244 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



thousands of copies. There is, however, this difference 

 between the two cases, that the successive impressions 

 are identical, as well as the simultaneous copies of the 

 same impression, whereas representatives of one and 

 the same species are never entirely the same, either in 

 different points of space or at different moments of 

 time. Heredity does not only transmit characters ; it 

 transmits also the impetus in virtue of which the 

 characters are modified, and this impetus is vitality 

 itself. That is why we say that the repetition which 

 serves as the base of our generalizations is essential in 

 the physical order, accidental in the vital order. The 

 physical order is &quot; automatic &quot; ; the vital order is, I will 

 not say voluntary, but analogous to the order &quot; willed.&quot; 



Now, as soon as we have clearly distinguished 

 between the order that is &quot; willed &quot; and the order that 

 is &quot; automatic,&quot; the ambiguity that underlies the idea 

 of disorder is dissipated, and, with it, one of the principal 

 difficulties of the problem of knowledge. 



The main problem of the theory of knowledge is 

 to know how science is possible, that is to say, in effect, 

 why there is order and not disorder in things. That 

 order exists is a. fact. But, on the other hand, disorder, 

 which appears to us to be less than order, is, it seems, of 

 right. The existence of order is then a mystery to be 

 cleared up, at any rate a problem to be solved. More 

 simply, when we undertake to found order, we regard 

 it as contingent, if not in things, at least as viewed 

 by the mind : of a thing that we do not judge to 

 be contingent we do not require an explanation. If 

 order did not appear to us as a conquest over some 

 thing, or as an addition to something (which some 

 thing is thought to be the &quot; absence of order &quot;), ancient 

 realism would not have spoken of a &quot; matter &quot; to 



