236 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



escape it, different names would have to be given to 

 the two kinds of order, and that is not easy, because of 

 the variety and variability of the forms they take. The 

 order of the second kind may be defined as geometry, 

 which is its extreme limit ; more generally, it is that 

 kind of order that is concerned whenever a relation of 

 necessary determination is found between causes and 

 effects. It evokes ideas ot inertia, of passivity, of 

 automatism. As to the first kind of order, it oscillates 

 no doubt around finality ; and yet we cannot define it 

 as finality, for it is sometimes above, sometimes below. 

 In its highest forms, it is more than finality, for of 

 a free action or a work of art we may say that they 

 show a perfect order, and yet they can only be expressed 

 in terms of ideas approximately, and after the event. 

 Life in its entirety, regarded as a creative evolution, is 

 something analogous ; it transcends finality, if we 

 understand by finality the realization of an idea con 

 ceived or conceivable in advance. The category of 

 finality is therefore too narrow for life in its entirety. 

 It is, on the other hand, often too wide for a particular 

 manifestation of life taken separately. Be that as it 

 may, it is with the vital that we have here to do, and the 

 whole present study strives to prove that the vital is 

 in the direction of the voluntary. We may say then 

 that this first kind of order is that of the vital or of 

 the willed, in opposition to the second, which is that of 

 the inert and the automatic. Common sense instinctively 

 distinguishes between the two kinds of order, at least 

 in the extreme cases ; instinctively, also, it brings them 

 together. We say of astronomical phenomena that 

 they manifest an admirable order, meaning by this 

 that they can be foreseen mathematically. And we 

 find an order no less admirable in a symphony of 



