238 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



lines of evolution. But, without looking so far, we 

 may presume that the reproduction only of the type of 

 the ancestor by his descendants is an entirely different 

 thing from the repetition of the same composition of 

 forces which yields an identical resultant. When we 

 think of the infinity of infinitesimal elements and of 

 infinitesimal causes that concur in the genesis of a 

 living being, when we reflect that the absence or the 

 deviation of one of them would spoil everything, the 

 first impulse of the mind is to consider this army of 

 little workers as watched over by a skilled foreman, the 

 &quot;vital principle,&quot; which is ever repairing faults, cor 

 recting effects of neglect or absent-mindedness, putting 

 things back in place : this is how we try to express the 

 difference between the physical and the vital order, the 

 former making the same combination of causes give 

 the same combined effect, the latter securing the 

 constancy of the effect even when there is some wavering 

 in the causes. But that is only a comparison ; on 

 reflection, we find that there can be no foreman, for 

 the very simple reason that there are no workers. 

 The causes and elements that physico-chemical analysis 

 discovers are real causes and elements, no doubt, as 

 far as the facts of organic destruction are concerned ; 

 they are then limited in number. But vital phenomena, 

 properly so called, or facts of organic creation open up 

 to us, when we analyse them, the perspective of an 

 analysis passing away to infinity : whence it may be 

 inferred that the manifold causes and elements are here 

 only views of the mind, attempting an ever closer and 

 closer imitationof theoperation of nature, while the opera 

 tion imitated is an indivisible act. The likeness between 

 individuals of the same species has thus an entirely 

 different meaning, an entirely different origin, to that 



