to bodies, is not at all
symbolical. Let us go further: if there are thus two in-
tuitions of different order (the second being obtained by a
reversal of the direction of the first), and if it is toward the
second that the intellect naturally inclines, there is no
essential difference between the intellect and this intuition
itself. The barriers between the matter of sensible know-
“ THE KANTIAN CRITICISM 361.
ledge and its form are lowered, as also between the “pure
forms’ of sensibility and the categories of the understand-
ing. The matter and form of intellectual knowledge
(restricted to its own object) are seen to be engendering
each other by a reciprocal adaptation, intellect modeling
itself on corporeity, and corporeity on intellect.
But this duality of intuition Kant neither would nor could admit. It would have been necessary, in order to ad- mit it, to regard duration as the very stuff of reality, and consequently to distinguish between the substantial du- ration of things and time spread out in space. It would have been necessary to regard space itself, and the geometry which is immanent in space, as an ideal limit in the direction of which material things develop, but which they do not actually attain. Nothing could be more contrary to the letter, and perhaps also to the spirit, of the Critique of Pure Reason. No doubt, knowledge is presented to us in it as an ever-open roll, experience as a push of facts that is for ever going on. But, according to Kant, these facts are spread out on one plane as fast as they arise; they are external to each other and external to the mind. Of a knowledge from within, that could grasp them in their springing forth instead of taking them already sprung, that would dig beneath space and spatialized time, there is never any question. Yet it is indeed beneath this plane that our consciousness places us; there flows true duration.
In this respect, also, Kant is very near his predecessors. Between the non-temporal, and the time that is spread out in distinct moments, he admits no mean. And as there is indeed no intuition that carries us into the non- temporal, all intuition is thus found to be sensuous, by definition. But between physical existence, which is spread out in space, and non-temporal existence, which can only be a conceptual and logical existence like that
362 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
of which metaphysical dogmatism speaks, is there not
room for consciousness and for life? There is, unquestion-
ably. We perceive it when we place ourselves in duration
in order to go from that duration to moments, instead of
starting from moments in order to bind them again. and
to construct duration.
Yet it was to a non-temporal intuition that the immediate successors of Kant turned, in order to escape from the Kantian relativism. Certainly, the ideas of becoming, of progress, of evolution, seem to occupy a large place in their philosophy. But does duration really play a part in it? Real duration is that in which each form flows out of previous forms, while adding to them something new, and is explained by them as much as it explains them; but to deduce this form directly from one complete Being which it is supposed to manifest, is to return to Spinozism. It is, like Leibniz and Spinoza, to deny to duration all efficient action. The post-Kantian philosophy, severe as it may have been on the mechanistic theories, accepts from mechanism the idea of a science that is one and the same for all kinds of reality. And it is nearer to mechanism than it imagines; for though, in the consideration of matter, of life and of thought, it replaces the successive degrees of complexity, that mechanism supposed by degrees of the realization of an Idea or by degrees of the objectification of a Will, it still speaks of degrees, and these degrees are those of a scale which Being traverses in a single direction. In short, it makes out the same articulations in nature that mechanism does. Of mechanism it retains the whole design; it merely gives it a different coloring. But it is the design itself, or at least one half of the design, that needs to be re-made.
If we are to do that, we must give up the method of construction, which was that of Kant’s successors. We
IV.1 THE KANTIAN CRITICISM — 363
must appeal to experience—an experience purified, or,
in other words, released, where necessary, from the molds
that our intellect has formed in the degree and proportion
of the progress of our action on things. An experience
of this kind is not a non-temporal experience. It only
seeks, beyond the spatialized time in which we believe
we see continual rearrangements between the parts, that
concrete duration in which a radical recasting of the whole
is always going on. It follows the real in all its sinuosities.
It does not lead us, like the method of construction, to
higher and higher generalities—piled-up stories of a mag-
nificent building. But then it leaves no play between the
explanations it suggests and the objects it has to explain.
It is the detail of the real, and no longer only the whole
in a lump, that it claims to illumine.
That the thought of the nineteenth century called for a
philosophy of this kind, rescued from the arbitrary, capable
of coming down to the detail of particular facts, is un-
questionable. Unquestionably, also, it felt that this
philosophy ought to establish itself in what we call con-
crete duration. The advent of the moral sciences, the
progress of psychology, the growing importance of embry-
ology among the biological sciences—all this was bound
to suggest the idea of a reality which endures inwardly,
which is duration itself. So, when a philosopher arose who
announced a doctrine of evolution, in which the progress
of matter toward perceptibility would be traced together
with the advance of the mind toward rationality, in which
the complication of correspondences between the external
and the internal would be followed step by step, in which
change would become the very substance of things—to
him all eyes were turned. The powerful attraction that
Spencerian evolutionism has exercised on contemporary
364 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [CHAP.
thought is due to that very cause. However far Spencer
may seem to be from Kant, however ignorant, indeed, he
may have been of Kantianism, he felt, nevertheless, at
his first contact with the biological sciences, the direction
in which philosophy could continue to advance without
laying itself open to the Kantian criticism.
But he had no sooner started to follow the path than he turned off short. He had promised to retrace a genesis, and, lo! he was doing something entirely different. His doctrine bore indeed the name of evolutionism; it claimed to remount and redescend the course of the universal becoming; but, in fact, it dealt neither with becoming nor with evolution.
We need not enter here into a profound examination of this philosophy. Let us say merely that the usual device of the Spencerian method consisis in reconstructing evolution with fragments of the evolved. If I paste a picture on a card and then cut up the card into bits, I can reproduce the picture by rightly grouping again the small pieces. And a child who working thus with the pieces of a puzzle-picture, and putting together unformed fragments of the picture finally obtains a pretty colored design, no doubt imagines that he has produced design and color. Yet the act of drawing and painting has nothing to do with that of putting to- gether the fragments of a picture already drawn and al- ready painted. So, by combining together the most simple results of evolution, you may imitate well or ill the most complex effects; but of neither the simple nor the complex will you have retraced the genesis, and the addition of evolved to evolved will bear no resemblance whatever to the movement of evolution.
Such, however, is Spencer’s illusion. He takes reality in its present form; he breaks it to pieces, he scatters it in fragments which he throws to the winds; then he
IV.} THE EVOLUTIONISM OF SPENCER 365
“integrates” these fragments and “dissipates their move-
ment.” Having imitated the Whole by a work of mosaic,
he imagines he has retraced the design of it, and made the
genesis.
Is it matter that is in question? The diffused elements which he integrates into visible and tangible bodies have all the air of being the very particles of the simple bodies, which he first supposes disseminated throughout space. They are, at any rate, ‘material points,’ and consequently unvarying points, veritable little solids: as if solidity, being what is nearest and handiest to us, could be found at the very origin of materiality! The more physics pro- gresses, the more it shows the impossibility of representing the properties of ether or of electricity—the probable base of all bodies—on the model of the properties of the matter which we perceive. But philosophy goes back further even than the ether, a mere schematic figure of the re- lations between phenomena apprehended by our senses. It knows indeed that what is visible and tangible in things represents our possible action on them. It is not by divid- ing the evolved that we shall reach the principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which it is the term.
Is it the question of mind? By compounding the reflex with the reflex, Spencer thinks he generates instinct and rational volition one after the other. He fails to see that the specialized reflex, being a terminal point of evo- lution just as much as perfect will, cannot be supposed at the start. That the first of the two terms should have reached its final form before the other is probable enough; but both the one and the other are deposits of the evolution movement, and the evolution movement itself can no more be expressed as a function solely of the first than solely
366 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (CHAP.
of the second. -We must begin by mixing the reflex and
the voluntary. We must then go in quest of the fluid
reality which has been precipitated in this twofold form,
and which probably shares in both without being either.
At the lowest degree of the animal scale, in living beings
that are but an undifferentiated protoplasmic mass, the
reaction to stimulus does not yet call into play one definite
mechanism, as in the reflex; it has not yet choice among
several definite mechanisms, as in the voluntary act; it is,
then, neither voluntary nor reflex, though it heralds both.
We experience in ourselves something of this true original
activity when we perform semi-voluntary and semi-auto-
matic movements to escape a pressing danger. And yet
this is but a very imperfect imitation of the primitive char-
acter, for we are concerned here with a mixture of two
activities already formed, already localized in a brain
and in a spinal cord, whereas the original activity was a
simple thing, which became diversified through the very
construction of mechanisms like those of the spinal cord
and brain. But to all this Spencer shuts his eyes, because
it is of the essence of his method to recompose the con-
solidated with the consolidated, instead of going back
to the gradual process of consolidation, which is evolution
itself.
Is it, finally, the question of the correspondence between mind and matter? Spencer is right in defining the in-
tellect by this correspondence. He is right in regarding ©
it as the end of an evolution. But when he comes to re- trace this evolution, again he integrates the evolved with the evolved—failing to see that he is thus taking useless trouble, and that in positing the slightest fragment of the actually evolved he posits the whole—so that it is vain for him, then, to pretend to make the genesis of it.
For, according to him, the phenomena that succeed.
v1 THE EVOLUTIONISM OF SPENCER 367
each other in nature project into the human mind images
which represent them. To the relations between phenom-
ena, therefore, correspond symmetrically relations between
the ideas. And the most general laws of nature, in which
the relations between phenomena are condensed, are thus
foundtohave engendered the directing principles of thought,
into which the relations between ideas have been integrated.
Nature, therefore, is reflected in mind. The intimate
structure of our thought corresponds, piece by piece, to
the very skeleton of things—I admit it willingly; but, in
order that the human mind may be able to represent re-
lations between phenomena, there must first be phenomena,
that is to say, distinct facts, cut out in the continuity of
becoming. And once we posit this particular mode of
cutting up such as we perceive it to-day, we posit also the
intellect such as it is to-day, for it is by relation to it, and
to it alone, that reality is cut up in this manner. Is it
probable that mammals and insects notice the same aspects
of nature, trace in it the same divisions, articulate the whole
in the same way? And yet the insect, so far as intelligent,
has already something of our intellect. Each being cuts
up the material world according to the lines that its action
must follow: it is these lines of possible action that, by
intercrossing, mark out the net of experience of which
each mesh is a fact. No doubt, a town is composed ex-
clusively of houses, and the streets of the town are only the
intervals between the houses: so, we may say that nature
contains only facts, and that, the facts once posited, the
relations are simply the lines running between the facts.
But, in a town, it is the gradual portioning of the ground
. into lots that has determined at once the place of the houses,
their general shape, and the direction of the streets: to
this portioning we must go back if we wish to understand
the particular mode of subdivision that causes each house
368 CREATIVE EVOLUTION _ (CHAP.
to be where it is, each street to run as it does. Now, the
cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience already
allotted as given, whereas the true problem is to know
how the allotment was worked. I agree that the laws of
thought are only the integration of relations between
facts. But, when I posit the facts with the shape they
have for me to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception
and intellection such as they are in me to-day; for it is
they that portion the real into lots, they that cut the facts
out in the whole of reality. Therefore, instead of saying
that the relations between facts have generated the laws
of thought, I can as well claim that it is the form of thought
that has determined the shape of the facts perceived, and
consequently their relations among themselves: the two
ways of expressing oneself are equivalent; they say at
bottom the same thing. With the second, it is true, we
give up speaking of evolution. But, with the first, we
only speak of it, we do not think of it any the more. For
a true evolutionism would propose to discover by what
modus vivendi, gradually obtained, the intellect has adopted
its plan of structure, and matter its mode of subdivision.
This structure and this subdivision work into each other;
they are mutually complementary; they must have pro-
gressed one with the other. And, whether we posit the
present structure of mind or the present subdivision of
matter, in either case we remain in the evolved: we are
told nothing of what evolves, nothing of evolution.
And yet it is this evolution that we must discover. Al- ready, in the field of physics itself, the scientists who are pushing the study of their science furthest incline to believe that we cannot reason about the parts as we reason about the whole; that the same principles are not applicable to the origin and to the end of a progress; that neither creation nor annihilation, for instance, is inadmissible
———————
Iv.] THE EVOLUTIONISM OF SPENCER 369
when we are concerned with the constituent corpuscles
of the atom. Thereby they tend to place themselves
in the concrete duration, in which alone there is true
generation and not only a composition of parts. It is
true that the creation and annihilation of which they speak
concern the movement or the energy, and not the imponder-
able medium through which the energy and the movement
are supposed to circulate. But what can remain of matter
when you take away everything that determines it, that
is to say, just energy and movement themselves? The
philosopher must go further than the scientist. Making
a clean sweep of everything that is only an imaginative
symbol, he will see the material world melt back into a
simple flux, a continuity of flowing, a becoming. And he
will thus be prepared to discover real duration there where
it is still more useful to find it, in the realm of life and of
consciousness. For, so far as inert matter is concerned,
we may neglect the flowing without committing a serious
error: matter, we have said, is weighted with geometry;
and matter, the reality which descends, endures only by
its connection with that which ascends. But life and con-
sciousness are this very ascension. When once we have
grasped them in their essence by adopting their movement,
we understand how the rest of reality is derived from them.
Evolution appears and, within this evolution, the pro-
gressive determination of materiality and intellectuality
by the gradual consolidation of the one and of the other.
But, then, it is within the evolutionary movement that
we place ourselves, in order to follow it to its present re-
sults, instead of recomposing these results artificially with
fragments of themselves. Such seems to us to be the true
function of philosophy. So understood, philosophy is
not only the turning of the mind homeward, the coincidence
of human consciousness with the living principle whence
370 CREATIVE EVOLUTION
it emanates, a contact with the creative effort: it is the
study of becoming in general, it is true evolutionism and
consequently the true continuation of science—provided
that we understand by this word a set of truths either
experienced or demonstrated, and not a certain new
scholasticism that has grown up during the latter half
of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo,
as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle.
Ee
INDEX
(CoMPILED BY THE TRANSLATOR)
Abolition of everything a self-
contradiction, 280, 283, 296,
298
idea of, 279, 282, 283, 295, 296. See Nought
Absence of order, 231, 234, 274. See Disorder
Absolute and freedom, 277
reality, 99, 228-9, 269, 358, 361 reality of the person, 269 time and the, 239, 240, 298, 340, 344 Absoluteness of duration, 206 of understanding, xi, 47, 152, 190, 197, 199 Abstract becoming, 304-7 multiplicity, 257-9 time, 9, 17, 20-2, 37, 39, 46, 51, 163, 318-9, 336, 352-3
Accident and essence in Aris-
totle’s philosophy, 353
in evolution, 86-7, 104, 114-5, 127, 169, 170, 252, 254-5, 266, 267, 326-7
Accidental variations, 55, 63, 68, 69, 74, 85-6, 168
Accumulation of energy, function of vegetable organisms, 253, 255
Achilles and tortoise, in Zeno, 811, 312-3
Acquired characters, inheritance of, 76-9, 83-4, 87, 169, 170, 173, 231
Act, consciousness as inadequacy of, to representation, 144
form (or essence), quality, three classes of representa- tion, 302-3 :
Action, creativeness of free, 192, 247
and concepts, 160, 297
and consciousness, xiii, 5, 143- 4, 145, 179-80, 207, 262
discontinuity of, 154, 307
freedom of, in animals, 130
_as function of nervous system, 262-3
Action (Continued)
indivisibility of, 94, 95, 308-9
and inert matter, 96, 136, 141-2,
156, 187, 198, 226, 366 instinct and, 136, 141 instrument of, consciousness,
180 instrument of, life, 162 instrument of matter, 161, 198-9 as instrument of consciousness,
180 and intellect.
action intensity of consciousness varies with ratio of possible, to
real, 145 meaning of, 301-3 moves from want to fulness,
297, 298 organism a machine for, 252,
254, 300 and perception, 5, 11, 12, 93,
188, 189, 206, 227-30, 300, 307,
368 possible, 12, 13, 96, 144, 145,
146-7, 159, 165, 179-81, 188,
264 and science, 93, 195-6, 198-9,
329-30 and space, 203 sphere of the intellect, 155 tension in a free, 200, 207, 238,
240, 301-2
Activity, dissatisfaction the start-
ing-point of, 297 of instinct, continuous with
vital process, 139, 140 life as, 128-9, 247 mutually inverse
vital, 248 and nervous system, 110, 130,
132-3, 134-5, 180, 252, 261-3 organism as, 174 potential. See Action, possible tension of free, 200, 202, 207-8,
223-4, 237, 239, 300-1 and torpor in evolution, 109,
111, 113, 114, 119-20, 129-30,
See Intellect and
factors in
372
Activity, (Continued)
135-6, 181, 292 vital, has evolved divergently,
134 See Divergent lines of evolu- tion
Adaptation, 50-1, 55, 57-8, 59, 70, 101, 129, 1388, 192, 255, 270,
305-6
and causation, 102
mutual, between materiality
and intellectuality, 187, 206-7
and progress, 101-2
Adequate and inadequate in
Spinoza, 353
Adjectives, substantives and
verbs, 303-4, 315
Aesthetics and philosophy, 177
Affection, Role of, in the idea of
chance, 234
in the idea of nought, 281-3,
289, 298, 295, 296
in negation, 286-7
Affirmation and negation,
293
Age and individuality, 15-6
Albuminoid substances, 121-2
Alciope, 96
Alexandrian philosophy, 322, 323
Algae in illustration of probable
consciousness in vegetable
forms, 112
Alimentation, 113-4, 117, 247
Allegory of the Cave, 191
Alternations of increase and de-
crease of mutability of the
universe, 245-6
Alveolar froth, 33-4
Ambiguity of the idea of “gen-
erality’”’ in philosophy, 230-1,
320-1
of primitive organisms, 99, 112,
113, 129-30
Ammophila hirsuta,
instinct in, 173
Amoeba, in illustration of imita-
tion of the living by the un-
organized, 33-6
in illustration of the ambiguity
of primitive organisms, 99
in illustration of the mobility
characteristic of animals, 108
in illustration of the ‘‘explo-
sive’ expenditure of energy
characteristic of animals,
120, 253
Anagenesis, 34
Anarchy, idea of, 233, 284. See
Disorder
285-6,
paralyzing
INDEX
Anatomy, comparative, and
transformism, 25
Ancient philosophy, Achilles and
tortoise, 311-2
Alexandrian philosophy, 322-3
Allegory of the Cave, 191
Anima (De), 322 note
Apogee of sensible object, 344,
345, 349
Archimedes, 343-4
Aristotle, 135, 174-5, 227-8, 314,
316, 321, 323, 324, 328-33, 347,
349, 353, 356, 370
Arrow of Zeno, 308-13
ascent toward God, in Aris-
totle, 323
Astronomy, ancient and mod- ern, 334-6
attraction and impulsion in, 323-4
becoming in, 313-4, 317
bow and indivisibility of mo- tion, 308-9
Caelo (De), of Aristotle, 322 note, 324 note
and Cartesian geometry, 334-5
causality in, 323, 325-6
change in, 313-4, 317, 328-9, 342- 3
cinematographical
315
circularity of God’s thought, 323-4
concentric spheres, 328
concepts, 326-7, 356
- “conversion’’ and ‘‘procession’’
in, 323
degradation of ideas into sensi- ble flux, 317-8, 321, 323-4, 327, 828, 3438-5, 352-3
degrees of reality, 323-4, 327
diminution, derivation of be- coming by. See Degradation of Ideas, ete.
