74 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP 



which, being organized, possesses a special aptitude for 

 receiving it. 



But can an organic structure be likened to an 

 imprint ? We have already called attention to the 

 ambiguity of the term &quot;adaptation.&quot; The gradual 

 complication of a form which is being better and better 

 adapted to the mould of outward circumstances is one 

 thing, the increasingly complex structure of an instru 

 ment which derives more and more advantage from 

 these circumstances is another. In the former case, the 

 matter merely receives an imprint ; in the second, it 

 reacts positively, it solves a problem. Obviously it is 

 this second sense of the word &quot; adapt &quot; that is used 

 when one says that the eye has become better and better 

 adapted to the influence of light. But one passes more 

 or less unconsciously from this sense to the other, and 

 a purely mechanistic biology will strive to make the 

 passive adaptation of an inert matter, which submits 

 to the influence of its environment, mean the same as 

 the active adaptation of an organism which derives from 

 this influence an advantage it can appropriate. It must 

 be owned, indeed, that Nature herself appears to invite 

 our mind to confuse these two kinds of adaptation, for 

 she usually begins by a passive adaptation where, later 

 on, she will build up a mechanism for active response. 

 Thus, in the case before us, it is unquestionable that 

 the first rudiment of the eye is found in the pigment- 

 spot of the lower organisms ; this spot may indeed 

 have been produced physically, by the mere action of 

 light, and there are a great number of intermediaries 

 between the simple spot of pigment and a complicated 

 eye like that of the vertebrates. But, from the fact 

 that we pass from one thing to another by degrees, it 

 does not follow that the two things are of the same 



