i, DEVELOPMENT OF ANIMAL LIFE 133 



unforeseeable, are the forms it creates in the course 

 of its evolution. More and more indeterminate also, 

 more and more free, is the activity to which these 

 forms serve as the vehicle. A nervous system, with 

 neurones placed end to end in such wise that, at 

 the extremity of each, manifold ways open in which 

 manifold questions present themselves, is a veritable 

 reservoir of inde termination. That the main energy of 

 the vital impulse has been spent in creating apparatus 

 of this kind is, we believe, what a glance over the 

 organized world as a whole easily shows. But con 

 cerning the vital impulse itself a few explanations are 

 necessary. 



It must not be forgotten that the force which is 

 evolving throughout the organized world is a limited 

 force, which is always seeking to transcend itself and 

 always remains inadequate to the work it would fain 

 produce. The errors and puerilities of radical finalism 

 are due to the misapprehension of this point. It has 

 represented the whole of the living world as a construc 

 tion, and a construction analogous to a human work. 

 All the pieces have been arranged with a view to the 

 best possible functioning of the machine. \ Each species 

 has its reason for existence, its part to play, its allotted 

 place ; and all join together, as it were, in a musical 

 concert, wherein the seeming discords are really meant 

 to bring out a fundamental harmony. In short, all 

 goes on in nature as in the works of human genius, 

 where, though the result may be trifling, there is at 

 least perfect adequacy between the object made and 

 the work of making it. 



Nothing of the kind in the evolution of life. There, 

 the disproportion is striking between the work and the 