duration, 317-9 note, 323-4, 327- 9
nature of,
Eleatic philosophy, 308, 314
Enneads of Plotinus, 210 note
essence and accident, 354
essence or form, 314-5
eternal, 317-8, 324-6
Eternity, 3817-8, 320, 324, 328 9
extension, 210 note, 318, 324, 327
form or idea, 314-20, 322, 327, 329-31, 352
geometry, Cartesian, and an-
cient philosophy, 334
INDEX
Ancient Philosophy,
God of Aristotle,
349, 352, 356
(Continued)
196-7, 322-4,
Ody, 353
Idea, 314-22, 352-3
and indivisibility of motion,
307-8, 311
intelligible reality in, 326
intelligibles of Plotinus, 353
Asyos, of Plotinus, 210 note
matter in Aristotle’s philoso- phy, 316, 327
and modern astronomy, 335
and modern geometry, 333-4
and modern philosophy, 226-7, 228-9, 232, 281-2, 344-5, 346, 349-51, 364, 369
and modern § science, 336, 342-3, 344-5, 357
motion in, 307-8, 312-3
necessity in, 327
VOTTEWS VONTLS, 356
non-being, 316, 327
VOUS TOCNTLKOS, 322
oscillation about being, sensible reality as, 317-8
333-4,
329-30,
Physics of Aristotle, 227-8 note,
324 note, 330-1
Plato, 48, 156, 191, 210 note,
816-8, 321-4, 327, 330, 348, 349
Plotinus, 210, 316, 323, 326 note,
349, 352-4
procession in Alexandrian phi-
losophy, 323
vz, 210 note, 350
realism in, 232
refraction of idea through mat-
ter or non-being, 317
sectioning of becoming, 318-9
sensible reality, 314, 316-8, 321,
327-9, 352-3
o@pa, 350
space and time, 317-9, 320
Timaeus, 318 note
time in ancient and in modern
science, 330-1, 336-7, 341-4
time and space, 317-9, 320
vision of God in Alexandrian
philosophy, 322
Zeno, 308, 313
Ancient science and modern, 329-
31, 336-7, 342-5, 357
Anima (De), of Aristotle, 322
note
Animal kingdom, 12, 105-6, 119-
373
21, 126, 129, 131-2, 134-6, 137-
8, 139, 179, 184-5
Animals, 105-47, 167, 170, 181, 183,
187, 212, 214, 246, 252, 253,
254, 262-5, 267, 271, 293, 301
deduction in, 212
induction in, 214
and man, 139-43, 183, 187, 188,
212, 263, 264, 267
and man in respect to brain,
183, 184-5, 263-5
and man in respect to con-
sciousness, 139-43, 180, 183,
187, 188, 192, 212, 263-8
and man in respect to instru-
ments of action, 139-43, 150-1
and man in respect to intelli-
gence, 137-8, 187, 188, 191-2,
212
and plants, 105-39, 124-6, 143,
145, 146-7, 168-70, 181-2, 253,
254, 293,
and plants in respect to activ-
ity of consciousness, 109, 111,
113, 119-21, 128-9, 132, 134-
6, 142-3, 144, 181-2, 293
and plants in respect to func-
tion, 117-8, 121-2, 127
and plants in respect to in-
stinct, 167, 170
and plants in respect to mobil-
ity, 109, 110, 113, 129-30, 132-
3, 135, 181
and plants in respect to nature
of consciousness, 134-5
Antagonistic currents of the vital
impetus, 129, 135-6, 181, 184,
250, 258-9
Anthophora, 146-7
Antinomies of Kant, 204, 205
Antipathy. See Sympathy, Feel-
ing, Divination
Antithesis and thesis, 205
Ants, 101, 134, 140, 157
Ape’s brain and _ consciousness
contrasted with man’s, 263
Aphasia, 181
Apidae, social instinct in the,
171
Apogee of instinct in the hymen-
optera and of intelligence in
man, 174-5 See Evolution-
ary superiority
Apogee of sensible object, in
philosophy of Ideas, 343-4,
349
Approximateness of the know-
ledge of matter, 206-7
Approximation, in matter, to the
374
mathematical order, 218. See
Order
Archimedes, 333-4
Aristotle. See Ancient Philoso- phy, Aristotle
Arrow, Flying, of Zeno, 310, 312-3
Art, 6-7, 29 note, 45, 89, 177
308-9,
Artemia Salina, transformations
- of, %2, 73
Arthropods in evolution, 130-5, 142
Articulate species, 133
Articulations of matter relative
to action, 156, 367
of motion, 310-1
of real time, 332-3
Artificial, how far scientific
knowledge is, 197, 218-9
instruments, 138, 139, 140-1
Artist, in illustration of the crea-
tiveness of duration, 340-1
Ascending cosmic movement, 1,
208, 275, 369
Ascent toward God, in Aristotle,
- 323
Association of organisms, See Individuation universal oscillation between association and _ individua- tion, 259, 260. See Socie- ties Astronomy and deduction, 213 and the inert order, 224 modern, in reference to ancient science, 334-6 Atmosphere of spatiality bathing intelligence, 204 Atom, 240, 254, 255 as an intellectual view of mat- ter, 203 250 and interpenetration, 207 Attack and defence in evolution, 131-2 Attention, 2, 148-9, 154, 184, 209 discontinuity of, 2 in man and in lower animals, 184. See Tension and in- stinct, Tension as inverted extension, Tension of person- ality, Sympathetic apprecia- tion, etc., Relaxation and in- tellect Attraction and impulsion in Greek philosophy, 323, 324 Attribute and subject, 148 Automatic activity, 145 as instrument of voluntary, 252 order, 224, 231-4. See Negative
260.
INDEX
movement, etc., Geometrical
order
Automatism, 127, 148-4, 174, 223-
4, 261, 264
Background of instinct and intel-
ligence, consciousness as, 186
Backward-looking attitude of the intellect, 47, 48, 237
Baldwin, J. M., 27 note
Ballast of intelligence, 152, 230,
239, 369-70
Bastian, 212 note
Bateson, 63
Becoming, 164, 236, 248-9, 273,
299-304, 307-8, 313-4, 316, 337-
8, 342-3, 345, 363
in. ancient philosophy,
317
in Deseartes’s philosophy, 346
in Bleatic philosophy, 313-4, 315
in general, or abstract becom-
ing, 304, 306-7
instantaneous and static views
of, 272, 304-5
states of, falsely so called, 164,
247-8, 278, 298-301, 307-8
in the successors of Kant, 363.
See Change, New, Duration,
Time, Views of reality
Bees, 101, 140, 142, 146, 166, 172
Beethoven, 224
Berthold, 34 note
Bethe, 176 note
Bifurcations of tendency, 54. See
Divergent lines of evolution
Biology, 12, 25, 26, 31-2, 43, 168-
9, 174-5, 194-6
evolutionist, 168-9
and philosophy, 43, 194-6
and physico-chemistry, 26
Blaringhem, 85
Bodies, 156, 188, 189, 300-1, 360.
See Inert matter as a relaxa-
tion of the unextended into
the extended
defined as bundles of qualities,
349
Bois-Reymond (Du), 38
Boltzmann, 245
Bombines, social instincts in, 171
Bouvier, 142 note
Bow, strain of, illustrating indi-
visibility of motion, 308-10
Brain and consciousness, 5, 109,
110, 179-80, 183-4, 212 note,
252, 261-4, 270, 354, 356, 366.
See Nervous System
313-4,
ee ae ee
INDEX
Brain (Continued)
in man and lower animals, 183,
184, 263-5
Brandt, 66 note
Breast-plate, in reference to ani- mal mobility, 130, 131. See Carapace, Cellulose envelope
Brown-Sequard, 80-2
Bulb, medullary, in the develop- ment of the nervous system, 110, 252
Busquet, 259 note
Btitschli, 33 note
Buttel-Reepen, 171 note
Butterflies, in illustration of va- riation from evolutionary type, 72
Caelo (De), of Aristotle, 322 note,
324 note
Calcareous sheath, in reference to animal mobility, 130-1
Calkins, 16 note
Canal, in illustration of the rela- tion of function and struc- ture, 93
Canalization, in illustration of the function of animal organ- isms, 98, 95, 110, 126, 256, 270
Canvas, embroidering ‘‘some- thing” on the, of “nothing’’ 297
Caprice, an attribute not of free- dom but of mechanism, 47
Carapace, in reference to animal mobility, 130-1
Carbohydrates, in reference to the function of the animal or- ganism, 121-2
Carbon, in reference to the func- tion of organisms, 107, 113, 114, 117, 254, 255
Carbonic acid, in reference to the
function of organisms, 254,
255
Carnot, 248, 246, 256
Cartesian geometry, compared
with ancient, 334
Cartesianism, 345, 856, 358
Cartesians, 358. See Spinoza,
Leibniz
Carving, the, of matter by intel- lect, 155
Categorical propositions, charac- teristic of instinctive know- ledge, 149-50
Categories, conceptual, x, xiii, 48, 147, 148-9, 165, 189-90, 195- 7, 207, 220-1, 257-60, 265, 358,
375
Categories (Continued)
361. See Concept deduction
of, and genesis of the intel-
lect, 196, 207, 359. See Gene-
sis of matter and of the intel-
lect ;
innate, 147, 148-9
misfit for the vital, x, xiii, 48, 165, 195-9, 220-1, 257-9
in reference to the adaptation to each other of the matter and form of knowledge, 361
Cats, in illustration of the law of correlation, 67
Causal relation in Aristotle, 325
between consciousness and movement, 111 in Greek philosophy, 324-5
Causality, mechanical, a cate- gory which does not apply to life, x, xiv, 177
in the philosophy of Ideas, 323-6
Causation and adaptation, 101,
102 final, involves mechanical, 44
Cause and effect as mathemati- cal functions of each other, 20, 21
efficient, 238, 277, 323
efficient, in Aristotle’s philoso- phy, 324
efficient, in Leibniz’s philoso- phy, 353
final, 40, 44, 238
final, in Aristotle's phy, 324
by impulsion, winding, 73
mechanical, as containing ef- fect, 14, 233, 269
in the vital order, 95, 164
Cave, Plato’s allegory of the, 191
Cell, 16, 24, 33, 162, 166, 167, 260, 269
as artificial construct, 162
in the ‘‘colonial theory,’’ 260 division, 16, 24, 33
instinct in the, 166, 167
in relation to the soul, 269
Cellulose envelope in reference to vegetable immobility and tor- por, 108, 111, 130
Cerebral activity and conscious- ness, 5, 109-10, 180-1, 183-4, 212 mote, 252, 258, 261, 264, 268, 270, 350, 351, 354, 355, 366
mechanism, 5, 252, 253, 262, 264, 366 Cerebro-spinal system,
philoso-
release and un-
124. See
376 INDEX
Nervous system
Certainty of induction, 215,
216
Chance’ analogous to disorder,
233, 234. See Affection
in evolution, 86-7, 104, 114-5,
126, 169-70, 171, 252, 254, 255,
266, 267, 326-7. See Indeter-
mination
Change, 1, 7-8, 18, 85-6, 248, 275,
294, 300-304, 308, 313-4, 317,
326, 328-9, 343-4, 344-5
in ancient philosophy, 313-4,
316-7, 325-6, 327-9, 3438, 345
in Eleatic philosophy, 314
known only from within, 307-8
Chaos, 232. See Disorder
Character, moral, 5, 99-100
Charrin, 81 note
Chemistry, 27, 34-6, 55, 72, 74,
98, 194, 226, 256, 260
Child, intelligence in, 147-8
adolescence of, in illustration
of evolutionary becoming,
311-3
Chipped stone, in paleontology,
189
Chlorophyllian function,
114, 117, 246, 253
Choice, 110, 125, 148-5, 179, 180,
252, 260-4, 276, 366
and consciousness, 110, 179,
260-4
Chrysalis, 114 note
Cinematograph, 306-7, 339-40
Cinematographical character of
ancient philosophy, 315-6
of intellectual knowledge, 306,
307, 312-8, 323-4, 331-3, 346
of language, 306-7, 312-5
of modern science, 329-31, 336-
7, 341-3, 345, 346, 347
Circle of the given, broken by
action, 192, 247
logical and physical, 277
vicious, in intellectualist phi-
losophy, 193, 197, 320
vicious, in the _ intuitional
method is only apparent, 192,
193
Cirecularity of God’s thought in
Aristotle’s philosophy, 324
of each special evolution, 128
Circulation, protoplasmic, imi-
tated, 32-3
in plants and animals, 108
Circumstances in the determina-
tion of evolution, 101-2, 128-
9, 188, .188,, 142, °160-1, 167,
107-9,
Circumstances (Continued)
168, 170-1, 198, 194, 252, 256
in relation to special instincts,
138, 168, 193
Classes of words corresponding
to the three kinds of repre-
sentation, 303-4
Clausius, 243
Clearness characteristic of intel-
lect, 160
Cleft between the organized and
the unorganized, 190, 196-9
Climbing plants, instincts of, 170
note ; :
Coincidence of matter with space
as in Kant, 206, 207, 244
of mind with intellect as in
Kant, 48, 206
of qualities, 216
of seeing and willing, 237
of self with self, definition of
the feeling of duration, 199-
200
Coleopter, instinct in, 146
Colonial theory, 259, 260
Colonies, microbial, 259
Color variation in lizards, 72, 74
Coming and going of the mind
between the without and the
within gives rise to the idea
of “Nothing,’’ 279
between nature and mind, the
true method of philosophy,
239
Common-sense, 29, 153, 161, 213,
224, 277
defined as continuous experi-
ence of the real, 213°
Comparison of ancient philosophy
with modern, 226, 228-9, 232,
328-9, 345-6, 349-51, 353-4,
356
Compenetration, 352-3. See In-
terpenetration
Complementarity of forms
evolved, xii, xiii, 51, 101, 103,
113, 116-7, 135, 136, 254, 255
of instinct and intelligence, 146,
173. See Opposition of In-
stinct and Intelligence
of intuition and intellect, 343, 345
in the powers of life, 49, 96-7, 140-8, 177, 178-9, 183-5, 239, 246, 254, 343
of science and metaphysics, 344,
Complexity of the order of math-
ematics, 208-10, 217, 251
INDEX
Compound reflex, instinct as a,
174
Concentration,
301
of personality, 198-9, 201
Concentric spheres in Aristotle’s
philosophy, 328
Concept accessory to action, ix,
analogy of, with the solid body,
ix
in animals, 187
externality of, 160, 168, 175-8,
199-200, 251, 306, 311, 314
fringed about with intuition, 46
and image distinguished, 160,
279
impotent to grasp life, ix-xiili,
49
intellect the
faculty, vi, 49
misfit for the vital, 48
representation of the act by
which the intellect is fixed on
things, 161
synthesis of, in ancient philoso-
phy, 325-6, 356. See Cate-
gories, Externality, Frames,
Image, Space, Symbol
Conditions, external, in evolution,
128-9, 1338, 188, 141-2, 150-1,
166-7, 168, 170, 193, 194, 251,
256, 257
external, in determination of
special instinct, 141-2, 150-1,
167, 168, 171
Conduct, mechanism and finality
in the evolution of, 47. See
Freedom, Determination, In-
determination ‘
Confused plurality of life, 257
Conjugation of Infusoria, 16
Consciousness and action, ix, 5,
144, 145, 179-80, 207, 260-1
consciousness as appendage to
intellect as, 191,
concept-making
action, ix
consciousness as arithmetical
difference between possible
and real activity, 145
consciousness as auxiliary to action, 179-80
consciousness as_ inadequacy of act to representation, 144
consciousness as instrument of action, 180
consciousness as interval be- tween possible and real ac- tion, 145, 179
consciousness as light from zone of possible actions sur-
377
Consciousness (Continued)
rounding the real act, 179
consciousness and locomotion,
262
consciousness plugged up by action, 144, 145. See Torpor, Sleep
consciousness as sketch of ac- tion, 207
intensity of, varies with ratio
of possible to real action,
145
Consciousness in animals, as dis-
tinguished from the _ con- sciousness of plants, 130, 135- 6, 143
as distinguished from the con- sciousness of man, 139-43, 180, 183, 184, 187, 188, 212, 263-9. See Torpor, Sleep
characteristic of animals, tor- por of plants, 109, 111, 113, 120, 128-9, 135-6, 181, 182, 292
as background of instinct and intelligence, 186
and brain, 180, 262, 263, 269, 270, 354
and choice, 110, 144-5, 179, 262-4
coextensive with universal life, 186, 270
and creation, consciousness as demand for creation, 261
current of, penetrating matter, 181, 270
as deficiency of instinct, 145
in dog and man, 180
double form of, 179
function of, 207
as hesitation or choice, 143, 144
imprisonment of, 180, 183-4, 264
as invention and freedom, 264, 270
in man as distinguished from, in lower forms of life, 180, 263, 264, 267, 268
and matter, 179, 181-2
as motive principle of evolu- tion, 181-2
nullified, as distinguished from the absence of consciousness, 143
and the organism, 270
in plants, 131, 135-6, 143
as world principle, 237, 261
Conservation of energy, 243, 244
Construction, 139-42, 150-1, 156,
157-8, 180, 182. See Manufac-
ture, Solid
the characteristic work of in-
378
Construction (Continued)
tellect, 163-4
as the method of Kant’s suc-
cessors, 364-5
Contingency, 96, 255, 268.
