Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson 1

CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV

Creative Evolution, by Henri

Bergson
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Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson 2

Title: Creative Evolution

Author: Henri Bergson

Translator: Arthur Mitchell

Release Date: August 1, 2008 [EBook #26163]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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CREATIVE EVOLUTION

BY HENRI BERGSON

MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE PROFESSOR AT THE COLLEGE DE

FRANCE

AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY ARTHUR MITCHELL, PH.D.

NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1911

COPYRIGHT, 1911, by

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

CAMELOT PRESS, 18-20 OAK STREET, NEW YORK

Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson 3

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 sympathetic 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 Aristotelian Society of London, and the
writer of several studies of "Evolution Creatrice."[1] 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

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

CONTENTS

PAGE
Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson 4

INTRODUCTION ix
CHAPTER I 5

CHAPTER I

THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE--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--Radical

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 theories with regard to

a particular example--Darwin and insensible variation--De Vries and
sudden variation--Eimer and orthogenesis--Neo-Lamarckism and the
hereditability of acquired characters 59

Result of the inquiry--The vital impetus 87

CHAPTER II 6

CHAPTER II

THE DIVERGENT DIRECTIONS OF THE EVOLUTION OF

LIFE--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 of animal

life--The development of animal life 105

The main directions of the evolution of life: torpor, intelligence, instinct

135

The nature of the intellect 151

The nature of instinct 165

Life and consciousness--The apparent place of man in nature 176

CHAPTER III 7

CHAPTER III

ON THE MEANING OF LIFE--THE ORDER OF 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 186

Simultaneous genesis of matter and intelligence--Geometry inherent in

matter--Geometrical tendency of the intellect--Geometry and
deduction--Geometry and induction--Physical laws 199

Sketch of a theory of knowledge based on the analysis of the idea of

Disorder--Two opposed forms of order: the problem of genera and the
problem of laws--The idea of "disorder" an oscillation of the intellect
between the two kinds of order 220

Creation and evolution--Ideal genesis of matter--The origin and function of

life--The essential and the accidental in the vital process and in the
evolutionary movement--Mankind--The life of the body and the life of the
spirit 236
CHAPTER IV 8

CHAPTER IV

THE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND

THE MECHANISTIC ILLUSION--A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF
SYSTEMS--REAL BECOMING AND FALSE EVOLUTIONISM

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
272

Form and Becoming 298

The philosophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming--Plato and

Aristotle--The natural trend of the intellect 304

Becoming in modern science: two views of Time 329

The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes, Spinoza,

Leibniz 345

The Criticism of Kant 356

The evolutionism of Spencer 363

INDEX 371

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 beings to the conditions of existence that are made
for them. Hence should result this consequence that our intellect, in the
CHAPTER IV 9

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 movement, after the
lightest possible contact with experience, in order to go from discovery to
discovery, sure that experience 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.
CHAPTER IV 10

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
evolution, 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 province; 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
reciprocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their material
environment, how should it not reveal to us something of the very essence
of which these bodies are made? Action cannot move in the unreal. A mind
born to speculate 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 intellect 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
philosophy 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.
CHAPTER IV 11

*****

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
potentialities it possesses in producing pure understandings--that is to say,
in making geometricians. But the line of evolution 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 themselves,
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
amalgamated with intellect: would not the result be a consciousness 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 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.

*****
CHAPTER IV 12

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
understanding 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
knowledge 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 inquiries, theory of knowledge and theory of life, should join
each other, and, by a circular process, push 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 enterprise, they would show us the formation of
the intellect, and thereby the genesis of that matter of which our intellect
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 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
CHAPTER IV 13

puts at our disposal, mechanism and finality;[2] 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 has
traveled by the side of that which has led to the human intellect. The
intellect is thus brought back to its generating cause, which we then have to
grasp in itself and follow in its movement. It is an effort of this kind that we
attempt--incompletely indeed--in our third chapter. A fourth and last part is
meant to show how our understanding 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vols. ix. and x., and
Hibbert Journal for July, 1910.]

[Footnote 2: The 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 problème 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 conscience (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: "real 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.]
CHAPTER I 14

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
perception is internal and profound. What, then, do we find? In this
privileged case, what is the precise meaning 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 nothing, 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 would cease to flow. Let us
take the most stable of internal 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 mental 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
CHAPTER I 15

expedient to disregard 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 difference between passing

from one state to another and persisting 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 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
attention, 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 comprises
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
CHAPTER I 16

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 substratum 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, psychic states. As a matter of
fact, this substratum has no reality; it is merely a symbol intended to recall
unceasingly 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 real
time. 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 anything 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,[3] 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, 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
CHAPTER I 17

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 prepared--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, will 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 consciousness cannot go

through the same state twice. The circumstances 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, 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 without 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. Doubtless, 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
CHAPTER I 18

indivisible form which gives to these purely abstract elements their

concrete organization. For to foresee consists of projecting into the future
what has been perceived in the past, or of imagining for a later time a new
grouping, 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 concentrates 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
foreseen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it would have
been to produce it before it was produced--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 outside, 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,
CHAPTER I 19

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. Either it remains as it is, or else, if it
changes under the 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 universe 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
CHAPTER I 20

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 ourselves to
pointing out that the abstract time t 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
remains 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 t 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 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 understanding progresses, it
may be in the manner of a consciousness?
CHAPTER I 21

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 isolable 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 includes both, and so on
to the system most objectively isolated and most independent of all, the
solar system complete. 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 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,
CHAPTER I 22

provided such systems 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 distinct 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 reabsorbed in
the universal interaction which, without doubt, is reality itself.

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.
CHAPTER I 23

But that is no reason for thinking it is not a characteristic property of life.

The biologist who proceeds as a geometrician is too ready to take
advantage here of our inability to give a precise and general definition of
individuality. A perfect definition applies only to a completed 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 particular, it
may be said of individuality that, while the tendency 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
Lumbriculus, 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 now, it does not follow
that there was not a single individual 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
CHAPTER I 24

fashion of thinking, are regulated by this simple law: the present contains
nothing 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 something 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 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 individuality, 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 artificially. 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
CHAPTER I 25

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
understand 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 differentiated, from the
multicellular organism of man to the unicellular 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 environment, to put off the
moment when a rejuvenation by conjugation becomes necessary, this
cannot be indefinitely postponed.[4] 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 automatically to every
living thing. There are only directions in which life throws out species in
general. Each 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,
considered 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 metaphorical every expression which
attributes to time an effective action and a reality of its own. In vain does
CHAPTER I 26

immediate experience show us that the very basis of our conscious

existence is memory, that is to say, the prolongation of the past into the
present, or, in a word, duration, 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 inmost 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 requirements, its
ready-made explanations, its irreducible propositions: all unite in denying
concrete duration. Change must be reducible to an arrangement or
rearrangement of parts; the irreversibility of time must be an appearance
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, perhaps 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.[5] More probable and more profound is the 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."[6] Must
we however--with an eminent bacteriologist--declare any explanation of
growing old insufficient that does not take account of phagocytosis?[7] We
do not feel qualified to settle the question. But the fact that the two theories
agree in affirming the constant accumulation or loss of a 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
CHAPTER I 27

a priori. 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 development 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 continuum. 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, 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 ageing. 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 abrupto, 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 ageing up to that crisis
consists, in part at least, of this gradual preparation. In short, what is
properly vital in growing old is the insensible, 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 ageing be confined. It will note the
facts of sclerosis, the gradual accumulation of residual substances, the
growing hypertrophy 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 continual recording of duration, a persistence
of the past in the present, and so an appearance, at least, of organic
memory.
CHAPTER I 28

The present state of an unorganized body depends exclusively 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
position 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 in which time (in the sense in which the
mathematician takes this word) would play the rôle 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 argument, 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 phenomena of organic
destruction. Organic creation, on the contrary, the evolutionary phenomena
which properly constitute life, we cannot in any way subject to a
mathematical 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 metaphysic 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 which so many excellent minds accept it
without proof--all the seductions, in short, 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
CHAPTER I 29

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 exclusively 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 "immediately 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 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 t-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
mathematician 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 t'; with the interval up to T' he is not
CHAPTER I 30

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 tendencies 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? Evolution 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 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 invention, 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 performs its particular variation. Now, such is
just the relation 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
CHAPTER I 31

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 development
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 transformations comparable to those through which, according 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 considerations 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 observation 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 suddenly 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 demonstrable; but, failing the certainty of
theoretical or experimental demonstration, there is a probability which is
continually growing, due to evidence which, while coming 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 inference 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
CHAPTER I 32

us? Classification would probably remain, in its broad lines. The actual data
of embryology would also remain. The correspondence between
comparative 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 chronological
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 themselves are generated on the earth; or in
a plan of vital organization 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 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
CHAPTER I 33

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 elements 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
fertilized 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
whose cells are made of unmodified protoplasm.[8] 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 continuity 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 in a new germ. The essential thing is the continuous
progress indefinitely pursued, an invisible progress, on which each visible
organism 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 antecedents. That the
appearance of a vegetable or animal species is due to specific causes,
CHAPTER I 34

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.[9] It may
perhaps be said that the form could be foreseen if we could know, in all
their details, the conditions under which it will be produced. But these
conditions 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?[10] 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 on throughout a series of generations that do not seem to
change. In this sense it might be said of life, as of consciousness, that at
every moment it is creating something.[11]

But against this idea of the absolute originality and unforeseeability 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
CHAPTER I 35

situation, the events, favorable or unfavorable, which may follow

thereupon. Intellect therefore instinctively 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 itself--that is to say, on what is
withdrawn, by hypothesis, from the action of real time. Anything that is
irreducible 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
ignorance. What is presented to the senses as a continuous history would
break up, we are told, into a series of successive 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.
Knowledge 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
chemistry 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
CHAPTER I 36

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
natural systems which we call living beings must be assimilated 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
conceive, 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 undoubtedly
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 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
intervals 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
CHAPTER I 37

function--that is, the continuous movement by which the figure is

described. No doubt, for greater strictness, all considerations of motion may
be eliminated from mathematical 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 superficial
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 simplification,
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, so perhaps the integration of the physico-chemical
elements 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, however, 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 protoplasmic 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
CHAPTER I 38

cytoplasm. These latter commence by the doubling of the centrosome, a

small spherical body alongside the nucleus. The two centrosomes thus
obtained draw apart, attract the broken and doubled ends of the filament of
which the original nucleus mainly consisted, 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.[12] If, in a froth of the same kind,
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.[13] Even the external motions of a unicellular organism--of an
amoeba, at any rate--are sometimes explained mechanically. The
displacements 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 continual 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.[14] In the same way we
may perhaps come to explain the more complex movements which the
Infusorian makes with its vibratory cilia, which, moreover, are probably
only fixed pseudopodia.

But scientists are far from agreed on the value of explanations 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 rôle of the anagenetic
CHAPTER I 39

energies is to raise the inferior energies 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.[15] 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 protoplasm chemically. Finally, a physico-chemical
explanation 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 rudimentary organisms. Even in these humblest
manifestations of life they discover traces of an effective psychological
activity.[16] But instructive above all is the fact that the tendency 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
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.[17]"

To sum up, those who are concerned only with the functional activity of the
living being are inclined to believe that physics and chemistry will give us
the key to biological processes.[18] 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, embryogenists, and naturalists
believe far less readily than physiologists in the physico-chemical character
CHAPTER I 40

of vital actions.

The fact is, neither one nor the other of these two theories, neither that
which affirms nor that which denies the possibility of chemically producing
an elementary organism, can claim the authority of experiment. They are
both unverifiable, the former because science has not yet advanced 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 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
continuity of the animated matter which supports it, a single indivisible
history. Thus viewed, the evolutionist hypothesis does not seem so closely
akin to the mechanistic conception 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
CHAPTER I 41

thus to claim that all is given. On this hypothesis, past, present and future
would be open at a glance to a superhuman intellect capable of making the
calculation. Indeed, 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 precision: "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."[19] 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 differential equations,
from which could be deduced, for each moment, the position, direction, and
velocity of every atom of the world."[20] 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 certainty as one can say
what will happen to the vapor of the breath in a cold winter's day." In such
a doctrine, 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 infirmity 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 foundation 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
CHAPTER I 42

before our eyes the dazzling prospect of a universal mathematic; we cannot

sacrifice experience to the requirements of a system. That is why we reject
radical mechanism.

*****

But radical finalism 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 is 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 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 mechanism. The theory we shall put forward in
this book will therefore necessarily partake of finalism to a certain extent.
For that reason it is important to intimate exactly what we are going to take
of it, and what we mean to leave.
CHAPTER I 43

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 complexity? Does not each living being thus realize a plan
immanent in its substance?--This theory consists, at bottom, in breaking up
the original notion of finality into bits. It does not accept, indeed it
ridicules, the idea of an external 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 a time. 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
external 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
CHAPTER I 44

independence. Strictly speaking, if the subordination of all the elements of

the individual 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 autonomy. To say nothing of phagocytes, which push
independence 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
suddenly 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,[21] 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
pretends to have its own. But, on the other hand, the individual itself is not
sufficiently independent, not sufficiently cut off from other things, for us to
allow it a "vital principle" 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 spermatozoon belonging to the body of its father, that
the egg (i.e. the ovum fertilized) is a connecting link between the two
progenitors since it is common to their two substances, 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
CHAPTER I 45

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 mathematically 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 collective whole of all others.

Finality will not go down any easier for being taken as a powder. Either the
hypothesis of a finality immanent 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
CHAPTER I 46

guide actions inspired by intentions, 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 adapting means to ends
and by thinking out mechanisms of more and more geometrical form.
Whether nature be conceived as an immense machine regulated by
mathematical 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 reluctant 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 anything 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
arrangement 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
conclusion 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. Real duration is that
duration which gnaws on things, and leaves on them the mark of its tooth.
CHAPTER I 47

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. Mechanism 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 movement of life.

Indeed, if the fringe exists, however delicate and indistinct, 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 surface, but below.

As soon as we go out of the encasings in which radical 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 already 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 antecedents 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 everywhere, 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
CHAPTER I 48

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 rearranging the past. Mechanism and
finalism are therefore, 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 maturing 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 indefinitely into intelligible elements without ever reaching its goal.
The free act is incommensurable with the idea, and its "rationality" must be
defined by this very incommensurability, 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, however, and shows us
the eternal conflict of systems, the impossibility 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 extremity, our
reason prefers to announce once for all, with a proud modesty, that it has to
CHAPTER I 49

do only with the relative, and that the absolute is not in its province. This
preliminary 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 universal 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 particular, 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 intuition 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
combining 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 heterogeneous," 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 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 expresses itself; and it is this part of a part that we declare
representative of the whole, of something indeed which goes beyond the
CHAPTER I 50

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 movement; 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 consists adaptation. The species and the individual thus
think only of themselves--whence arises a possible conflict 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
"complementarity," 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
CHAPTER I 51

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 intellect, 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, evolution 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 interpretation, such as we
shall propose it, be taken for an 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 meaning 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
comprehensive 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
perceiving and also of producing repetitions--this reality is undoubtedly
creative, i.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
CHAPTER I 52

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 intellect 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 precise 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 condition 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 developed 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 beyond a certain point without becoming
mutually incompatible. 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 transformations 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 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
CHAPTER I 53

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 evolution diverge, the less probability is
there that accidental outer influences or accidental inner variations bring
about the construction of the same apparatus upon them, especially 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 something 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 demonstrable in a certain aspect, if it could be proved that life
may manufacture the like apparatus, by unlike means, on divergent lines of
evolution; and the strength of the proof 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
rôle which the concept of adaptation plays in the science of to-day.
Biologists certainly do not all make the same use of it. Some think the outer
conditions capable of causing change in organisms in a direct manner, in a
definite direction, through physico-chemical alterations induced by them in
CHAPTER I 54

the living 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 variations. But, in both cases, the outer conditions are supposed
to bring about a precise adjustment of the organism to its circumstances.
Both parties, then, will attempt to explain mechanically, by adaptation to
similar conditions, 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. The Darwinian idea of adaptation by
automatic elimination of the unadapted is a simple and clear idea. But, just
because it attributes to the outer cause which controls 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 difficulty 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
CHAPTER I 55

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
infinitely numerous and the effect infinitely complicated?

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 particular 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 wandering 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 become impossibility, if the zigzags are infinitely complicated. 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 positive 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
CHAPTER I 56

adapted itself was there, ready-made, and 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
conditions. 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 solution 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 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 interesting first to institute

here a general comparison between plants and animals. One cannot fail to
CHAPTER I 57

be struck with the parallel progress which has been accomplished, on both
sides, in the direction of sexuality. Not only is fecundation 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.[22] 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
combined 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
"adaptation": where is the adaptation, where is the pressure of external
circumstances? There is no striking utility 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.[23] But we do not wish to dwell on facts so disputed.
The ambiguity of the term "adaptation," and the necessity of transcending
both the point of view of mechanical causality and that of anthropomorphic
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
pigment-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
conditions in which it occurs; but the relation of the eye to light is obvious,
and when we call this relation an adaptation, 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
CHAPTER I 58

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
difficulty in showing that in this extremely complicated apparatus 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[24] at the extremity of the dark
chamber;... perpendicular to the retina there must be an innumerable
quantity of transparent cones permitting only the light directed in the line of
their axes to reach the nervous membrane,"[25] etc. etc. In reply, the
advocate of final causes has been invited to assume the evolutionist
hypothesis. Everything is marvelous, indeed, if one consider an eye like
ours, in which thousands of elements are coördinated 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, possibly 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 reactions between the function and the organ, without the
intervention of other than mechanical causes.

