i BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 55 



the light of the present. In short, the classic conception 

 of finality postulates at once too much and too little : 

 it is both too wide and too narrow. In explaining life 

 by intellect, it limits too much the meaning of life : 

 intellect, such at least as we find it in ourselves, has 

 been fashioned by evolution during the course of 

 progress ; it is cut out of something larger, or, rather, 

 it is only the projection, necessarily on a plane, of a 

 reality that possesses both relief and depth. It is this 

 more comprehensive reality that true finalism ought to 

 reconstruct, or, rather, if possible, embrace in one view. 

 But, on the other hand, just because it goes beyond 

 intellect- the faculty of connecting the same with the 

 same, of perceiving and also of producing repetitions 

 this reality is undoubtedly creative, i.e. productive of 

 effects in which it expands and transcends its own being. 

 These effects were therefore not given in it in advance, 

 and so it could not take them for ends, although, when 

 once produced, they admit of a rational interpretation, 

 like that of the manufactured article that has reproduced 

 a model. In short, the theory of final causes does not 

 go far enough when it confines itself to ascribing some 

 intelligence to nature, and it goes too far when it 

 supposes a pre-existence of the future in the present in 

 the form of idea. And the second theory, which sins 

 by excess, is the outcome of the first, which sins by 

 defect. In place of intellect proper must be substituted 

 the more comprehensive reality of which intellect is 

 only the contraction. The future then appears as 

 expanding the present : it was not, therefore, con 

 tained in the present in the form of a represented 

 end. And yet, once realized, it will explain the present 

 as much as the present explains it, and even more ; 

 it must be viewed as an end as much as, and more 