Accident, Chance
the, of order, 231, 235
Continuation of vital process in
instinct, 138, 139, 166, 167, 246.
See Variations, Vital process
Continuity, 1, 26, 29-30, 37, 138-
40, 154, 162-4, 258, 302, 306-7,
311-2, 321, 325-6, 329-30, 347
of becoming, 306-7, 312
of change, 325-6
of evolution, 18, 19
of extension, 154
of germinative plasma, 26, 37
of instinct with vital process,
139, 140, 166-7, 246
of life, 1-11, 29, 163-4, 258
of living substance, 162
of psychic life, 1, 30
of the real, 302, 329-30
of sensible intuition with ultra-
intellectual, 361
of sensible universe, 346
Conventionality of science, 207
“Conversion” and “procession”? in
Alexandrian philosophy, 323
Cook, Plato’s comparison of the,
and the dialectician, 156
Cope, 35 note, 77, 111
Correlation, law of, 66, 67
Correspondence between
and matter in Spencer,
See Simultaneity
Cortical mechanism, 252, 253, 262.
See Cerebral mechanism
Cosmogony and genesis of mat-
ter, 188. See Genesis of mat-
ter and of intellect, Spencer
Cosmology the, that follows from
the philosophy of Ideas, 315,
328
as reversed psychology, 208
Counterweight representation as,
to action, 145
Counting simultaneities, the
measurement of time is, 338,
341-2
Creation, xi, 7, 11, 12, 22, 29, 30,
45, 98, 100, 101, 103, 105, 108,
114, 128-31, 161, 163-4, 178,
200, 217, 218, 223, 226, 230, 237-
40, 261, 270, 275, 339-40
in Descartes’s philosophy, 345
of intellect, 248-9
_of matter, 237, 239, 247-8, 249.
See
mind
368.
INDEX
Creation (Continued)
See Materiality the inversion
of spirituality
of present by past, 5, 20-3, 27,
167, 199-202
the vital order as, 230
Creative evolution, 7, 15, 21, 27,
29, 36, 37, 65, 100, 104-5, 161,
168, 223-4, 230-1, 237, 264, 269
Creativeness of free action, 192,
243
of invention, 250 -
Creeping plants in illustration of
vegetable mobility, 108
Cricket victim of paralyzing in-
stinct of sphex, 172
Criterion, quest of a, 53 #.
of evolutionary rank, 133, 265
Criticism, Kantian, 205, 287 note,
356, 360-2
of knowledge, 194-5
Cross-cuts through becoming by
intellect, 314. See Views of
reality
through matter by perception,
206
Cross-roads of vital tendency, 51,
52, 54, 110, 126
Crustacea, 19, 111, 129-30
Crystal illustrating (by contrast)
individuation, 12
Cuénot, 79 note
Culminating points of evolution-
ary progress, 50, 133-5. See
Evolutionary superiority
Current, 26, 27, 51, 185, 236, 237,
250, 266, 269 :
Currents, antagonistic, 250
of existence, 185
of life penetrating matter, 26,
27, 266, 270
vital, 26, 27, 51, 287, 266, 270
of will penetrating matter, 237
Curves, as symbol of life, 32, 90,
213
Cuts through becoming by the in-
tellect, 313-4. See Views of
reality, Snapshots in illustra-
tion, etc.
through matter by perception,
206
Cuvier, 125 note
Dantec (Le), 18 note, 34 note
Darwin, 62-5, 66, 72, 108, 170 note
Darwinism; 56, 85, 86 ;
Dastre, 36 note
Dead, the, is the object of in- tellect, 165
INDEX
Dead-locks in speculation, 155,
312
Death, 246 note, 271
Declivity descended by matter,
208, 246, 256, 339-40. See De-
scending movement
Decomposing and recomposing
powers characteristic of in-
tellect, 157, 251
Deduction, analogy between, re-
lated to moral sphere and
tangent to curve, 213
and astronomy, 213
duration refractory to, 213
geometry the ideal limit of,
213-26, 361
in animals, 212
inverse to positive spiritual ef-
fort, 212
nature of, 211
physics and, 213
weakness of, in psychology and
moral science, 213
Defence and attack in evolution,
132
Deficiency of will the negative
condition of mathematical
order and complexity, 209
Definition in the realm of life,
13, 105, 106
Degenerates, 133-5
Dégénérescence sénile (La), by
Metchnikoff, 18 note
Degradation of energy, 241, 242,
246
of the extra-spatial into the
spatial, 207
of the ideas into the sensible
flUux in ancient philosophy,
317-9, 324-5, 327-9, 331, 343,
345, 352-3
Degrees of being in the succes-.
sors of Kant, 362-3
Degrees of reality in Greek phi-
losophy, 324, 327
Delage, 59 note, 81 note, 260 note
Delamare, 81 note
Deliberation, 144
De Manacéine, 124 note
Deposit, instinct and intelligence
as deposits, emanations, is-
sues, or aspects of life, x, xii,
xiii, 49, 108, 105, 186, 365
De Saporta, 107 note
Descartes, 280, 334, 345, 346, 353, 358
becoming, 345-6
creation, 346
determinism, 345
duration, 346
379
Descartes (Continued)
freedom, 345, 346
geometry, 334
God, 346
image and idea or concept, 281
indeterminism, 345
mechanism, 345, 346
motion, 346
vacillation between abstract
time and real duration, 345
Descending movement of exist-
ence, 11, 202, 208, 208, 271,
275, 369
Design, motionless, of action the
object of intellect, 154-5, 299,
301-2, 303
Detention in the dream state, 202
of intuition in intellect, 238
Determination, 76-7, 129-30, 223,
246
Determinism, 217, 264, 345, 348.
See Inert matter, Geometry
in Descartes, 345
Development, 133, 134-5, 141. See
Order, Progress, Evolution,
Superiority
Deviation from type, 82-4
Dialect and intuition in philoso-
phy, 238
Dichotomy of the real in modern
Philosophy, 350
Differentiation of parts in an or-
ganism, 253, 260
Dilemma of any systematic meta-
physics, 195, 197, 230
Diminution, derivation of becom-
ing from being by, in ancient
philosophy, 316, 317, 322, 323-
4, 327-8, 348-5, 352
geometrical order as, or lower
complication of the vital or-
der, 236
Dionaea illustrating certain ani-
mal characteristics in plants,
107, 108, 109
Discontinuity of action, 154, 306-7
of attention, 2
of extension relative to action,
154, 163
of knowledge, 306
of living substance, 163
a positive idea, 154
Discontinuous the object of in-
tellect, 154
Discord in nature, 127, 128, 254-5,
267
Disorder, 40, 104,
232-5, 274.
Order,
222-3, 225-6,
See Expectation,
mathematical, Orders
380 INDEX
of reality, two
Disproportion between an inven-
tion and its consequences, 182
Dissociation as a cosmic principle
opposed to association, 260
of tendencies, 54, 89, 135, 254,
255, 257, 258. See Divergent
lines of evolution
Distance, extension as the, be-
tween what is and what
ought to be, 318-9, 327-8, 331
Distinct multiplicity in the dream
state, 201, 210
of the inert, 257
Distinctness characteristic of the
intellect, 160, 237, 251
characteristic of perception,
227, 251
as spatiality, 203, 207-8, 244,
250
Divergent lines of evolution, xii,
54, 55, 87, 97-101, 103-4, 106,
107, 109,. 112, .118,; 116, 119,
130, 182, 134-5, 142, 149, 150,
168, 178, 181, 254, 255, 266, 267.
See Dissociation of tenden-
cies, Complementarity, etc.,
Schisms in the primitive im-
pulsion of life
Diversity, sensible, 205, 220-1,
231, 235, 236
Divination, instinct as, 176. See
Sympathy, etc.
Divisibility of extension, 154, 162
Divison as function of intellect,
152, 154, 162-3, 189
of labor, 99, 110, 118, 157, 166,
260
of labor in cells, 166
Dog and man, consciousness in,
180
Dogmatism of the ancient episte-
mology contrasted with the
relativism of the modern, 230
of Leibniz and Spinoza, 356-7
skepticism, and relativism, 196-
7, 230
Dogs and the law of correlation,
66
Domestication of animals and
heredity, 80
Dominants of Reinke, 42 note
Dorfmeister, 72
Dream, 144, 180-1, 202, 209, 256.
See Interpenetration, Relaxa-
tion, Detention, Recollection
as relaxation, 202
Driesch, 42 note
Drosera, 107, 108, 109
Dufourt, 124 note
Duhem, 242 note
Dunan, Ch., xv note
Duration xiv note, 2, 4-6, 8-11,
16, 1%, 21, '22,.-87,; 39) 46;.)84"
199, 201, 206, 218, 216, 240,
272, 273, 276, 298-9, 308-9, 317-
8, 319 note; 324, 328, 332, 339,
342, 348, 345, 354, 361, 363-4
absoluteness of, 206
and deduction, 213
in Descartes’s philosophy, 346
gnawing of, 4, 8, 46
indivisibility of, 6, 308-9
and induction, 216
and the inert, 343-4
in the philosophy of the Ideas,
316-7, 319 note, 324, 327, 328-9
rhythm of, 11, 128, 346. See
Creation, Evolution, Inven-
tion, Time, Unforeseeable-
ness, Uniqueness
Echinoderms in reference to ani-
mal mobility, 130, 131
Efficient cause in conception of
chance, 234
Spinoza and, 269
Effort in evolution, 170
Eidos 314-5
Himer, 55, 72, 73, 86
Elaborateness of the mathemati- cal order, 208-10, 217, 251
Eleatic philosophy, 308, 314-5
Emanation, logical thought an, issue, aspect or deposit of life, ix, xii, xiii, 49
Embroidering ‘‘something’’ on the canvas of ‘nothing,’ 297
Embroidery by descendants on the canvas handed down by ancestors, 23
Embryo, 18, 19, 26, 27, 75, 81, 89, 101, 166
Embryogeny, comparative, and transformism, 25
Embryonic life, 27, 166
Empirical study of evolution the centre of the theory of know- ledge and of the theory of life, 178
theories of knowledge, 205
Empty, thinking the full by means of the empty, 273-4
End in Eleatic philosophy, 314-5
of science is practical utility,
329
Energy, 115-7, 120-3, 242, 243, 245, 246, 252-5, 256, 257, 262
INDEX
Energy (Continued)
conservation of, 242
degradation of, 242, 248, 246
solar, stored by plants, released
by animals, 245, 254
Enneadae of Plotinus, 210 note
Entelechy of Driesch, 42 note
Entropy, 243
Environment in evolution, 129,
133, 188, 140, 142, 150, 167,
168, 170, 192, 198, 252, 256, 257
and special instincts, 138, 168,
192, 1938
Epiphenomenalism, 262
Essence and accidents in Aris-
totle’s philosophy, 353
or form in Eleatic philosophy,
314-5
the meaning of, 302-3
Essences (or forms), qualities
and acts, the three kinds of
representation, 303-4
Eternity, 39, 298, 314, 317, 320,
324, 328, 346, 352, 354
in the philosophy of Ideas, 316-
7, 319, 324, 328
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 353
Euglena, 116
Evellin, 311 note
Eventual actions, 11, 96.
Possible activity
Evolution, ix-xv, 18, 20, 22, 24,
25, 26-7, 37, 46-55, 63, 68, 79
note, 84-8, 97-105, 107, 113,
116, 126, 127, 129-30, 131-2,
133, 1384, 136, 1388-40, 141-2,
143, 161, 166, 167, 168-72, 173,
174, 175, 179, 181, 182, 185, 186,
190, 193, 198-9, 207-8, 224 231,
242 mote, 246, 248, 249, 2651,
252, 254, 264-6, 268, 273, 302,
$311, 345, 359, 360, 366
accident in, 104, 169, 170, 173,
174, 261, 252
animal, a progress toward mo-
bility, 131
antagonistic tendencies in, 103,
113, 185
automatic and determinate, is
action being undone, 248
blind alleys of, 129
circularity of each special, 128
complementarity of the diver-
gent lines of, 97-102, 103, 116
conceptually inexpressible, 49,
50, 52, 53, 127, 181, 273
continuity of, 18, 19, 26, 37, 46,
273, 302, 312, 345
creative, 7, 15, 21, 27, 30, 36, 37,
See
381
Evolution, (Continued)
65, 100, 105, 161, 162, 163, 223, 230, 238, 264, 269
culminating points of, 50, 133, 174, 185, 265, 266, 268
development by, 133, 134, 141-2
divergent lines of, xii, 53, 54, 87, 97-101, 103-4, 107, 173-4, 246
and duration, 20, 22, 37, 45-6
empirical study of, the centre of the theory of knowledge and of life, 178
and environment, 101-3, 129, 133, 138, 142 150, 167, 168, 169, 192, 193, 251, 256, 257
of instinct, 170, 171, 174-5. See Divergent lines, etc., Culmi- nating points, etc., Evolution and environment
of intellect, x-xii, 153, 186, 189- 90, 193, 198-9, 207-8, 359, 360. See Divergent lines, etc., Cul- minating points, etc., Genesis of matter and of intellect
as invention, 344
of man, 264, 266, 268. See Cul-
minating points, etc.
motive principle of, is con-
sciousness, 181
of species product of the vital
impetus opposed by matter,
247-8, 254
and transformism, 24
unforeseeable, 47, 48, 653, 86,
224
variation in, 23-4, 55, 63, 68, 72
note, 85, 181, 137-8, 167, 169,
171, 264
Evolutionary, qualitative, and
extensive motion 302-3, 311,
312
superiority, 133-5, 174-5. See
Success, Criterion of evolu-
tionary rank, Culminating
points, etc.
Evolutionism,
364
Exhaustion of the mutability of
the universe, 337-8
Existence, logical, as contrasted
with psychical and physical,
276, 362
of matter tends toward instan-
taneity, 201
of self means change, 1 f.
superaddition of, upon nothing-
ness, 276
Expectation, 214-6, 221, 222, 226,
x-xli, xiv, 77, 84,
382 INDEX
Expectation (Continued)
233, 235, 274, 281, 292
in conception of disorder, 221,
222, 226, 238, 234, 2385, 274
in conception of void or naught,
282, 292
Experience, 138, 147, 177, 197, 204,
229, 321, 354, 359, 363, 368
Explosion, illustrating cause by
release, 73
Explosive character of animal
energy, 116, 119, 120, 246
of organization, 92
Explosives, manufacture of, by
plants and use by animals,
246, 254
Extension, 149, 154, 161, 202, 203,
207, 211, 223, 286, 245, 318-20,
$24, 327, 351, 352
continuity of, 154
discontinuity of, relative to ac-
tion, 154, 162
as the distance between what
is and what ought to be, 318
divisibility of, 154, 162
the most general property of
matter, 154, 250, 251
the inverse movement to ten-
sion, 245
of knowledge, 150
in Leibniz’s philosophy, 351,
352
of matter in space, 204, 211
in the philosophy of Ideas, 318-
9, 323-4, 327
and relaxation, 202, 207, 209,
211, 212, 218, 223, 245
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 350
in the Transcendental Aes-
thetic, 203
unity of, 158-9
as weakening of the essence of
being, in Plotinus, 210 note
Extensive, evolutionary and
qualitative motion, 302-3, 311,
312
External conditions in evolution,
128, 133, 137, 141-2, 150-1, 167,
168, 170, 192, 193, 252, 256, 257
finality,. 41
Externality of concepts, 160, 168,
174, 177, 199, 251, 305, 311-4
the most general property of
matter, 154, 250, 251
Externalized action in distinction
from internalized, 147, 165.
See Somnambulism, etc.,
Automatic activity, etc.
Eye of molluse and vertebrate
compared, 60, 75, 77, 84, 86,
87-8
Fabre, 172 note
Fabrication. See Construction
Fallacies, two fundamental, 272,
273
Fallacy of thinking being by not-
being, 276, 277, 284, 297-8
of thinking the full by the emp-
ty, 273-5
of thinking motion by the
motionless, 272, 273, 297-8,
307-8, 309-14
Fallibility of instinct, 172-3
Falling back of matter upon con-
sciousness, 264
bodies, comparison of Aristotle
and Galileo, 228, 331-2, 334
weight, figure of material
world, 245, 246
Familiar, the, is the object of in-
tellect, 168, 164, 199, 270
Faraday, 203
Fasting, in reference to primacy
of nervous system over the
other physiological systems,
124
Fauna, menace of torpor in
primitive, 130
Feeling in the conception of
chance, 207
and instinct, 143, 174-5
Fencing-master, illustrating he-
reditary transmission, 79
Ferments, certain characteristics
of, 106 ;
Fertilization of
insects, by
note
Fichte’s conception of the intel-
lect, 189-90, 357
Filings, iron, in illustration of
the relation of structure to
function, 94, 95
Film, cinematographic, figure of
abstract motion, 304-6
Final cause, 40, 45, 234, 325
conception of, involves. con-
ception of mechanical cause,
44
God as, in Aristotle, 322-3
Finalism, 39-53, 58, 74, 88-97, 101-
5, 126-8
Finality, 41, 164, 177-8, 185, 223,
224, 266
external and internal, 41
misfit for the vital, 177, 223-4,
225, 266
orchids by
Darwin, 170
hse 2
it aap mater nig OPS ENR IOS
=
eS
INDEX ~—
Finality (Continued)
and the unforeseeableness of
life, 164, 185
Fischel, 75 note
Fish in illustration of animal
tendency to mobility, 130, 131
Fixation of nutritive elements,
107-9, 113, 117, 246, 247, 253
Fixity, 108-13, 118, 119, 130, 155.
See Torpor
apparent or relative, 155
cellulose envelope and the, of
plants, 108, 111, 130
of extension, 155
of plants, 108-13, 118, 119, 130-1
of torpid animals, 130
Flint hatchets and human intel-
ligence, 137
Fluidity of life, 153, 165, 193
of matter as a whole, 186, 369
Flux of material bodies, 265
of reality, 250, 251, 337,
344
Flying arrow of Zeno, 308, 309,
310
Focalization of personality, 201
Food, 106-9, 113-4, 117, 120, 121,
246, 247, 254
Foraminifera, failure of certain,
to evolve, 197
Force, 126-7, 141, 149, 150, 175,
246, 254, 339
life a, inverse to matter, 246
limitedness of vital force, 126,
127, 141, 149, 162
time as, 339-40
Forel, 176 note
Foreseeing, 8, 28, 29, 30, 37, 45, 47,
96. See Unforeseeableness
Form, xi, 51, 101, 104, 1138, 116-8,
129, 185-6, 148-53, 155, 156,
160, 164, 195-7, 222, 237, 250,
255, 302, 308, 314, 317, 318, 322,
$341, 357, 359, 361, 362
complementarity of forms
evolved, xi, 51, 101, 104, 113.
