62 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



in finality again, and a finality this time more than ever 

 charged with anthropomorphic elements. In a word, if 

 the adaptation is passive, if it is mere repetition in the 

 relief of what the conditions give in the mould, it will 

 build up nothing that one tries to make it build ; and 

 if it is active, capable of responding by a calculated solu 

 tion to the problem which is set out in the conditions, 

 that is going further than we do too far, indeed, in 

 our opinion in the direction we indicated in the 

 beginning. But the truth is that there is a surreptitious 

 passing from one of these two meanings to the other, 

 a flight for refuge to the first whenever one is about to 

 be caught in flagrante delicto of final ism by employing 

 the second. It is really the second which serves the 

 usual practice of science, but it is the first that generally 

 provides its philosophy. In any particular case one 

 talks as if the process of adaptation were an effort of 

 the organism to build up a machine capable of turning 

 external circumstances to the best possible account : 

 then one speaks of adaptation /;/ general as if it were 

 the very impress of circumstances, passively received 

 by an indifferent matter. 



But let us come to the examples. It would be 

 interesting first to institute here a general comparison 

 between plants and animals. One cannot fail to be 

 struck with the parallel progress which has been accom 

 plished, on both sides, in the direction of sexuality. 

 Not only is fecundation itself the same in higher plants 

 and in animals, since it consists, in both, in the 

 union of two nuclei that differ in their properties and 

 structure before their union and immediately after 

 become equivalent to each other ; but the preparation 

 of sexual elements goes on in both under like con 

 ditions : it consists essentially in the reduction of the 



