n DIVERGENT TENDENCIES 105 



Each of us, glancing back over his history, will find 

 that his child-personality, though indivisible, united 

 in itself divers persons, which could remain blended 

 just because they were in their nascent state : this 

 indecision, so charged with promise, is one of the 

 greatest charms of childhood. But these interwoven 

 personalities become incompatible in course of growth, 

 and, as each of us can live but one life, a choice must 

 perforce be made. We choose in reality without 

 ceasing ; without ceasing, also, we abandon many things. 

 The route we pursue in time is strewn with the 

 remains of all that we began to be, of all that we might 

 have become. But nature, which has at command an 

 incalculable number of lives, is in no wise bound to 

 make such sacrifices. She preserves the different 

 tendencies that have bifurcated in their growth. She 

 creates with them diverging series of species that will 

 evolve separately. 



These series may, moreover, be of unequal import 

 ance. The author who begins a novel puts into his 

 hero many things which he is obliged to discard as he 

 goes on. Perhaps he will take them up later in other 

 books, and make new characters with them, who will 

 seem like extracts from, or rather like complements of, 

 the first ; but they will almost always appear somewhat 

 poor and limited in comparison with the original 

 character. So with regard to the evolution of life. 

 The bifurcations on the way have been numerous, but 

 there have been many blind alleys beside the two or 

 three highways ; and of these highways themselves, 

 only one, that which leads through the vertebrates up 

 to man, has been wide enough to allow free passage to 

 the full breath of life. We get this impression when 

 we compare the societies of bees and ants, for instance, 