116-8, 135-6, 255
expansion of the forms of con-
sciousness, xii, xiii
(or essences), qualities and
acts the three kinds of repre-
sentation, 302-3
God as pure form in Aristotle,
196, 322
or idea in ancient philosophy,
317, 318, 330
of intelligence, xiv, 48, 147, 148,
165, 190, 195, 196, 198, 207,
219, 257-9, 266, 358-9, 361. See
342,
383
Form (Continued)
Concept
and matter in creation, 239, 250
and matter in knowledge, 195,
361
a snapshot view of transition,
302
Formal knowledge, 152
logic, 292
Forms of sensibility, 361
Fossil species, 102
Foster, 125 note
Fox in illustration of animal in-
telligence, 138
Frames of the understanding, 46-
7, 48, 1650-2, 173, 177, 197-9,,
219-20, 223-4, 258, 270, 313,
358, 364
fit the inert, 197, 218
inadequate to reality entire, 364
misfit for the vital, x, xiii, xiv,
46, 48, 173, 177, 197-9, 223,
258, 313
product of life, 358
transform freedom into neces-
sity, 270
utility of, lies in their unlimited
application, 149-50, 152
Freedom, 11, 48, 126, 130,
164, 200, 202, 207, 208, 217,
228, 281, 287, 239, 247, 249,
264-6, 269, 270, 277, 300, 339-
41, 345, 346
the absolute as freely acting,
277
affirmed by conscience, 269
animal characteristic rather
than vegetable, 129-30
caprice attribute not of, but of
mechanism, 47
coextensiveness of conscious-
ness with, 111, 112, 202, 264,
270
of creation and life, 247,
255
163,
254,
creativeness of, 223, 239, 248
in Descartes’s philosophy, 345, 346
as efficient causality, 277
inversion of necessity, 236
and liberation of consciousness, 265, 266. See Imprisonment of consciousness
and novelty, 12, 163, 164, 200, 218, 231, 239, 249, 270, 339-42
order in, 223
property of every organism, 129-31
relaxation of, into necessity, 217
384 INDEX
Freedom (Continued)
tendency of, to self-negation in
habit, 127
tension of, 200, 201, 202, 207,
223, 237, 301
transformed by the under-
standing into necessity, 270
See Spontaneity
Fringe of intelligence around in-
stinct, 136
of intuition around intellect,
xii, xiii, 46
of possible action around real
action, 179, 272
Froth, alveolar, in imitation of
organic phenomena, 33-4
Full, fallacy of thinking the, by
the empty, 273-6
Function, ix, 3, 5, 44, 46, 47, 88-
90, 94, 95, 106-10, 113, 114, 117,
120, 121, 127, 132, 140, 141, 145,
152, 158, 157, 161, 163, 164, 168,
173-5, 186-92, 199, 206, 207,
233, 237, 246, 251, 254-6, 262,
2638, 270, 273, 298, 306, 346,
358, 369
accumulation. of energy the
function of vegetable organ-
isms, 254, 255
action the, of intellect, ix, 12,
44, 47, 93, 161, 162, 186-8, 206,
251, 278, 305
action the, of nervous system,
262, 263
alimentation, 106, 107, 120, 121,
246, 254
of animals is canalization of
energy, 93, 110, 126, 255, 256
carbon and the, of organisms,
107, 113, 114, 117, 254, 255
chlorophyllian, 107-9, 114, 117,
246, 254
concept-making the, of intel-
lect, x, 49
of consciousness:
movements, 207
construction the, of intellect,
108
illumination of action, of per-
ception, 5, 206, 307-8
of intelligence: action, ix, 12, 44,
46, 93, 160, 162, 186-8, 206,
251, 273, 307-8
of intelligence: concept-making,
x, 60
of intelligence:
160, 168, 181-2
of intelligence: division, 154,
155, 162, 189
sketching
construction,
Function (Continued)
of intelligence: illumination of
action by perception, 5, 206,
301
of intelligence: repetition, 164, 199, 214-6
of intelligence: retrospection, 47, 237
of intelligence: connecting same with same, 199, 233, 270
of intelligence: scanning the rhythm of the universe, 346
of intelligence: tactualizing all perception, 168
of intelligence: unification, 152, 154, 357
of the nervous system: action, 262, 263
and organ, 88-90, 94, 95, 132-3, 140, 141, 158. See Function and structure
and organ in arthropods, verte- brates and man, 132-3
of the organism, 94, 106-10, 112, 114, 117, 120, 126, 173-5, 246, 253-6
of the organism, alimentation, 106, 107, 120, 121, 246, 254
of the organism, animal: canal- ization of energy, 938, 110, 126, 255, 256
of the organism, carbon in, 107, 113, 114, 117, 254, 255
of the organism, chlorophyllian function, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 247, 254
of the organism, primary func- tions of life: storage and ex- penditure of energy, 254-6
of the organism, vegetable: ac- cumulation of energy, 254, 255
of philosophy: adoption of the evolutionary movement of life and consciousness, 370
of science, 168, 346
sketching movements the, of consciousness, 207
and structure, 55, 62, 66, 69, 74, 75, 76, 86, 88-91, 93, 94, 96, 118, 132, 140, 141, 158, 162, 250, 252, 256
tactualizing all perception the, of science, 168
of vegetable organism: accumu- lation of energy, 254, 255
Functions of life, the two: stor-
age and expenditure of ener- By, 254-6
ee eee
INDEX
Galileo, homogeneity of time in,
332
his influence on metaphysics,
20, 228
his influence on modern science,
334, 335
extension of Galileo’s physics,
357, 370
his theory of the fall of bodies
compared with Aristotle’s,
228, 331, 332, 334
Ganoid breastplate of ancient
fishes, in reference to animal
mobility, 130, 131
Gaudry, 130 note
Genera, relation of, to individu-
als, 226
relation of, to laws,
330
potential, 226-7
and signs, 158
Generality, ambiguity of the idea
of, in philosophy, 236, 229-31
Generalization dependent on
repetition, 230, 231
distinguished from transference
of sign, 158
in the vital and mathematical
orders, 224, 225, 230
Generic, type of the: similarity of
structure between generating
and generated, 223, 224
Genesis, xiii, xiv, 153, 186-199,
207, 359, 360
of intellect, xiii, xiv, 153, 186,
187, 190, 193, 194, 196-7, 207,
264, 360
of knowledge, 191
of matter, xiii, xiv, 153, 186,
188, 190, 193, 199, 207, 360
Genius and the willed order, 223,
237
Genus. See Genera
Geometrical, the, is the object
of the intellect, 190
Geometrical order as a diminu-
tion or lower complication of
the vital, 228, 225, 236, 330.
See Genera, Relation of, to
laws
mutual contingency of,
vital order, 235
See Mathematical order
space, relation of, to the spa-
tiality of things, 203
Geometrism, the latent, of intel-
lect, 194, 211-3
Geometry, fitness of, to matter,
10
225, 226,
and
385
Geometry, (Continued)
goal of intellectual operations,
2 271, 213, 218
ideal limit of induction and de-
duction, 214-8, 361. See
Space, Descending movement
of existence
modern, compared with ancient,
36, 161, 333-4
natural, 194, 211-2
perception impregnated with,
205, 230
reasoning in, contrasted with
reasoning concerning life, 7,
8
scientific, 161, 211
Germ, accidental predisposition
of, in Neo-Darwinism, 168,
169, 170
Germ-plasm,
37, 78-83
Giard, 84
Glucose in organic function, 122,
123
Glycogen in organic
122-4
God, as activity, 249
of Aristotle, 196, 322, 325, 349,
353, 356-7
ascent toward, in Aristotle’s
philosophy, 322-3
circularity of God’s thought, in
Aristotle’s philosophy, 324,
325
in Descartes’s philosophy, 346,
347
as efficient cause in Aristotle’s
philosophy, 324
as hypostasis of the unity of
nature, 196, 322, 357
in Leibniz’s philosophy,
353, 356-7
as eternal matter, 196-7
as pure form, 196-7, 322
in Spinoza’s philosophy,
357
Greek philosophy.
philosophy
Green parts of plants, 107-9, 114,
117, 246, 247, 254
Growing old, 15
Growth, creation is, 240-1, 275
and novelty, 231
of the powers of life, 132, 134-5
reality is, 237
of the universe, 343, 345
Guérin, P., 59 note
Guinea-pig, in illustration of
hereditary transmission, 80, 81
continuity of, 27,
function,
352,
351,
See Ancient
386 INDEX
Habit and consciousness an-
nulled, 143
form of knowledge a habit or
bent of attention, 148
and heredity, 78, 93, 169, 170,
“173. See Acquired characters,
inheritance of
instinct as an intelligent, 173-4
and invention in animls, 264
and invention in man, 265
tendency of freedom to self-
negation in, 127-8
Harmony between instinct and
life, and between intelligence
and the inert, 187, 194-5, 198
of the organic world is comple-
mentarity due to a common
original impulse 50, 51, 103,
116, 118
pre-established, 205, 206
‘in radical finalism, 127-8 See
Discord
Hartog, 60 note
Hatchets, ancient flint, and hu-
man intellect, 137
Heliocentric radius-vector in
Kepler’s laws, 333-4
Hereditary transmission, 76-83,
87, 168-9, 170, 173, 225-6, 230
domestication of animals and,
80-1
habit and, 79, 83, 169, 170, 173
Hesitation or choice, conscious-
ness as, 148, 144
Heteroblastia and identical struc-
tures on divergent lines of
evolution, 75
Heymons, 72 note
History as creative evolution, 6,
15, 21, 26, 29, 36, 37, 65-6, 103-
4, 105, 163, 264, 269
of philosophy, 238
Hive as an organism, 166
Homo faber, designation of hu-
man species, 139
Homogeneity of space, 156, 212
the sphere of intellect, 163
of time in Galileo, 332
Horse-fly illustrating the object
of instinct, 146
Houssay, 109 note
Human and animal attention, 184
and animal brain, 184, 263-5
and animal consciousness, 139-
43, 180, 183, 184, 187, 188, 191,
212, 263-8
and animal instruments of ac-
tion, 139-43, 150
and animal intelligence, 138,
Human (Continued)
187, 188, 191, 192, 212
and animal invention, relation
of, to habit, 264, 265
intellect and language, 157-8
intellect and manufacture, 137,
138
Humanity in evolution, 134, 137-9,
142, 147, 158, 181, 184, 185, 264-
71. See Culminating points,
etc.
goal of evolution, 266, 267
Huxley, 38
Hydra and individuality, 13
BAn of Aristotle, 353
Hymenoptera, the culmination of
arthropod and instinctive
evolution, 134, 173-4
as entomologists, 146, 172-3
organization and instinct in, 149
paralyzing instinct of, 146, 172,
173-4
social instincts of, 101, 171
Hypostasis of the unity of na-
ture, God as, 196-7, 322, 356
Hypothetical propositions charac-
teristic of intellectual know-
ledge, 149-50
Idea or form in ancient philoso-
phy, 49, 314, 316-7, 318, 329-
30
in ancient philosophy, £2008, 314-5
in ancient philosophy, Platonic,
48
and image in Descartes, 280
Idealism, 232
Idealists and realists alike as~
sume the possibility of an ab-
sence of order, 220, 232
Identical structures in divergent
lines of evolution, 55, 60-1, 62,
69, 74-7, 86, 119
Illumination of action the func-
tion of perception, 5, 206, 307
Image and idea in Descartes, 280
distinguished from concept,
160-1, 280
Imitation of being in Greek phi-
losophy, 324, 327
of instinct by science, 168-9,
173-4
of life in intellectual represen-
tation, 4, 33, 88-9, 101, 176,
208, 209, 213, 226, 259, 341,
365
of life by the unorganized, 33,
6
Ny er
INDEX
Imitation (Continued)
of motion by intelligence, 305,
307-8, 312, 313, 329. See Imi-
tation of the real, etc.
of the physical order by the
vital, 230
of the real by intelligence, 258,
270, 307
Immobility of extension, 155
and plants, 108-13, 118, 119, 130
of primitive and torpid ani-
mals, 130-1
relative and apparent; mobility
real, 155
Impatience, duration as, 10, 339-
40
Impelling cause, 73
Impetus, vital, divergence of, 26-
7, 51-5, 97-105, 110, 118-9, 126-
7, 181, 184-6, 257, 258, 266,
270
vital, limitedness of, 126, 141, 148-9, 254
vital, loaded with matter, 239
vital, as necessity for creation,
252, 261
vital, transmission of, through
organisms, 25, 27, 79, 85, 87,,
88, 230, 231, 250, 251
vital. See Impulse of life
Implement, the animal, is natur-
al: the human, artificial, 139-
43
artificial, 137-40, 150-1
constructing, function of intel-
ligence, 159, 182-3
life known to intelligence only
as, 162
matter known to intelligence
only as, 161, 198
natural, 141, 145, 150
organized, 141, 145, 150
unorganized, 137-9, 141, 150-1
Implicit knowledge, 148
Impotence of intellect and per-
ception to grasp life, 176-8
Imprisonment of consciousness,
180-3, 264-6
Impulse of life, divergence of, 26,
27, 51-5, 97-105, 110, 118-9,
126-7, 131, 134-6, 257, 258, 266,
270
limitedness of, 126, 141, 148-9,
254
loaded with matter, 239
tendency to mobility, 131, 132
as necessity for creation, 252,
261
negates itself, 247, 248
387
Impulse (Continued)
. prolonged in evolution, 246
prolonged in our will, 239
transmitted through genera-
tions of organisms, 25, 26, 79,
85, 87, 230, 231
unity of, 202, 250, 270
Impulsion and _ attraction in
Greek philosophy, 323-4
release and unwinding,
three kinds of cause, 73
given to mind by matter, 202
Inadequacy of act to representa-
tion, consciousness as, 143
Inadequate and adequate in
Spinoza, 353
Inanition, illustrating primacy of
nervous system, 124 note
Incoherence, 236. See Absence
of order, Chance, Chaos
in nature, 104
Incommensurability of free act
with conceptual idea, 47, 201
of instinct and intelligence, 167-
8, 175
Incompatibility of developed ten-
dencies, 104, 168
Independent variable, time as, 20,
335-6
Indetermination, 86, 114, 126, 252,
253, 326. See Accident in
evolution
Indeterminism in Descartes, 345
Individual, viewed by intelligence
as aggregate of molecules
and of facts, 250-1
and division of labor, 140
in evolutionist biology, 169, 171,
246 note
and genus, 226-9
mind in philosophy, 191
aesthetic intuition only attains
the, 177
and society, 260, 265
transmits the vital
250, 259, 270
Individuality never absolute, x,
12, 18, 16, 19, 42, 260
and age, 15-23, 27, 43
corporeal, physics tends to
deny, 188, 189, 208. See In-
terpenetration, Obliteration
of outlines, Solidarity of the
parts of matter
and generality, 226-8
the many and the one in the
idea of, x, 258
as plan of possible influence, 11
Individuation never absolute, x,
the
impetus,
388 INDEX
Individuation (Continued)
12-16, 43, 260
as a cosmic principle in con-
trast with association, 259-
60
property of life, 12-5
partly the work of matter,- 257-
8,259, 270
Indivisibility of action, 94, 95,
of duration, 6, 308
of invention, 164
of life, 225, 270-1. See Unity
of life of motion, 307-11
Induction in animals, 214
certainty of, approached as
factors approach pure mag-
nitudes, 222, 223
and duration, 216
and expectation, 214-6
geometry the ideal limit of, 214-
8, 361. See Space, Geometry,
Reasoning, *Descending’’
movement of matter, etc.
and magnitude, 215, 216
repetition the characteristic
function of intellect, 164, 199,
205-16
and space, 216. See Space as
the ideal limit, Systems, etc.
Industry, ix, 161, 162, 164
Inert matter and action, 96, 136,
141, 155, 187, 198, 225, 367
in Aristotle, 316, 327, 353
bodies, 7, 8, 12, 14, 20, 21, 156,
159, 174, 186, 188, 189, 204,
2138, 215, 228, 240, 241, 298,
300, 341, 342, 346-8, 360
Creation of. See Inert matter
the inversion of life
flux of, 186, 265, 273, 369
and form, 148, 149, 157, 239, 250
genesis of, 188
homogeneity of, 156
imitation of living matter by,
33, 35, 36
imitation of physical order by
vital, 230
instantaneity of, 10, 201
and intellect, ix, 31, 141, 159-62,
164, 165, 167-8, 175, 179, 181,
186, 187, 195, 196, 197, 198,
205-12, 216-9, 224, 264, 270,
319, 369
the inversion or interruption of
life, 93, 94, 98, 99, 128-9, 153,
177, 186, 189, 190, 196, 197, 201,
203, 208, 216-9, 231, 235, 236,
239, 240, 245-50, 252, 254, 256,
258, 259, 261, 264, 267, 272,
Inert matter (Continued)
276, 319, 339-40, 343. See In-
ert matter, order inherent in
knowledge of, approximate but
not relative, 206
the metaphysics and the phy-
sics of, 195-6
as necessity, 252, 264
the order inherent in, 40, 103,
158, 201, 207-12, 216, 226-7,
230-6, 245, 251, 263, 274, 319-20.
