i TRANSFORMISM 27 



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 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. 



