5 o CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



realization of an intention. In this sense mechanism 

 is everywhere, and finality everywhere, in the evolu 

 tion of our conduct. But if our action be one that 

 involves the whole of our person and is truly ours, 

 it could not have been foreseen, even though its ante 

 cedents explain it when once it has been accomplished. 

 And though it be the realizing of an intention, it 

 differs, as a present and new reality, from the intention, 

 which can never aim at anything but recommencing or 

 rearranging the past. Mechanism and finalism are 

 therefore, here, only external views of our conduct. 

 They extract its intellectuality. But our conduct slips 

 between them and extends much further. Once again, 

 this does not mean that free action is capricious, un 

 reasonable action. To behave according to caprice is 

 to oscillate mechanically between two or more ready- 

 made alternatives and at length to settle on one of 

 them ; it is no real maturing of an internal state, no 

 real evolution ; it is merely however paradoxical the 

 assertion may seem bending the will to imitate the 

 mechanism of the intellect. A conduct that is truly 

 our own, on the contrary, is that of a will which does 

 not try to counterfeit intellect, and which, remaining 

 itself that is to say, evolving ripens gradually into 

 acts which the intellect will be able to resolve in 

 definitely into intelligible elements without ever reach 

 ing its goal. The free act is incommensurable with 

 the idea, and its &quot; rationality &quot; must be defined by this 

 very incommensurability, which admits the discovery 

 of as much intelligibility within it as we will. Such is 

 the character of our own evolution ; and such also, 

 without doubt, that of the evolution of life. 



Our reason, incorrigibly presumptuous, imagines 

 itself possessed, by right of birth or by right of con- 