See Inert matter, inversion of
life
penetration of, by life, 25, 26,
51, 179, 181, 237, 239, 266, 270,
271
and perception, 12, 206, 226
and the psychical, 201, 202, 205,
269, 270, 350, 367
solidarity of the parts of, 188,
202, 207, 241, 257-9, 270, 271,
352
and space, 10, 1538, 189, 204-11,
214, 244, 250, 251, 257
in Spencer’s philosophy, 365
Inertia, 176, 224
Infant, intelligence in, 147, 148
Inference a beginning of inven-
tion, 138
Inferiority in evolutionary rank,
174-5
Influence, possible, 11, 189
Infusoria, conjugation of, 15
development of the eye from
its stage in, 60-1, 72, 78, 84
and individuation, 260
and mechanical explanations,
34, 35
vegetable function in, 116
Inheritance of acquired charac-
ters. See Hereditary trans-
mission
Innate knowledge, 146-7, 150-1
Innateness of the categories, 148,
149-50
Inorganic
matter
Insectivorous plants, 107-9
Insects, 19, 101, 107, 126, 131, 134,
135, 140-1, 146, 147, 157, 166,
169, 171-5, 188
apogee of instinct in hymenop-
tera, 134, 173-4
consciousness and instinct, 145,
167, 173
continuity of instinct with or-
ganization, 139, 145
fallibility of instinct in, 172-3
instinct in general in, 169, 173-4
matter. See Inert
ea a a ae
INDEX
Insects (Continued)
language of ants, 157-8
object of instinct in, 146
paralyzing instinct in, 146, 171,
172-3
social instinct in, 101, 157-8, 171
special instincts as variations
on a theme, 167. See Ar-
thropods in evolution
Insensible variation, 63, 66
Inspiration of a poem an un-
divided intuitive act, con-
trasted with its intellectual
imitation in words, 209, 210,
258. See Sympathy
Instantaneity of the intellectual
view, 31, 70, 84, 89, 199, 201-2,
207, 226, 249, 258, 273, 300-6,
311, 314, 331-3, 342, 351, 352
Instinct and action on inert mat-
ter, 136, 141
in animals as
from plants, 170
in cells, 166
and consciousness, 143-5, 166,
167, 173, 174, 175. 186
culmination of, in evolution,
distinguished
133, 174-5. See Arthropods in
evolution, Evolutionary su-
periority
fallibility of, 173-4
in insects in general, 169, 173-4
and intelligence, xii, 51, 100, 103, 113, 116-8, 132-7, 141-3, 145, 150, 152, 159, 168-70, 173- 9, 184-5, 186, 197-8, 238, 246, 254, 255, 259, 267, 268, 343, 345, 36
and intuition, 177, 178-9, 181
object of, 146-52, 165, 168, 172- 9, 186, 189, 195, 284, 254
and organization, 23-4, 138-40, 145, 166-8, 171-2, 173, 176, 193, 194, 264
paralyzing, in certain hymen- optera, 146, 171, 172-3
in plants, 170, 171
social, of insects, 101, 157-8, 171
Instinctive knowledge, 148, 167,
168, 1738-4
learning, 193
metaphysics, 192, 269, 270, 277
Instrument, action as, of con-
sciousness, 180
animal, is natural; human arti- ficial, 139-43
automatic activity as instru- ment of voluntary, 252
consciousness as, of action, 180
389
Instrument (Continued)
intelligence: the function of in- telligence is to construct instruments, 159, 192-3
intelligence transforms life into an, 162
intelligence transforms matter into an, 161, 198
intelligence: the instruments of intelligence are artificial, ix, 137-9, 140-1, 150-1
natural or organized instru- ments of instinct, 140-1, 145, 150
Intellect and action, ix, 11, 29,
44-8, 938, 136, 142, 152-7, 162, 179, 186, 187, 192, 195, 197-8, 219, 220, 226-9, 251, 270, 273, 297-9, 301, 302, 306, 329, 346-7
in animals, 187
Fichte’s conception of the, 189, 190, 357
function of the, 5, 11, 12, 44- 50, 92, 98, 126, 137-45, 149-60, 162-4, 168, 174, 176, 181, 187- 99, 204-8, 214-9, 229, 233, 237, 241, 242, 246, 247, 251, 270, 290, 298, 299, 328, 336, 337, 341, 342, 347, 348 356, 357
genesis of the, xi-xv, 49, 103, 104-5, 126-7, 152, 153, 186, 187, 189, 198, 194, 195, 198, 207, 247-9, 358, 359, 366
as inversion of intuition, 7, 8, 11, 12, 46, 49, 51, 86, 88-91 93, 94, 103-4, 113, 116-8, 129, 132, 133, 135, 136, 139-43, 145, 157, 161, 168-80, 181, 183, 184,
- 185, 190-204, 207-12, 216-8, 221, 228, 225-6, 230-3, 235, 236, 238, 245-52, 254-9, 264, 267-71, 276, 277, 318, 330, 339, 342-5, 361, 369
and language, 4, 148, 158-60, 268, 265, 292, 3038, 304, 312, 313, 326
and matter, ix-xv, 10, 11, 48-9, 92, 135, 136, 141, 142, 152-4, 155, 160, 161, 165, 168, 175, 179, 181, 182, 186-7, 190, 193, 194, 195, 198, 199, 201-4, 205-10, 213, 215, 218-20, 224, 225-30, 240-2, 245, 246, 248-52, 254, 256-9, 264, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275, 297- 8, 306, 319, 321, 329, 340, 341- 3, 347-9, 355, 358-61, 368, 369
mechanism of the, ix-xv, 4, 30, 32, 47-9, 70, 84-5, 88-9, 101, 137-8, 150-5, 156-7, 160, 161,
390 INDEX
Intellect (Continued)
164, 165, 167, 168, 1738, 174,
176, 177, 186, 187, 190-3, 194-
218, 228-40, 244, 246-7, 249-51,
254, 265, ‘257, 258, 266, 270,
273, 276-7, 292, 300-21, 325,
829, 3830, 332, 3837, 388, 339,
341-8, 351, 358-9, 361-2, 363-
4, 365, 367
object of the, ix-xv, 7, 8, 10,
17, .20; 21, ‘30, $1, 384, 386, 37,
46-9, 52, 71, 74, 84, 87-92, 93,
95, 102, 103, 139, 140, 149, 152-
66, 168, 173, 175-9, 180, 181,
186, 190, 193-211, 213, 216-20,
223, 224, 226, 228-30, 233, 237,
238, 240, 245, 249-51, 254, 255,
257-9, 261, 264, 265, 270, 271,
273, 274, 298-314, 318-22, 326,
328, 329, 332-8, 342, 344-9, 351,
352-7, 359-61, 363, 365, 369-70
and perception, 4-5, 11, 12, 93-
4, 161-2, 168, 176-7, 188, -189,
205, 207, 226-7, 228-9, 230, 238,
249-51, 273, 299-300, 301, 306,
359-60
and rhythm, 299, 300-1, 306-7,
829, 337, 346-7
and science, 8-12, 31, 92-3, 152,
158, 157-8, 159, 160-1, 162-3,
168, 173-6, 187, 193-8, 202, 204,
207-9, 214-6, 217, 225-6, 228-
9, 241, 251, 270, 278, 297-8,
306, 321, 322, 329, 333-5, 345,
346-8, 354, 356, 357, 359-60,
362-3, 369-70
and space, 10-11, 154, 156-7, 160-
8, 174-5, 176-7, 189, 202-4, 207-
12, 215, 218, 222-3, 244, 245,
250, 251, 257-8, 361-2
and time, 4, 8-9, 17, 18, 20-2, 36,
39, 45-6, 47, 51, 163, 300, 301,
331-2, 335-7, 341
possibility of transcending the,
xii, xiii, 48, 152, 177-8, 193-4,
198-200, 205-6, 207-8, 266, 360-
1. See Philosophy, Intelli-
gence
Intellectualism, hesitation of
Descartes between, and in-
tuitionism, 345
Intelligence and action, 137-41,
150, 154-5, 161, 162-3, 181, 189,
198, 306
animal, 138, 187, 188, 212
categories of, x, 48, 195-6
of the child, 147-8
and consciousness, 187
culmination of, 130, 139-40, 174-
Intelligence (Continued)
5. See Superiority
genesis of, 136, 177-8, 366
and the individual, 251
and instinct, 109, 135, 136, 141,
142, 168-70, 173-7, 179, 186, 197,
209, 288, 259, 267
in Kant’s philosophy, 357-8
and laws, 229-30
limitations of, 152
and matter, 152, 159-60, 161-2,
175, 179, 181, 186, 189, 194-8,
230, 287, 250, 369, 370
mechanism of, 152, 153, 164, 165
and motion, 153, 159-60, 274,
303-7, 312, 313, 329
object of, 145-56, 161, 162, 175,
179, 250
practical nature of, ix-xv, 137-
9, 141, 150-1, 247-8, 305, 306,
328-9
and reality, ix-xv, 161-2, 177.
237, 251, 258, 269, 271, 307
and science, 175, 176, 193, 194-5
and signs, 157, 158, 159, 160
and space, 205
See Intellect,
Reason
Intelligent, the, contrasted with
the merely intelligible, 175
Intelligible reality in ancient phi-
losophy, 316-7
world, 160-1
Intelligibles of Plotinus, 353
Intension of knowledge, 149-50
Intensity of consciousness varies
with ratio of possible to real
action, 144-5
Intention as contrasted with
mechanism, 233. See Auto-
matic order, Willed order
of life the object of instinct.
176, 233
Interaction, universal, 188-9
Interest as cause of variation, 131
in representation of “nought,”
296, 297. See Affection, réle
of, etc.
Internal finality, 41
Internality of instinct, 168, 174-
5, 176-7
Understanding,
of subject in object the condi- |
tion of knowledge of reality,
307, 317, 358-9
Interpenetration, 161, 162, 174-5,
177, 184 note, 188, 189, 201-3,
207-8, 257, 258, 270, 319-20,
341, 352
Interruption, materiality an, of
oo
ee
INDEX
positivity, 219, 246, 247-8, 319-
20. See Inverse relation, ete.
Interval of time, 8-9, 22, 23
between what is done and what
might be done covered by
consciousness, 179
Intuition, continuity between sen-
sible and _ ultra-intellectual,
360-1
djalectic and, in philosophy,
238. See Intellect as inver-
sion of intuition
fringe of, around the nucleus
of intellect, xiii, 12, 46, 49,
193
and instinct, 176-9, 182
and intellect in theoretical
knowlege, 176-9, 270-1.
Intuitional cosmology as reversed
psychology, 207-8
metaphysics contrasted with in-
tellectual or systematic, 191-2,
268-70, 277-8
method of philosophy, apparent
vicious circle of, 191-4, 195-
8
Intuitionism in Spinoza, 347-8
and intellectualism in Des-
cartes, 345-6
Invention, consciousness as, and
freedom, 264, 270-1
creativeness of, 164, 237, 340,
341
disproportion between, and its
consequences, 181, 182-3
duration as, 10-1
evolution as, 102-3, 255, 344-5
fervor of, 164
indivisibility of, 164
inference a beginning of, 138
mechanical, 142-8, 194-5
of steam engine as epoch-mark-
ing, 138-9
time as, 341
unforeseeableness of, 164
upspringing of, 164
See New
Inverse relation of the physical
and psychical, 126-7, 1438-4,
145, 178-4, 177-8, 201, 202, 206-
7, 208, 210-1, 212, 217, 218, 222,
223, 236, 240, 245, 246, 247-8,
249, 256, 257, 261, 264, 265,
270, 319-20
Irreversibility of duration. See
Repetition
Isolated systems of matter, 204, 213, 215, 241, 242, 341, 342, 346, 347-8. See Bodies
391
Janet, Paul, 60-1 note
Jennings, 35 note
Jourdain and the two kinds of order, 221
Juxtaposition, 207-8, 341. Cf. Succession
338, 339,
Kaleidoscopic variation, 74
Kant, antinomies of, 204-5, 206
becoming in Kant’s successors,
362
coincidence of matter with
space in Kant’s philosophy,
206, 207-8, 244 ~
construction the method of
Kant’s successors, 364-5
his criticism of pure reason,
205, 287 note, 356-62, 364
degrees of being in Kant’s suo-
cessors, 362-3
duration in Kant’s successors,
362-3
intelligence in Kant’s philoso-
phy, 230, 357
ontological argument in Kant’s
philosophy, 285
space and time in Kant’s phil-
osophy, 204-6
and Spencer, 364
See Mind and matter, Sensuous
manifold, Thing-in-itself
Kantianism, 358, 364
Katagenesis, 34
Kepler, 228-9, 332-5
Knowledge and action, 150, 193-4,
196, 197, 206-7, 208, 218
criticism of, 193-4
discontinuity of, 306
extension of, 149
form of, 148, 194-5, 358-362
formal, 152
genesis of, 190
innate or natural, 146-50
instinct in, 143, 144, 166-9, 173,
177, 192-3, 198, 268
intellect in, ix-xv, 48, 149, 162-
4, 177, 179, 193-4, 196-9, 206-7,
208, 218, 237, 238, 251, 270,
805, 306, 312, 313, 315, 317,
$25, 331-2, 342, 343, 347-8, 359-
60, 361
intension of, 149-50
of reality viewed as the intern-
ality of subject in object,
307, 317, 358-9
intuition and intellect in theo-
retical knowledge, 174-7, 179,
238, 270, 342-4
matter of, 194-5,
357-8, 359-62
392
Knowledge (Continued)
of matter, xi, 48, 206-7, 360-1
object of, ix-xv, 1, 48, 147, 148,
159-60, 163, 164, 197-9, 270,
342, 359-60
fundamental problem of, 273-5
as relative to certain require-
ments of the mind, 152, 190-
1, 230
scientific, 193-4, 196-8, 206, 207,
218
theory of, xiii, 177, 179, 197,
204-5, 207-8, 229, 2381
unconscious, 142-6, 146, 150, 165,
166
alleged unknowableness of the
thing-in-itself, 205, 206
Kunstler, 260 note
Labbé, 260 note
Labor, division of, 99, 110, 118,
140, 157, 166, 260
Lalande, André, 246 note
Lamarck, 75-6
Lamarckism, 75-6, 77, 84-87
Language, 4, 147, 157-60, 258, 265,
298, 302-3, 305, 312-4, 320
La Place, 38
Lapsed intelligence,
169, 175
Larvae, 19, 140, 145-66, 172-3
Latent geometrism of intellect,
194, 211-2
Law of correlation, 66, 67
and genera, 226-9, 330
heliocentric radius-vector in
Kepler’s laws, 334
imprint of relations and laws
upon consciousness in Spen-
cer’s philosophy, 188
and intuitional philosophy, 176-7
physical, contrasted with the
laws of our codes, 218-9
physical, expression of the neg-
ative movement, 218
physical, mathematical form of,
218, 219, 229-30, 241
relation as, 228, 229-30
Learning, instinctive, 192, 193
Le Dantec, 18 note
Leibniz, cause in, 277
dogmatism of, 356, 357
extension in, 351, 352
God in, 351, 352, 356
mechanism in, 348, 351, 355,
356
his philosophy a systematization
of physics, 347
space in, 351-2
instinct as,
INDEX
Leibniz (Continued)
teleology in, 39, 40
time in, 352, 362
Lepidoptera, 114 note, 134
Le Roy, Ed., 218 note
Liberation of consciousness, 183-4,
265, 266
Liberty. See Freedom
Life as activity, 128-9, 246
cause in the realm of, 94, 164,
complementarity of the powers
of, ix-xv, 25-6, 27, 51-5,
97-105, 110, 1138, 116-9, 126-
7, 131-6, 140-3, 176, 177, 183,
184, 246, 254-7, 266, 270, 343,
344-5
consciousness co-extensive with,
186, 257, 270, 362-3
mutual contingency of the or-
ders of life and matter, 235
continuity of, 1-11, 29, 30, 162,
168, 258
as creation, 57-8, 161-2, 223,
230, 246, 247-8, 252, 254, 255
symbolized by a curve, 31, 89,
90
embryonic, 166
and finality, 44, 89, 164, 185, 222-
3
fluidity of, 153, 165, 191-2, 193
as free, 129-30
function of, 93-4, 106-10, 113, 114, 117, 120, 121, 126-7, 173-5, 246, 254-6
harmony of the realm of, 50, 51, 103, 116, 117-8, 127
imitation of the inert by, 230
imitation of, by the inert, 33-6
impulse of, prolonged in our will, 239
and individuation, 12-4, 26, 27, 79-80, 85, 87, 88, 127-8, 149, 195-6, 230, 231, 250, 259, 261, 269, 300-1, 302-3. See Individ- uality
indivisibility of, 225-6, 270
and instinct, 136-40, 145, 165-8, 170, 172, 173, 175-9, 186, 192-7, 233, 264, 366
and intellect, ix-xv, 138, 32-5, 44-9, 89, 101, 102-3, 104-5, 127, 136, 152, 160-5, 168, 173-4, 176- 9, 181, 191-201, 206, 207, 213, 220, 222-8, 224, 225-6, 257-61, 266, 270, 300-1, 342, 355, 359- 61, 365, 366
and interpenetration, 271
as inversion of the inert, 6-7, 8, 176, 177, 186, 190, 191, 196,
a a ee
a ee
——~ wT. ee ee ee
et ee eee ee a ae he
.
