268 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



CHAP. 



given once for all. It cannot overcome all obstacles. 

 The movement it starts is sometimes turned aside, 

 sometimes divided, always opposed ; and the evolution 

 of the organized world is the unrolling of this con 

 flict. The first great scission that had to be effected 

 was that of the two kingdoms, vegetable and animal, 

 which thus happen to be mutually complementary, 

 without, however, any agreement having been made 

 between them. It is not for the animal that the plant 

 accumulates energy, it is for its own consumption ; 

 but its expenditure on itself is less discontinuous, and 

 less concentrated, and therefore less efficacious, than 

 was required by the initial impetus of life, essentially 

 directed toward free actions : the same organism could 

 not with equal force sustain the two functions at once, 

 of gradual storage and sudden use. Of themselves, 

 therefore, and without any external intervention, simply 

 by the effect of the duality of the tendency involved 

 in the original impetus and of the resistance opposed 

 by matter to this impetus, the organisms leaned 

 some in the first direction, others in the second. To 

 this scission there succeeded many others. Hence 

 the diverging lines of evolution, at least what is 

 essential in them. But we must take into account 

 retrogressions, arrests, accidents of every kind. And 

 we must remember, above all, that each species behaves 

 as if the general movement of life stopped at it 

 instead of passing through it. It thinks only of itself, 

 it lives only for itself. Hence the numberless struggles 

 that we behold in nature. Hence a discord, striking 

 and terrible, but for which the original principle of life 

 must not be held responsible. 



The part played by contingency in evolution is 

 therefore great. Contingent, generally, are the forms 



