! THE VITAL IMPETUS 99 



For us, the whole of an organized machine may, 

 strictly speaking, represent the whole of the organizing 

 work (this is, however, only approximately true), yet 

 the parts of the machine do not correspond to parts of 

 the work, because the materiality of this machine does not 

 represent a sum of means employed^ but a sum of obstacles 

 avoided : it is a negation rather than a positive reality. 

 So, as we have shown in a former study, vision is a 

 power which should attain by right an infinity of things 

 inaccessible to our eyes. But such a vision would not 

 be continued into action ; it might suit a phantom, but 

 not a living being. The vision of a living being is an 

 effective vision, limited to objects on which the being 

 can act : it is a vision that is canalized^ and the visual 

 apparatus simply symbolizes the work of canalizing. 

 Therefore the creation of the visual apparatus is no 

 more explained by the assembling of its anatomic 

 elements than the digging of a canal could be ex 

 plained by the heaping-up of the earth which might 

 have formed its banks. A mechanistic theory would 

 maintain that the earth had been brought cart-load by 

 cart-load ; fmalism would add that it had not been 

 dumped down at random, that the carters had followed 

 a plan. But both theories would be mistaken, for the 

 canal has been made in another way. 



With greater precision, we may compare the process 

 by which nature constructs an eye to the simple act by 

 which we raise the hand. But we supposed at first that 

 the hand met with no resistance. Let us now imagine 

 that, instead of moving in air, the hand has to pass 

 through iron filings which are compressed and offer 

 resistance to it in proportion as it goes forward. At a 

 certain moment the hand will have exhausted its effort, 

 and, at this very moment, the filings will be massed and 



