i RADICAL MECHANISM 39 



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 use 

 less, and even unreal. The essence of mechanical 

 explanation, in fact, is to regarcPthe future and the 