INDEX F
Life (Continued)
197, 201, 202, 207, 208-9, 210-1,
212, 216, 217, 218, 222-3, 225-6,
232, 235, 236, 288, 239, 245-50,
264, 329-31
a limited force, 126, 127, 141,
148, 149, 254
and memory, 167
penetrating matter, 26, 27, 52,
179, 181, 182, 2387, 289, 266,
269-70
as tendency to mobility, 128, 131,
132
and physics and chemistry, 31,
33, 35, 36, 225-6
in other planets, 256
as potentiality, 258
repetition in, and in the inert,
224, 225, 230, 231
sinuousness of, 71, 98, 99, 102,
112, 113, 116, 129-30, 212
social, 138, 140, 157-8, 265
in other solar systems, 256
and evolution of species, 247-8,
254, 269
theory of, and theory of know-
ledge, xii, 177, 179, 197
unforeseeableness of, 6, 8-9, 20,
26-7, 28, 29, 37, 45-6, 47, 48,
52, 86, 96, 163, 164, 184, 223-4,
249, 339, 341
unity of, 250, 268, 270
as a wave flowing over matter,
251, 266
See Impulse of, Organic sub-
stance, Organism, Organiza-
tion, Vital impetus, Vital or-
der, Vital principle, Vitalism,
Willed order
Limitations of instinct and of in-
telligence, 152
Limitedness of the scope of Gali-
leo’s physics, 357, 370
of the vital impetus, 126, 127,
141, 148, 149, 255
Linden, Maria von, 114 note
Lingulae illustrating failure to
evolve, 102
Lizards, color variation in, 72, 74
Locomotion and _ consciousness,
108, 111, 115, 261. See Mobil-
ity, Movement
Logie and action, ix, 44, 46, 162,
179
formal, 292
genesis of, x-xi, xiii-xiv, 49,
103, 104-5, 136, 191-2, 193, 301,
359, 366
and geometry, ix, 161, 176, 212
393
Logie (Continued)
impotent to grasp life, x, 13, 32,
35, 36, 46-9, 89, 101, 152, 162-5,
194-201, 205, 206, 213, 219, 220,
222, 228, 225-6, 256-61, 266,
270, 313, 355, 360-1, 365
natural, 161, 194-5
of number, 208
and physics, 319-20, 321
and time, 4, 277
See Intellect, Intelligence, Un-
derstanding, Order, mathe-
matical
Logical existence contrasted with
psychical and physical, 277,
298, 328, 361-2
categories, x, 48, 195, 196
and physical contrasted, 276-7
Logik, by Sigwart, 287 note
hoyos, in Plotinus, 210 note
Looking backward, the attitude
of intellect, 46, 237
Lumbriculus, 13
Machinery and intelligence, 141
Machines, natural and artificial,
139. See Implement, Instru-
ment
organisms, for action, 252, 254,
300-1
Magnitude, certainty of induction
approached as factors ap-
proach pure magnitudes, 215-
16
and modern science, 333, 335
Man in evolution, attention, 184
brain, 183, 184, 263-5
consciousness, 139-43, 180,
183, 185, 187, 188, 191-2,
262-8
goal, 134, 174-5, 185, 266,
269, 270
habit and invention, 265
intelligence, 133, 137-9, 148, 146,
174, 175, 187, 188, 212, 266, 267
language, 158
Manacéine (de), 124 note
Manufacture, the aim of intellect,
187, 138, 145, 152-4, 159-65,
181, 191, 192, 199, 261, 298
and organization, 92, 93, 126-7,
139-43, 150
and repetition, 44, 45, 155-8
See Construction, Solid, Utility
Many and one, categories inap-
plicable to life, x, 162-3, 177-
8, 257, 261, 268
in the idea of individuality, 258
See Multiplicity
181,
212,
267,
394
Martin, J., 102 note
Marion, 107 note
Material knowledge, 152
Materialists, 240
Materialty the inversion of spirit-
uality, 212
Mathematical order.
matter, Order
Matter. See Inert matter
Maturation as creative evolution,
47-8, 230
Maupas, 35 note
Measurement a human conven-
tion, 218, 242
of real time an illusion, 336-
40
Mechanical account of action af-
ter the fact, 47
cause, x, 34, 35, 40, 44, 177, 234,
235
procedure of intellect, 165
invention, 138, 140, 194-5
necessity, 47, 215, 216, 218, 236,
252, 265, 270, 327
Mechanics of transformation, 32
Mechanism, cerebral, 252, 253, 262,
263, 265, 366. See Cerebral
activity and consciousness
of the eye, 88
instinct as, 176-7
See Inert
of intellect. See Intellect,
mechanism of
and intention, 233. See Auto-
matic order, Willed order
life more than, x, xiv note, 78-
9
Mechanistic philosophy, xii, xiv,
17, 29, 80, 37, 74, 88-96, 101,
102, 194-5, 218, 223, 264, 345,
346, 347, 348, 351, 355, 356,
362
Medical philosophers of the eigh- teenth century, 356
science, 165
Medullary bulb in the develop- ment of the nervous system, 252
and consciousness, 110
Memory, 5, 17, 20, 21, 167, 168, 180, 181, 201
Menopause in illustration of crisis of evolution, 19
Mental life, unity of, 268
Metamorphoses of larvae, 139-40, 146-7, 166
Metaphysics and duration, 276
and epistemology, 177, 179, 185, 197, 208-9 Galileo’s influence on, 20, 238
INDEX
Metaphysics (Continued)
instinctive, 191-2, 269, 270, 277-
8
and intellect, 189-90
and matter, 194
natural, 21, 325
and science, 176-7, 194-5, 198,
208-9, 344, 354, 369-70
systematic, 191, 192, 194, 195-
6, 238, 269, 270, 347
Metchnikoff, 18 note
Method of philosophy, 191-2
Microbes, illustrating divergence
of tendency, 117
Microbial colonies, 259
Mind, individual, in philosophy,
191
and intellect, 48-9, 205-6
knowledge as relative to cer-
tain requirements of the
mind, 152, 190-1, 230
and matter, 188-9, 201, 202, 203,
205-6, 264, 269, 270, 350, 365-9
See Psychic, Psycho-physio-
logical parallelism, Psychol-
ogy and Philosophy,
Minot, Sedgwick, 17 hy. Pua
Mobility, tendency toward, char- .
acterizes animals, 109, 110,
118, 129-32, 135, 180
and consciousness, 108, 111, 115-
6, 261
and intellect, 154-5, 161-2, 163,
300, 326, 327, 337
of intelligent signs, 158, 159
life as tendency toward, 127-8,
181,- 132; *
in plants, 112, 135
See Motion
Mobius, 60 note
Model necessary to the construc-
tive work of intellect, 164,
166-7
Modern astronomy compared with
ancient science, 334, 335
geometry compared with an-
cient science, 31, 161, 334
idealism, 231
philosophy compared with an-
cient, 225-9, 281, 327-8, 344,
345, 349-51, 354, 356-7
Philosophy: parallelism of body
and mind in, 180, 350, 355,
356
science: cinematographical char-
acter of, 329, 330, 336, 341, 342,
346-7
science compared with ancient,
329-36, 342-5, 356-7
INDEX
Modern (Continued)
science, Galileo’s influence on,
334, 335
science, Kepler’s influence on, 334
science, magnitudes the object of, 333, 335
science, time an independent
variable in, 20, 335
Molecules, 251
Molluscs, illustrating animal ten-
dency to mobility, 129-31
perception in, 189
vision in, 60, 75, 77, 83, 86, 87
Monads of Leibniz, 351-4
Monera, 126
Monism, 355
Moral sciences, weakness of de-
duction in, 212
Morat, 123 note
Morgan, L., 79 note, 80
Motion, abstract, 304
articulations of, 310-1
an animal characteristic, 252
and the cinematograph, 304-5
continuity of, 310
in Descartes, 346-7
evolutionary, extensive and
qualitative, 302, 303, 311, 312
in general (i.e. abstract), 304-5
indivisibility of, 306-7, 311, 336-
7, 338
and instinct, 139-40, 331-2
and intellect, 71, 155, 156, 159-
60, 273, 274, 298, 317-8, 321,
329, 331-2, 338, 344-5
organization of, 310-1
track laid by motion along its
course, 308-11, 3387, 338
See Mobility, Movement
Motive principle of evolution:
consciousness, 181-2
Motor mechanisms, cerebral, 252,
253, 268, 265
Moulin-Quignon, quarry of, 137
Moussu, 81
Movement and animai life, 108,
131, 132 ;
ascending, 12, 101, 103, 104, 185,
208-9, 210-1, 369-70. See Vital
impetus
consciousness and, 111, 118, 144-
5, 207-8
descending, 11-2, 202-4, 207-10,
212, 246, 252, 256, 270, 276,
339, 861, 369-70
goal of, the object of the intel-
lect, 155, 299-300, 302, 303
intellect unable to grasp, 313
395
Movement (Continued)
mutual inversion of cosmic
movements, 126-7, 143, 144,
173-4, 176, 177, 209-10, 212,
217, 218, 222-8, 236, 245-51,
261, 264, 265, 272, 342-3
life as, 166, 176-7
and the nervous system,
132, 134, 180, 262-3
of plants, 109, 135-6
See Mobility, Motion, Locomo-~
tion, Current, Tendency, Im-
petus, Impulse, Impulsion
Movements, antagonistic cosmic,
128-9, 135, 181, 185, 250, 259.
See Movement, Mutual inver-
sion of cosmic
Multiplicity, abstract, 257, 259
distinct, 202, 209-10, 257. See
Interpenetration
does not apply to life, x, 162,
177, 257, 261, 270
Mutability, exhaustion of, of the
universe, 244, 245
Mutations, sudden, 28, 62-3, 64-8
theory of, 85-6
110,
Natural geometry, 195-6, 211-2
instrument, 141, 144-5, 150-12
or innate knowledge, 147, 150-1
logic, 161, 194-5
metaphysic, 21, 325-6
selection, 54, 56-7, 59-60, 61-5,
68, 95, 169-70 Nature, Aristotelian theory of, 135, 174 discord in, 127-8, 255, 267 facts and relations in, 368 incoherence in, 104 as inert matter, 161-2, 218, 219, 228-9, 239, 245, 264, 280-1, 308, 356, 359-60, 367 as life, 100, 138, 189-40, 141-2, 143, 144-5, 150, 154, 155-6, 227, 241, 260, 269, 270, 301-2 order of, 225-6 as ordered diversity, 231, 233 unity of, 105, 190, 191, 195, 196- 9, 322, 352-7, 358 Nebula, cosmic, 249, 257 Necessity for creation, vital im- petus as, 252, 261 and death of individuals, 246 note and freedom, 218, 236, 270 in Greek philosophy, 326-7 in induction, 215, 216 and matter, 252, 264 Negation, 275, 285-97. Nought
See
396
Negative cause of mathematical
order, 217. See Inverse re-
lation, etc.
cosmic principle, 126-7, 143, 144, 173-4, 176-7, 209, 212, 218, 223- 4, 236, 245-51, 261, 264-5, 272, 243. See Inert matter, Oppo- sition of the two ultimate cosmic movements, etc.
Neo-Darwinism, 55, 56, 85, 86, 169-70
Neo-Lamarckism, 42 note
Nervous system a centre of ac- tion, 109, 1380-1, 132, 134-5, 180, 253, 261-3
of the plant, 114
primacy of, 120-1, 126-7, 252
Neurone and indetermination, 126
New, freedom and the, 11-2, 164, 165, 199-200, 218, 230, 239, 249, 270, 339-42
Newcomen, 184
Newton, 335
Nitrogen and the function of or- ganisms, 108, 113-4, 117, 255
vofjosws vénots of Aristotle, 356
Non-existence. See Nought
Nothing. See Nought
Nought, conception of the, 273- 80, 281-3, 289-90, 292-8, 316-7, 327. See Negation, Pseudo- ideas, etc.
vobs tonteKds of Aristotle, 322
Novelty. See new.
Nucleus intelligence as the lumi-
nous, enveloped by instinct,
166-7
in microbial colonies, 259
intelligence as the solid, bathed
by a mist of instinct, 193, 194 of Stentor, 260
Number illustrating degrees of reality, 324-5, 327
logic of, 208
Nuptial flight, 146
Nutritive elements, fixation of, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 247, 254
Nymph (Zool.), 139, 146
Object of this book, ix-xv
of instinct, 146-52, 163, 175-9
of intellect, 146-52, 161-5, 175,
179, 190-1, 199-200, 237, 250,
252, 270, 278, 298-304, 307-8,
311-2, 354, 359
internality of subject in, the
condition of knowledge of re-
ality, 307-8, 317-8, 359
of knowledge, 147, 148-9, 159-60
idea of, contrasted with that
INDEX
Object (Continued)
of universal interaction, 11,
188-9, 207-8
of philosophy as _ contrasted
with object of science, 195-6,
220-1, 225-6, 227, 239, 251, 270,
273, 297-9, 305-6, 347
of science, 329, 332-3, 335-6
Obliteration of outlines in the
real, 11, 188, 189, 207-8
Oenothera Lamarckiana, 63, 85-6
Old, growing. See Age
the, is the object of the intel-
lect, 163, 164, 199, 270
One and many in the idea of in-
dividuality, x, 258. See Unity
Ontological argument in Kant,
284
Opposition of the two ultimate
cosmic movements, 128-9, 175-
6, 179, 186, 201, 203, 288, 248,
254, 259, 261, 267. See In-
verse relation of the physi-
cal and psychical
Orchids, instincts of, 170
Order and action, 226-7
complementarity of the two or-
ders, 145-6, 173-4, 221-2. See
Order, Mutual inversion of
the two orders
mutual contingency of the two
orders, 231, 235
and disorder, 40, 103-4, 220-2,
225-6, 231-6, 274
mutual inversion of the two
orders, 186, 201, 202, 206-9,
211, 212, 216-8, 219-21, 222-3,
225-6, 230, 232, 235, 236, 238,
240, 245-8, 256, 257, 258, 264,
270, 274, 313, 330
mathematical, 153, 209-11, 217-
9, 223-6, 230-3, 2386, 245, 251,
270, 330-1
of nature, 225-6, 231, 233
as satisfaction, 222, 228, 274
vital, 94-5, 164, 222-7, 230, 235,
236, 237, 330-1
willed, 224, 239
Organ and function, 88-91, 93-4,
95, 132, 140, 141, 157, 161-2
Organic destruction and physico-
chemistry, 226
substance, 131, 140, 141-2, 149,
162-3, 195-6, 240 note, 255, 267
world, cleft between, and the
inorganic, 190, 191, 196, 197-8
world, harmony of, 50-1, 103,
104, 116, 118, 126-7
world, instinct the procedure
of, 165
INDEX
Organism and action, 123-4, 125,
/
174, 253, 254, 300-1
ambiguity of primitive, 99, 112, 113, 116, 129, 130
association of organisms,
change and the, 301, 302-3
complementarity of intelligence and instinct in the, 141-2, 150, 181, 184, 185
complexity of the, 162, 250, 252, 253, 260
consciousness and _ the, 145, 179, 180, 262, 270
contingency of the actual chem- ical nature of the, 255, 257
differentiation of parts in, 252, 260. See Organism, complex- ity of
extension of, by artificial in- struments, 141, 161
‘ freedom the property of every,
260
111,
__Banction of, 26, 27, 79, 80, 85,
87, 88, 93-4, 106-110, 113, 114,
117, 120, 121, 126-7, 128, 136,
173-5, 280, 231, 246, 247, 250,
251, 254, 255, 256, 258, 270
function and structure, 55, 61, 62, 69, 74, 75, 76-7, 86, 88-91, 93-4, 95, 96-7, 118-9, 132, 139, 140, 157-8, 161-3, 250, 252, 256
generality typified by similar- ity among organisms, 223, 224, 228-9, 2380
hive as, 166
and individuation, x, 12, 13, 15, 23, 26-7, 42, 149, 195-6, 225-6, 228-9, 259, 260, 261, 270
mutual interpenetration of or- ganisms, 177-8
mechanism of the, 31, 92-3, 94
philosophy and the, 195-6
unity of the, 176-8
Organization of action, 142, 145,
147-8, 150, 181, 184, 185
of duration, 5-6, 15, 25, 26
explosive character of, 92
and instinct, 24, 138-46, 150, 165-7, 171-2, 178, 176, 192-3, 194, 264
and intellect, 161-2
and manufacture, 92, 93, 94-5, 96, 126-8
is the modus vivendi between the antagonistic cosmic cur- rents, 181, 250, 254
of motion, 310
and perception, 226-7
Originality of the willed order,
224
397
Orthogenesis, 69, 86-7
Oscillation between association
and individuation, 259, 261.
See Societies
of ether, 301-2
of instinct and _ intelligence
about a mean position, 136
of pendulum, illustrating space
and time in ancient philoso-
phy, 318-9, 320
between representation of inner
and outer reality, 279-80
of sensible reality in ancient
philosophy about being, 316-8
Outlines of perception the plan of
action, 5, 11, 12, 93, 188, 189,
204-5, 206-7, 226-7, 228-9, 230,
250, 299-300, 306
Oxygen, 114, 254, 255
Paleontology, 24-5, 129, 139
Paleozoic era, 102
Parallelism, psycho-physiological,
180, 350, 351, 355, 356
Paralyzing instinct in hymenop-
tera, 139-40, 146, 172, 174-5
Parasites, 106, 108, 109, 111-13,
134-5
Parasitism, 132
Passivity, 222-4
Past, subsistence of, in present,
4, 20-3, 26-7, 108, 199-202
Peckham, 173-4 note
Pecten, illustrating identical
structures in divergent lines
of evolution, 62, 63, 75
Pedagogical and social nature of
negation, 287-97
Pedagogy and the function of the
intellect, 165
Penetration, reciprocal, 161-2. See
‘Interpenetration
Perception and action, 4-5, 11, 12,
93, 188, 189, 206, 226-7, 228-9,
300-1, 306-7
and becoming, 176-7, 303-6
cinematographical character of,
206-7, 249, 251, 331-2
distinctness of, 226-7, 250
and geometry, 205, 230
in molluscs, 188
and organization, 226-7
prolonged in intellect, 161-2, 273
reaction in, 264
and recollection, 180, 181
refracts reality, 204, 238, 359-60
rhythm of, 299-300, 301
and science, 168
Permanence an illusion, 299-301
398
Peron, 80
Perrier, Ed., 260 note
Personality, absolute reality of,
269
concentration of, 201, 202
and matter, 269, 270
the object of intuition, 268
tension of, 199, 200, 201
Perthes, Boucher de, 137
Phaedrus, 156 note
Phagocytes and external finality,
42
Phagocytosis and growing old, 18
Phantom ideas and problems, 177,
277, 283, 296
Philosophical explanation con-
trasted with scientific explan-
ation, 168
Philosophy and art, 176-7
and biology, 43-4, 194-6
and experience, 197-8
function of 29-30, 84-5, 93-4,
168, 173-4, 194-7, 198, 268,
269, 369-70
history of, 238
incompletely conscious of it-
self, 207-8, 209
individual mind in, 191
and intellect, ix-xv
intellect and intuition in, 238
of intuition, 176-7, 191-4, 196,
197, 277
method of, 191-2, 194, 195, 239
object of, 239
and the organism, 195-6
and physics, 194, 208
and psychology, 194, 196
and science, 175, 196-7, 208, 345,
370
See Ancient philosophy, Cos-
mology, Finalism, Mechanis-
tic philosophy, Metaphysics,
Modern philosophy, Post-
Kantian philosophy
Phonograph illustrating “unwind-
ing’’ cause, 73
Phosphorescence, consciousness
compared to, 262
Photograph, illustrating the na-
ture of the intellectual view
of reality, 31, 304-5
Photography, instantaneous, il-
lustrating the mechanism of
the intellect, 331-2, 333
Physical existence, as contrasted
with logical, 276, 297-8, 328,
361
laws, their precise form artifi-
cial, 218, 219, 229, 240-1
INDEX
Physical (Continued)
laws and the negative cosmic
movement, 218
operations the object of intelli-
gence, 175, 250
order, imitation of, by the vital,
230
science, 176-7
Physico-chemistry and organic
destruction, 226
and biology, 25-6, 29-30, 34, 35,
36, 55, 57, 98, 194
Physics, ancient, “logic spoiled,’’
320, 321-2
of ancient philosophy, 315, 320,
321-2, 355
of Aristotle, 228 note, 324 note,
8381, $382
and deduction, 213
of Galileo, 357, 369-70
and individuality of bodies, 188,
208
as inverted psychics, 202
and logic, 319-20, 321
and metaphysics, 194, 208
and mutability, 245
success of, 218, 219
Pigment-spot and adaptation, 60,
61, 71-3, 76-7
and heredity, 83, 84
Pinguicula, certain animal char-~
acteristics of, 107
Plan, motionless, of action the
object of intellect, 155, 298-9,
301-2, 303
Planets, life in other, 256
Plants and animals in evolution,
105-39, 142-3, 144, 145-6, 147,
168, 169-70, 181, 182, 183-4, 185,
254, 267
complementarity of, to animals,
183-4, 185, 267
consciousness of, 109, 111, 113,
120, 128-35, 142-8, 144,- 181,
182, 292. See Torpor, Sleep
function of, 107-9, 113, 114, 117,
246, 247, 254, 256
function and structure in, 67,
77-8, 79
individuation in, 12
instinct in, 170, 171
and mobility, 108, 109, 111-13,
118-9, 129, 180, 135-6
parallelism of evolution with
animals, 59-60, 106-8, 116
supporters of all life, 271
variation of, 85, 86
Plasma, continuity of germina-
tive, 25-6, 42, 78-83
INDEX
Plastic substances, 255
Plato, 49, 156, 191, 210 note, 316, 318, 319, 320, 321, 327, 330, 847, 349
Platonic ideas, 49, 315-6, 321, 322, 327, 330, 352
Plotinus, 210 note, 314-5, 323, 324 note, 349, 352, 353
Plurality, confused, of life, See Interpenetration
Poem, sounds of, distinct to per- ception; the sense indivisible to intuition, 209
illustrating creation of matter,
240, 319-20
TOCHTCKOS, VOUS, of Aristotle, 322
Polymorphism of ants, bees, and wasps, 140
of insect societies, 157 Polyzoism, 260
257.
