246 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



as a function of the first, instead of expressing it, so to 

 speak, as a function of itself, by saying it is disorder. 

 Inversely, when we affirm that we are imagining a 

 chaos, that is to say a state of things in which the 

 physical world no longer obeys laws, what are we 

 thinking of ? We imagine facts that appear and 

 disappear capriciously. First we think of the physical 

 universe as we know it, with effects and causes well 

 proportioned to each other ; then, by a series of 

 arbitrary decrees, we augment, diminish, suppress, so 

 as to obtain what we call disorder. In reality we have 

 substituted will for the mechanism of nature ; we have 

 replaced the u automatic order &quot; by a multitude of 

 elementary wills, just to the extent that we imagine 

 the apparition or vanishing of phenomena. No doubt, 

 for all these little wills to constitute a &quot; willed order,&quot; 

 they must have accepted the direction of a higher will. 

 But, on looking closely at them, we see that that is 

 just what they do : our own will is there, which 

 objectifies itself in each of these capricious wills in 

 turn, and takes good care not to connect the same with 

 the same, nor to permit the effect to be proportional 

 to the cause in fact makes one simple intention hover 

 over the whole of the elementary volitions. Thus, 

 here again, the absence of one of the two orders 

 consists in the presence of the other. In analysing the 

 idea of chance, which is closely akin to the idea of 

 disorder, we find the same elements. When the 

 wholly mechanical play of the causes which stop the 

 wheel on a number makes me win, and consequently 

 acts like a good genius, careful of my interests, or 

 when the wholly mechanical force of the wind tears a 

 tile off the roof and throws it on to my head, that is 

 to say acts like a bad genius, conspiring against my 



