Creative Evolution — Henri Bergson (trans. Arthur Mitchell, 1911)

This twofold result has been obtamed in a particular way on our planet. But it might have been obtained by entirely different means. It was not necessary that hfe should fix its choice mainly upon the carbon of car- bonic acid. What was essential for it was to store solar energy; but, instead of asking the sun to separate, for instance, atoms of oxygen and carbon, it might (theoret- ically at least, and, apart from practical difficulties possibly insurmountable) have put forth other chemical elements, which would then have had to be associated or dissociated by entirely different physical means. And if the element characteristic of the substances that supply energy to the organism had been other than carbon, the element char- acteristic of the plastic substances would probably have been other than nitrogen, and the chemistry of hving bodies would then have been radically different from what it is. The result would have been living forms without any analogy to those we know, whose anatomy would have been different, whose physiology also would have been

256 Creative Evolution

different. Alone, the sensori-motor function would have been preserved, if not in its mechanism, at least in its effects. It 13 therefore probable that life goea on in other planets, in other solar systems also, under forms of which we have no idea, in physical conditions to which it seems to us, from the point of view of our physiology, to be ab- solutely opposed. If its essential aim is to catch up usable energy in order to expend it in explosive actions, it probably chooses, in each solar system and on each planet, as it does on the earth, the fittest means to get this result in the circumstances with which it is con- fronted. That is at least what reasoning by analogy leads to, and we use analogy the wrong way when we declare life to be impossible wherever the circumstances with which it is confronted are other than those on the earth. The truth is that life is possible wherever- energy descends the incline indicated by Camot's law and where a cause of inverse direction can retard the descent — that is to say, probably, in all the worlds suspended from all the stars. We go further: it is not even necessary that life should be concentrated and determined in organisms properly so called, that is, in definite bodies presenting to the flow of energy ready-made though elastic canals. It can be con- ceived (although it can hardly be imagined) that energy might be saved up, and then expended on varying bnea running across a matter not yet solidified. Every es- sential of life would still be there, since there would still be slow accumulation of energy and sudden release. There would hardly be more difference between this vitality, vague and formless, and the definite vitality we know, than there is, in our psychical life, between the state of dream and the state of waking. Such may have been the condition of life in our nebula before the condensation of matter was complete, if it be true that life springs forward

The Meaning of Evolution

at the very moment when, as the effect of an inverse move- ment, the nebular matter appears.

It is therefore conceivable that life might have assumed a totally different outward appearance and designed forms very different from those we know. With another chemical substratum, in other physical conditions, the impulsion would have remained the same, but it would have split up very differently in course of progress; and the whole would have traveled another road — whether shorter or longer who can tell? In any case, in the entire series of living beings no term would have been what it now is. Now, was it necessary that there should be a series, or terms? Why should not the unique impetus have been impressed on a unique body, which might have gone on evolving?

This question arises, no doubt, from the comparisoa of life to an impetus. And it must be compared to an impetus, because no imago borrowed from the physical world can give more nearly the idea of it. But it is only an image. In reaUty, life is of the psychological order, and it is of the essence of the psychical to enfold a confused plurality of interpenetrating terras. 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 determinatioas of space or categories of the understanding, whichever we will, spatiality and in- tellectuality being molded on each other. But what is of | psychical nature cannot entirely correspond with space, I nor enter perfectly into the categories of the understanding. Is my own person, at a given moment, one or manifold? If I declare it one, inner voices arise and protest — ^those of the sensations, feelings, ideas, among which my in-

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dividuality is distributed. But, if I make it distinctly manifold, my consciousness rebels quite as strongly; it affirms that my sensations, my feelings, my thoughts are abstractions which I effect on myself, and that each of my states implies all the others. I am then (we must adopt the language of the understanding, since only the understanding has a language) a miity that is multiple and a multiplicity that is one;' but unity and multiplicity are only views of my personality taken by an understand- ing that directs its categories at me; I enter neither into one nor into the other nor into both at once, although both, united, may give a fair imitation of the mutual interpenetration and continuity that I find at the base of my own self. Such is my inner life, and such also is life in general. While, in its contact with matter, life is comparable to an impulsion or an impetus, regarded in itself it is an immensity of potentiality, a mutual encroach- ment of thousands aad 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 determinea 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 thia multiplicity of individuated ele- ments, and yet, in fact, it is the materiality of language that creates it.

