134 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



result. From the bottom to the top of the organized 

 world we do indeed find one great effort ; but most 

 often this effort turns short, sometimes paralysed by 

 contrary forces, sometimes diverted from what it should 

 do by what it does, absorbed by the form it is engaged 

 in taking, hypnotized by it as by a mirror. Even in its 

 most perfect works, though it seems to have triumphed 

 over external resistances and also over its own, it is 

 at the mercy of the materiality which it has had to 

 assume. It is what each of us may experience in himself. 

 Our freedom, in the very movements by which 

 it is affirmed, creates the growing habits that will 

 stifle it if it fails to renew itself by a constant 

 effort : it is dogged by automatism. The most living 

 thought becomes frigid in the formula that expresses it. 

 The word turns against the idea. The letter kills the 

 spirit. And our most ardent enthusiasm, as soon as 

 it is externalized into action, is so naturally con 

 gealed into the cold calculation of interest or vanity, 

 the one takes so easily the shape of the other, that 

 we might confuse them together, doubt our own 

 sincerity, deny goodness and love, if we did not 

 know that the dead retain for a time the features 

 of the living. 



The profound cause of this discordance lies in 

 an irremediable difference of rhythm. Life in general 

 is mobility itself; particular manifestations of life 

 accept this mobility reluctantly, and constantly lag 

 behind. It is always going ahead ; they want to 

 mark time. Evolution in general would fain go 

 on in a straight line ; each special evolution is a 

 kind of circle. Like eddies of dust raised by the 

 wind as it passes, the living turn upon themselves, 

 borne up by the great blast of life. They are therefore 