The question is hard to decide, indeed, when put directly 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 priori
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
CHAPTER I 59

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
invertebrates. 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 complex 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 directed 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 variations 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.[26] 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,[27] has become deeply
significant and acquired great force since the striking experiments of Hugo
de Vries. This botanist, working on the OEnothera 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
CHAPTER I 60

through alternate periods of stability and transformation. When the period

of "mutability" occurs, unexpected forms spring forth in a great number of
different directions.[28]--We will not attempt to take sides between 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 similarity 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. It must not be forgotten that all the parts of an
organism are necessarily coördinated. 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 continue to perform its function? Darwin quite
understood this; it is one of the reasons why he regarded variation as
insensible.[29] 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, wait for
complementary 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? Unwittingly 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, incalculable in number, have ever occurred
CHAPTER I 61

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 variations, and see whether it
will solve the problem. It certainly 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 somewhat reduced, but I can
also understand better how each could be preserved and added to the others;
for the elementary 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 coördinated that
the eye continues to exercise its function? For the change of one part alone
will make vision impossible, unless this change is absolutely infinitesimal.
The parts must then all change at once, each consulting the others. I agree
that a great number of uncoördinated variations may indeed have arisen in
less fortunate individuals, that natural selection may have eliminated these,
and that only the combination fit to 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
regulated 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
harmony of elements more and more numerous and complex--along two
independent lines of evolution?
CHAPTER I 62

The law of correlation will be invoked, of course; Darwin himself appealed

to it.[30] 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 examples
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 coördinated
as to keep up and even improve the functioning 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 principle of explanation; for hair
and teeth are similar formations,[31] and the same chemical change of the
germ that hinders the formation of hair would probably obstruct 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 coördinated that
the organ keeps on performing 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 formations 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 confusion 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
CHAPTER I 63

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 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 structure 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 conclusion. 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 correlation in 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 understood that this is only a
convenient way of expressing oneself, that one will correct it and fall back
on pure mechanism when explaining the nature of the principles and
turning 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 accidental
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 complementary. So we have to fall back on the good genius again, this
time to obtain the convergence of simultaneous changes, as before to be
assured of the continuity of direction 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 accumulation 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
CHAPTER I 64

causes, but to the direct influence of outer circumstances. Let us see what
line we should have to take, on this hypothesis, 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 a 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 without, should bring about in both
cases the same juxtaposition of elements coördinated 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 somehow adapt this structure to its
own form. 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? 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. Obviously 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 influence of its environment, mean the same
as the active adaptation of an organism which derives from this influence
an advantage it can appropriate. It must be owned, indeed, that Nature
CHAPTER I 65

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
produced 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 vertebrates.--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, living matter seems
to have no other means of turning circumstances 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 pigment-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 photograph and a
photographic apparatus. Certainly the photograph 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" is a 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
locomotion. 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 physically determine the
movements of certain organisms; ciliated Infusoria, for instance, react to
CHAPTER I 66

light. But no one would hold that the influence of light has physically
caused the formation of a 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 speaks of the gradual
formation of the eye, and, still more, when one takes into account all that is
inseparably connected with it, one brings in something entirely different
from the direct action of light. One implicitly attributes to organized matter
a certain capacity sui 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 everything. 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 internal, 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 submitted to cold or heat, gave
rise to very different butterflies, which had long been regarded as
independent species, Vanessa levana and Vanessa prorsa: an intermediate
temperature 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.[32]
In these various experiments the external agent seems to act as a cause of
transformation. But what does the word "cause" 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
confused. A cause may act by impelling, releasing, or unwinding. The
billiard-ball, that strikes another, determines 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
CHAPTER I 67

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 becoming 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 of the
"kaleidoscopic" character of the variation,[33] or when he says that the
variation of organized matter works in a definite way, just as inorganic
matter crystallizes in definite directions.[34] 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 formation 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.[35] 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?
CHAPTER I 68

The more we reflect upon it, the more we shall see that this production of
the same effect by two different accumulations 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 moment, right before our eyes, nature arrives at identical
results, in sometimes neighboring species, by entirely different
embryogenic processes. Observations of "heteroblastia" have multiplied in
late years,[36] and it has been necessary to reject the almost classical theory
of the specificity of embryonic gills. Still keeping to our comparison
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 regenerated by the iris.[37]
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.[38] 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
CHAPTER I 69

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 remains 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 sui 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 certain organs, mechanically elicited by the pressure
of external circumstances. But it may also imply consciousness and will,
and it is in this sense that it appears to be understood by one of the most
eminent representatives of the doctrine, the American naturalist Cope.[39]
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
remains, 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
CHAPTER I 70

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 complication of an organ, and yet an enormous number of
complications, all admirably coördinated, 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 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 completely indifferent to it. Nowhere is it
clearer that philosophers 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 hereditability 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 remaking, 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 transmissibility of acquired

characters has been no less dogmatically 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
CHAPTER I 71

of the somatic cells. Starting from this, it has been claimed, and is still
claimed by many, that the hereditary transmission of an acquired 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.[40] 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
the son, may have grown on the way by the effect of the primitive impetus,
and thus assured to the son a greater 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
interpretation, has been eliminated, there remains hardly a single
unquestionable example of acquired and transmitted peculiarities, beyond
CHAPTER I 72

the famous experiments of Brown-Séquard, repeated and confirmed by

other physiologists.[41] 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 certain 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.[42] This objection has been answered by Brown-Séquard
himself;[43] but a more plausible one might be raised. Some experiments
of Voisin and Peron have shown that fits of epilepsy are followed by the
elimination of a toxic body which, when injected into animals,[44] 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 disturbance, 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.[45] It is true that, in these experiments, as in a former
observation of the same physiologists,[46] 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 produced, by an analogous
process, on the spermatozoa and the ova.[47] To conclude, then: the
inheritance of an acquired 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
CHAPTER I 73

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 transmissible. 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 is 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 certain 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 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 development 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 character. 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 substances capable of changing the germ-plasm, or does not
CHAPTER I 74

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 contrary, and so long as the
decisive experiments called for by an eminent biologist[48] 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 transmissibility 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 exception 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 supposing 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 evolutionism 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
CHAPTER I 75

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, i.e. to give a 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 precision 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 evolutionism 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 Darwinism
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 representatives 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 OEnothera Lamarckiana),[49] and 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
CHAPTER I 76

mutation are determinate. 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 manifested 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
individual, it cannot operate in more than a restricted number of cases--at
most in the animal world, and not at all in the vegetable kingdom. Even in
animals, it will act only on points which are under the direct or indirect
control 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 substance alone,
an effort thereby assured of being passed on to their descendants.
CHAPTER I 77

*****

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 following generation of germs through the developed
organisms 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 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
complicated organism: so complicated, indeed, is the retinal membrane in
its intimate structure, that no simple description can give an adequate idea
of it. The mechanism of the eye is, in short, composed of an infinity of
mechanisms, 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 complex 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
CHAPTER I 78

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 proceeds
by the assemblage of parts with a view to the realization of an idea or the
imitation of a model. Mechanism, here, reproaches finalism with its
anthropomorphic character, 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 association 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
CHAPTER I 79

infinity of elements infinitely small, 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 in neither case should we
have got at the real process, for there are no squares brought together. It is
the picture, i.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
distinguish as many positions as I please, and the line itself might be
defined as a certain mutual coördination 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 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
CHAPTER I 80

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 nothing
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 coördination: 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 elements, 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 coördinated 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 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 manufacture, 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 quantity 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 beginning 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 spermatozoon which really takes part in the
operation.
CHAPTER I 81

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 manufacturer 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.

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 on them. 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
CHAPTER I 82

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 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 coördinated 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 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.
CHAPTER I 83

The greater the effort of the hand, the farther it will go into the filings. But
at whatever point it stops, instantaneously and automatically the filings
coördinate and find their equilibrium. So with vision and its organ.
According as the undivided act constituting vision advances more or less,
the materiality of the organ is made of a more or less considerable number
of mutually coördinated 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 coördination 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 coördination, 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 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 coördination. 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
CHAPTER I 84

direction of this action is not predetermined; 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 contingency; 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:[50] 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 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: Matière et mémoire, Paris, 1896, chaps. ii. and iii.]

[Footnote 4: Calkins, Studies on the Life History of Protozoa (Archiv f.

Entwicklungsmechanik, vol. xv., 1903, pp. 139-186).]

[Footnote 5: Sedgwick Minot, On Certain Phenomena of Growing Old

(Proc. Amer. Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, 39th Meeting, Salem,
1891, pp. 271-288).]

[Footnote 6: Le Dantec, L'Individualité et l'erreur individualiste, Paris,

1905, pp. 84 ff.]

[Footnote 7: Metchnikoff, La Dégénérescence sénile (Année biologique,

iii., 1897, pp. 249 ff.). Cf. by the same author, La Nature humaine, Paris,
1903, pp. 312 ff.]
CHAPTER I 85

[Footnote 8: Roule, L'Embryologie générale, Paris, 1893, p. 319.]

[Footnote 9: 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).]

[Footnote 10: We have dwelt on this point and tried to make it clear in the
Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, pp. 140-151.]

[Footnote 11: In 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 advance 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 separate 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.]

[Footnote 12: Bütschli, Untersuchungen über mikroskopische Schäume und

das Protoplasma, Leipzig, 1892, First Part.]

[Footnote 13: Rhumbler, Versuch einer mechanischen Erklärung der

indirekten Zell-und Kernteilung (Roux's Archiv, 1896).]

[Footnote 14: Berthold, Studien über Protoplasmamechanik, Leipzig, 1886,

p. 102. Cf. the explanation proposed by Le Dantec, Théorie nouvelle de la
vie, Paris, 1896, p. 60.]

[Footnote 15: Cope, The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, Chicago,

1896, pp. 475-484.]
CHAPTER I 86

[Footnote 16: Maupas, "Etude des infusoires ciliés" (Arch. de zoologie

expérimentale, 1883, pp. 47, 491, 518, 549, in particular). P. Vignon,
Recherches 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,
Washington, 1904). The "type of behavior" of these lower organisms, as
Jennings defines it (pp. 237-252), is unquestionably of the psychological
order.]

[Footnote 17: E.B. Wilson, The Cell in Development and Inheritance, New
York, 1897, p. 330.]

[Footnote 18: Dastre, La Vie et la mort, p. 43.]

[Footnote 19: Laplace, Introduction à la théorie analytique des probabilités

(OEuvres complètes, vol. vii., Paris, 1886, p. vi.).]

[Footnote 20: Du Bois-Reymond, Über die Grenzen des Naturerkennens,

Leipzig, 1892.]

[Footnote 21: 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 Vorgänge, Leipzig, 1899; Die organischen
Regulationen, Leipzig, 1901; Naturbegriffe und Natururteile, Leipzig,
1904; Der Vitalismus als Geschichte und als Lehre, Leipzig, 1905; and of
Reinke--Die Welt als Tat, Berlin, 1899; Einleitung in die theoretische
Biologie, Berlin, 1901; Philosophie der Botanik, Leipzig, 1905.]

[Footnote 22: P. Guérin, Les Connaissances actuelles sur la fécondation

chez les phanérogames, Paris, 1904, pp. 144-148. Cf. Delage, L'Hérédité,
CHAPTER I 87

2nd edition, 1903, pp. 140 ff.]

[Footnote 23: Möbius, Beiträge zur Lehre von der Fortpflanzung der
Gewächse, Jena, 1897, pp. 203-206 in particular. Cf. Hartog, "Sur les
phénomènes de reproduction" (Année biologique, 1895, pp. 707-709).]

[Footnote 24: Paul Janet, Les Causes finales, Paris, 1876, p. 83.]

[Footnote 25: Ibid. p. 80.]

[Footnote 26: Darwin, Origin of Species, chap. ii.]

[Footnote 27: Bateson, Materials for the Study of Variation, London, 1894,
especially pp. 567 ff. Cf. Scott, "Variations and Mutations" (American
Journal of Science, Nov. 1894).]

[Footnote 28: De Vries, Die Mutationstheorie, Leipzig, 1901-1903. Cf., by

the same author, Species and Varieties, Chicago, 1905.]

[Footnote 29: Darwin, Origin of Species, chap. vi.]

[Footnote 30: Darwin, Origin of Species, chap. i.]

[Footnote 31: On this homology of hair and teeth, see Brandt, "Über ... eine
mutmassliche Homologie der Haare und Zahne" (Biol. Centralblatt, vol.
xviii., 1898, especially pp. 262 ff.).]

[Footnote 32: 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).]

[Footnote 33: Eimer, Orthogenesis der Schmetterlinge, Leipzig, 1897, p.

24. Cf. Die Entstehung der Arten, p. 53.]
CHAPTER I 88

[Footnote 34: Eimer, Die Entstehung der Arten, Jena, 1888, p. 25.]

[Footnote 35: Ibid. pp. 165 ff.]

[Footnote 36: Salensky, "Heteroblastie" (Proc. of the Fourth International

Congress 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.]

[Footnote 37: Wolff, "Die Regeneration der Urodelenlinse" (Arch. f.

Entwicklungsmechanik, i., 1895, pp. 380 ff.).]

[Footnote 38: Fischel, "Über die Regeneration der Linse" (Anat. Anzeiger,
xiv., 1898, pp. 373-380).]

[Footnote 39: Cope, The Origin of the Fittest, 1887; The Primary Factors
of Organic Evolution, 1896.]

[Footnote 40: Cuénot, "La Nouvelle Théorie transformiste" (Revue

générale des sciences, 1894). Cf. Morgan, Evolution and Adaptation,
London, 1903, p. 357.]

[Footnote 41: Brown-Séquard, "Nouvelles recherches sur l'épilepsie due à

certaines lésions de la moelle épiniéere et des nerfs rachidiens" (Arch. de
physiologie, vol. ii., 1866, pp. 211, 422, and 497).]

[Footnote 42: Weismann, Aufsätze über Vererbung, Jena, 1892, pp.

376-378, and also Vorträge über Descendenztheorie, Jena, 1902, vol. ii., p.
76.]

[Footnote 43: Brown-Séquard, "Hérédité d'une affection due à une cause

accidentelle" (Arch. de physiologie, 1892, pp. 686 ff.).]

[Footnote 44: Voisin and Peron, "Recherches sur la toxicité urinaire chez
les épileptiques" (Arch. de neurologie, vol. xxiv., 1892, and xxv., 1893. Cf.
CHAPTER I 89

the work of Voisin, L'Épilepsie, Paris, 1897, pp. 125-133).]

[Footnote 45: Charrin, Delamare and Moussu, "Transmission expérimentale

aux descendants de lésions développées chez les ascendants" (C.R. de
l'Acad. des sciences, vol. cxxxv., 1902, p. 191). Cf. Morgan, Evolution and
Adaptation, p. 257, and Delage, L'Hérédité, 2nd edition, p. 388.]

[Footnote 46: Charrin and Delamare, "Hérédité cellulaire" (C.R. de l'Acad.

des sciences, vol. cxxxiii., 1901, pp. 69-71).]

[Footnote 47: Charrin, "L'Hérédité pathologique" (Revue générale des

sciences, 15 janvier 1896).]

[Footnote 48: Giard, Controverses transformistes, Paris, 1904, p. 147.]

[Footnote 49: Some analogous facts, however, have been noted, all in the
vegetable world. See Blaringhem, "La Notion d'espèce et la théorie de la
mutation" (Année psychologique, vol. xii., 1906, pp. 95 ff.), and De Vries,
Species and Varieties, p. 655.]

[Footnote 50: See, on this subject, Matière et mémoire, chap. i.]

CHAPTER II 90

CHAPTER II

THE DIVERGENT DIRECTIONS OF THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE.

TORPOR, INTELLIGENCE, INSTINCT

The evolution movement would be a simple one, and we should soon have
been able to determine its direction, 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 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, outwardly 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
CHAPTER II 91

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 succeeded 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 indivisible, united in itself divers persons, which
could remain blended just because they were in their nascent state: this
indecision, so charged with promise, is one of the 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 importance. 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 almost always appear somewhat
poor and limited in comparison 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;
CHAPTER II 92

and of these highways themselves, 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
complete each other, which do complete each other in their embryonic
state, can no longer abide together when they grow stronger. If one could
speak, otherwise than metaphorically, 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 collected on the road
leading to the hymenoptera: the societies 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 characteristics 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 proportion. Combining
these tendencies, then, we shall get an approximation, or rather an
imitation, of the indivisible motor principle whence their impetus proceeds.
Evolution will thus prove to be something entirely different from a series of
adaptations to circumstances, as mechanism claims; entirely different also
from the realization of a plan of the whole, as maintained by the doctrine of
finality.

*****
CHAPTER II 93

That adaptation to environment is the necessary condition 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
imposed on it. But it is one thing to recognize that outer 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 becoming anchylosed in its primitive
forms. Certain Foraminifera have not varied since the Silurian epoch.
Unmoved 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.[51]
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, instead 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 evolution does not mark
out a solitary route, that it takes directions without aiming at ends, and that
it remains inventive even in its adaptations.