But through the words, lines and verses runs the simple inspiration which is the whole poem. So, among the

'We have dwelt on this point in an article entitled "Introductkiii k la mitaphyaique" [Itevue de milaphyiique el de morale, January, L9(KI, pp. 1-25).

Meaning of Evolution

dissociated individuals, one life goes on moving: every- where the tendency to individualize la opposed and at the same time completed by an antagonistic and com- plementary tendency to associate, as if the manifold unity of Ufe, drawn in the direction of multiplicity, made so much the more effort to withdraw itself on to itself. A part is no sooner detached than it tends to reunite itself, if not to all the rest, at least to what is nearest to it. Hence, throughout the whole realm of life, a balanc- ing between individuation and association. Individuals join together into a society; but the society, as soon aa formed, tends to melt the associated individuals into a new organism, so as to become itself an individual, able in its turr to be part and parcel of a new association. At the lowest degree of the scale of organisms we already find veritable associations, microbial colonies, and in these associations, according to a recent work, a tendency to individuate by the constitution of a nucleus." The same tendency is met with again at a higher stage, in the proto- phytes, which, once having quitted the parent cell by way of division, remain united to each other by the gelatinous substance that surrounds them — also in those protozoa which begin by mingling their pseudopodia and end by welding themselves together. The "colonial" theory of the genesis of higher organisms is well known. The protozoa, consisting of one single cell, are supposed to have formed, by assemblage, aggregates which, relating themselves together in their turn, have given rise to aggregates of aggregates; so organisms more and more complicated, and also more and ntore differentiated, are bom of the association of organisms barely differ- entiated and elementary." In this extreme form, the

' Cf , a paper written (in Russian) by Serkovski. and reviewed in the Annie bioUrgique, 1898, p. 317.

Ed. Ferrier, La Coton-iea animalaa, Paris, 1867 (2ad edition).

(Chai^^^

theory is open to grave objections; more and more the idea seema to be gaining ground, that polyzoism is an exceptional and abnormal fact." But it is none the less true that things happen as if every higher organism was bora 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 lias made the cells by means of dissociation,' But this itself reveals to us, in the genesis of the individual, a haunting of the social form, as if the individual could develop only on the condition that its sub- stance should be spHt up into elements ha\'ing themselves an appearance of individuality and united among them- selves by an appearance of sociahty. There are numerous cases in which nature seems to hesitate between the two forms, and to ask herself if she shall make a society or an individual. The slightest push is enough, then, to make the balance weigh on one side or the other. If we take an infusorian sufficiently large, such as the Stentor, and cut it into two halves each containing a part of the nu- cleus, each of the two halves will generate an independent Stentor; but if we divide it incompletely, so that a pro- toplasmic communication is left between the two halves, we shall see them execute, each from its side, correspond- ing movements: so that in this case it is enough that a thread should be maintained or cut in order that life should affect the social or the individual form. Thus, in rudimentary organisms consisting of a single cell, we already find that the apparent individuahty of the whole

' Delage, L'HiridiU, Zud edition, Paris, 1903, p. 97. Cf. hy the SBmg kutbor, ' ' La ConceptioD poIyzolQue des f tres" (Revue scwilijiquc, 1896, pp. 641-653).

' This is the theory mointaiaed by KunBller, Delage, Sedgwick, L&bM, etc. lie development, with bibUograpIiicut references, will be found hi the work of Buaquet, Z.cs krea vivanl^, Paris, 1S0»,

is the composition of an undefined number of potential individualities potentially associated. But, from top to bottom of the series of living beings, the same law is mani- fested. And it is this that we express when we say that unity and multiplicity are categories of inert matter, that the vital impetus is neither pure unity nor pure multiplicity, and that if the matter to which it communi- cates itself compels it to choose one of the two, its choice will never be definitive: it will leap from one to the other ., indefinitely. The evolution of life in the double direction of individuality and association has therefore nothing accidental about it: it is due to the very nature of hfe.

Essential also is the progress to reflextion. If our analysis 18 correct, it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, that is at the origin of life. Consciousness, or suprar consciousness, is the name for the rocket whose extin- guished fragments fall back as matter; consciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them up into organisms. But this consciousness, which is a need of creation, is made manifest to itself only where creation is possible. It lies dormant when life is con- demned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the possi- bility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of the switch- board on which the paths called sensory and the paths called motor mtersect — 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