102 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



would be so, undoubtedly, if this progress required the 

 conscious or unconscious idea of an end to be attained. 

 But it is really effected in virtue of the original impetus 

 of life ; it is implied in this movement itself, and that 

 is just why it is found in independent lines of evolu 

 tion. If now we are asked why and how it is implied 

 therein, we reply that life is, more than anything 

 else, a tendency to act on inert matter. The direc 

 tion of this action is not predetermined ; hence the 

 unforeseeable variety of forms which life, in evolving, 

 sows along its path. But this action always presents, 

 to some extent, the character of contingency ; it implies 

 at least a rudiment of choice. Now a choice involves 

 the anticipatory idea of several possible actions. 

 Possibilities of action must therefore be marked out 

 for the living being before the action itself. Visual 

 perception is nothing else : l the visible outlines of 

 bodies are the design of our eventual action on them. 

 Vision will be found, therefore, in different degrees in 

 the most diverse animals, and it will appear in the 

 same complexity of structure wherever it has reached 

 the same degree of intensity. 



We have dwelt on these resemblances of structure 

 in general, and on the example of the eye in particular, 

 because we had to define our attitude toward mechanism 

 on the one hand and finalism on the other. It remains 

 for us to describe it more precisely in itself. This we 

 shall now do by showing the divergent results of 

 evolution not as presenting analogies, but as them 

 selves mutually complementary. 



* See, on this subject, Mature et memotre, chap, i. 