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
CHAPTER II 94

time, in terms actually given. If, on the contrary, evolution 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 manifestations 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
supposed, for the sake of simplicity, that each species received the
impulsion in order to pass it on to others, and that, 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 movement 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 progress mean a continual advance in the
general direction determined by a first impulsion; but this progress is
accomplished 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
CHAPTER II 95

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 crystallizes. 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 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 richness, 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 discussions 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
CHAPTER II 96

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 come to naught. There is not a single
property of vegetable life that is not found, in some degree, in certain
animals; 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 manifestations. 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 alimentation. 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; so that ultimately the vegetable nourishes the animal. True, this
law allows of many exceptions among vegetables. We do not hesitate to
CHAPTER II 97

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 animals: 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 automatically
settle in any particular case the question whether we are dealing with a
plant or an animal. But the difference may provide the beginning of a
dynamic definition of the two kingdoms, in that it marks the two divergent
directions 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.[52] They might be called the abortive children of the
vegetable world. Their different species are like so many blind alleys, as if,
by renouncing the mode of alimentation customary amongst vegetables,
they had been brought to a standstill 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 nourishment. In a
general way, then, if we attach less importance 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
CHAPTER II 98

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 coördinate their movements with their
sensations, 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 cellulose, 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 elements it can appropriate directly. It is
true that phenomena 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 insectivorous 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.[53] 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 movements 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 superficial signs of
CHAPTER II 99

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 arrangements. 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 animal 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 incapable 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 movement, 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 canalized, still less concentrated into a system, there is
something 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 intelligent hesitations of the latter, but which,
partaking of both it may be infinitesimally, is a reaction simply undecided,
and therefore vaguely conscious. This amounts to saying that the humblest
organism is conscious in proportion 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 locomotion. But in another sense
it is the effect; for it is the motor activity that maintains it, and, once this
CHAPTER II 100

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 differentiated, 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 direction 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.[54] 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
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 organisms
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 substances directly with

mineral substances; as a rule, this aptitude enables it to dispense with
CHAPTER II 101

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 between the vegetable and animal form, participating in both at
once. Indeed, we have just seen that the characteristic 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. Ordinarily, 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 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 retarded, or stopped, or dragged back, by the tendency it has
kept toward the vegetative life. However full, however overflowing the
activity of an animal species may appear, torpor and unconsciousness are
always lying in wait for it. It keeps up its rôle 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 rudimentary 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
CHAPTER II 102

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 organisms 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 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 animal is the
impressionability, quite of its kind, of its chlorophyl light. Now, a nervous
system being pre-eminently a mechanism which serves as intermediary
between sensations and volitions, the true "nervous system" of the plant
seems to be the mechanism or rather chemicism sui generis which serves as
intermediary between the impressionability of its chlorophyl to light and
the producing of starch: which amounts to saying that the plant can have no
nervous elements, and that the same impetus that has led the animal to give
itself nerves and nerve centres must have ended, in the plant, in the
chlorophyllian function.[55]

*****

This first glance over the organized world will enable us to ascertain more
precisely what unites the two kingdoms, and also what separates them.

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 by our senses and instruments of measurement, our
experience 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 succeeding 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
CHAPTER II 103

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 substances
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 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
vegetable, that indicates, on the whole, the fundamental direction of life.
CHAPTER II 104

The "harmony" of the two kingdoms, the complementary 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
characters 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 perfected
rather its system of accumulation without moving. We shall not dwell on
this second point. Suffice it to 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 specialized 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 adaptation; 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
CHAPTER II 105

sheaf, sunders, in proportion to their simultaneous growth, terms which at

first completed each other so well that they coalesced.

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 microorganisms 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 developments 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 tendencies, 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 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
CHAPTER II 106

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 it 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.

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 differentiated mass
of organized tissue. It may, therefore, be surmised 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 maintenance alone, as if it took for end what must at first have
CHAPTER II 107

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 by food amongst the higher animals 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 which 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 muscular elements stand
in this relation towards the rest of the organism. Glance first at the
distribution of alimentary 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 albuminoids 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
CHAPTER II 108

deposited in the cell rather than forming part of its substance, convey to it,
in the form of chemical potential, an expansive energy that may be directly
converted into either 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 organism 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
remarkable 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, 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
CHAPTER II 109

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 incline 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 contrary, 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
Dufourt.[56] While the glycogenic function of the liver depends on the
action of the excitory nerves which control it, the 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
calculation, 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.[57] 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.
CHAPTER II 110

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 energy to
convert into locomotive movement.[58] 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 themselves.
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
everything 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-defined track between
one point of the periphery and another, 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 constructions
CHAPTER II 111

and complications of mechanism that this progress required. As we

foreshadowed in the beginning of this work, the rôle of life is to insert some
indetermination into matter. Indeterminate, i.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 organized
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 evolving 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 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 functioning 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 fundamental 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 taking, hypnotized by it as by a mirror. Even in its most perfect
works, though it seems to have triumphed over external resistances and also
CHAPTER II 112

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
automatism. The most living thought becomes frigid in the formula that
expresses it. The word turns against the idea.

The letter kills the spirit. And our most ardent enthusiasm, 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, 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 irremediable difference of

rhythm. Life in general is mobility 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 turn 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, however, 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, observable 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 character. It might be said that life
tends toward the utmost possible action, but that each species prefers to
CHAPTER II 113

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
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. Accordingly, 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 continue 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 necessarily been sufficient, since the species has subsisted.
In this sense, each of the successive species that paleontology 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 separated soon from their common stock, the vegetable falling asleep
in immobility, the animal, on the contrary, 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
CHAPTER II 114

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 echinoderms, 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.[59] 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 refusing to manufacture organic out of
inorganic material and taking organic substances ready made from
organisms 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 became mobile, the more they
became voracious and dangerous 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 echinoderm, 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
CHAPTER II 115

echinoderms and even the molluscs live to-day. Probably arthropods and
vertebrates were threatened with it too. 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 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 evolution 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 all in the progress of the
sensori-motor nervous system. Mobility and suppleness were sought for,
and also--through many experimental attempts, and not without a tendency
to excess of substance and brute force at the start--variety of movements.
CHAPTER II 116

But this quest itself took place in divergent directions. A glance at the
nervous system of the arthropods 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.[60] 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, immanent in life and originally intermingled, which
were bound to part company in course of growth.

To define these powers, we must consider, in the evolution 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 accidental 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 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 particular
certain hymenoptera. It has been said of the ants that, as man is lord of the
soil, they are lords of the sub-soil.
CHAPTER II 117

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;[61] 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 kingdom, apart from retrogressions towards vegetative life,
has taken place on two divergent paths, one of which led to instinct and the
other to intelligence.

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 Aristotle onwards, has vitiated
most of the philosophies of nature, is 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 antagonistic. 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
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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 originally 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 thoroughly interpenetrating, to begin with, that there has
never been a complete severance between them: they haunt each other
continually; everywhere we find them mingled; it is the proportion that
differs. So with intelligence 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 intelligent, 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 intelligence what is intelligent, whereas all concrete
instinct is mingled with intelligence, as all real intelligence is penetrated 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
CHAPTER II 119

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. 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 diagrammatic 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 collection 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 manufacture, 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 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;
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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 gravitates around the manufacture and use of
artificial instruments, 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 altogether. 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 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 prehistoric times: it will
serve to define an age.[62] If we could rid ourselves 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 intelligence,
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,
corresponding to this instrument, there is an instinct that knows how to use
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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 "primary"
instinct would not come under it. But this definition, 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 often require appropriate action and a kind of
initiative on the part of the larva, there is no sharp line of demarcation
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 perfection 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 therefore necessarily specialized,
being nothing but the utilization of a specific instrument for a specific
object. The instrument constructed intelligently, on the contrary, is an
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imperfect instrument. It costs an effort. It is generally troublesome to

handle. But, as it is made of 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 extended. 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 automatically, 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 foretell 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 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,
instead of possessing the required instrument naturally, will itself construct
it by fashioning inorganic matter. Hence intelligence and instinct, which
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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 intelligence, 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 conditions.[63] 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 already 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
direction of instinct in the arthropods, we observe in almost all the
vertebrates the striving after rather than the expansion 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 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 intelligence and
instinct. But it is no less true that nature must have hesitated between two
modes of psychical 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 indefinitely. 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 explanations are first of
all necessary on the subject of consciousness in general.
CHAPTER II 124

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 hardly any complex 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 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 representation 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, consciousness may reappear. It
was there, but neutralized by the action which fulfilled and thereby filled
the representation. 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 surrounds 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 somnambulistic 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,
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and if, besides, consciousness can flash out of them at the shock of an
obstacle. From this point 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 unconsciousness. 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 consciousness 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 counterweight.
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. Essentially, consciousness only
emphasizes the starting-point of instinct, the point at which the whole series
of automatic movements is released. Deficit, on the contrary, 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
intelligence 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.

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.
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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 underground passages dug by
a kind of bee, the Anthophora. Its larva, after long waiting, springs upon the
male Anthophora as it goes out of the passage, clings to it, and remains
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 if 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 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 consciousness. 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 without 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
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we will confine ourselves 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, therefore 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. Intelligence 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; 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 relation 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
content 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 intelligence, 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 knowledge. Can the form,
without matter, be an object of knowledge? Yes, without doubt, provided
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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 what
numerator and what denominator are to come; he therefore has present to
his mind the general relation between 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:
Intelligence, 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 knowledge instead of

action, the force immanent in life in general appears to us again as a limited
principle, in which originally 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 particular; 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
is;" 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 knowledge is intimate and
full; not explicit, but implied in the accomplished action. The intellectual
faculty, on the 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
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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 instrument 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 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 knowledge 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,
although it is in view of practical utility that it has made its appearance in
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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 is 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 details that concern the

mechanism of intelligence. We 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
something absolute, irreducible and inexplicable. The understanding 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 unification, 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, knowledge would
have been different. Intellect being no longer dependent on anything,
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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. Postulate 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, 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 intellect 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 its chief object the unorganized
solid.
CHAPTER II 132

When we pass in review the intellectual functions, 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 decomposing 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 decomposition, 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 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
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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 put together. 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 movement such as it actually is; it merely replaces it with a
practical equivalent. It is the philosophers who are mistaken 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 intellect form a clear idea.

Now, fabricating consists in carving out the form of an object in matter.

What is the most important is 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.[64] 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
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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 whatsoever. A medium of this
kind is never perceived; it is only conceived. What is perceived is extension
colored, resistant, 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 say, 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, although, 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 extended
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 according
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 necessities 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 polymorphism, the
subdivision of labor is natural, and each individual is riveted by its structure
to the function it performs. In any case, these societies are based on
instinct, and consequently on certain actions or fabrications that are more or
less dependent on the form of the organs. So if the ants, for instance, have a
CHAPTER II 135

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 required 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 observable 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 intelligence
entirely externalized and incapable of turning 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 consciousness that has virtually
reconquered itself. But still the virtual has to become actual. Without
language, intelligence 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
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recollection to a more fleeting image, and finally from an image fleeting,

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 relation 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 contracted 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 distinctness and
clearness.
CHAPTER II 137

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: 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 derived from the consideration of solids, as the rules
for combining 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.[65] 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, converted 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
turns to the living and is confronted with organization. It does what it can,
it resolves the organized into the unorganized, for it cannot, without
reversing its natural direction and twisting about on itself, think true
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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.[66] 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 in the field in which our industry,
and consequently our intellect, is engaged.

Just as we separate in space, we fix in time. The intellect 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 modification. Each of these new states must be invariable, or
else their internal change, if we are forced to notice it, must be resolved
CHAPTER II 139

again into a fresh series of invariable states, and so on to infinity. Here

again, thinking consists 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, 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 upspringing, that the form just come into
existence (although, when once produced, it may be regarded as an effect
determined 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 determined 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 industry, 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 resolving it, it the unforeseeable and new,
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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 consider 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 stiffness 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 wrongness of a
medical or pedagogical practise is both made manifest and punished at
once, we are amazed at the stupidity 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 consciousness 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.
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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 working 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, responding 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 indistinguishable, 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 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
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goes 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 consciousness, 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 philosopher, 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 explanation. Yet it is doubtful whether
science, with its present methods of explanation, will ever succeed in
analyzing instinct completely. The reason is that instinct and intelligence
are two divergent developments of one and the same principle, which in the
one case remains 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 reabsorb instinct. That which is instinctive in instinct cannot
be expressed in terms of intelligence, nor, consequently, 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, having its origin in the
stimulation of the retina, by the vibrations 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.[67] Now
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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 predisposition of the germ, has been transmitted from germ 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 transmission, 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 explaining 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-Darwinians, 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 recasting of the kind? I agree that
an accidental modification 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
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old elements. No one will maintain that chance could perform such a
miracle: in one form or another we shall appeal to intelligence. We shall
suppose that it is by an effort, more or less conscious, that the living being
develops a higher instinct. 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 conscious. And yet, when we see with what sureness and
precision climbing plants use their tendrils, what marvelously combined
manoeuvres the orchids perform to procure their fertilization by means of
insects,[68] 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 initiative of individuals, although individuals collaborate in it.

Compare the different forms of the same instinct in different species of

hymenoptera. The impression derived 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 circumference 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 approaching it only to
the extent of its means, and to the extent also to which this central point has
CHAPTER II 145

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
arranged 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.[69] 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. 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 putrefaction, which it must avoid.[70] 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.[71] The Ammophila Hirsuta gives nine successive strokes of its
sting upon nine nerve-centres of its caterpillar, and then seizes the head and
CHAPTER II 146

squeezes it in its mandibles, enough to cause paralysis without death.[72]

The general theme is "the necessity of paralyzing without killing"; the
variations are subordinated to the structure of the victim on which they are
played. No doubt the operation is not always perfect. It has recently been
shown that the Ammophila sometimes kills the caterpillar instead of
paralyzing it, that sometimes also it paralyzes it incompletely.[73] 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 express the knowledge of
the hymenoptera in terms of intelligence. It is this that compels us to
compare the Ammophila with the entomologist, who knows the caterpillar
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 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 nothing 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
CHAPTER II 147

theory cannot appeal to considerations of this kind. It must not put action
before organization, sympathy before perception and knowledge. But, once
more, either philosophy has nothing to see here, or its rôle 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 intelligent 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 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 absolutely 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. Evolution 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
CHAPTER II 148

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 knowledge--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 to a pure mechanism.[74] Each of these systems of
explanation 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 explanation, 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 translation in terms of inertia. It
goes all round life, taking from outside the greatest possible number of
views of it, drawing it into itself instead of entering into it. But it is to the
very inwardness of life that intuition leads us--by intuition I mean instinct
CHAPTER II 149

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 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, prolongs 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. Intelligence 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
intelligence 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 it
establishes between us and the rest of the living, by the expansion of our
consciousness which it brings about, it introduces us into life's own domain,
which is reciprocal interpenetration, endlessly continued creation. But,
though it thereby transcends intelligence, it is from intelligence that has
come the push that has made it rise to the point it has reached. Without
intelligence, it would have remained in the form of instinct, riveted to the
CHAPTER II 150

special object of its practical interest, and turned outward by it into

movements of locomotion.

How theory of knowledge must take account of these two faculties,

intellect and intuition, and how also, for want of establishing a sufficiently
clear distinction between them, it becomes involved in inextricable
difficulties, creating phantoms of ideas to which there cling phantoms of
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 that both one and the other depend upon
experience. On the one hand, indeed, if intelligence is charged with matter
and 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 into
intuition and intelligence, it is because of the need it had to 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 itself, that we shall form an idea of the
mutual opposition of the two terms, as also, perhaps, of their common
origin. But, on the other hand, by dwelling on this opposition of the two
elements and on this identity of origin, perhaps we shall bring out more
clearly the meaning of evolution itself.

Such will be the aim of our next chapter. But the facts that we have just
noticed must have already suggested to us the idea that life is connected
either with consciousness or with something that resembles it.

Throughout the whole extent of the animal kingdom, we have said,

consciousness seems proportionate to the living being's power of choice. It
lights up the zone of potentialities that surrounds the act. It fills the interval
between what is done and what might be done. Looked at from without, we
may regard it as a simple aid to action, a light that action kindles, a
CHAPTER II 151

momentary spark flying up from the friction of real action against possible
actions. But we must also point out that things would go on in just the same
way if consciousness, instead of being the effect, were 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 instrument 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? 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
consciousness only when an analogous perception recalls it by reproducing
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, independently 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
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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 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
particular the forms of aphasia.[75] 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 symbolisms, the hypothesis of equivalence between the
cerebral state and the psychic state rests.[76]

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 consciousness had penetrated matter, loaded, as all consciousness
is, with an enormous multiplicity of interwoven potentialities. It has carried
matter along to organization, but its movement has been at once infinitely
retarded and infinitely 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 movements 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
completely 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
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,
CHAPTER II 153

touching 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 concentrating 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,
moreover, it can turn inwards on itself, and awaken the potentialities 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
difference 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 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 disproportion 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.
CHAPTER II 154

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 correspond 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 drowned in the accomplishment
of the act, is restored and set free.[77]

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 condense 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
compared 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
perceive 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
CHAPTER II 155

the human brain.

If, now, we should wish to express this in terms of 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: This view of adaptation has been noted by M.F. Marin in a
remarkable article on the origin of species, "L'Origine des espèces" (Revue
scientifique, Nov. 1901, p. 580).]

[Footnote 52: De Saporta and Marion, L'Évolution des cryptogames, 1881,

p. 37.]

[Footnote 53: On fixation and parasitism in general, see the work of

Houssay, La Forme et la vie, Paris, 1900, pp. 721-807.]

[Footnote 54: Cope, op. cit. p. 76.]

CHAPTER II 156

[Footnote 55: Just as the plant, in certain cases, recovers the faculty of
moving actively which slumbers in it, so the animal, in exceptional
circumstances, 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
Lépidoptères," C.R. de la Soc. de biologie, 1905, pp. 692 ff.).]

[Footnote 56: Archives de physiologie, 1892.]

[Footnote 57: De Manacéine, "Quelques observations expérimentales sur

l'influence 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.]

[Footnote 58: Cuvier said: "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole
animal; the other systems are there only to serve it." ("Sur un nouveau
rapprochement à établir entre les classes qui composent le regne animal,"
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 background. 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.]

[Footnote 59: See, on these different points, the work of Gaudry, Essai de
paléontologie philosophique, Paris, 1896, pp. 14-16 and 78-79.]

[Footnote 60: See, on this subject, Shaler, The Individual, New York, 1900,
pp. 118-125.]
CHAPTER II 157

[Footnote 61: This point is disputed by M. René Quinton, who regards the
carnivorous and ruminant mammals, as well as certain birds, as subsequent
to man (R. Quinton, L'Eau 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 favorable conditions of activity--the very
conditions, indeed, which life had chosen in the beginning.]

[Footnote 62: M. 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).]

[Footnote 63: Bouvier, "La Nidification des abeilles à l'air libre" (C.R. de
l'Ac. des sciences, 7 mai 1906).]

