THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 271 



It is therefore conceivable that life might have 

 assumed a totally different outward appearance 

 and designed forms very different from those we 

 know. With another chemical substratum, in other 

 physical conditions, the impulsion would have re 

 mained the same, but it would have split up very 

 differently in course of progress ; and the whole would 

 have travelled another road, whether shorter or longer 

 who can tell ? In any case, in the entire series of 

 living beings no term would have been what it now is. 

 Now, was it necessary that there should be a series, or 

 terms ? Why should not the unique impetus have 

 been impressed on a unique body, which might have 

 gone on evolving ? 



This question arises, no doubt, from the comparison 

 of life to an impetus. And it must be compared to an 

 impetus, because no image borrowed from the physical 

 world can give more nearly the idea of it. But it is 

 only an image. In reality, life is of the psychological 

 order, and it is of the essence of the psychical to 

 enfold a confused plurality of interpenetrating terms. 

 In space, and in space only, is distinct multiplicity 

 possible : a point is absolutely external to another 

 point. But pure and empty unity, also, is met with 

 only in space ; it is that of a mathematical point. 

 Abstract unity and abstract multiplicity are deter 

 minations of space or categories of the understanding, 

 whichever we will, spatiality and intellectuality being 

 moulded on each other. But what is of psychical 

 nature cannot entirely correspond with space, nor enter 

 perfectly into the categories of the understanding. Is 

 my own person, at a given moment, one or manifold ? 

 If I declare it one, inner voices arise and protest those 

 of the sensations, feelings, ideas, among which my 



