i.j INDIVIDUALITY AND AGE 23 



the knowledge of an artificial or mathematical system applies 

 only to the extremity. 



Continuity of change, preservation of the past in the 

 present, real duration — the living being seems, then, to 

 share these attributes with consciousness. Can we go 

 further and say that life, like conscious activity, is in- 

 vention, is unceasing creation? 



It does not enter into our plan to set down here the 

 proofs of transformism. We wish only to explain in a 

 word or two why we shall accept it, in the present work, 

 as a sufficiently exact and precise expression of the facts 

 actually known. The idea of transformism is already 

 in germ in the natural -classification of organized beings. 

 The naturalist, in fact, brings together the organisms that 

 are like each other, then divides the group into sub-groups 

 within which the likeness is still greater, and so on: all 

 through the operation, the characters of the group appear 

 as general themes on which each of the sub-groups per- 

 forms its particular variation. Now, such is just the re- 

 lation we find, in the animal and in the vegetable world 

 between the generator and the generated: on the canvas 

 which the ancestor passes on, and which his descendants 

 possess in common, each puts his own original embroidery. 

 True, the differences between the descendant and the 

 ancestor are slight, and it may be asked whether the same 

 living matter presents enough plasticity to take in turn 

 such different forms as those of a fish, a reptile and a bird. 

 But, to this question, observation gives a peremptory 

 answer. It shows that up to a certain period in its de- 

 velopment the embryo of the bird is hardly distinguishable 

 from that of the reptile, and that the individual develops, 

 throughout the embryonic life in general, a series of trans- 

 formations comparable to those through which, according 



