226 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



CHAP. 



does this work, and indeed, independently of all con 

 sciousness, the living body itself is so constructed that 

 it can extract from the successive situations in which 

 it finds itself the similarities which interest it, and so 

 respond to the stimuli by appropriate reactions. But 

 it is a far cry from a mechanical expectation and reaction 

 of the body, to induction properly so called, which is 

 an intellectual operation. Induction rests on the belief 

 that there are causes and effects, and that the same 

 effects follow the same causes. Now, if we examine 

 this double belief, this is what we find. It implies, in 

 the first place, that reality is decomposable into groups, 

 which can be practically regarded as isolated and in 

 dependent. If I boil water in a kettle on a stove, the 

 operation and the objects that support it are, in reality, 

 bound up with a multitude of other objects and a 

 multitude of other operations ; in the end, I should 

 find that our entire solar system is concerned in what 

 is being done at this particular point of space. But, 

 in a certain measure, and for the special end I am 

 pursuing, I may admit that things happen as if the 

 group water-kettle-stove were an independent microcosm. 

 That is my first affirmation. Now, when I say that 

 this microcosm will always behave in the same way, 

 that the heat will necessarily, at the end of a certain 

 time, cause the boiling of the water, I admit that it is 

 sufficient that a certain number of elements of the 

 system be given in order that the system should be 

 complete ; it completes itself automatically, I am not free 

 to complete it in thought as I please. The stove, the 

 kettle and the water being given, with a certain interval 

 of duration, it seems to me that the boiling, which 

 experience showed me yesterday to be the only thing 

 wanting to complete the system, will complete it 