[Footnote 64: Plato, Phaedrus, 265 E.]

[Footnote 65: We shall return to these points in the next chapter.]

[Footnote 66: We shall return to this point in chapter iii., p. 259.]

[Footnote 67: Matière et mémoire, chap. i.]

[Footnote 68: See the two works of Darwin, Climbing Plants and The
Fertilization of Orchids by Insects.]

[Footnote 69: Buttel-Reepen, "Die phylogenetische Entstehung des

Bienenstaates" (Biol. Centralblatt, xxiii. 1903), p. 108 in particular.]

[Footnote 70: Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques, 3^e série, Paris, 1890, pp.
1-69.]

[Footnote 71: Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques, 1^{re} série, Paris, 3^e

édition, Paris, 1894, pp. 93 ff.]
CHAPTER II 158

[Footnote 72: Fabre, Nouveaux souvenirs entomologiques, Paris, 1882, pp.

14 ff.]

[Footnote 73: Peckham, Wasps, Solitary and Social, Westminster, 1905, pp.
28 ff.]

[Footnote 74: See, in particular, among recent works, Bethe, "Dürfen wir
den Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitäten zuschreiben?" (Arch. f. d.
ges. Physiologie, 1898), and Forel, "Un Aperçu de psychologie comparée"
(Année psychologique, 1895).]

[Footnote 75: Matière et mémoire, chaps. ii. and iii.]

[Footnote 76: "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (Revue de

métaphysique, Nov. 1904).]

[Footnote 77: 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" (Shaler, The Interpretation of Nature, Boston, 1899,
p. 187).]
CHAPTER III 159

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 demarcation 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 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 cosmology, further than traditional metaphysics; for
psychology, 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
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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 animal
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.[78] To explain the intelligence of
man by that of the animal consists 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,
consciousness 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 materiality 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
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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 mollusc or an insect, for instance--cut
matter up 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 perceive objects, it is enough to distinguish
properties. Intelligence, 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 movement 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 is 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 intelligence, define intellect, give its formula, but we
do not trace its genesis. An enterprise like that of Fichte, although 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
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concentrated 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 compounding 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 differences 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 perfect, 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 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 dogmatic or critical, whether it admits the
relativity of our knowledge or claims to be established within the absolute,
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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 concentration.
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
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 reasoning to shut us up in the circle of the given. But action
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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 intellect 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 condensation. This nucleus does not differ radically from the
fluid surrounding it. It can only be reabsorbed in it because 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 understand how the mechanism of swimming is connected with
that of walking. Swimming is an extension of walking, 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
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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 philosophy. This we must try to show in a few
words, if only 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 consideration of facts to

positive science, to let physics and chemistry busy themselves with matter,
the biological and psychological 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 confuse 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 contained 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 judgment on the fact are two distinct
things, distinct for the very simple reason that above the fact, and
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independent 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 into 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 philosophy questions of principle, and who has
thereby tried to put philosophy above the sciences, as a "court of cassation"
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 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
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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 priori accept the doctrine of the
simple unity of knowledge and of the abstract unity of nature.

The moment it does so, its fate is sealed. The philosopher 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 endeavors to seize an unseizable multiplicity,
and which is, 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 being held
in the frame otherwise than by a convention which eliminates from it all
that is essential, we find ourselves, 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
absolute 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 between science and philosophy, we have sacrificed
philosophy without any appreciable gain to science. And for having tried to
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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 demarcation 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 knowledge, 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 footing, 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 meaning of the term. If science is to
extend our action on things, and if we can act only with inert matter for
instrument, 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 depths of life, the more symbolic, the more relative to the
contingencies of action, the knowledge it supplies to us becomes. On this
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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 progressive 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
introduces 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 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
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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 intellect 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
consciousness 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 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 processes 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 interruption 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.
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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 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 consists in this very movement pushed further, and that physics
is simply psychics inverted. We shall now understand 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,
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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.

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[79] 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 without being absolutely
extended therein, and that in regarding matter as decomposable into isolated
systems, in attributing 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 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, a priori, figures whose properties
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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 advance 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 something 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 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 nothing: by what right,
then, can he affirm their existence, even as "problematic"? If the
unknowable reality projects 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
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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 knowledge: 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 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 existence, having put
time, a priori, on the same plane as space. This alternative consists, first of
all, in regarding the intellect as a special function of the mind, essentially
turned toward inert matter; then in saying that neither does matter
determine the form of the intellect, nor does the intellect 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 rôle 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 practical 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
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mind would have to embrace 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
indefinitely 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, provided 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 determine, 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 ourselves fall back little by little, we get the feeling of
extension: 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 consciousness 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 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 intermediate links. Will they always escape us? We must remember that
philosophy, as we define it, has not yet become completely conscious of
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itself. Physics understands its rôle when it pushes matter in the direction of
spatiality; but has metaphysics understood its rôle 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 spatiality 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
necessarily appear to the intellect as a positive reality, since 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
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scan in syllables which I shall perceive one after another. Let me go farther
still in the direction of dream: the letters themselves 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 marvelous 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 extension 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 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 subtraction arises once the two numbers are posited.[80]
But, in the one case as in the other, the infinite complexity of the parts and
their perfect coördination among themselves 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. 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
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intellect and the cause of its working. We shall be convinced of this if we

consider the two essential functions of intellect, the faculty of deduction
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 triangle, 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 intelligence
externalized in action resolves even before reflective intelligence has
appeared. The savage understands 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.[81] If the animal does not deduce explicitly, if he
does not form explicit concepts, neither does he form the idea of a
homogeneous space. You cannot present this space to yourself without
introducing, in the same act, a virtual geometry which will, of itself,
degrade itself into logic. All the repugnance 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
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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 principii 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 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 something 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 undoubtedly 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,
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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. 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
operations; 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 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?
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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 considered 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 approaches 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?[82] 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 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
simultaneous: 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,
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as through a transparency, a geometrical mechanism.[83] 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,
intellectuality entire.

*****

It creates them in the mind. But it creates also, in things, the "order" which
our induction, aided by deduction, 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 always 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 advancing; for no
complication of the mathematical order with itself, however elaborate we
may suppose it, can introduce 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
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relax its tension, only to relax its tension to extend, only to extend for the
mathematical order of the elements so distinguished and the inflexible
determinism connecting them to manifest the interruption of the creative
act: in fact, inflexible determinism 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 approximately mathematical
immanent in matter, an objective order, which our science approaches in
proportion to its progress. For if matter is a relaxation of the inextensive
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 geometry. 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.[84] 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, relates "quantitative" variations to one another to
obtain laws, and it succeeds. Its success would be inexplicable, 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 prolongation of the
movement, our intellect has only to let itself go, for it runs naturally to
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space and mathematics, intellectuality 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 interruption 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
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 mathematical 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 at
all, and that the mathematical order of things, being a conquest over
disorder, possesses a positive reality. In examining this point, we shall see
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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 conceivable. 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 coördinated (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?

It will be seen in the next chapter how hard it is to determine the content of
a negative idea, and what illusions one is liable to, what hopeless
difficulties philosophy falls into, for not having undertaken this task.
Difficulties and illusions are generally due to this, that we accept as final a
manner of expression essentially provisional. 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 expressing 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, moreover, that he was thinking of it: it would be
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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 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 theoretical 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 concerned); 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 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
CHAPTER III 187

distinguished.

In a general way, reality is ordered exactly to the degree in which it

satisfies our thought. Order is therefore 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 automatism. 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
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
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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
attention. But what we meet in our daily experience is a certain determinate
living being, certain special manifestations 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 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 experience, 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 foundation, 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 intervention 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 evolution. 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
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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 constancy of the effect even when
there is some wavering in the causes. But that is only a comparison; on
reflection, 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, attempting 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 obtained 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 representing 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 knowledge, among the ancients as well
as among the moderns. The generality of laws and that of genera having
been designated by the same word and subsumed under the same idea, the
geometrical order and the vital order are accordingly confused together.
According to the point of view, the generality of laws is explained by that
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of genera, or that of genera by that of laws. The first view is characteristic

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
likeness, 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
unquestionable 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,[85] 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 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 interesting, 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;"[86] 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 completing itself, like a living being
that grows, thus realizing fully the essence of the genus stone.[87] If this
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conception 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 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 contains 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
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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 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 conception is the result of an arbitrary confusion between the
generality of laws and that of genera. Though an intelligence 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 because 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 philosophers 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 confusion. 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
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,
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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 between 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 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 "absence 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
manifold" 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 conceived as prose, so any state of things
that is not one of the two orders is the other and is necessarily conceived as
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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 do I mean? 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 consciously
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 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 augment, 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
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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 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 explained 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 feeling.
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, 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
denying 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
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incoherence 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
something. 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 contingency of order is explained: one of the
forms is contingent in relation to the other. Where I find the geometrical
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." And this state
of things I shall believe that I am thinking of, because it is implied, it
seems, in the very contingency 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 intermediate degrees can be imagined between the two
orders, and that there is no going down from the two orders to the
"incoherent." Either the incoherent is only a word, devoid of meaning, or, if
I give it a meaning, it is on condition 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
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geometrical and the vital, and then, by a swaying of the mind between
them, the idea of the incoherent. To speak of an uncoördinated diversity to
which order is superadded is therefore to commit a veritable petitio
principii; for in imagining the uncoördinated 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 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 inversion
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 extend,
the interruption of the cause here being equivalent to a reversal 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 consciousness 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 opposite way, obliged,
though it goes forward, to look behind. 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
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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 moments, of the becoming by which they are organized into 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 dialectic--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 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
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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
congealed 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 organization. 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
inadmissible. 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 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 understand 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.
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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 duration,
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 itself, 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 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 assemblage 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 themselves; 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 provides 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
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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 is to say the sum of its kinetic
and potential energy, remains 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,[88] and the measurement of
each of them has evidently been so chosen as to justify the principle of
conservation of energy. Convention, 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 measurements 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 conservation 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 thermodynamics. 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 certain quantitative
considerations on the yield of thermic machines. Unquestionably, too, the
terms in which Clausius generalized it were mathematical, and a calculable
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
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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
metaphysical of the laws of physics since it points out without interposed
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 homogeneous, and that the instability to which we owe the richness 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 mutability 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 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 infinite, 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
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conceivable, as has been demonstrated quite recently; but, according to the

calculations of Boltzmann, the mathematical improbability of it passes all
imagination and practically amounts to absolute impossibility.[89] In
reality, the problem remains 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 rôle 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 abstracto? Extension,

we said, appears only as a tension which is interrupted. Or, are we
considering the concrete 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 remount 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 interruption
alone. The life that evolves on the surface of our planet is indeed attached
to matter. If it were pure consciousness, a fortiori if it were
supra-consciousness, 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
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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 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 determined the development of the chlorophyllian function in the plant
and of the sensori-motor system in the animal, 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.[90]

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 represents what subsists of the primitive direction of the original jet,
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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 determined necessarily, whereas the creation
of a world is a free act, and the life within the material world participates 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
subsists 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 representation 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 particularly, 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 fireworks display--provided,
however, that I do not present this centre as a thing, but as a continuity of
shooting 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 ourselves when we act freely. That new things can join
CHAPTER III 206

things already existing is absurd, no doubt, since the thing results from a
solidification performed by our understanding, 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 compare 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 juxtaposed 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 undivided flux, and undivided also the
life that runs through it, cutting out in it living beings all along its track. Of
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
individuals, 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 aggregate, aggregate of molecules and aggregate of
facts. The reason of this lies in the structure of our intellect, which is
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formed to act on matter from without, and which succeeds by making, in

the flux of the real, instantaneous cuts, each of which becomes, in its fixity,
endlessly decomposable. 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 concatenation of atoms, or to
relate it to the incomprehensible influence of an external force that has
grouped its elements 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 understanding, working on the image supposed to be fixed of the
progressing action, shows us parts infinitely manifold 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 fireworks 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, because 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 indetermination and liberty. How does it go
to work?
CHAPTER III 208

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 addition, because this part itself must live, and every change
in one point of the body reverberates, as it were, throughout. 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 corresponding 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, increasing efficiency and independence. The organism
behaves 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 complexity of the higher organisms; there is no need
CHAPTER III 209

here of 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 chemicism 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 stretching 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 permitted 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 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 reinforcement 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 sometimes 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
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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 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 therefore 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 carbonic
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
CHAPTER III 211

might (theoretically 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
characteristic 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 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 absolutely 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
confronted. 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 conceived (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 essential 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 at the very moment when, as
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the effect of an inverse movement, 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 intellectuality 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 individuality 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;[91]
but unity and multiplicity are only views of my personality taken by an
understanding 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
CHAPTER III 213

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
encroachment 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 elements, 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 dissociated individuals, one life goes on
moving: everywhere the tendency to individualize is opposed and at the
same time completed by an antagonistic and complementary 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
balancing 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.[92]
The same tendency is met with again at a higher stage, in the protophytes,
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
CHAPTER III 214

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
differentiated and elementary.[93] In this extreme form, the theory is open
to grave objections: more and more the idea seems to be gaining ground,
that polyzoism is an exceptional and abnormal fact.[94] 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.[95] 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 substance should be split up into elements
having themselves an appearance of individuality and united among
themselves 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 nucleus, each of the two halves will generate
an independent Stentor; but if we divide it incompletely, so that a
protoplasmic communication is left between the two halves, we shall see
them execute, each from its side, corresponding 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 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 manifested. 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 communicates 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.
CHAPTER III 215

Essential also is the progress to reflexion. 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
extinguished 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 condemned to automatism; it
wakens as soon as the possibility 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 switchboard 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 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
CHAPTER III 216

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 modeled on that of the cerebral activity. In reality,
consciousness does not spring from the brain; but brain and consciousness
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 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 inseparable 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 corresponding
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 exercise, of constructing any sort of object, in short of acquiring 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 animal consciousness,

even the most intelligent, and human consciousness. For consciousness
corresponds exactly to the living being's power of choice; it is coextensive
CHAPTER III 217

with the fringe of possible action that surrounds the real action:
consciousness is synonymous with invention and with freedom. Now, in
the animal, invention is never anything but a variation on the theme of
routine. Shut up in the habits of the species, it succeeds, no doubt, in
enlarging 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 complete 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 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
individuals must raise themselves at the outset, and by this initial
stimulation prevents the average man from slumbering 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
CHAPTER III 218

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 essentially 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 abundantly 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 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 circumference 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 indefinitely, 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, doubtless, kept
something, but of which he has kept only very little. It is as if a vague and
CHAPTER III 219

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 to it, have none the less been useful
traveling companions, on whom consciousness has unloaded whatever
encumbrances 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 inverse 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 conscious 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 especially as intellect. Intuition is there, however, but vague and
CHAPTER III 220

above all discontinuous. It is a lamp almost extinguished, which only

glimmers now and then, for a few moments at most. But it glimmers
wherever a vital 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
recognize 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 between the animal and man; but the history of life is there, which
makes us witness the genesis of species by gradual transformation, and
seems thus to reintegrate man in animality. 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 independent life, whence
do they come? When, how and why do they enter into this body which we
CHAPTER III 221

see arise, quite naturally, from a mixed cell derived from the bodies of its
two parents? All these questions will remain unanswered, 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
without number which interpenetrate and to which consequently neither the
category of unity nor that of multiplicity 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, nevertheless, 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.
CHAPTER III 222

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 movement 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 78: We have developed this point in Matière et mémoire, chaps.

ii. and iii., notably pp. 78-80 and 169-186.]

[Footnote 79: Faraday, A Speculation concerning Electric Conduction

(Philosophical Magazine, 3d. series, vol. xxiv.).]

[Footnote 80: Our comparison does no more than develop the content of the
term [Greek: logos], as Plotinus understands it. For while the [Greek:
logos] of this philosopher is a generating and informing power, an aspect or
a fragment of the [Greek: psychê], 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
CHAPTER III 223

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 consequences 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.]

[Footnote 81: Bastian, The Brain as an Organ of the Mind, pp. 214-16.]

[Footnote 82: 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.]

[Footnote 83: Op. cit. chaps. i. and ii. passim.]

[Footnote 84: Cf. especially the profound studies of M. Ed. Le Roy in the
Revue de métaph. et de morale.]

[Footnote 85: Matière et mémoire, chapters iii. and iv.]

[Footnote 86: See in particular, Phys., iv. 215 a 2; v. 230 b 12; viii. 255 a 2;
and De Caelo, iv. 1-5; ii. 296 b 27; iv. 308 a 34.]

[Footnote 87: De Caelo, iv. 310 a 34 [Greek: to d' eis ton autou topon
pherethai hekaoton to eis to autou eidos esti pheresthai].]

[Footnote 88: On these differences of quality see the work of Duhem,

L'Évolution de la mécanique, Paris, 1905, pp. 197 ff.]

[Footnote 89: Boltzmann, Vorlesungen über Gastheorie, Leipzig, 1898, pp.

253 ff.]
CHAPTER III 224

[Footnote 90: In a book rich in facts and in ideas (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 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 remarked, life has never made an
effort to prolong indefinitely the existence of the individual, although on so
many other points it has made so many successful efforts. Everything is as
if this death had been willed, or at least accepted, for the greater progress of
life in general.]

[Footnote 91: We have dwelt on this point in an article entitled

"Introduction à la métaphysique" (Revue de métaphysique et de morale,
January, 1903, pp. 1-25).]

[Footnote 92: Cf. a paper written (in Russian) by Serkovski, and reviewed
in the Année biologique, 1898, p. 317.]

[Footnote 93: Ed. Perrier, Les Colonies animales, Paris, 1897 (2nd
edition).]

[Footnote 94: Delage, L'Hérédité, 2nd edition, Paris, 1903, p. 97. Cf. by the
same author, "La Conception polyzoïque des êtres" (Revue scientifique,
1896, pp. 641-653).]

