2 4 o CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



the same word for practice, but which does not authorize 

 us at all, in the speculative domain, to confuse them in 

 the same definition. 



The ancients, indeed, did not ask why nature 

 submits to laws, but why it is ordered according to 

 genera. The idea of genus corresponds more especially 

 to an objective reality in the domain of life, where it 

 expresses an unquestionable fact, heredity. Indeed, 

 there can only be genera where there are individual 

 objects ; now, while the organized being is cut out from 

 the general mass of matter by his very organization, 

 that is to say naturally, it is our perception which cuts 

 inert matter into distinct bodies. It is guided in this 

 by the interests of action, by the nascent reactions that 

 our body indicates that is, as we have shown else 

 where, 1 by the potential genera that are trying to gain 

 existence. In this, then, genera and individuals 

 determine one another by a semi-artificial operation 

 entirely relative to our future action on things. Never 

 theless the ancients did not hesitate to put all genera 

 in the same rank, to attribute the same absolute 

 existence to all of them. Reality thus being a system 

 of genera, it is to the generality of the genera (that is, 

 in effect, to the generality expressive of the vital order) 

 that the generality of laws itself had to be brought. It 

 is interesting, in this respect, to compare the Aristotelian 

 theory of the fall of bodies with the explanation 

 furnished by Galileo. Aristotle is concerned solely 

 with the concepts &quot; high &quot; and &quot; low,&quot; &quot; own proper 

 place&quot; as distinguished from &quot;place occupied,&quot; &quot;natural 

 movement &quot; and &quot; forced movement &quot; ; 2 the physical 



1 Mature et m/moire, chapters iii. and iv. 



2 See in particular Phys. iv. 215 a z ; v. 230 b 12 ; viii 255 a 2 : and 

 Df caelo, iv. 1-5 ; ii. 296 b 27 ; iv. 308 a )+. 



