386 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



simple bodies, which he first supposes disseminated 

 throughout space. They are, at any rate, u material 

 points,&quot; and consequently unvarying points, veritable 

 little solids : as if solidity, being what is nearest and 

 handiest to us, could be found at the very origin of 

 materiality ! The more physics progresses, the more 

 it shows the impossibility of representing the properties 

 of ether or of electricity, the probable base of all 

 bodies, on the model of the properties of the matter 

 which we perceive. But philosophy goes back further 

 even than the ether, a mere schematic figure of the 

 relations between phenomena apprehended by our 

 senses. It knows indeed that what is visible and 

 tangible in things represents our possible action on 

 them. It is not by dividing the evolved that we 

 shall reach the principle of that which evolves. It 

 is not by recomposing the evolved with itself that we 

 shall reproduce the evolution of which it is the term. 



Is it the question of mind ? By compounding the 

 reflex with the reflex, Spencer thinks he generates 

 instinct and rational volition one after the other. 

 He fails to see that the specialized reflex, being 

 a terminal point of evolution just as much as 

 perfect will, cannot be supposed at the start. That 

 the first of the two terms should have reached its 

 final form before the other is probable enough ; 

 but both the one and the other are deposits of the 

 evolution movement, and the evolution movement 

 itself can no more be expressed as a function solely 

 of the first than solely of the second. We must 

 begin by mixing the reflex and the voluntary. We 

 must then go in quest of the fluid reality which has 

 been precipitated in this twofold form, and which 

 probably shares in both without being either. At 



