42 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



from the same postulate, with this sole difference, that 

 in the movement of our finite intellects along succes 

 sive things, whose successiveness is reduced to a mere 

 appearance, it holds in front of us the light with which 

 it claims to guide us, instead of putting it behind. 

 It substitutes the attraction of the future for the 

 impulsion of the past. But succession remains none 

 the less a mere appearance, as indeed does movement 

 itself. In the doctrine of Leibniz, time is reduced to 

 a confused perception, relative to the human stand 

 point, a perception which would vanish, like a rising 

 mist, for a mind seated at the centre of things. 



Yet finalism is not, like mechanism, a doctrine with 

 fixed rigid outlines. It admits of as many inflections 

 as we like. The mechanistic philosophy is to be 

 taken or left : it must be left if the least grain of dust, 

 by straying from the path foreseen by mechanics, should 

 show the slightest trace of spontaneity. The doctrine 

 of final causes, on the contrary, will never be defini 

 tively refuted. If one form of it be put aside, it will 

 take another. Its principle, which is essentially psy 

 chological, is very flexible. It is so extensible, and 

 thereby so comprehensive, that one accepts something 

 of it as soon as one rejects pure mechanism. The 

 v theory we shall put forward in this book will therefore 

 ^necessarily partake of finalism to a certain extent. For 

 that reason it is important to intimate exactly what 

 we are going to take of it, and what we mean to leave. 

 Let us say at once that to thin out the Leibnizian 

 finalism by breaking it into an infinite number of 

 pieces seems to us a step in the wrong direction. 

 This is, however, the tendency of the doctrine of 

 finality. It fully realizes that if the universe as a whole 

 is the carrying out of a plan, this cannot be demon- 



