54 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



stream of life the more do diverse tendencies appear 

 complementary to each other. Thus the wind at a 

 street corner divides into diverging currents which are 

 all one and the same gust. Harmony, or rather 

 &quot; complementarity,&quot; is revealed only in the mass, in 

 tendencies rather than in states. Especially (and this 

 is the point on which finalism has been most seriously 

 mistaken) harmony is rather behind us than before. It 

 is due to an identity of impulsion and not to a common 

 aspiration. It would be futile to try to assign to life 

 an end, in the human sense of the word. To speak of 

 an end is to think of a pre-existing model which has 

 only to be realized. It is to suppose, therefore, that 

 all is given, and that the future can be read in the 

 present. It is to believe that life, in its movement and 

 in its entirety, goes to work like our intellect, which 

 is only a motionless and fragmentary view of life, and 

 which naturally takes its stand outside of time. Life, 

 on the contrary, progresses and endures in time. Of 

 course, when once the road has been travelled, we 

 can glance over it, mark its direction, note this in 

 psychological terms and speak as if there had been 

 pursuit of an end. Thus shall we speak ourselves. 

 But, of the road which was going to be travelled, the 

 human mind could have nothing to say, for the road 

 has been created pan passu with the act of travelling 

 over it, being nothing but the direction of this act itself. 

 At every instant, then, evolution must admit of a 

 psychological interpretation which is, from our point 

 of view, the best interpretation ; but this explanation 

 has neither value nor even significance except retrospec 

 tively. Never could the finalistic interpretation, such as 

 we shall propose it, be taken for an anticipation of the 

 future. It is a particular mode of viewing the past in 



