io 4 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



and very insinuating, bending to physical and chemical 

 forces, consenting even to go a part of the way with 

 them, like the switch that adopts for a while the direc 

 tion of the rail it is endeavouring to leave. Of phe 

 nomena in the simplest forms of life, it is hard to say 

 whether they are still physical and chemical or whether 

 they are already vital. Life had to enter thus into the 

 habits of inert matter, in order to draw it little by 

 little, magnetized, as it were, to another track. The 

 animate forms that first appeared were therefore of 

 extreme simplicity. They were probably tiny masses of 

 scarcely differentiated protoplasm, outwardly resembling 

 the amoeba observable to-day, but possessed of the 

 tremendous internal push that was to raise them even 

 to the highest forms of life. That in virtue of this 

 push the first organisms sought to grow as much as 

 possible, seems likely. But organized matter has a 

 limit of expansion that is very quickly reached ; beyond 

 a certain point it divides instead of growing. Ages of 

 effort and prodigies of subtlety were probably necessary 

 for life to get past this new obstacle. It succeeded in 

 inducing an increasing number of elements, ready to 

 divide, to remain united. By the division of labour it 

 knotted between them an indissoluble bond. The 

 complex and quasi-discontinuous organism is thus 

 made to function as would a continuous living mass 

 which had simply grown bigger. 



But the real and profound causes of division were 

 those which life bore within its bosom. For life is 

 tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop 

 in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, 

 divergent directions among which its impetus is 

 divided. This we observe in ourselves, in the evolution 

 of that special tendency which we call our character. 