[Footnote 95: 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 êtres vivants, Paris, 1899.]
CHAPTER IV 225

CHAPTER IV

THE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND

THE MECHANISTIC ILLUSION--A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF
SYSTEMS[96]--REAL BECOMING AND FALSE EVOLUTIONISM.

It 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 perpetual 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, like 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 practical 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 instants, and even when we speak
of duration and of becoming, 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 immobile.
CHAPTER IV 226

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, 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
problem of knowledge. The question, we then said, is to know why there is
order, and not disorder, 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
leaping 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
CHAPTER IV 227

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 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 conception which it implies of
negation, of the void and of the nought.[97]

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 to what hides behind
them, this is what I find:--Existence 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 superaddition 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 nevertheless fills a void. In the same way, being may have
CHAPTER IV 228

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
inclined to endow true being with a logical, and not a psychological 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
throughout 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 wherewith 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 definition,
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
understood in the sense of a free choice. Such are precisely the conclusions
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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 intellectual 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.

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, however, 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,
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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 the consciousness that I have of myself. If I 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
representing. 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 together, 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 beneath being, for it
already includes existence in general.

But we shall be told that, if the representation of Nothing, visible or latent,

enters into the reasonings of philosophers, it is not as an image, but as an
idea. It may be agreed that we do not imagine the annihilation of
everything, 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
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imagination: it is enough that we can clearly represent the possibility of

constructing it. So with the idea of the annihilation of everything. Nothing
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 compose 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 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
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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 remembering 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 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 preference 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 representing in the external world a partial nought.
Let us now see how it represents it within itself. We find in ourselves
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 supposition, I conceive
myself, I imagine myself watching over my slumber or surviving my
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annihilation, and I give up perceiving 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 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
between 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, experienced 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,
annihilation 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 suppressed 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 contradiction in terms, since the
operation consists in destroying the very condition that makes the operation
possible.

But the illusion is tenacious. Though suppressing one thing consists in 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 substitution
in thought of a new thing for the old. We agree that a thing is always
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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 represent 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 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. Between 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,
CHAPTER IV 235

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. 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 inseparable 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 existing" than in the idea of this same object conceived
as "existing"; for the idea of the object "not existing" is necessarily the idea
of the object "existing" with, in addition, the representation 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,
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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
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
assimilation which is arbitrary. We fail to see that while affirmation is a
complete act of the mind, which can succeed in building up an idea,
negation is but the half of an intellectual 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 affirmation.[98] 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 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
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undetermined). Thus, while affirmation bears directly on the thing,

negation aims at the thing only indirectly, through an interposed
affirmation. An affirmative 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: it 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 ourselves. 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,
opposing him and aiding him at the same time; there is a beginning of
society. Negation aims at some one, and not only, like a purely intellectual
operation, at some thing. 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 pronounce 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
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actual interest, the attention bearing only on the substance of the first.

Thus, whenever I add a "not" to an affirmation, whenever 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
another 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
affirmation. The sui generis character of negation is due to superimposing
the first of these acts upon the second. 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, instead 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 formulate 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 rejects 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 supposed to be
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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. Instead 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 it 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 ourselves 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 subjective,
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 propositions, 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 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 establishes 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
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ground will subsist none the less, capable of inscribing itself automatically
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-existence 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 expectation, 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 instructive 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-dampness; for the dry as well
as the damp can give impressions 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 entirely
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 x. This quality is left indeterminate, either because we
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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 indifferent reality that supplants
this possibility. The second affirmation is virtually contained in the
judgment we apply to the first, a judgment which is negation itself. And
what gives negation its subjective character is precisely this, that in the
discovery of a replacement it takes account only of the replaced, and is not
concerned 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, instead 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 represent 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.
CHAPTER IV 242

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. 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
substitution 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 pedagogical 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 implies the latent affirmation of its replacement by something
else, which we systematically leave on one side. But the negative form of
negation benefits by the affirmation 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
CHAPTER IV 243

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 comprehensive 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 existence
which would then be the true reality; in vain do we find in the sui generis
form of negation an element which 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
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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 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
is 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 mathematical essence,
therefore non-temporal. And, consequently, a static conception of the real is
forced on us: everything appears given once for all, in eternity. But we
CHAPTER IV 245

must accustom ourselves to think being directly, without making a detour,

without first appealing to the phantom of the nought which interposes itself
between it and us. We must strive to see in order to see, and no longer to
see in order to act. Then the Absolute 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 generally 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 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
CHAPTER IV 246

surroundings 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 termination 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?

A priori we may presume that our perception manages to apprehend matter

with this bias. Sensory organs and motor organs are in fact coördinated
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 perception 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 resistance, etc. Each of these qualities, taken separately, is a state that
seems to persist as such, immovable until another 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 movements, as the persistence of life consists in a series of
palpitations. 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
CHAPTER IV 247

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 movements; 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 proportional to the
concentration of their faculty of perceiving. 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 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 perception, 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 is only a snapshot view of a
transition. Therefore, 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
CHAPTER IV 248

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 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 underlies 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
representations: (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 substantives therefore symbolize states. But the
verb itself, if we keep to the clear part of the idea it calls up, hardly
expresses anything else.

*****
CHAPTER IV 249

Now, if we try to characterize more precisely our natural attitude towards

Becoming, this is what we find. Becoming 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 evolutionary movements. The action of
eating or of drinking is not like the action of fighting: they are different
extensive movements. And these three kinds of movement
themselves--qualitative, evolutionary, extensive--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, differences of state, beneath which there is supposed
to flow, hidden from our view, a becoming always and everywhere the
same, invariably colorless.

Suppose we wish to portray on a screen a living picture, 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
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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 because 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 mobility; he strings all his successive
attitudes on the invisible movement of the film. The process then consists
in extracting 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 movement by combining this nameless movement with
the personal attitudes. Such is the contrivance of the cinematograph. 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 therefore sum up what we have
been saying in the conclusion that the mechanism of our ordinary
knowledge is of a cinematographical 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 kaleidoscopic picture. Our
activity goes from an arrangement to a rearrangement, each time no doubt
giving the kaleidoscope a new shake, but not interesting itself in the shake,
and seeing only the new picture. Our knowledge of the operation of nature
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must be exactly symmetrical, therefore, 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 is 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 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, whatever 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
snapshots, 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 perpetual 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 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
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it. Install yourself within change, and you will grasp at once both change
itself and the successive states in which it 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 reconstitute change out of
states implies the absurd proposition, 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 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
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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 trajectory 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
required 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 is at a point of its course is to cut
the course in two by a snip of the scissors at this point, 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 absurdities that all express the
same fundamental absurdity. But the possibility of applying the movement
to the line traversed 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
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movement, 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 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 supposed 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 subscribe to this first
absurdity, all the others follow.[99]

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,
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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 reconstitute what is being
made? How, for instance, from childhood 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 dead-locks--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, 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 is, 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 superpose 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
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cinematographical mechanism of thought.

We must make complete abstraction of this mechanism, 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 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 movement than the series of positions, that is
to say, the possible stops. Only, the first way of looking at things is
conformable 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 philosophers of the Eleatic
school. And they passed it without 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 conclusion 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 becoming: 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 philosophy of Ideas.

The word [Greek: eidos], which we translate here by "Idea," has, in fact,
this threefold meaning. It denotes (1) the quality, (2) the form or essence,
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(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
supposed 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 [Greek: eidos] by "view" or rather by
"moment." For [Greek: eidos] 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 mechanism 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 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 rediscover,
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.
CHAPTER IV 258

*****

We said there is more in a movement than in the successive 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 proceeds as
the intellect does. It installs itself in the immutable, 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 motionless than in the
moving, and that we pass from immutability 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 metaphysical zero which, joined to the Idea, like
the arithmetical zero to unity, multiplies it in space and time. By it the
motionless and simple Idea is refracted into a movement 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 between 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
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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 unreal. On the contrary, if we treat becoming by the
cinematographical 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 time, as a reality. Such is exactly, on this point, the attitude 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."[100]

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
movement. 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
snapshot of becoming; it posits Forms in the eternal; of this motionless
eternity, then, duration and becoming are supposed to be only the
degradation. Form thus posited, independent of time, is then no longer what
is found in a perception; it is a concept. And, as a reality of the conceptual
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
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therefore necessarily, 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 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 movement
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 reasonings 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.[101] 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 prevented 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 themselves. 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 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.
CHAPTER IV 261

This amounts to saying that physics is but logic spoiled. In this proposition
the whole philosophy of Ideas is summarized. And in it also is the hidden
principle of the philosophy that is innate in our understanding. If
immutability 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
coördinated among themselves, is scattered into a physical series of objects
and events accidentally placed one after another. The generative 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 motionless 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 perceives 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 accidents--to the conception of the Idea that
posits its own being. So the philosopher proceeds, confronted with the
universe. Experience 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 intelligible. 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 hypothesis that we
CHAPTER IV 262

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
degradation of the immutable, there could be no movement, consequently
no sensible world, if there were not, somewhere, immutability realized. So,
having begun by refusing 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 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 is in
the divine unity: in vain should we look for the ideas of Plato within the
God of Aristotle. But if only we imagine the God of Aristotle in a sort of
refraction of himself, 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 [Greek: nous] that has
been called [Greek: poiêtikos]--that is, by what is essential and yet
unconscious in human intelligence. The [Greek: nous poiêtikos] is Science
entire, posited all at once, which the conscious, discursive intellect is
condemned to reconstruct with difficulty, bit by bit. There is then within 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 intuition we should see God expand in Ideas. This it is that "does
everything,"[102] playing in relation to the discursive intellect, which
moves in time, the same rôle 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 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
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ancient philosophers never formulated it explicitly. They confined

themselves to drawing the consequences of it, and, in general, they have
marked but points of view of it rather than presented it itself. Sometimes,
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 understand, 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 existence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, ..., etc.--in short, of
the whole interval between 10 and zero. But here our mind passes 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.
CHAPTER IV 264

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 inextension and
eternity. We must therefore picture to ourselves 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,[103] 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.[104] Then, by degrees, 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 movement, is an imitation of God and all imitation is the
reception of a form. 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 endless 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 beginning or end.
CHAPTER IV 265

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 to
deduce it from a simple principle.[105] 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 philosophy 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 mobility 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, 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 entering one within the other, and even of being at last massed
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together into a single concept, the synthesis of all reality, the achievement
of all perfection. The more, on the contrary, it descends toward the invisible
source of the universal 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 coördinated 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 perceive 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 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 consequently 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 particular 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 coördinated
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with each other. Science, understood as the system of concepts, will be

more real than the sensible reality. It will be prior to human knowledge,
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 immutability is therefore, indeed,
the cause of the universal becoming.

Such was the point of view of ancient philosophy in 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
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science has in view. Even when it launches into theory, it is bound to adapt
its behavior 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
intelligence, our senses and our language: it does not bear on the interval,
but only on the extremities. So the cinematographical 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, moreover, 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
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 belonged, was now going to find its
place again. They noted, then, the final term or culminating point ([Greek:
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telos, akmê]) 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 whatever, 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 total 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 instead
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, 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
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more complete recording of these phases by instantaneous photography. 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
schematic 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, forms replacing forms; it is content with a qualitative
description 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
produced from one moment to another are no longer, by the hypothesis,
changes of quality; they are quantitative variations, 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 experimental, 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 between the quantitative variations of two or several elements of
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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 measuring, 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 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 time 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 a veiled form, it is true--time and movement even in the
consideration 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 becoming representative of the time. The curve is then
defined if we can state the relation connecting the space traversed on the
movable straight line to the time employed in traversing it, that is, if we are
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able to indicate the position 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
tracing of the curve at any moment whatever, instead of regarding 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 determine 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, 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.
CHAPTER IV 273

Let us conclude, then, that our science is not only distinguished 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 knowledge. 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 contrast 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, immobilities. 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
misunderstandings.

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{1},
T{2}, T{3}, ... etc., points which divide the trajectory of the mobile into
equal parts from its origin T0. We shall say that 1, 2, 3, ... units of time
have flowed past, when the mobile is at the points T{1}, T{2}, T{3}, ... of
the line it traverses. Accordingly, to consider the state of the universe at the
end of a certain time t, is to examine where it will be when T is at the point
Tt 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
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only the points T{1}, T{2}, T{3}, ... 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 between two consecutive divisions T{n} and T{n-|-1}; but
it is always with points, and with points only, that we are dealing. 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{1}, T{2}, T{3}, ... 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 t, we
mean by it that we have noted a number t of correspondences 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 participate 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{1}, T{2}, T{3}, ... 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 nothing 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 consciousness 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.
CHAPTER IV 275

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
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 conscious of these intervals as of definite intervals. Let me come back
again to the sugar in my glass of water:[106] 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
themselves 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 absolute? 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 consciousness
that is installed in it absolute value and reality, 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.
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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 because 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 without 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 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 unshrinkable duration, which is one with their
essence. So of the works of nature. Their novelty arises from an internal
impetus which is progress or succession, which confers on succession a
peculiar virtue or which owes to succession the whole of its virtue--which,
at any rate, makes succession, or continuity of interpenetration in time,
irreducible 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 unfolding now their history yet to come, involves a
veritable absurdity. But this absurdity is difficult to bring out, because our
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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 succession to come will end by being a
succession past, we persuade ourselves that the duration to come admits of
the same treatment as past duration, that it is, even now, unrollable, 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-invention physics can

take no account, restricted as it is to the cinematographical method. It is
limited to counting 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,
it 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 cinematographical 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 moving body will be, what shape a
system will take, through what state a change will pass at a given moment:
the moments of time, which are only arrests of our attention, would no
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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
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
knowledge of matter by accustoming it to install itself within the moving,
but by developing also another faculty, complementary to the intellect, we
may open a perspective on the other half of the real. For, as soon as we are
confronted 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 degradation 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
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
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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 diminution 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 definitely. Their science consisted in a
scattered and fragmentary 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 conception 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
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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 universal mechanism: from this point of view movement
would be relative,[107] 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 reality. When he places himself at this second
point of view, Descartes speaks of movement, even spatial, as of an
absolute.[108]

He therefore entered both roads one after the other, having 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
consequences which the intuition of true duration implies. Creation 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 determinable 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 produced
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
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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 conceptions of
metaphysics which were offered to philosophy.

It chose the first. The reason of this choice is undoubtedly the mind's
tendency to follow the cinematographical 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 renounce it in
metaphysics. But ancient philosophy also influenced the choice. Artists for
ever admirable, the Greeks created a type of supra-sensible 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 philosophers 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 doctrines contain. Spinoza and Leibniz
have poured into them the whole content of their souls, rich with the
inventions 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 universe, 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 was in this a
methodological rule, a very natural rule--so natural, indeed, that it was not
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even necessary to formulate 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 recommencement, or rather a

transposition, of the old. The ancient philosophy had taken each of the
concepts into which a 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.
CHAPTER IV 283

True, this return to the ancient philosophy was not without 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 between concrete things. So that if a modern philosopher works
with the laws of the new science as the Greek philosopher did with the
concepts of the ancient science, if he makes all the conclusions of a physics
supposed omniscient converge on a single point, he neglects what is
concrete in the phenomena--the qualities perceived, the perceptions
themselves. 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, nor the soul by
consciousness. If the [Greek: psychê] of Aristotle, the entelechy of a living
body, is less spiritual than our "soul," it is because his [Greek: oôma],
already impregnated with the Idea, is less corporeal than our "body." The
scission was not yet irremediable between the two terms. It has become so,
and thence a metaphysic that aims at an abstract unity must resign itself
either to comprehend in its synthesis only one half of the real, or to take
advantage of the absolute heterogeneity of the two halves in order to
consider 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 diversity 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
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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 unequal 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, therefore, 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, 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 automatically, 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, according to the order and position of
points of view, qualitatively 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 perception 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 equivalent to the
whole set of stereoscopic views taken of it from all points, so that, instead
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of seeing in the relief a juxtaposition 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 compenetration 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 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 anything else
than the manifold views that it can take of its own substance: so that time
CHAPTER IV 286

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 [Greek: ylê] 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 Aristotelianism--just as the Leibnizian monads,
in proportion as they mark themselves out the more clearly, tend to
approximate to the Intelligibles of Plotinus.[109] 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 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 in eternity. Both are
opposed to the idea of a reality that creates itself gradually, that is, at
bottom, to an absolute 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 chemistry 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 explanations, 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 metaphysic--the very metaphysic of which Spinoza and Leibniz have
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laid down the principles and drawn the consequences. 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 consciousness, believes
himself very far from the metaphysicians of the seventeenth century, and
very near to experience. 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
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 relation 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,[110] but the facts, examined without
prejudice, certainly 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
Spinozistic or Leibnizian metaphysic. It is to accept this philosophy, 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
sometimes 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 Leibnizianism that we come back. Between
this conception of nature and Cartesianism we find, moreover, intermediate
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historical stages. The medical philosophers of the eighteenth 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 imbued with the belief in a science
single and complete, embracing 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 sufficient. For the ancients,
science applied to concepts, that is to say, to kinds of things. In
compressing all concepts 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 [Greek: noêseôs
noêsis], it is probably on [Greek: noêseôs], and not on [Greek: noêsis] 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 intellect 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 he bound them together: such
was the hypothesis of Leibniz 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
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indefinitely extensible. 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 rôle 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
dogmatism 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 intelligence as pre-eminently a
faculty of establishing relations, Kant attributed an extra-intellectual origin
to the terms between which the relations are established. He affirmed,
against his immediate predecessors, that knowledge 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. Coinciding 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, intellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited,
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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 coextensive 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 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 if 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 binding with the same force all the parts of what is
given, and of coördinating 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.
CHAPTER IV 291

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 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 intellect. There would be, in other words, a
supra-intellectual intuition. If this intuition exist, a taking possession of the
spirit by itself is possible, and no longer only a knowledge that is external
and phenomenal. What is more, if we have an intuition of this kind (I mean
an ultra-intellectual 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. Sensuous 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 knowledge 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
intuitions 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 knowledge
and its form are lowered, as also between the "pure forms" of sensibility
and the categories of the understanding. 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.
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But this duality of intuition Kant neither would nor could admit. It would
have been necessary, in order to admit it, to regard duration as the very
stuff of reality, and consequently to distinguish between the substantial
duration 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 of
which metaphysical dogmatism speaks, is there not room for consciousness
and for life? There is, unquestionably. 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
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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 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
magnificent 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 unquestionable. Unquestionably, also, it felt that this
philosophy ought to establish itself in what we call concrete duration. The
advent of the moral sciences, the progress of psychology, the growing
importance of embryology among the biological sciences--all this was
CHAPTER IV 294

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 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 consists 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 together the fragments of a picture
already drawn and already 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.
CHAPTER IV 295

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 "integrates" these fragments and "dissipates their movement."
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 progresses, 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
relations 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 dividing 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
evolution 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 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
CHAPTER IV 296

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-automatic
movements to escape a pressing danger. And yet this is but a very imperfect
imitation of the primitive character, 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 consolidated 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 intellect by this correspondence. He is right
in regarding it as the end of an evolution. But when he comes to retrace
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 each other in nature
project into the human mind images which represent them. To the relations
between phenomena, therefore, correspond symmetrically relations
between the ideas. And the most general laws of nature, in which the
relations between phenomena are condensed, are thus found to have
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 relations 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
CHAPTER IV 297

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 actionthat, by intercrossing, mark out the
net of experience of which each mesh is a fact. No doubt, a town is
composed exclusively 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 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 progressed 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. Already, in the field of
physics itself, the scientists who are pushing the study of their science
CHAPTER IV 298

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 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 imponderable
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 consciousness 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 progressive
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 results, 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 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
CHAPTER IV 299

around Aristotle.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 96: The part of this chapter which treats of the history of
systems, particularly 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 Collège de France, especially in a course on the History of
the Idea of Time (1902-1903). We then compared the mechanism of
conceptual thought to that of the cinematograph. We believe the
comparison will be useful here.]

