ni LAWS AND GENERA 237 



Beethoven, which is genius, originality, and therefore 

 unforeseeability itself. 



But it is exceptional for order of the first kind to 

 take so distinct a form. Ordinarily, it presents features 

 that we have every interest in confusing with those of 

 the opposite order. It is quite certain, for instance, 

 that if we could view the evolution of life in its entirety, 

 the spontaneity of its movement and the unforesee 

 ability of its procedures would thrust themselves on 

 our attention. But what we meet in our daily experi 

 ence is a certain determinate living being, certain special 

 manifestations of life, which repeat, almost^ forms and 

 facts already known ; indeed, the similarity of structure 

 that we find everywhere between what generates and 

 what is generated a similarity that enables us to 

 include any number of living individuals in the same 

 group is to our eyes the very type of the generic : 

 the inorganic genera seem to us to take living genera 

 as models. Thus the vital order, such as it is offered to 

 us piecemeal in experience, presents the same character 

 and performs the same function as the physical order : 

 both cause experience to repeat itself^ both enable our 

 mind to generalise. In reality, this character has 

 entirely different origins in the two cases, and even 

 opposite meanings. In the second case, the type of 

 this character, its ideal limit, as also its foundation, is 

 the geometrical necessity in virtue of which the same 

 components give the same resultant. In the first case, 

 this character involves, on the contrary, the interven 

 tion of something which manages to obtain the same 

 total effect although the infinitely complex elementary 

 causes may be quite different. We insisted on this 

 last point in our first chapter, when we showed how 

 identical structures are to be met with on independent 