Positive reality, 208, 212. See
Reality
Positivity, materiality an inver-
sion or interruption of, 219,
246, 247-8, 319-20
Possible activity as a factor in
consciousness, 11, 12, 96, 144,
145, 146-7, 158-9, 165, 179, 180,
181, 189, 264, 368
existence, 290, 295
Post-Kantian philosophy, 362, 363
Potential activity. See Possible
activity
genera, 226
knowledge, 142-7, 150, 166
Potentiality, life as an immense,
258, 270
zone of, surrounding acts, 179,
180, 181, 264. See Possible
activity
Powers of life, complementarity
of, xii, xiii, 26, 27, 51-5, 97-105,
110, 113, 116-8, 119, 126-7, 131-
6, 140-3, 176, 177, 183, 184,
246, 254, 255, 257, 266, 270,
343, 345
Practical nature of perception and
its prolongation in intellect
and science, 137-41, 150, 193-
4, 196, 197, 206, 207-8, 218,
247-8, 278, 281, 305, 306-7, 328,
329
Preéstablished harmony,
207
Present, creation of, by past, 5,
20-3, 26-7, 167, 199-202
Prevision. See Foreseeing
Primacy of nervous system, 120-
6, '252
205-6,
399
Primary instinct, 138-9, 168
{Primitive organisms, ambiguous forms of, 99, 112, 113, 116, 129, 130
- ‘Procession” in Alexandrian phi-
losophy, 323
Progress, adaptation and, 101 ff.
evolutionary, 50, 133, 134, 138,
141-2, 173-4, 175, 185, 264-5,
266
Prose and verse, illustrating the
two kinds of orders, 221, 232
Protophytes, colonizing of, 259
Protoplasm, circulation of, 32-3,
108
and senescence, 18, 19
imitation of, 32-3, 35
primitive, and the nervous sys-
tem, 124, 126-7
of primitive organisms, 99, 108,
109
and the vital principle, 42-3
Protozoa, association of, 259-61
ageing of, 16
of ambiguous form, 112
and individuation, 14, 259-61
mechanical explanation of
movements of, 33
and nervous system, 126
reproduction of, 14
Pseudo-ideas and problems, 177,
277, 288, 296
Pseudoneuroptera,
labor among, 140
of Aristotle, 350
of Plotinus, 210 note
Psychic activity, two-fold nature
of, 136, 140-1, 142-3
life, continuity of, 1-11, 29-30
Psychical existence contrasted
with logical, 276, 297-8, 327-
8, 361
nature of life, 257
Psychics inverted physics, 201,
202. See Inverse relation of
the physical and psychical
Psychology and deduction, 212-3
and the genesis of intellect, 187,
194, 195-6, 197
intuitional cosmology as_ re-
versed, 208-9
Psycho-physiological parallelism,
180, 350, 351, 355, 356
Puberty, illustrating crises in
evolution, 19, 320-1
division of
Qualitative, evolutionary and ex-
tensive becoming, 313
motion, 302-8, 304, 311
400
Qualities, acts, forms, the classes
of representation, 303, 314
bodies as bundles of, 300-1
coincidence of, 309
and movements, 299-300
and natural geometry, 211
superimposition of, in induc-
tion, 216
Quality is change, 299-300
in EHEleatic philosophy, 314-5
and quantity in ancient phi-
losophy, 323-4
and quantity in modern phi-
losophy, 350
and rhythm, 300-2
Quaternary substances, 121
Quinton, René, 134 note
Radius-vector, Heliocentric, in
Kepler’s laws, 334
Rank, evolutionary, 50, 133-5, 173-
4, 265
Reaction, réle of, in perception,
226-7
Ready-made categories, x, xiv,
48, 237, 250, 251, 273, 311, 321,
329, 354, 359
Real activity as distinguished
from possible, 145
common-sense is continuous ex-
perience of the, 213
continuity of the, 302, 329
dichotomy of the, in modern
philosophy, 349
imitation of the, by intelli-
gence, 90, 204, 258, 270, 307,
355
obliteration of outlines in the,
11-2, 188, 189, 207-8
representation of
science, 203-4
Realism, ancient, 231-2
Realists and idealists alike as-
sume possibility of absence of
order, 220, 231-2
Reality, absolute, 198, 228-9, 230,
269, 359-60, 361
as action, 47, 191-2, 194-5, 249
degrees of, 323, 327
in dogmatic metaphysics, 196
double form of, 179-80, 216, 230-
1, 236
as duration, 11-2, 217, 272
as flux, 165, 250, 251, 294, 337,
338, 342
and the frames of the intellect,
363-4, 365. See Frames of the
understanding
as freedom, 247
the, by
INDEX
Reality (Continued)
of genera in ancient philoso- phy, 226-7
is growth, 239
imitation of, by the intellect, 89-90, 365
and the intellect, 52, 89-90, 153, 191, 192, 314-5, 355-6
intelligible, in ancient philoso- phy, 317
knowledge of, 307-8, 317, 358-9
and mechanism, 351, 354-5
as movement, 90, 155, 301-2, 312
and not-being, 276, 280, 285
of the person, 269
refraction of, through the forms of perception, 204, 238, 359- 60
and science, 194, 196, 198, 199,
203-4, 206-8, 354, 357
sensible, in ancient philosophy, 314, 317, 321, 327, 328, 352
Symbol of, xi, 30-1, 71, 88-9, 93-4, 195-6, 197, 209, 240, 342, 360-1, 369
undefinable 49
unknowable in Kant, 205
unknowable in Spencer, xi
views of, 30-1, 71, 84, 88, 199, 201, 206-7, 225-6, 249, 258, 273, 300-7, 311, 314, 331-2, 342, 351, 352
Reason and life, 7, 8, 48, 161 cannot transcend itself, 193-4 Reasoning and acting, 192-3
and experience, 203-4
and matter, 204-5, 208-9
on matter and life, 7, 8
conceptually, 13,
Recollection, dependence of, on
special circumstances, 167,
180
in the dream, 202, 207-8
and perception, 180, 181
Recommencing, continual, of the
present in the state of relax-
ation, 201
Recomposing, decomposing and,
the characteristic powers of
intellect, 157, 251
Record, false comparison of
memory with, 5
Reflection, 158-9
Reflex activity, 110
compound, 173-4, 175-6
Refraction of the idea through
matter or non-being, 316-7
of reality through forms of per-
ception, 204, 238, 359-60
INDEX
Regeneration and individuality,
13, 14
Register of time, 16, 20, 37
Reinke, 42 note
Relation, imprint of relations and
laws upon consciousness, 188
as law, 229, 230-1
and thing, 147-52, 156-7, 160,
161, 187, 202, 352, 357
Relativism, epistemological,
197, 230
Relativity of immobility, 155
of the intellect, xi, 48-9, 152,
153, 187, 195-6, 197-8, 199, 219,
273, 306-7, 360-1
of knowledge, 152, 191, 230
of perception, 226-7, 228, 300-1
Relaxation in the dream state,
201, 209-10
and extension, 201, 207-8, 209,
210, 212, 218, 223, 245
and intellect, 200, 207-8, 209,
212, 218
logic a, of virtual geometry, 212
matter a, of unextended into
extended, 218
memory vanishes in complete,
200
necessity as, of freedom, 218
present continually recom-
mences in the state of relaxa-
tion, 200
will vanishes in complete, 200,
207-8
See Tension
Releasing cause, 73, 74, 115, 118-
9, 120
Repetition and _ generalization,
230-1, 232
and fabrication, 44-5, 46, 155-8
and intellect, 156-7, 199, 214-6
of states, 5-6, 7-8, 28-9, 30, 36,
45-6, 47
in the vital and in the mathe-
matical order, 225, 226, 230,
231
Representation and action, 143-4,
145, 180
classes of: qualities,
acts, 302-3, 314
and consciousness, 143-4
of motion, 159-60, 3803-4, 305,
306-7, 308, 313, 315, 344-5
of the Nought, 273-80, 281-4,
289-317, 327
Represented or internalized ac-
tion distinguished from ex-
Hh-saiog action, 144-7, 158-
9, 16
196,
forms,
401
Reproduction and individuation,
13, 14
Resemblance. See Similarity
Reservoir, organism a, of energy,
115, 116, 125-6, 245, 246, 254
Rest and motion in Zeno, 308-12
Retrogression in evolution, 133,
134
Retrospection the function of in-
tellect, 47-8, 237
Reversed psychology:
cosmology, 208
Rhizocephala and animal mobil-
ity, 111
Rhumbler, 34 note
Rhythm of duration, 11-2, 127-8,
300-1, 345-7
intelligence adopts the, of ac-
tion, 305-6
of perception, 299-300, 301
and quality, 301
scanning the, of the universe
the function of science, 346-7
of science must coincide with
that of action, 320
of the universe untranslatable
into scientific formulae, 337
Rings of arthropods, 132-3
Ripening, creative evolution as,
47-8, 340-1
Romanes, 139
Roule, 27 note
Roy (Le), Ed., 218 note
intuitional
Salamandra maculata, vision in,
Salensky, 75 note
Same, function of intellect con-
necting same with same, 199-
200, 233, 770
Samter and Heymons, 72 note
Saporta (De), 112 note
Savage’s sense of distance and
direction, 212
Skepticism or dogmatism the
dilemma of any systematic
metaphysics, 195-6, 197, 230-1
Schisms in the primitive impul-
sion of life, 254-5, 257. See
Divergent lines of evolution
Scholasticism, 370
Science and action, 93, 195, 198,
328-9
ancient, and modern,
342-5, 357 °
astronomy, ancient and modern,
834-5, 336
cartesian geometry and ancient
geometry, 333-4
329-37,
402
Science (Continued)
cinematographical character of modern, 329, 330, 336-7, 340- 1, 342, 345-8
conventionality of a certain as- pect of, 206-7
and deduction, 212-3
and discontinuity, 161-2
function of, 92, 167-8, 176-7, 193-4, 195-6, 9, 346-7
Galileo’s influence on modern, 333-4, 335
and _ instinct, 175, 193-5
and intelligence, 176, 177, 193-6
Kepler’s influence on modern, 334
and matter, 194-5, 206-7, 208
modern. See Modern science
object of, 195-6, 220, 221, 251, 270-1, 273, 296-8, 306-7, 328-9, 832-3, 335-6, 347-8
and perception, 168
and philosophy, 175-6, 208-9, 344, 370
173-4,
198-9, 328-
169, 170, 173-4,
196-7,
physical. See Physics
and reality. See Reality and
science
and time, 8-13, 20, 335-8
unity of, 195-6, 197, 228-9, 230,
321-2, 323, 344-5, 347-8, 349,
354, 355-6, 359-60, 362-3
Scientific concepts, 338-40
explanation and philosophical
explanation, 168
formulae, 337
geometry, 161, 211
knowledge, 193-4,
199, 207, 208, 218
Sclerosis and aging, 19
Scolia, paralyzing instinct in, 172
Scope of action indefinitely ex-
tended by intelligent instru-
ments, 141
of Galileo’s physics, 357, 370
Scott, 63 note
Sea-urchin and individuality,
Séailles, 29 note
Secondary instincts, 139, 168
Sectioning of becoming in the
philosophy of Ideas, 317-8
of matter by perception, 206-7,
249, 251
Sedgwick, 260 note
Seeing and willing, coincidence
of, in intuition, 237
Selection, natural, 54, 56-7, 59-
spe 61-2, 63, 64, 68, 95-6, 169,
196-7, 198,
13
INDEX
Self, coincidence of, with, 199
existence of, means change, 1]
i;
knowledge of, 1 ff.
Senescence, 15-23, 26-7,
Sensation and space, 202
Sense-perception. See
tion
Sensible flux, 316-7, 318, 321, 322,
327, 348, 345
intuition and ultra- intellectual,
360-1
Object, apogee of, 342-3, 344-5,
349
42-3
Percep-
reality, 314, 317, 319, 327, 328,
352
Sensibility, forms of, 361
Sensitive plant, in illustration of
mobility in plants, 109
Sensori-motor system. See Ner-
vous system
Sensuous manifold, 205, 221, 232,
235, 236
Sentiment, poetic, in illustration
of individuation, 258, 259
Serkovski, 259 note
Serpula, in illustration of identi-
cal evolution in divergent
lines, 96
Sexual cells, 14, 26, 27, 79-81
Sexuality parallel in plants and
animals, 58-60, 119-21
Shaler, N. S., 133 note, 184 note
Sheath, calcareous, in illustration
of animal tendency to mo-
bility, 130-1
Signs, function of, 158, 159, 160
the instrument of science, 329-
30
Sigwart, 287 note
Silurian epoch, failure of certain
species to evolve since, 102
Similarity among individuals of
same species the type of gen-
erality, 224-6, 228-9, 230-1
and mechanical causality,
45
Simultaneity, to measure time is
merely to count simultanei-
ties, 9, 336, 337, 341
Sinuousness of evolution, 71, 98,
' 102, 212-3
Sitaris, unconscious knowledge
of, 146, 147
Situation and magnitude, prob-
lems of, 211
Sketching movements, function
of consciousness, 207-8
Sleep, 129-31, 185, 181
Snapshot, in illustration of intel-
lectual representation of mo-
44,
INDEX
Snapshot (Continued)
tion, 305, 306, 313, 315, 344,
See View of reality, Cinema-
tographical character, etc.
form defined as a, of transition,
301-2, 317, 318, 321-2, 345
Social instinct, 101, 140, 158, 171-2
life, 1388, 140, 158, 265
and pedagogical character of
negation, 287-97
Societies, 101, 131-2, 158, 171-2,
259
Society and the individual, 260,
265
Solar energy stored by plants, re-
leased by animals, 246, 254
Systems, 241-4, 246 note, 256,
270 systems, life in other, 256 Solid, concepts analogous’ to ' golids, ix . intellect as a solid nucleus, 193, 194 the material of construction and the object of the intel- lect, 153, 154, 161, 162, 251 Solidarity between brain and consciousness, 180, 262 of the parts of matter, 203, 207- 8, 241, 271 Solidification operated by the un- derstanding, 249 o@pain Aristotle, 350 Somnambulism and_ conscious- ness, 144, 145, 159 Soul and body, 350 and cell, 269 creation of, 270 Space and action, 203 in ancient philosophy, 318, 319 and concepts, 160-1, 163, 174-5, 176-7, 188-9, 257-9 geometrical, 203 homogeneity of, 156, 212 and induction, 216 in Kant’s philosophy, 205, 206, 207, 244 in Leibniz’s philosophy, 351 and matter, 189, 202-13, 244, 257, 264, 361-2, 368 and time in Kant’s philosophy, 205-6 unity and multiplicity determi- nations of, 357-9 See Extension Spatiality atmosphere of, bath- ing intelligence, 205 degradation of the extra-spa- tial, 207 and distinctness, 203, 250, 257-9
207, 244,
403
Spatiality (Continued)
and geometrical space, 203, 211,
213, 218
and mathematical order,
209
Special instincts and _ environ-
ment, 138, 168, 192-3, 194
and recollections, 167, 168, 180
as variations on a theme, 167,
172, 264
Species, articulate, 133
evolution of, 247, 255, 269
and external finality, 128-9, 130-
1, 132, 266
fossil, 102
human, as goal of evolution,
266, 267
human, styled homo faber, 139
and instinct, 140, 167, 170-2,
264
and life, 167
similarity within, 223-6, 228-9,
230-1
Speculation, dead-locks in, xii,
155, 156, 312, 313-4
object of philosophy, 44, 152,
196, 198, 220, 225-6, 227, 251,
270-1, 278, 297-8, 306-7, 317,
347-8
Spencer, Herbert, xi, xiv, 78-9,
153, 188, 189, 190, 364, 365
Spencer’s evolutionism, corres-
pondence between mind and
matter in, 368
cosmogony in, 188
imprint of relations and laws
upon consciousness in, 188
matter in, 365, 367
mind in, 365, 367
Spheres, concentric, in Aristotle’s
Philosophy, 328
Sphex, paralyzing
172-5
Spiders and paralyzing hymenop-
tera, 172
Spinal cord, 110
Spinoza, the adequate and the
inadequate, 353
cause, 277
dogmatism, 356, 357
eternity, 353
extension, 350
God, 351, 357
intuitionism, 347
mechanism, 348, 352, 355, 356
time, 362
Spirit, 251, 269, 270
Spirituality and materiality, 128-
9, 201-3, 316-7, 208-9, 210-1,
212-8, 217, 218, 219, 222-3,
237, 238, 245, 247-8, 249, 261,
208,
instinct in,
404
254, 266, 257, 259, 261, 267,
270-1, 272, 276, 343
Spontaneity of life, 86, 287. See
Freedom
and mechanism, 40
in vegetables, 109
and the willed order, 224
Sport (biol.), 63
Starch, in the function of vege-
table kingdom, 114
States of becoming, 1, 13, 163,
247-8, 299, 300, 307
Static character of the intellect,
155-6, 163, 274, 298
views of becoming, 273
Stehasny, 124 note
Steam-engine and bronze, paral-
lel as epoch-marking, 138-9
Stentor and individuality, 260
Stoics, 316
Storing of solar energy by plants,
246, 253-6
Strain of bow and indivisibility
of motion, 308
Stream, duration as a, 39, 338
Structure and _ function. See
Function and _ structure
identical, in divergent lines of
evolution, 55, 60, 61-2, 63, 69,
. 93-4, 75, 76-7, 88, 86, 87, 118-9
Subject and attribute, 147-8
Substanee, albuminoid, 120-1
continuity of living, 162
organic, 121, 131, 140, 142, 149,
162-3, 195-7 note, 255, 267
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 350
ternary substances, 121
Substantives, adjectives, verbs,
correspond to the three clas-
ses of representation, 302-4
Substitution essential to repre-
sentation of the Nought, 281,
283-4, 289-90, 291, 294, 296
Success of physics, 218, 219-20
and superiority, 133, 264-5
Succession in time, 10, 339, 340,
341, 345. Cf. Juxtapositfon
Successors of Kant, 363, 364
Sudden mutations, 28, 62-3, 64-5,
68-9
Sun, 115, 241, 328
Superaddition of existence upon
nothingness, 276
of order upon disorder, 236,
275
Superimposition. See Measure-
ment of qualities, in induc-
tion, 216
Superiority,
173, 174-5
evolutionary, 183-5,
INDEX
Superman, 267
Supraconsciousness, 261
Survival of the fit, 169.
