2c CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



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 in 

 dividual 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 dura 

 tion, a persistence of the past in the present, and so an 

 appearance, at least, of organic memory. 



The present state of an unorganized body depends ex 

 clusively on what happened at the previous instant ; and 

 likewise the position of the material points of a system 

 defined and isolated by science is determined by the 

 position of these same points at the moment immedi 

 ately before. In other words, the laws that govern 