[Footnote 97: The analysis of the idea of the nought which we give here
(pp. 275-298) has appeared before in the Revue philosophique (November
1906).]

[Footnote 98: 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.]

[Footnote 99: That is, we do not consider the sophism of Zeno refuted by
the fact that the geometrical progression a(1 + 1/n + 1/n2 + 1/n3 +,...
etc.)--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, Infini et quantité,
Paris, 1880, pp. 63-97; cf. Revue philosophique, vol. xi., 1881, pp.
564-568). 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.]
CHAPTER IV 300

[Footnote 100: Plato, Timaeus, 37 D.]

[Footnote 101: 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.]

[Footnote 102: Aristotle, De anima, 430 a 14 [Greek: kai hestin ho men

toioutos nous tô pynta ginesthai, ho de tô panta poiein, ôs hexis tis, oion to
phôs. tropon gar tina ka to phôs poiei ta dynamei onta chrômata energeia
chrômata].]

[Footnote 103: De caelo, ii. 287 a 12 [Greek: tês eschatês periphoras oute
kenon estin exôthen oute topos.] Phys. iv. 212 a 34 [Greek: to de pan esti
men hôs kinêsetai hesti d' hôs ou. hôs men gar holon, hama ton topon hou
metaballei. kyklô de kinêsetai, tôn moriôn gar outos ho topos].]

[Footnote 104: De caelo, i. 279 a 12 [Greek: oude chronos hestin hexô tou
ouranou]. Phys. viii. 251 b 27 [Greek: ho chronos pathos ti kinêseôs].]

[Footnote 105: 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.]

[Footnote 106: See page 10.]

[Footnote 107: Descartes, Principes, ii. § 29.]

[Footnote 108: Descartes, Principes, ii. §§ 36 ff.]

[Footnote 109: In a course of lectures on Plotinus, given at the Collège 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
employed on each side.]

[Footnote 110: "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (Revue de

métaphysique et de morale, Nov. 1904, pp. 895-908). Cf. Matière et
CHAPTER IV 301

mémoire, Paris, 1896, chap. i.]

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 Aristotle'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, 311, 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 representation, 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
CHAPTER IV 302

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. See Intellect and 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 starting-point of, 297 of instinct, continuous

with vital process, 139, 140 life as, 128-9, 247 mutually inverse factors in
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, 135-6, 181, 292 vital, has evolved divergently, 134 See
Divergent lines of evolution

Adaptation, 50-1, 55, 57-8, 59, 70, 101, 129, 133, 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, 293, 295, 296 in negation, 286-7

Affirmation and negation, 285-6, 293

Age and individuality, 15-6

CHAPTER IV 303

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 decrease of mutability of the universe, 245-6

Alveolar froth, 33-4

Ambiguity of the idea of "generality" in philosophy, 230-1, 320-1 of

primitive organisms, 99, 112, 113, 129-30

Ammophila hirsuta, paralyzing instinct in, 173

Amoeba, in illustration of imitation of the living by the unorganized, 33-6

in illustration of the ambiguity of primitive organisms, 99 in illustration of
the mobility characteristic of animals, 108 in illustration of the "explosive"
expenditure of energy characteristic of animals, 120, 253

Anagenesis, 34

Anarchy, idea of, 233, 234. See Disorder

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
CHAPTER IV 304

ascent toward God, in Aristotle, 323 Astronomy, ancient and modern,

334-6 attraction and impulsion in, 323-4 becoming in, 313-4, 317 bow and
indivisibility of motion, 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 nature of, 315 circularity of God's
thought, 323-4 concentric spheres, 328 concepts, 326-7, 356 "conversion"
and "procession" in, 323 degradation of ideas into sensible flux, 317-8,
321, 323-4, 327, 328, 343-5, 352-3 degrees of reality, 323-4, 327
diminution, derivation of becoming by. See Degradation of Ideas, etc.
duration, 317-9 note, 323-4, 327-9 Eleatic philosophy, 308, 314 Enneads of
Plotinus, 210 note essence and accident, 354 essence or form, 314-5
eternal, 317-8, 324-6 Eternity, 317-8, 320, 324, 328-9 extension, 210 note,
318, 324, 327 form or idea, 314-20, 322, 327, 329-31, 352 geometry,
Cartesian, and ancient philosophy, 334 God of Aristotle, 196-7, 322-4, 349,
352, 356 [Greek: hylê], 353 Idea, 314-22, 352-3 and indivisibility of
motion, 307-8, 311 intelligible reality in, 326 intelligibles of Plotinus, 353
[Greek: logos], of Plotinus, 210 note matter in Aristotle's philosophy, 316,
327 and modern astronomy, 333-4, 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, 329-30, 336, 342-3, 344-5, 357 motion in, 307-8,
312-3 necessity in, 327 [Greek: noêseôs noêsis], 356 non-being, 316, 327
[Greek: nous poiêtikos], 322 oscillation about being, sensible reality as,
317-8 Physics of Aristotle, 227-8 note, 324 note, 330-1 Plato, 48, 156, 191,
210 note, 316-8, 321-4, 327, 330, 348, 349 Plotinus, 210, 316, 323, 326
note, 349, 352-4 procession in Alexandrian philosophy, 323 [Greek:
psychê], 210 note, 350 realism in, 232 refraction of idea through matter or
non-being, 317 sectioning of becoming, 318-9 sensible reality, 314, 316-8,
321, 327-9, 352-3 [Greek: sôma], 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

CHAPTER IV 305

Animal kingdom, 12, 105-6, 119-21, 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 consciousness, 139-43, 180, 183, 187,
188, 192, 212, 263-8 and man in respect to instruments of action, 139-43,
150-1 and man in respect to intelligence, 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 activity of consciousness, 109, 111, 113, 119-21, 128-9,
132, 134-6, 142-3, 144, 181-2, 293 and plants in respect to function, 117-8,
121-2, 127 and plants in respect to instinct, 167, 170 and plants in respect
to mobility, 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, Feeling, 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 hymenoptera and of intelligence in man, 174-5 See

Evolutionary superiority
CHAPTER IV 306

Apogee of sensible object, in philosophy of Ideas, 343-4, 349

Approximateness of the knowledge of matter, 206-7

Approximation, in matter, to the mathematical order, 218. See Order

Archimedes, 333-4

Aristotle. See Ancient Philosophy, Aristotle

Arrow, Flying, of Zeno, 308-9, 310, 312-3

Art, 6-7, 29 note, 45, 89, 177

Artemia Salina, transformations of, 72, 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 creativeness of duration, 340-1

Ascending cosmic movement, 11, 208, 275, 369

Ascent toward God, in Aristotle, 323

Association of organisms, 260. See Individuation universal oscillation

between association and individuation, 259, 260. See Societies
CHAPTER IV 307

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 matter, 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 instinct, Tension as inverted extension,
Tension of personality, Sympathetic appreciation, etc., Relaxation and
intellect

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 movement, etc., Geometrical order

Automatism, 127, 143-4, 174, 223-4, 261, 264

Background of instinct and intelligence, 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
CHAPTER IV 308

Becoming, 164, 236, 248-9, 273, 299-304, 307-8, 313-4, 316, 337-8, 342-3,
345, 363 in ancient philosophy, 313-4, 317 in Descartes's philosophy, 346
in Eleatic philosophy, 313-4, 315 in general, or abstract becoming, 304,
306-7 instantaneous and static views of, 272, 304-5 states of, falsely so
called, 164, 247-8, 273, 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 relaxation 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 indivisibility of motion, 308-10

CHAPTER IV 309

Brain and consciousness, 5, 109, 110, 179-80, 183-4, 212 note, 252, 261-4,
270, 354, 356, 366. See Nervous System in man and lower animals, 183,
184, 263-5

Brandt, 66 note

Breast-Plate, in reference to animal mobility, 130, 131. See Carapace,

Cellulose envelope

Brown-Séquard, 80-2

Bulb, medullary, in the development of the nervous system, 110, 252

Busquet, 259 note

Bütschli, 33 note

Buttel-Reepen, 171 note

Butterflies, in illustration of variation 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 relation of function and structure, 93

Canalization, in illustration of the function of animal organisms, 93, 95,

110, 126, 256, 270

Canvas, embroidering "something" on the, of "nothing," 297

Caprice, an attribute not of freedom but of mechanism, 47

CHAPTER IV 310

Carapace, in reference to animal mobility, 130-1

Carbohydrates, in reference to the function of the animal organism, 121-2

Carbon, in reference to the function of organisms, 107, 113, 114, 117, 254,
255

Carbonic acid, in reference to the function of organisms, 254, 255

Carnot, 243, 246, 256

Cartesian geometry, compared with ancient, 334

Cartesianism, 345, 356, 358

Cartesians, 358. See Spinoza, Leibniz

Carving, the, of matter by intellect, 155

Categorical propositions, characteristic of instinctive knowledge, 149-50

Categories, conceptual, x, xiii, 48, 147, 148-9, 165, 189-90, 195-7, 207,
220-1, 257-60, 265, 358, 361. See Concept deduction of, and genesis of the
intellect, 196, 207, 359. See Genesis of matter and of the intellect 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 category which does not apply to life, x, xiv, 177
in the philosophy of Ideas, 323-6
CHAPTER IV 311

Causation and adaptation, 101, 102 final, involves mechanical, 44

Cause and effect as mathematical functions of each other, 20, 21 efficient,

238, 277, 323 efficient, in Aristotle's philosophy, 324 efficient, in Leibniz's
philosophy, 353 final, 40, 44, 238 final, in Aristotle's philosophy, 324 by
impulsion, release and unwinding, 73 mechanical, as containing effect, 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 torpor, 108,

111, 130

Cerebral activity and consciousness, 5, 109-10, 180-1, 183-4, 212 note,

252, 253, 261, 264, 268, 270, 350, 351, 354, 355, 366 mechanism, 5, 252,
253, 262, 264, 366

Cerebro-spinal system, 124. See 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
Indetermination

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,
343, 345 in Eleatic philosophy, 314 known only from within, 307-8

Chaos, 232. See Disorder

Character, moral, 5, 99-100

CHAPTER IV 312

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, 139

Chlorophyllian function, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 253

Choice, 110, 125, 143-5, 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 philosophy, 193, 197, 320 vicious, in the
intuitional method is only apparent, 192, 193

Circularity of God's thought in Aristotle's philosophy, 324 of each special

evolution, 128

Circulation, protoplasmic, imitated, 32-3 in plants and animals, 108

Circumstances in the determination of evolution, 101-2, 128-9, 133, 138,

142, 150-1, 167, 168, 170-1, 193, 194, 252, 256 in relation to special
instincts, 138, 168, 193

Classes of words corresponding to the three kinds of representation, 303-4

CHAPTER IV 313

Clausius, 243

Clearness characteristic of intellect, 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

experience 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 Interpenetration

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
Instinct and Intelligence of intuition and intellect, 343, 345 in the powers of
life, 49, 96-7, 140-3, 177, 178-9, 183-5, 239, 246, 254, 343 of science and
CHAPTER IV 314

metaphysics, 344

Complexity of the order of mathematics, 208-10, 217, 251

Compound reflex, instinct as a, 174

Concentration, intellect as, 191, 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-xiii, 49 intellect the concept-making 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 philosophy, 325-6, 356. See Categories,
Externality, Frames, Image, Space, Symbol

Conditions, external, in evolution, 128-9, 133, 138, 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, Indetermination

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 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 between possible and real action, 145, 179
consciousness as light from zone of possible actions surrounding the real
CHAPTER IV 315

act, 179 consciousness and locomotion, 262 consciousness plugged up by

action, 144, 145. See Torpor, Sleep consciousness as sketch of action, 207
intensity of, varies with ratio of possible to real action, 145

Consciousness in animals, as distinguished from the consciousness of

plants, 130, 135-6, 143 as distinguished from the consciousness of man,
139-43, 180, 183, 184, 187, 188, 212, 263-9. See Torpor, Sleep
characteristic of animals, torpor 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 evolution, 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 Manufacture, Solid
the characteristic work of intellect, 163-4 as the method of Kant's
successors, 364-5

Contingency, 96, 255, 268. See 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
CHAPTER IV 316

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 mind and matter in Spencer, 368. See

Simultaneity

Cortical mechanism, 252, 253, 262. See Cerebral mechanism

Cosmogony and genesis of matter, 188. See Genesis of matter 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, 93, 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 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, 163,
223-4, 230-1, 237, 264, 269
CHAPTER IV 317

Creativeness of free action, 192, 243 of invention, 250

Creeping plants in illustration of vegetable mobility, 108

Cricket victim of paralyzing instinct of sphex, 172

Criterion, quest of a, 53 ff. 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 evolutionary 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, 237, 266, 270 of will penetrating matter, 237

Curves, as symbol of life, 32, 90, 213

Cuts through becoming by the intellect, 313-4. See Views of reality,

Snapshots in illustration, etc. through matter by perception, 206

Cuvier, 125 note

CHAPTER IV 318

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 intellect, 165

Dead-locks in speculation, 155, 312

Death, 246 note, 271

Declivity descended by matter, 208, 246, 256, 339-40. See Descending

movement

Decomposing and recomposing powers characteristic of intellect, 157, 251

Deduction, analogy between, related 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 effort, 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

CHAPTER IV 319

Degradation of energy, 241, 242, 246 of the extra-spatial into the spatial,
207 of the ideas into the sensible flux in ancient philosophy, 317-9, 324-5,
327-9, 331, 343, 345, 352-3

Degrees of being in the successors of Kant, 362-3

Degrees of reality in Greek philosophy, 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, issues, or

aspects of life, x, xii, xiii, 49, 103, 105, 136, 365

De Saporta, 107 note

Descartes, 280, 334, 345, 346, 353, 358 becoming, 345-6 creation, 346
determinism, 345 duration, 346 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 existence, 11, 202, 203, 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
CHAPTER IV 320

Development, 133, 134-5, 141. See Order, Progress, Evolution, Superiority

Deviation from type, 82-4

Dialect and intuition in philosophy, 238

Dichotomy of the real in modern philosophy, 350

Differentiation of parts in an organism, 253, 260

Dilemma of any systematic metaphysics, 195, 197, 230

Diminution, derivation of becoming from being by, in ancient philosophy,

316, 317, 322, 323-4, 327-8, 343-5, 352 geometrical order as, or lower
complication of the vital order, 236

Dionaea illustrating certain animal 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 intellect, 154

Discord in nature, 127, 128, 254-5, 267

Disorder, 40, 104, 222-3, 225-6, 232-5, 274. See Expectation, Order,
mathematical, Orders of reality, two

Disproportion between an invention 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
CHAPTER IV 321

Distance, extension as the, between 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, 113, 116, 119, 130, 132, 134-5, 142, 149, 150, 168, 173, 181, 254,
255, 266, 267. See Dissociation of tendencies, Complementarity, etc.,
Schisms in the primitive impulsion of life

Diversity, sensible, 205, 220-1, 231, 235, 236

Divination, instinct as, 176. See Sympathy, etc.

