2 So CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP 



said, transcends finality as it transcends the other 

 categories. It is essentially a current sent through 

 matter, drawing from it what it can. There has not, 

 therefore, properly speaking, been any project or plan. 

 On the other hand, it is abundantly evident that the 

 rest of nature is not for the sake of man : we struggle 

 like the other species, we have struggled against other 

 species. Moreover, if the evolution of life had 

 encountered other accidents in its course, if, thereby, 

 the current of life had been otherwise divided, we 

 should have been, physically and morally, far different 

 from what we are. For these various reasons it would 

 be wrong to regard humanity, such as we have it before 

 our eyes, as prefigured in the evolutionary movement. 

 It cannot even be said to be the outcome of the whole 

 of evolution, for evolution has been accomplished on 

 several divergent lines, and while the human species 

 is at the end of one of them, other lines have been 

 followed with other species at their end. It is in a 

 quite different sense that we hold humanity to be the 

 , round of evolution. 



From our point of view, life appears in its entirety 

 as an immense wave which, starting from a centre, 

 spreads outwards, and which on almost the whole of its 

 circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation : 

 at one single point the obstacle has been forced, the 

 impulsion has passed freely. It is this freedom that 

 the human form registers. Everywhere but in man, 

 consciousness has had to come to a stand ; in man 

 alone it has kept on its way. Man, then, continues the 

 vital movement indefinitely, although he does not draw 

 along with him all that life carries in itself. On other 

 lines of evolution there have travelled other tendencies 

 which life implied, and of which, since everything inter- 



