5 6 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



than, a result. Our intellect has a right to consider 

 the future abstractly from its habitual point of view, 

 being itself an abstract view of the cause of its own 

 being. 



It is true that the cause may then seem beyond our 

 grasp. Already the finalist theory of life eludes all 

 precise verification. What if we go beyond it in one of 

 its directions ? Here, in fact, after a necessary digres 

 sion, we are back at the question which we regard as 

 essential : can the insufficiency of mechanism be proved 

 by facts ? We said that if this demonstration is 

 possible, it is on condition of frankly accepting the 

 evolutionist hypothesis. We must now show that if 

 mechanism is insufficient to account for evolution, the 

 way of proving this insufficiency is not to stop at the 

 classic conception of finality, still less to contract or 

 attenuate it, but, on the contrary, to go further. 



Let us indicate at once the principle of our demon 

 stration. We said of life that, from its origin, it is 

 the continuation of one and the same impetus, 

 divided into divergent lines of evolution. Something 

 has grown, something has developed by a series of 

 additions which have been so many creations. This 

 very development has brought about a dissociation of 

 tendencies which were unable to grow beyond a certain 

 point without becoming mutually incompatible. Strictly 

 speaking, there is nothing to prevent our imagining 

 that the evolution of life might have taken place in one 

 single individual by means of a series of transformations 

 spread over thousands of ages. Or, instead of a single 

 individual, any number might be supposed, succeeding 

 each other in a unilinear series. In both cases evolu 

 tion would have had, so to speak, one dimension only. 

 But evolution has actually taken place through millions 