Divisibility of extension, 154, 162

Division 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 epistemology 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
CHAPTER IV 322

Dream, 144, 180-1, 202, 209, 256. See Interpenetration, Relaxation,

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, 15, 17, 21, 22, 37, 39, 46, 51, 199, 201,
206, 213, 216, 240, 272, 273, 276, 298-9, 308-9, 317-8, 319 note, 324, 328,
332, 339, 342, 343, 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, Invention, Time, Unforeseeableness,
Uniqueness

Echinoderms in reference to animal mobility, 130, 131

Efficient cause in conception of chance, 234 Spinoza and, 269

Effort in evolution, 170

[Greek: Eidos], 314-5

Eimer, 55, 72, 73, 86

Elaborateness of the mathematical order, 208-10, 217, 251

Eleatic philosophy, 308, 314-5

CHAPTER IV 323

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 knowledge 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
conservation of, 242 degradation of, 242, 243, 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, 138, 140, 142, 150, 167, 168, 170, 192,
193, 252, 256, 257 and special instincts, 138, 168, 192, 193

Epiphenomenalism, 262
CHAPTER IV 324

Essence and accidents in Aristotle'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. See 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, 134, 136, 138-40,
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 note, 246, 248, 249, 251, 252, 254,
264-6, 268, 273, 302, 311, 345, 359, 360, 366 accident in, 104, 169, 170,
173, 174, 251, 252 animal, a progress toward mobility, 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 divergent 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, 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.,
Culminating points, etc., Evolution and environment of intellect, x-xii, 153,
186, 189-90, 193, 198-9, 207-8, 359, 360. See Divergent lines, etc.,
Culminating points, etc., Genesis of matter and of intellect as invention,
344 of man, 264, 266, 268. See Culminating points, etc. motive principle of,
CHAPTER IV 325

is consciousness, 181 of species product of the vital impetus opposed by

matter, 247-8, 254 and transformism, 24 unforeseeable, 47, 48, 53, 86, 224
variation in, 23-4, 55, 63, 68, 72 note, 85, 131, 137-8, 167, 169, 171, 264

Evolutionary, qualitative, and extensive motion 302-3, 311, 312 superiority,

133-5, 174-5. See Success, Criterion of evolutionary rank, Culminating
points, etc.

Evolutionism, x-xii, xiv, 77, 84, 364

Exhaustion of the mutability of the universe, 337-8

Existence, logical, as contrasted with psychical and physical, 276, 362 of

matter tends toward instantaneity, 201 of self means change, 1 ff.
superaddition of, upon nothingness, 276

Expectation, 214-6, 221, 222, 226, 233, 235, 274, 281, 292 in conception of
disorder, 221, 222, 226, 233, 234, 235, 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, 236, 245, 318-20, 324,
327, 351, 352 continuity of, 154 discontinuity of, relative to action, 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 tension, 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
CHAPTER IV 326

philosophy, 350 in the Transcendental Aesthetic, 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 mollusc 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 empty, 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 consciousness, 264 bodies, comparison of

Aristotle and Galileo, 228, 331-2, 334 weight, figure of material world,
245, 246

Familiar, the, is the object of intellect, 163, 164, 199, 270

Faraday, 203
CHAPTER IV 327

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 hereditary transmission, 79

Ferments, certain characteristics of, 106

Fertilization of orchids by insects, by Darwin, 170 note

Fichte's conception of the intellect, 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 conception 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 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
CHAPTER IV 328

plants, 108-13, 118, 119, 130-1 of torpid animals, 130

Flint hatchets and human intelligence, 137

Fluidity of life, 153, 165, 193 of matter as a whole, 186, 369

Flux of material bodies, 265 of reality, 250, 251, 337, 342, 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, 113, 116-8, 129, 135-6, 148-53, 155, 156, 160, 164,
195-7, 222, 237, 250, 255, 302, 303, 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 consciousness, xii, xiii (or essences),
qualities and acts the three kinds of representation, 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 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

CHAPTER IV 329

Fossil species, 102

Foster, 125 note

Fox in illustration of animal intelligence, 138

Frames of the understanding, 46-7, 48, 150-2, 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 necessity, 270 utility of, lies
in their unlimited application, 149-50, 152

Freedom, 11, 48, 126, 130, 163, 164, 200, 202, 207, 208, 217, 223, 231,
237, 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 consciousness with, 111, 112, 202, 264,
270 of creation and life, 247, 254, 255 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 tendency of, to self-negation in habit, 127 tension of, 200,
201, 202, 207, 223, 237, 301 transformed by the understanding into
necessity, 270 See Spontaneity

Fringe of intelligence around instinct, 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, 153, 157, 161, 163, 164, 168, 173-5,
186-92, 199, 206, 207, 233, 237, 246, 251, 254-6, 262, 263, 270, 273, 298,
CHAPTER IV 330

306, 346, 358, 369 accumulation of energy the function of vegetable

organisms, 254, 255 action the, of intellect, ix, 12, 44, 47, 93, 161, 162,
186-8, 206, 251, 273, 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 intellect, x, 49 of consciousness: sketching
movements, 207 construction the, of intellect, 108 illumination of action, of
perception, 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, 50 of
intelligence: construction, 160, 163, 181-2 of intelligence: division, 154,
155, 162, 189 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, vertebrates 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: canalization of energy,
93, 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 functions of life: storage and expenditure of
energy, 254-6 of the organism, vegetable: accumulation 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: accumulation of
energy, 254, 255

Functions of life, the two: storage and expenditure of energy, 254-6

Galileo, homogeneity of time in, 332 his influence on metaphysics, 20, 228
his influence on modern science, 334, 335 extension of Galileo's physics,
CHAPTER IV 331

357, 370 his theory of the fall of bodies compared with Aristotle's, 228,
331, 332, 334

Ganoid breast-plate of ancient fishes, in reference to animal mobility, 130,

131

Gaudry, 130 note

Genera, relation of, to individuals, 226 relation of, to laws, 225, 226, 330
potential, 226-7 and signs, 158

Generality, ambiguity of the idea of, in philosophy, 229-31, 236

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 diminution or lower complication of the vital, 223,

225, 236, 330. See Genera, Relation of, to laws mutual contingency of, and
vital order, 235 See Mathematical order space, relation of, to the spatiality
of things, 203

Geometrism, the latent, of intellect, 194, 211-3

CHAPTER IV 332

Geometry, fitness of, to matter, 10 goal of intellectual operations, 211, 213,

218 ideal limit of induction and deduction, 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, continuity of, 27, 37, 78-83

Giard, 84

Glucose in organic function, 122, 123

Glycogen in organic function, 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, 352, 353, 356-7 as eternal
matter, 196-7 as pure form, 196-7, 322 in Spinoza's philosophy, 351, 357

Greek philosophy. See Ancient 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

CHAPTER IV 333

Habit and consciousness annulled, 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
animals, 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 complementarity 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 human 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, consciousness as, 143, 144

Heteroblastia and identical structures 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 human species, 139

Homogeneity of space, 156, 212 the sphere of intellect, 163 of time in

Galileo, 332
CHAPTER IV 334

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 action, 139-43, 150 and animal intelligence, 138,
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

[Greek: Hylê] of Aristotle, 353

Hymenoptera, the culmination of arthropod and instinctive evolution, 134,

173-4 as entomologists, 146, 172-3 organization and instinct in, 140
paralyzing instinct of, 146, 172, 173-4 social instincts of, 101, 171

Hypostasis of the unity of nature, God as, 196-7, 322, 356

Hypothetical propositions characteristic of intellectual knowledge, 149-50

Idea or form in ancient philosophy, 49, 314, 316-7, 318, 329-30 in ancient
philosophy, [Greek: eidos], 314-5 in ancient philosophy, Platonic, 48 and
image in Descartes, 280

Idealism, 232

Idealists and realists alike assume the possibility of an absence of order,

220, 232
CHAPTER IV 335

Identical structures in divergent lines of evolution, 55, 60-1, 62, 69, 74-7,
86, 119

Illumination of action the function of perception, 5, 206, 307

Image and idea in Descartes, 280 distinguished from concept, 160-1, 280

Imitation of being in Greek philosophy, 324, 327 of instinct by science,

168-9, 173-4 of life in intellectual representation, 4, 33, 88-9, 101, 176,
208, 209, 213, 226, 259, 341, 365 of life by the unorganized, 33, 35, 36 of
motion by intelligence, 305, 307-8, 312, 313, 329. See Imitation 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 animals, 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, 131,
134-6, 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 natural: the human, artificial, 139-43 artificial,

137-40, 150-1 constructing, function of intelligence, 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 perception to grasp life, 176-8

CHAPTER IV 336

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 prolonged in evolution, 246 prolonged in our
will, 239 transmitted through generations 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, the three kinds of cause, 73 given to mind by matter, 202

Inadequacy of act to representation, 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 tendencies, 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 impetus, 250, 259, 270
CHAPTER IV 337

Individuality never absolute, x, 12, 13, 16, 19, 42, 260 and age, 15-23, 27,
43 corporeal, physics tends to deny, 188, 189, 208. See Interpenetration,
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, 12-16, 43, 260 as a cosmic principle in

contrast 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 magnitudes, 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, 213, 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, 276, 319, 339-40,
343. See Inert matter, order inherent in knowledge of, approximate but not
relative, 206 the metaphysics and the physics of, 195-6 as necessity, 252,
264 the order inherent in, 40, 103, 153, 201, 207-12, 216, 226-7, 230-6,
CHAPTER IV 338

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, 153,
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 invention, 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 characters. See Hereditary transmission

Innate knowledge, 146-7, 150-1

Innateness of the categories, 148, 149-50

Inorganic matter. See Inert 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 hymenoptera, 134, 173-4 consciousness
and instinct, 145, 167, 173 continuity of instinct with organization, 139,
145 fallibility of instinct in, 172-3 instinct in general in, 169, 173-4
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
CHAPTER IV 339

variations on a theme, 167. See Arthropods in evolution

Insensible variation, 63, 66

Inspiration of a poem an undivided intuitive act, contrasted 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 matter, 136, 141 in animals as distinguished

from plants, 170 in cells, 166 and consciousness, 143-5, 166, 167, 173,
174, 175, 186 culmination of, in evolution, 133, 174-5. See Arthropods in
evolution, Evolutionary superiority 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, 366 and intuition, 177, 178-9, 181 object of,
146-52, 165, 168, 172-9, 186, 189, 195, 234, 254 and organization, 23-4,
138-40, 145, 166-8, 171-2, 173, 176, 193, 194, 264 paralyzing, in certain
hymenoptera, 146, 171, 172-3 in plants, 170, 171 social, of insects, 101,
157-8, 171

Instinctive knowledge, 148, 167, 168, 173-4 learning, 193 metaphysics,

192, 269, 270, 277

Instrument, action as, of consciousness, 180 animal, is natural; human

artificial, 139-43 automatic activity as instrument of voluntary, 252
consciousness as, of action, 180 intelligence: the function of intelligence 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 instruments of instinct, 140-1, 145, 150

Intellect and action, ix, 11, 29, 44-8, 93, 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
CHAPTER IV 340

function of the, 5, 11, 12, 44-50, 92, 93, 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, 193,
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, 223, 225-6, 230-3, 235, 236, 238, 245-52, 254-9, 264, 267-71,
276, 277, 313, 330, 339, 342-5, 361, 369 and language, 4, 148, 158-60,
258, 265, 292, 303, 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, 164, 165, 167, 168, 173, 174, 176, 177, 186, 187, 190-3,
194-218, 223-40, 244, 246-7, 249-51, 254, 255, 257, 258, 266, 270, 273,
276-7, 292, 300-21, 325, 329, 330, 332, 337, 338, 339, 341-8, 351, 358-9,
361-2, 363-4, 365, 367 object of the, ix-xv, 7, 8, 10, 17, 20, 21, 30, 31, 34,
35, 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, 329, 337, 346-7
and science, 8-12, 31, 92-3, 152, 153, 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, 273, 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, 160-3, 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, Intelligence

Intellectualism, hesitation of Descartes between, and intuitionism, 345

CHAPTER IV 341

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, 174-5. 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, 238, 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, 237, 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, Understanding,
Reason

Intelligent, the, contrasted with the merely intelligible, 175

Intelligible reality in ancient philosophy, 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 Automatic 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, rôle of, etc.

Internal finality, 41

Internality of instinct, 168, 174-5, 176-7 of subject in object the condition

of knowledge of reality, 307, 317, 358-9
CHAPTER IV 342

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 positivity, 219, 246, 247-8, 319-20. See

Inverse relation, etc.

Interval of time, 8-9, 22, 23 between what is done and what might be done
covered by consciousness, 179

Intuition, continuity between sensible and ultra-intellectual, 360-1 dialectic

and, in philosophy, 238. See Intellect as inversion of intuition fringe of,
around the nucleus of intellect, xiii, 12, 46, 49, 193 and instinct, 176-9, 182
and intellect in theoretical knowledge, 176-9, 270-1

Intuitional cosmology as reversed psychology, 207-8 metaphysics

contrasted with intellectual 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 Descartes, 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, 142-3,
194-5 of steam engine as epoch-marking, 138-9 time as, 341
unforeseeableness of, 164 upspringing of, 164 See New

Inverse relation of the physical and psychical, 126-7, 143-4, 145, 173-4,
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
CHAPTER IV 343

Janet, Paul, 60-1 note

Jennings, 35 note

Jourdain and the two kinds of order, 221

Juxtaposition, 207-8, 338, 339, 341. Cf. Succession

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 successors,
362-3 duration in Kant's successors, 362-3 intelligence in Kant's
philosophy, 230, 357 ontological argument in Kant's philosophy, 285 space
and time in Kant's philosophy, 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, 305, 306, 312, 313,
315, 317, 325, 331-2, 342, 343, 347-8, 359-60, 361 intension of, 149-50 of
reality viewed as the internality of subject in object, 307, 317, 358-9
intuition and intellect in theoretical knowledge, 174-7, 179, 238, 270, 342-4
matter of, 194-5, 357-8, 359-62 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 requirements of the
CHAPTER IV 344

mind, 152, 190-1, 230 scientific, 193-4, 196-8, 206, 207, 218 theory of, xiii,
177, 179, 197, 204-5, 207-8, 229, 231 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, 293, 302-3, 305, 312-4, 320

La Place, 38

Lapsed intelligence, instinct as, 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 Spencer's philosophy, 188 and intuitional philosophy,
176-7 physical, contrasted with the laws of our codes, 218-9 physical,
expression of the negative movement, 218 physical, mathematical form of,
218, 219, 229-30, 241 relation as, 228, 229-30

Learning, instinctive, 192, 193

Le Dantec, 18 note
CHAPTER IV 345

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 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, 113, 116-9, 126-7,
131-6, 140-3, 176, 177, 183, 184, 246, 254-7, 266, 270, 343, 344-5
consciousness coextensive with, 186, 257, 270, 362-3 mutual contingency
of the orders of life and matter, 235 continuity of, 1-11, 29, 30, 162, 163,
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 Individuality 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, 13, 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,
222-3, 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, 197, 201, 202, 207, 208-9, 210-1, 212, 216, 217, 218, 222-3,
225-6, 232, 235, 236, 238, 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, 237, 239, 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
CHAPTER IV 346

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 knowledge, 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 substance,
Organism, Organization, Vital impetus, Vital order, Vital principle,
Vitalism, Willed order

Limitations of instinct and of intelligence, 152

Limitedness of the scope of Galileo'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 Mobility,

Movement

Logic 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 impotent to grasp life, x, 13, 32, 35, 36, 46-9, 89, 101, 152, 162-5,
194-201, 205, 206, 213, 219, 220, 222, 223, 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, Understanding, Order,
mathematical

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

CHAPTER IV 347

[Greek: logos], 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, Instrument

organisms, for action, 252, 254, 300-1

Magnitude, certainty of induction approached as factors approach pure

magnitudes, 215-16 and modern science, 333, 335

Man in evolution, attention, 184 brain, 183, 184, 263-5 consciousness,

139-43, 180, 181, 183, 185, 187, 188, 191-2, 212, 262-8 goal, 134, 174-5,
185, 266, 267, 269, 270 habit and invention, 265 intelligence, 133, 137-9,
143, 146, 174, 175, 187, 188, 212, 266, 267 language, 158

Manacéine (de), 124 note

Manufacture, the aim of intellect, 137, 138, 145, 152-4, 159-65, 181, 191,
192, 199, 251, 298 and organization, 92, 93, 126-7, 139-43, 150 and
repetition, 44, 45, 155-8 See Construction, Solid, Utility

Many and one, categories inapplicable to life, x, 162-3, 177-8, 257, 261,
268 in the idea of individuality, 258 See Multiplicity

Martin, J., 102 note

Marion, 107 note

Material knowledge, 152

Materialists, 240
CHAPTER IV 348

Materiality the inversion of spirituality, 212

Mathematical order. See Inert matter, Order

Matter. See Inert matter

Maturation as creative evolution, 47-8, 230

Maupas, 35 note

Measurement a human convention, 218, 242 of real time an illusion,

336-40

Mechanical account of action after 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 of intellect. See Intellect,
mechanism of and intention, 233. See Automatic order, Willed order life
more than, x, xiv note, 78-9

Mechanistic philosophy, xii, xiv, 17, 29, 30, 37, 74, 88-96, 101, 102, 194-5,
218, 223, 264, 345, 346, 347, 348, 351, 355, 356, 362

Medical philosophers of the eighteenth century, 356 science, 165

Medullary bulb in the development 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

CHAPTER IV 349

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 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 certain 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-physiological parallelism, Psychology and Philosophy, [Greek:
psychê]

Minot, Sedgwick, 17 note

Mobility, tendency toward, characterizes animals, 109, 110, 113, 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, 131, 132 in plants, 112, 135 See Motion

Möbius, 60 note

Model necessary to the constructive work of intellect, 164, 166-7

CHAPTER IV 350

Modern astronomy compared with ancient science, 334, 335 geometry

compared with ancient science, 31, 161, 334 idealism, 231 philosophy
compared with ancient, 225-9, 231, 327-8, 344, 345, 349-51, 354, 356-7
philosophy: parallelism of body and mind in, 180, 350, 355, 356 science:
cinematographical character of, 329, 330, 336, 341, 342, 346-7 science
compared with ancient, 329-36, 342-5, 356-7 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 tendency 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 deduction 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, 337, 338 See Mobility, Movement

Motive principle of evolution: consciousness, 181-2

CHAPTER IV 351

Motor mechanisms, cerebral, 252, 253, 263, 265

Moulin-Quignon, quarry of, 137

Moussu, 81

Movement and animal 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, 361, 369-70 goal of, the object of the intellect, 155, 299-300, 302,
303 intellect unable to grasp, 313 mutual inversion of cosmic movements,
126-7, 143, 144, 173-4, 176, 177, 209-10, 212, 217, 218, 222-3, 236,
245-51, 261, 264, 265, 272, 342-3 life as, 166, 176-7 and the nervous
system, 110, 132, 134, 180, 262-3 of plants, 109, 135-6 See Mobility,
Motion, Locomotion, Current, Tendency, Impetus, Impulse, Impulsion

Movements, antagonistic cosmic, 128-9, 135, 181, 185, 250, 259. See
Movement, Mutual inversion 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

Natural geometry, 195-6, 211-2 instrument, 141, 144-5, 150-1 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, 303, 356, 359-60, 367 as life, 100, 138,
139-40, 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
CHAPTER IV 352

Nebula, cosmic, 249, 257

Necessity for creation, vital impetus 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. See Nought

Negative cause of mathematical order, 217. See Inverse relation, 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, Opposition of the two
ultimate cosmic movements, etc.