ural selection
Swim, learning to, as instinctive
learning, 193, 194
Symbol, the concept is a,
209, 341-2
of reality, xi, 30-1, 71, 88-9, 93,
195-6, 210, 240, 342, 360-1,
369-70
Symbolic knowledge of life, 199,
342, 360
Symbolism, 176, 180, 360
Sympathetic or intuitive know-
ledge, 209, 210, 342
Sympathy, instinct is, 164, 168,
172-8, 342-3. See Divination,
Feeling, Inspiration
Systematic metaphysics, dilemma
of, 195, 196, 230-1
contrasted with intuitional,
191-2, 193-4, 238, 269, 270, 277,
346-8
postulate of, 190, 195
Systematization of physics, Lieb-
niz’s philosophy, 347
Systems, isolated, 9-138, 203, 214,
215, 241, 242, 342, 347-9
See Nat-
161,
Tangent and curve, analogy with
deduction and the moral
sphere, 214
analogy with physico-chemistry and life, 31
Tarakevitch, 124 note
Teleology. See Finalism
Tendency, antagonistic tendencies of life, 13, 98, 103, 118, 135, 150
antagonistic tendencies in de- velopment of nervous system, 124-5
complementary tendencies of life, 51, 103, 135, 150, 168, 246
to dissociation, 260
divergent tendencies of life, 54, 89, 99, 101, 107-8, 109-10, 112, 116-8, 134, 185, 150, 181, 246, 254-8
to individuation, 13
life a tendency to. act on inert matter, 96
toward mobility in animals, 109, 110, 118, 127-8, 129-33, -.135, 181, 182
the past exists in present ten- dency, 5
to reproduce, 13
of species to change, 85-86
INDEX
Tendency (Continued)
mathematical symbols of ten-
dencies, 22, 23
toward systems, in matter, 10
transmission of, 80-1
a vital property is a, 13
Tension and extension, 236, 245
and freedom, 200-2, 207-8, 223,
2387, 289, 300-2
matter the inversion of vital,
239
of personality, 199-200,
207-8, 237, 239, 300
Ternary substances, 121
Theology consequent upon the
philosophy of Ideas, 316
Theoretic fallacies, 263, 264
knowledge and instinct,
268
knowledge and intellect, 155,
177, 179, 238, 270, 342, 343
Theorizing not the original func-
tion of the intellect, 154-5
Theory of knowledge, xiii, 178,
180, 184-5, 197, 204, 207-8, 209,
201,
177,
228-9, 231
of life, xiii, 178, 180, 197
Thermodynamics, 241-2. See
Conservation of energy, Deg-
radation of energy
Thesis and antithesis, 205
Thing as distinguished from mo-
tion, 187, 202, 247-8, 249, 299-
300
as distinguished from relation,
147, 148, 150, 152, 158-9, 159-
60, 161, 187, 202, 352, 356-7
and mind, 206
as solidification operated by
understanding, 249
‘Thing-in-itself, 205, 206, 230-1,
312 .
Timaeus, 318 note
Time and the absolute, 240, 241,
297-8, 339, 343-4
abstract, 21, 22, 37, 39
articulations of real, 331-3
as force, 16, 45-6, 47, 51, 103,
839
homogeneous, 17, 18,
331-3
as independent variable, 20,
335-7
interval of, 9, 22, 23
as invention, 341-2
163-4,
in Leibniz’s philosophy, 351,
852, 362
and logic, 4, 277
and simultaneity, 9, 336, 337,
341
y
405
Time (Continued)
in modern § science
341-5
and space in Kant, 205
and space in ancient philoso-
phy, 318, 319. See Duration
Tools and intellect, 137-41, 150-1.
See Implement
Torpor, in evolution, 109, 111, 113,
114 note, 120, 128-35, 181, 292
Tortoise, Achilles and the, in
Zeno, 311
Touch, science expresses all per-
ception as touch, 168
is to vision as intelligence to
instinct, 169
Track laid by motion along its
course, 309-12, 337
Transcendental Aesthetic, 203
Transformation, 32, 72, 73, 131,
231, 263
Transformism, 23-5
Transition, form a snapshot view
of, 301-2, 316-7, 318, 321, 344-5
Transmissibility of acquired char-
acters, 75-84, 87, 168, 169, 172-
3, 225-6, 230-1
Transmission of the vital impe-
tus, 26, 27, 79, 85, 87, 88, 98-4,
110, 126-7, 128, 280, 281, 246,
255, 256, 257, 259, 270
Trigger-action of motor mechan-
isms, 272
Triton, Regeneration in, 75
Tropism and psychical activity,
35 note
Truth seized in intuition, 318-20
321-37,
Unconscious effort, 170
instinct, 142-8, 144, 145-6, 147,
166
knowledge, 145-8, 150-1
Unconsciousness, two kinds of, 144
Undefinable, reality, 13, 48
Understanding, absoluteness of,
153-4, 190-1, 197-8, 199, 200
and action, ix, xi, 179
genesis of the, ix-xv, 49, 189,
207-8, 257-9, 359, 361-2
and geometry, ix, xii
and innateness of categories,
147, 148-9
and intuition, 46-7
and life, ix-xv, 138, 32-3, 46-50,
88-9, 101, 147-8, 149, 152, 162-
5, 173-4, 176-7, 178, 195-201,
218, 220, 222-3, 224, 226, 257-9,
261, 266, 270, 271, 318, 361-2,
865
and inert matter, 166, 168, 179,
406
Understanding (Continued)
194-5, 198, 205-6, 207, 219, 355
and the ready-made, xiii, 48,
237, 250, 251, 278, $811, 321,
828-9, 354, 358
and the solid, ix
unlimited scope of the, 149, 150,
152
See Intellect, Intelligence,
Concept, Categories, Frames
of the understanding, Logic
Undone, automatic and determi-
nate evolution is action be-
ing, 249
Unfolding cause, 73, 74
Unforeseeableness of action, 47
of duration, 6, 164, 340-2
of evolution, 47, 48, 52, 86, 224
of invention. 164
of life, 164, 184
and the willed order, 224, 342-3
See Foreseeing
Unification as the function of the
intellect, 152, 154, 357-8
Uniqueness of phases of duration,
164
Unity of extension, 154
of knowledge, 195-6
of life, 106-7, 250, 268, 271
of mental life, 268
and multiplicity as determina-
tions of space, 351-3
of nature, 104-5, 189-90, 191,
195-6, 197, 199, 322, 352, 356-8
of the organism, 176-7
of science, 195-6, 197, 228-9,
230, 321, 322, 344-5, 347, 359-
60, 362-3
Universal interaction, 188, 189
life, consciousness coextensive
with, 186, 257, 270
Universe, continuity of, 346
Descartes’s, 346
physical, and the idea of dis-
order, 233, 275
duration of, 10, 11, 241
evolution of, 241, 246 note
growth of, 342-3, 344
movement of, in Aristotle, 323
mutability of, 244, 245
as organism, 31, 241
as realization of plan, 40
rhythm of, 337, 339, 346-7
states of, considered by science,
336, 337
as unification of physics, 348-9,
357
Unknowable, the, of evolutionism,
xi
the, in Kant, 204, 205, 206
INDEX
Unmaking, the nature of the pro-
cess of materiality, 245, 248,
249, 251, 272, 342-3
Unorganized bodies, 7-8, 14, 20, 21, 186. See inert matter
instruments, 137-9, 140-1, 150-1 matter, cleft between, and the organized, 190, 191, 196, 197-9 matter, imitation of the or- ganized by, 33-4, 35, 36 matter and science, 194-6 matter. See inert matter Unwinding cause, 73 ; of immutability in Greek phi- losophy, 325, 352
Upspringing of invention, 164
Utility, 4-5, 150, 152, 154-5, 158-9, 160, 168, 187, 195-6, 247-8, 297- 8, 328-9, 330
Vanessa levana and Vanessa
prorsa, transformation of, 72
Variable, time as an independent,
20, 336
Variation, accidental, 55,
68, 85, 168-9
of color, in lizards, 72, 74
by deviation, 82-3, 84
of evolutionary type, 23-4, 72
note, 131-2, 187-8, 167, 169,
171-2, 264
insensible, 63, 68
interest as cause of, 131-2
in plants, 85-86
Vegetable kingdom. See Plants
Verb, relation expressed by, 148
Verbs, substantives and adjec-
tives, 303
Verse and prose, in illustration
of the two kinds of order, 221,
232
Vertebrate, ix, 126, 130, 131-4, 141
Vibrations, matter analyzed into
elementary, 201
Vicious circle, apparent, of in-
tuitionism, 192-4, 196-7
of intellectualism, 194, 197, 318-
9, 320
View, intellectual, of - becoming,
4, 90-1, 273, 298-9, 304, 305,
310, 326-7
intellectual, of matter, 203, 240,
250, 254, 255
of reality, 206
Vignon, P., 35 note
Virtual actions, 12.
action
geometry, 212
Vise, consciousness compressed
63-4,
See Possible
INDEX
in a, 179
Vision of God, in Alexandrian
philosophy, 322
in molluscs. See Eye of mol-
luscs, etc.
in Salamandra maculata, 15
Vital activity, 134-6, 139, 140, 166-
9, 246, 247-8
current, 26, 27, 53-5, 80, 85, 87,
88, 96-105, 118-9, 120, 230-1,
232, 239, 257, 266, 270
impetus, 50-1, 53-5, 85, 87, 88,
98-105, 118-9, 126-7, 128, 131-
2, 141-2, 148-9, 150, 218, 230-1,
232, 247-8, 250, 252, 254-5, 261
order, cause in, 34, 35, 94-5, 164
order, finality and, 223-5, 226
order, generalization in the,
and in the mathematical or-
der contrasted, 225, 226, 230-1
order, and the geometrical
order, 222-3, 225, 226, 230, 231,
235, 236, 330-1
order, imitation of physical
order by vital, 230
principle, 42, 48, 225, 226
order, repetition in the vital
and the mathematical orders
contrasted, 225, 226, 230, 231
process, 166-7
Vitalism, 42, 43
Void, representation of, 273, 274,
275, 277-8, 281, 283-4, 289-90,
291, 292, 294, 296, 298
Voisin, 80
Volition and cerebral mechan-
ism, 253-4
Voluntary activity, 110, 252
Vries (de), 24, 63 note, 85
Wasps, instinct in, 140, 172
407
Weapons and intellect, 137
Weismann, 26, 78, 80-1
Will and caprice, 47
and cerebral mechanism, 252
current of, penetrating matter,
237 '
insertion of, into reality,
6, 307
and relaxation, 201, 207-8
and mechanism in disorder, 233
tension of, 199, 201, 207-8
Willed order, mutual contingency
of willed order and mathe-
matical order, 231-3
305-
unforeseeability in the, 224,
342-3
Willing, coincidence of seeing
and, in intuition, 237
Wilson, E. B., 36
Wolff, 75 note
Words and states, 4, 302-3
three classes of, corresponding
to three clases of representa-
tion, 302-3, 313-4
World, intelligible, 162-3
principle: conciousness, 237, 261
Worms, in illustration of am-
biguity of primitive organ-
isms, 130
Yellow-winged sphex, paralyzing
instinct in, 172
Zeno on motion, 308-13
Zone of potentialities surround- ing acts, 179-80, 181, 264
Zoology, 128-9
Zoospores of algae, in illustra- tion of mobility in plants, 112
Front matter
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
In the writing of this English translation of Professor
Bergson’s most important work, I was helped by the friendly ~
interest of Professor William James, to whom I owe the
illumination of much that was dark to me as well as the
happy rendering of certain words and phrases for which
an English equivalent was difficult to find. His sym-
pathetic appreciation of Professor Bergson’s thought is
well known, and he has expressed his admiration for it
in one of the chapters of A Pluralistic Universe. It was
his intention, had he lived to see the completion of this
translation, himself to introduce it to English readers
in a prefatory note.
I wish to thank my friend, Dr. George Clarke Cox, for many valuable suggestions.
I have endeavored to follow the text as closely as possible, and at the same time to preserve the living union of diction and thought. Professor Bergson has himself carefully revised the whole work. We both of us wish to acknowledge the great assistance of Miss Millicent Murby. She has kindly studied the translation phrase by phrase, weighing each word, and her revision has resulted in many improvements.
But above all we must express our acknowledgment to Mr. H. Wildon Carr, the Honorary Secretary of the
Vv
vi CREATIVE EVOLUTION
Aristotelian Society of London, and the writer of several
studies of ‘Evolution Creatrice.”* We asked him to be
kind enough to revise the proofs of our work. He has
done much more than revise them: they have come from
his hands with his personal mark in many places. We
cannot express all that the present work owes to him.
ARTHUR MITCHELL
Harvarp UNIVERSITY
1 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vols. ix. and x., and Hibbert
Journal for July, 1910.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION . ‘ i F 4 ; P 3 Ze ix
CHAPTER I
Tue EvonuTtion or LirE—MECHANISM AND TELEOLOGY
Of duration in general—Unorganized bodies and abstract time
—Organized bodies and real duration—Individuality and
the process of growing old . , 1
Of transformism and the different ways of interpreting it—Radi-
cal mechanism and real duration: the relation of biology to
physics and chemistry—Radical finalism and real duration:
the relation of biology to philosophy . : 23
The quest of a criterion—Examination of the various theoties
with regard to a particular example—Darwin and insensible
variation—De Vries and sudden variation—Eimer and or-
thogenesis—Neo-Lamarckism and the hereditability of
acquired characters é ‘ . ° ° 59
Result of the inquiry—The vital invites ; ‘ ° ° 87
CHAPTER II
Tue Divercent Dirucrions oF THE EVOLUTION OF
Lire—Torpor, INTELLIGENCE, INSTINCT
General idea of the evolutionary process—Growth—Divergent
and complementary tendencies—The meaning of progress
and of adaptation ; 98 The relation of the animal to the plant—General tendency uf
animal life—The development of animal life . ; 105 The main directions of the evolution of life: torpor, intelligence,
instinct Ps ° : e ° si whoo The nature of the intellect . ‘ : . ° R «ABE The nature of instinct s j + 1165 Life and consciousness—The apparent place of man in n nature UP
vii
vill | CREATIVE EVOLUTION
CHAPTER III
On THE MEANING oF Lire—THE ORDER or NATURE
AND THE ForM OF INTELLIGENCE
Relation of the problem of life to the problem of knowledge—
The method of philosophy—Apparent vicious circle of the
method proposed—Real vicious circle of the opposite
method
Simultaneous genesis of matic ‘and dntelligennecCeoruetey inherent in matter—Geometrical tendency of the intellect —Geometry and deduction—Geometry and induction— Physical laws ‘.
Sketch of a theory of howledae ua, on the cnaleets ‘of the idea of Disorder—Two opposed forms of order: the prob- lem of genera and the problem of laws—The idea of ‘‘dis- order” an oscillation of the intellect between the two kinds of order ‘ F 3
Creation and svolatinn— deal penises igs miateerul’ ths jciehs and function of life—The essential and the accidental in the vital process and in the evolutionary movement—Man- kind—The life of the body and the life of the spirit
CHAPTER IV
THe CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND THE
MecuHanistic ILnLusIon—A GLANCE AT THE HiIsTorY OF
Systems—ReEeaL Brcominc aNp Fatse EvoLurioNisM
Sketch of a criticism of philosophical systems, based on the
analysis of the idea of Immutability and of the idea of
‘“Nothing’’—Relation of metaphysical problems to the idea
of ‘‘ Nothing”—Real meaning of this idea : ,
Form and Becoming E
The philosophy of Forms and its dininaption of Pchoustages Plato and Aristotle—The natural trend of the intellect
Becoming in modern science: two views of Time.
The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Deedartas,
Spinoza, Leibniz . ‘ d i ° ; .
The Criticism of Kant . . . ° ° °
The evolutionism of Spencer . ° e ° . .
INDEX . . : . ° . ° : e+e
See also