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1dvngM of the AritUMian Society, VOI0. ix. and x., and Hibberi Journal for July, 1910. CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Evoldtidn of Ld-e— Mechahibu a Of duntioD in general — Unorganized bodiea and abstract time — Orgaoizod bodiea and real duration — ^Individuality and the process of growing old ...... Of tranBrormism and the different ways of interpreting it^— Radi- cal mechanism and real duration: the relation of biology to physics and chemistry — Radical fmalism and real dut the reUtioD of biology to philosophy The quest of a criterion — Examination of the various theortc with r^ard to a particular example— Darwin and ii variation^De Vriea and audden varjation — Eimer and or- thogeneaia — Neo-Lamarckiam and the hereditability of acquired charactera ....... RMult of the inquiry — The vital impettie .... General idea ot the evolutionary proceaa— Growth— Divergent and complementary tendenciea — The meaning of progresa and of adaptation ....... The relation of the animal to the plant— General tendency of animal life — The development of animal life . The main directions of the evoluljoa of hfe: torpor, intelligence. The nature of the intellect ....... The nature of instinct ....... lite and oonscioufnesa — The apparent place of man in nature CREATIYE EVOLUTION CHAPTER III 1 Relation of the problem o( 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 geoeeds of matter and intelligence — Geometry ^^^| inherent in matter-— Geometrical tendency of the intellect ^^^| — Geometry and deduction — Geometry and induction — ^^^| Physical kws ...... ^^^^1 Sketch of a theory of knowledge baaed on the BnalysiB of the ^^^| idea of Disorder — Two opposed forms of order: the prob- ^^^| lem of genera and the problem of laws — The idea of "dis- ^^^^ order" an oscillation of tbe intellect between the two kinds of order 220 Creation and evolution — Ideal genesia of matter — The origin and function of life — The essential and the accidental in the vital process and in the evolutionary movement — Man- kind— Tbe Ute of the body and the life of the spirit . . 236 CHAPTER IV Thi Cinematcorapbical IiIechanisu of Thouobt and thb Mechanistic Iu.vaio.v — A Glance at thb HtsroBr or Sr STEMS— Real BEcouitfa anu Faiab Evoi-moNiBM Sketch of a criticism of philosophical systems, based on the analysis of the idea of Immutability and of the idea of "Nothing" — Relation of metaphysical problems to the idea of ' ' Nothing"— Real meaning of this idea Form and Becoming ....... The phikisophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming- Plato and Aristotle — The yiatural trend of the intellect Becoming in modem science: two views of Time. The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz ....... The Criticism of Kant ......
2and Becoming ....... The phikisophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming- Plato and Aristotle — The yiatural trend of the intellect Becoming in modem science: two views of Time. The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz ....... The Criticism of Kant ...... The evolutionism of Spencer I INTRODUCTION Se 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 ua in the faculty of understanding an appendage of the faculty of acting, a more and more precise, more and more complex and supple adaptation of the consciousness of living be- ings to the conditions of existence that are made for them. Hence should result this consequence that our intellect, in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent the relations of external things among themselves — in short, to think matter. Such will indeed be one of the conclusions of the present essay. We shall see that the human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects, more especially among solids, where our action finds ita fulcrum and our industry its tools; that our concepts have been formed on the model of sohds; that our logic is, pre-eminently, the logic of solids; that, consequently, our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is revealed . the Idnship of logical thought with unorganized matter, 1 where the intellect has only to follow its natural move- ment, after the lightest possible contact with experience I order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that ex- rience is following behind it and will ju.stify it invariably. But from this it must also follow that our thought, I its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the ne nature of life, the full meauiag of the evolutionary CREATIVE EVOLUTION 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.