Neo-Darwinism, 55, 56, 85, 86, 169-70

Neo-Lamarckism, 42 note

Nervous system a centre of action, 109, 130-1, 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 organisms, 108, 113-4, 117, 255

[Greek: noêseôs noêsis] of Aristotle, 356

Non-existence. See Nought

Nothing. See Nought

CHAPTER IV 353

Nought, conception of the, 273-80, 281-3, 289-90, 292-8, 316-7, 327. See
Negation, Pseudo-ideas, etc.

[Greek: nous poiêtikos] of Aristotle, 322

Novelty. See new.

Nucleus intelligence as the luminous, 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, 273, 298-304,
307-8, 311-2, 354, 359 internality of subject in, the condition of knowledge
of reality, 307-8, 317-8, 359 of knowledge, 147, 148-9, 159-60 idea of,
contrasted with that 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 intellect, 163, 164, 199, 270

One and many in the idea of individuality, x, 258. See Unity

Ontological argument in Kant, 284

CHAPTER IV 354

Opposition of the two ultimate cosmic movements, 128-9, 175-6, 179, 186,
201, 203, 238, 248, 254, 259, 261, 267. See Inverse relation of the physical
and psychical

Orchids, instincts of, 170

Order and action, 226-7 complementarity of the two orders, 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, 236, 245, 251, 270, 330-1 of nature, 225-6, 231, 233 as satisfaction,
222, 223, 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

Organism and action, 123-4, 125, 174, 253, 254, 300-1 ambiguity of
primitive, 99, 112, 113, 116, 129, 130 association of organisms, 260
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, 111, 145, 179, 180, 262, 270 contingency of the
actual chemical nature of the, 255, 257 differentiation of parts in, 252, 260.
See Organism, complexity of extension of, by artificial instruments, 141,
161 freedom the property of every, 130, 131 function of, 26, 27, 79, 80, 85,
87, 88, 93-4, 106-110, 113, 114, 117, 120, 121, 126-7, 128, 136, 173-5,
230, 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 similarity
among organisms, 223, 224, 228-9, 230 hive as, 166 and individuation, x,
CHAPTER IV 355

12, 13, 15, 23, 26-7, 42, 149, 195-6, 225-6, 228-9, 259, 260, 261, 270
mutual interpenetration of organisms, 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, 173, 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 currents, 181, 250, 254 of motion, 310 and perception,
226-7

Originality of the willed order, 224

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 philosophy, 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 hymenoptera, 139-40, 146, 172, 174-5

Parasites, 106, 108, 109, 111-13, 134-5

CHAPTER IV 356

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

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

CHAPTER IV 357

Phagocytes and external finality, 42

Phagocytosis and growing old, 18

Phantom ideas and problems, 177, 277, 283, 296

Philosophical explanation contrasted with scientific explanation, 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 itself, 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, Cosmology,
Finalism, Mechanistic philosophy, Metaphysics, Modern philosophy,
Post-Kantian philosophy

Phonograph illustrating "unwinding" cause, 73

Phosphorescence, consciousness compared to, 262

Photograph, illustrating the nature of the intellectual view of reality, 31,

304-5

Photography, instantaneous, illustrating the mechanism of the intellect,

331-2, 333

Physical existence, as contrasted with logical, 276, 297-8, 328, 361 laws,
their precise form artificial, 218, 219, 229, 240-1 laws and the negative
cosmic movement, 218 operations the object of intelligence, 175, 250
order, imitation of, by the vital, 230 science, 176-7

Physicochemistry and organic destruction, 226 and biology, 25-6, 29-30,

34, 35, 36, 55, 57, 98, 194
CHAPTER IV 358

Physics, ancient, "logic spoiled," 320, 321-2 of ancient philosophy, 315,

320, 321-2, 355 of Aristotle, 228 note, 324 note, 331, 332 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 characteristics 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, 142-3, 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, 130, 135-6
parallelism of evolution with animals, 59-60, 106-8, 116 supporters of all
life, 271 variation of, 85, 86

Plasma, continuity of germinative, 25-6, 42, 78-83

Plastic substances, 255

Plato, 49, 156, 191, 210 note, 316, 318, 319, 320, 321, 327, 330, 347, 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, 257. See Interpenetration

CHAPTER IV 359

Poem, sounds of, distinct to perception; the sense indivisible to intuition,

209 illustrating creation of matter, 240, 319-20

[Greek: poiêtikos, nous], of Aristotle, 322

Polymorphism of ants, bees, and wasps, 140 of insect societies, 157

Polyzoism, 260

Positive reality, 208, 212. See Reality

Positivity, materiality an inversion 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, 273, 281, 305, 306-7,
328, 329

Preëstablished harmony, 205-6, 207

Present, creation of, by past, 5, 20-3, 26-7, 167, 199-202

CHAPTER IV 360

Prevision. See Foreseeing

Primacy of nervous system, 120-6, 252

Primary instinct, 138-9, 168

Primitive organisms, ambiguous forms of, 99, 112, 113, 116, 129, 130

"Procession" in Alexandrian philosophy, 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 system, 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, 283, 296

Pseudoneuroptera, division of labor among, 140

[Greek: pschnê] of Aristotle, 350 of Plotinus, 210 note

Psychic activity, twofold 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
CHAPTER IV 361

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 reversed, 208-9

Psycho-physiological parallelism, 180, 350, 351, 355, 356

Puberty, illustrating crises in evolution, 19, 320-1

Qualitative, evolutionary and extensive becoming, 313 motion, 302-3, 304,

311

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 induction, 216

Quality is change, 299-300 in Eleatic philosophy, 314-5 and quantity in

ancient philosophy, 323-4 and quantity in modern philosophy, 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, rôle 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 experience of the, 213 continuity of the, 302, 329 dichotomy of
CHAPTER IV 362

the, in modern philosophy, 349 imitation of the, by intelligence, 90, 204,

258, 270, 307, 355 obliteration of outlines in the, 11-2, 188, 189, 207-8
representation of the, by science, 203-4

Realism, ancient, 231-2

Realists and idealists alike assume 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 of genera in ancient
philosophy, 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 philosophy, 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 conceptually,
13, 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

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 relaxation, 201

CHAPTER IV 363

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 perception, 204, 238, 359-60

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, 196, 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
recommences in the state of relaxation, 200 will vanishes in complete, 200,
207-8 See Tension

Releasing cause, 73, 74, 115, 118-9, 120

CHAPTER IV 364

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 mathematical order, 225, 226, 230, 231

Representation and action, 143-4, 145, 180 classes of: qualities, forms,
acts, 302-3, 314 and consciousness, 143-4 of motion, 159-60, 303-4, 305,
306-7, 308, 313, 315, 344-5 of the Nought, 273-80, 281-4, 289-317, 327

Represented or internalized action distinguished from externalized action,

144-7, 158-9, 165

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 intellect, 47-8, 237

Reversed psychology: intuitional cosmology, 208

Rhizocephala and animal mobility, 111

Rhumbler, 34 note

Rhythm of duration, 11-2, 127-8, 300-1, 345-7 intelligence adopts the, of

action, 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

CHAPTER IV 365

Ripening, creative evolution as, 47-8, 340-1

Romanes, 139

Roule, 27 note

Roy (Le), Ed., 218 note

Salamandra maculata, vision in, 75

Salensky, 75 note

Same, function of intellect connecting same with same, 199-200, 233, 270

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 impulsion of life, 254-5, 257. See Divergent lines
of evolution

Scholasticism, 370

Science and action, 93, 195, 198, 328-9 ancient, and modern, 329-37,
342-5, 357 astronomy, ancient and modern, 334-5, 336 cartesian geometry
and ancient geometry, 333-4 cinematographical character of modern, 329,
330, 336-7, 340-1, 342, 345-8 conventionality of a certain aspect of, 206-7
and deduction, 212-3 and discontinuity, 161-2 function of, 92, 167-8,
173-4, 176-7, 193-4, 195-6, 198-9, 328-9, 346-7 Galileo's influence on
modern, 333-4, 335 and instinct, 169, 170, 173-4, 175, 193-5 and
intelligence, 176, 177, 193-6 Kepler's influence on modern, 334 and matter,
CHAPTER IV 366

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, 332-3, 335-6, 347-8 and perception,
168 and philosophy, 175-6, 196-7, 208-9, 344, 370 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, 196-7, 198, 199, 207,
208, 218

Sclerosis and ageing, 19

Scolia, paralyzing instinct in, 172

Scope of action indefinitely extended by intelligent instruments, 141 of

Galileo's physics, 357, 370

Scott, 63 note

Sea-urchin and individuality, 13

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, 59-60, 61-2, 63, 64, 68, 95-6, 169, 170
CHAPTER IV 367

Self, coincidence of, with, 199 existence of, means change, 1 ff. knowledge
of, 1 ff.

Senescence, 15-23, 26-7, 42-3

Sensation and space, 202

Sense-perception. See Perception

Sensible flux, 316-7, 318, 321, 322, 327, 343, 345 intuition and
ultra-intellectual, 360-1 object, apogee of, 342-3, 344-5, 349 reality, 314,
317, 319, 327, 328, 352

Sensibility, forms of, 361

Sensitive plant, in illustration of mobility in plants, 109

Sensori-motor system. See Nervous system

Sensuous manifold, 205, 221, 232, 235, 236

Sentiment, poetic, in illustration of individuation, 258, 259

Serkovski, 259 note

Serpula, in illustration of identical 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 mobility, 130-1

Signs, function of, 158, 159, 160 the instrument of science, 329-30
CHAPTER IV 368

Sigwart, 287 note

Silurian epoch, failure of certain species to evolve since, 102

Similarity among individuals of same species the type of generality, 224-6,

228-9, 230-1 and mechanical causality, 44, 45

Simultaneity, to measure time is merely to count simultaneities, 9, 336, 337,

341

Sinuousness of evolution, 71, 98, 102, 212-3

Sitaris, unconscious knowledge of, 146, 147

Situation and magnitude, problems of, 211

Sketching movements, function of consciousness, 207-8

Sleep, 129-31, 135, 181

Snapshot, in illustration of intellectual representation of motion, 305, 306,

313, 315, 344 See View of reality, Cinematographical character, etc. form
defined as a, of transition, 301-2, 317, 318, 321-2, 345

Social instinct, 101, 140, 158, 171-2 life, 138, 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, released by animals, 246, 254 systems,

241-4, 246 note, 256, 270 systems, life in other, 256

Solid, concepts analogous to solids, ix intellect as a solid nucleus, 193, 194

the material of construction and the object of the intellect, 153, 154, 161,
CHAPTER IV 369

162, 251

Solidarity between brain and consciousness, 180, 262 of the parts of

matter, 203, 207-8, 241, 271

Solidification operated by the understanding, 249

[Greek: sôma] in Aristotle, 350

Somnambulism and consciousness, 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 determinations of,
357-9 See Extension

Spatiality atmosphere of, bathing intelligence, 205 degradation of the

extra-spatial, 207 and distinctness, 203, 207, 244, 250, 257-9 and
geometrical space, 203, 211, 213, 218 and mathematical order, 208, 209

Special instincts and environment, 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, 273, 297-8, 306-7, 317,
347-8
CHAPTER IV 370

Spencer, Herbert, xi, xiv, 78-9, 153, 188, 189, 190, 364, 365

Spencer's evolutionism, correspondence 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 instinct in, 172-5

Spiders and paralyzing hymenoptera, 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, 212-3, 217,
218, 219, 222-3, 237, 238, 245, 247-8, 249, 251, 254, 256, 257, 259, 261,
267, 270-1, 272, 276, 343

Spontaneity of life, 86, 237. See Freedom and mechanism, 40 in vegetables,

109 and the willed order, 224

Sport (biol.), 63

Starch, in the function of vegetable 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
CHAPTER IV 371

Stehasny, 124 note

Steam-engine and bronze, parallel 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, 73-4, 75, 76-7, 83, 86, 87, 118-9

Subject and attribute, 147-8

Substance, 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 classes of

representation, 302-4

Substitution essential to representation 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. Juxtaposition

Successors of Kant, 363, 364

Sudden mutations, 28, 62-3, 64-5, 68-9

CHAPTER IV 372

Sun, 115, 241, 323

Superaddition of existence upon nothingness, 276 of order upon disorder,

236, 275

Superimposition. See Measurement of qualities, in induction, 216

Superiority, evolutionary, 133-5, 173, 174-5

Superman, 267

Supraconsciousness, 261

Survival of the fit, 169. See Natural selection

Swim, learning to, as instinctive learning, 193, 194

Symbol, the concept is a, 161, 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 knowledge, 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, Liebniz's philosophy, 347

Systems, isolated, 9-13, 203, 214, 215, 241, 242, 342, 347-9
CHAPTER IV 373

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, 113, 135, 150
antagonistic tendencies in development 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, 135, 150, 181, 246, 254-8 to individuation, 13 life
a tendency to act on inert matter, 96 toward mobility in animals, 109, 110,
113, 127-8, 129-33, 135, 181, 182 the past exists in present tendency, 5 to
reproduce, 13 of species to change, 85-86 mathematical symbols of
tendencies, 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, 237, 239,
300-2 matter the inversion of vital, 239 of personality, 199-200, 201, 207-8,
237, 239, 300

Ternary substances, 121

Theology consequent upon philosophy of ideas, 316

Theoretic fallacies, 263, 264 knowledge and instinct, 177, 268 knowledge
and intellect, 155, 177, 179, 238, 270, 342, 343

Theorizing not the original function of the intellect, 154-5

Theory of knowledge, xiii, 178, 180, 184-5, 197, 204, 207-8, 209, 228-9,
231 of life, xiii, 178, 180, 197

Thermodynamics, 241-2. See Conservation of energy, Degradation of

energy
CHAPTER IV 374

Thesis and antithesis, 205

Thing as distinguished from motion, 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, 339
homogeneous, 17, 18, 163-4, 331-3 as independent variable, 20, 335-7
interval of, 9, 22, 23 as invention, 341-2 in Leibniz's philosophy, 351, 352,
362 and logic, 4, 277 and simultaneity, 9, 336, 337, 341 in modern science
321-37, 341-5 and space in Kant, 205 and space in ancient philosophy,
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 perception 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
CHAPTER IV 375

Transition, form a snapshot view of, 301-2, 316-7, 318, 321, 344-5

Transmissibility of acquired characters, 75-84, 87, 168, 169, 172-3, 225-6,

230-1

Transmission of the vital impetus, 26, 27, 79, 85, 87, 88, 93-4, 110, 126-7,
128, 230, 231, 246, 255, 256, 257, 259, 270

Trigger-action of motor mechanisms, 272

Triton, Regeneration in, 75

Tropism and psychical activity, 35 note

Truth seized in intuition, 318-20

Unconscious effort, 170 instinct, 142-3, 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, 13, 32-3, 46-50, 88-9, 101, 147-8, 149, 152, 162-5,
173-4, 176-7, 178, 195-201, 213, 220, 222-3, 224, 226, 257-9, 261, 266,
270, 271, 313, 361-2, 365 and inert matter, 166, 168, 179, 194-5, 198,
205-6, 207, 219, 355 and the ready-made, xiii, 48, 237, 250, 251, 273, 311,
321, 328-9, 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 determinate evolution is action being, 249

CHAPTER IV 376

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 determinations 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
disorder, 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

Unmaking, the nature of the process 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 organized by, 33-4, 35, 36 matter and
science, 194-6 matter. See inert matter
CHAPTER IV 377

Unwinding cause, 73 of immutability in Greek philosophy, 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, 63-4, 68, 85, 168-9 of color, in lizards, 72, 74 by
deviation, 82-3, 84 of evolutionary type, 23-4, 72 note, 131-2, 137-8, 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 adjectives, 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 intuitionism, 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

CHAPTER IV 378

Virtual actions, 12. See Possible action geometry, 212

Vise, consciousness compressed in a, 179

Vision of God, in Alexandrian philosophy, 322 in molluscs. See Eye of

molluscs, etc. in Salamandra maculata, 75

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 order 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, 43, 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 mechanism, 253-4

Voluntary activity, 110, 252

Vries (de), 24, 63 note, 85

Wasps, instinct in, 140, 172

Weapons and intellect, 137

Weismann, 26, 78, 80-1

CHAPTER IV 379

Will and caprice, 47 and cerebral mechanism, 252 current of, penetrating
matter, 237 insertion of, into reality, 305-6, 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 mathematical order,

231-3 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 classes
of representation, 302-3, 313-4

World, intelligible, 162-3 principle: conciousness, 237, 261

Worms, in illustration of ambiguity of primitive organisms, 130

Yellow-winged sphex, paralyzing instinct in, 172

Zeno on motion, 308-13

Zone of potentialities surrounding acts, 179-80, 181, 264

Zoology, 128-9

Zoospores of algae, in illustration of mobility in plants, 112

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