i2 4 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



mentary in certain points is not, in our opinion, 

 produced, in course of progress, by a reciprocal adapta 

 tion ; on the contrary, it is complete only at the start. 

 It arises from an original identity, from the fact that 

 the evolutionary process, splaying out like a sheaf, 

 sunders, in proportion to their simultaneous growth, 

 terms which at first completed each other so well that 

 they coalesced. 



Now, the elements into which a tendency splits up 

 are far from possessing the same importance, or, above 

 all, the same power to evolve. We have just dis 

 tinguished three different kingdoms, if one may so 

 express it, in the organized world. While the first 

 comprises only micro-organisms which have remained 

 in the rudimentary state, animals and vegetables have 

 taken their flight toward very lofty fortunes. Such, 

 indeed, is generally the case when a tendency divides. 

 Among the divergent developments to which it 

 gives rise, some go on indefinitely, others come more 

 or less quickly to the end of their tether. These latter 

 do not issue directly from the primitive tendency, but 

 from one of the elements into which it has divided ; 

 they are residual developments made and left behind 

 on the way by some truly elementary tendency which 

 continues to evolve. Now, these truly elementary 

 tendencies, we think, bear a mark by which they may 

 be recognised. 



This mark is like a trace, still visible in each, of 

 what was in the original tendency of which they re 

 present the elementary directions. The elements of a 

 tendency are not like objects set beside each other in 

 space and mutually exclusive, but rather like psychic 

 states, each of which, although it be itself to begin 

 with, yet partakes of others, and so virtually includes 