3fe: 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 juat that of which we should never have thought. Yet evolutionist philosophy does not hesitate to extend to the things of life the same methods of explanation which have succeeded in the case of unorganized matter. It begins by showing us in the intellect a local effect of evo- lution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow passage open to their action; and lo! forgetting what it has just told us, it makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can illuminate the world. Boldly it proceeds, with the powers of conceptual thought alone, to the ideal ^ INTRODUCTION ^Beeonstniction of all things, even of life. True, it hurtles ^ in its course against such formidable difficulties, it sees its logic end in such strange contradictions, that it very speedily renounces its first ambition. "It is no longer reality itself," it says, "that it will reconstruct, but only an imitation of the real, or rather a symbolical image; the essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always; we move among relations; the absolute is not in our prov- ince; we are brought to a stand before the Unknowable." — But for the human intellect, after too much pride, this la really an excess of humihty. If the intellectual form of the living being has been gradually modeled on the recip- rocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their I toatcrial environment, how should it not reveal to us some- I thing of the very essence of which these bodies are made? ition cannot move in the unreal. A mind bom to specu- ? or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, night deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it — as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an in- tellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling its object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something " of the absolute.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1dvngM of the AritUMian Society, VOI0. ix. and x., and Hibberi Journal for July, 1910. CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Evoldtidn of Ld-e— Mechahibu a Of duntioD in general — Unorganized bodiea and abstract time — Orgaoizod bodiea and real duration — ^Individuality and the process of growing old ...... Of tranBrormism and the different ways of interpreting it^— Radi- cal mechanism and real duration: the relation of biology to physics and chemistry — Radical fmalism and real dut the reUtioD of biology to philosophy The quest of a criterion — Examination of the various theortc with r^ard to a particular example— Darwin and ii variation^De Vriea and audden varjation — Eimer and or- thogeneaia — Neo-Lamarckiam and the hereditability of acquired charactera ....... RMult of the inquiry — The vital impettie .... General idea ot the evolutionary proceaa— Growth— Divergent and complementary tendenciea — The meaning of progresa and of adaptation ....... The relation of the animal to the plant— General tendency of animal life — The development of animal life . The main directions of the evoluljoa of hfe: torpor, intelligence. The nature of the intellect ....... The nature of instinct ....... lite and oonscioufnesa — The apparent place of man in nature CREATIYE EVOLUTION CHAPTER III 1 Relation of the problem o( 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 geoeeds of matter and intelligence — Geometry ^^^| inherent in matter-— Geometrical tendency of the intellect ^^^| — Geometry and deduction — Geometry and induction — ^^^| Physical kws ...... ^^^^1 Sketch of a theory of knowledge baaed on the BnalysiB of the ^^^| idea of Disorder — Two opposed forms of order: the prob- ^^^| lem of genera and the problem of laws — The idea of "dis- ^^^^ order" an oscillation of tbe intellect between the two kinds of order 220 Creation and evolution — Ideal genesia of matter — The origin and function of life — The essential and the accidental in the vital process and in the evolutionary movement — Man- kind— Tbe Ute of the body and the life of the spirit . . 236 CHAPTER IV Thi Cinematcorapbical IiIechanisu of Thouobt and thb Mechanistic Iu.vaio.v — A Glance at thb HtsroBr or Sr STEMS— Real BEcouitfa anu Faiab Evoi-moNiBM Sketch of a criticism of philosophical systems, based on the analysis of the idea of Immutability and of the idea of "Nothing" — Relation of metaphysical problems to the idea of ' ' Nothing"— Real meaning of this idea Form and Becoming ....... The phikisophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming- Plato and Aristotle — The yiatural trend of the intellect Becoming in modem science: two views of Time. The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz ....... The Criticism of Kant ......
2and Becoming ....... The phikisophy of Forms and its conception of Becoming- Plato and Aristotle — The yiatural trend of the intellect Becoming in modem science: two views of Time. The metaphysical interpretation of modern science: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz ....... The Criticism of Kant ...... The evolutionism of Spencer I INTRODUCTION Se 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 ua in the faculty of understanding an appendage of the faculty of acting, a more and more precise, more and more complex and supple adaptation of the consciousness of living be- ings to the conditions of existence that are made for them. Hence should result this consequence that our intellect, in the narrow sense of the word, is intended to secure the perfect fitting of our body to its environment, to represent the relations of external things among themselves — in short, to think matter. Such will indeed be one of the conclusions of the present essay. We shall see that the human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects, more especially among solids, where our action finds ita fulcrum and our industry its tools; that our concepts have been formed on the model of sohds; that our logic is, pre-eminently, the logic of solids; that, consequently, our intellect triumphs in geometry, wherein is revealed . the Idnship of logical thought with unorganized matter, 1 where the intellect has only to follow its natural move- ment, after the lightest possible contact with experience I order to go from discovery to discovery, sure that ex- rience is following behind it and will ju.stify it invariably. But from this it must also follow that our thought, I its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the ne nature of life, the full meauiag of the evolutionary CREATIVE EVOLUTION 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.
3fe: 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 juat that of which we should never have thought. Yet evolutionist philosophy does not hesitate to extend to the things of life the same methods of explanation which have succeeded in the case of unorganized matter. It begins by showing us in the intellect a local effect of evo- lution, a flame, perhaps accidental, which lights up the coming and going of living beings in the narrow passage open to their action; and lo! forgetting what it has just told us, it makes of this lantern glimmering in a tunnel a Sun which can illuminate the world. Boldly it proceeds, with the powers of conceptual thought alone, to the ideal ^ INTRODUCTION ^Beeonstniction of all things, even of life. True, it hurtles ^ in its course against such formidable difficulties, it sees its logic end in such strange contradictions, that it very speedily renounces its first ambition. "It is no longer reality itself," it says, "that it will reconstruct, but only an imitation of the real, or rather a symbolical image; the essence of things escapes us, and will escape us always; we move among relations; the absolute is not in our prov- ince; we are brought to a stand before the Unknowable." — But for the human intellect, after too much pride, this la really an excess of humihty. If the intellectual form of the living being has been gradually modeled on the recip- rocal actions and reactions of certain bodies and their I toatcrial environment, how should it not reveal to us some- I thing of the very essence of which these bodies are made? ition cannot move in the unreal. A mind bom to specu- ? or to dream, I admit, might remain outside reality, night deform or transform the real, perhaps even create it — as we create the figures of men and animals that our imagination cuts out of the passing cloud. But an in- tellect bent upon the act to be performed and the reaction to follow, feeling its object so as to get its mobile impression at every instant, is an intellect that touches something " of the absolute.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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