28 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



be foreseen if we could know, in all their details, the con- 

 ditions under which it will be produced. But these con- 

 ditions are built up into it and are part and parcel of its 

 being; they are peculiar to that phase of its history in 

 which life finds itself at the moment of producing the form : 

 how could we know beforehand a situation that is unique 

 of its kind, that has never yet occurred and will never occur 

 again? Of the future, only that is foreseen which is like 

 the past or can be made up again with elements like those 

 of the past. Such is the case with astronomical, physical 

 and chemical facts, with all facts which form part of a 

 system in which elements supposed to be unchanging are 

 merely put together, in which the only changes are changes 

 of position, in which there is no theoretical absurdity in 

 imagining that things are restored to their place; in which, 

 consequently, the same total phenomenon, or at least the 

 same elementary phenomena, can be repeated. But an 

 original situation, which imparts something of its own 

 originality to its elements, that is to say, to the partial 

 views that are taken of it, how can such a situation be 

 pictured as given before it is actually produced? 1 All that 

 can be said is that, once produced, it will be explained by 

 the elements that analysis will then carve out of it. Now, 

 what is true of the production of a new species is also true 

 of the production of a new individual, and, more generally, 

 of any moment of any living form. For, though the 

 variation must reach a certain importance and a certain 

 generality in order to give rise to a new species, it is being 

 produced every moment, continuously and insensibly, 

 in every living being. And it is evident that even the sudden 

 "mutations" which we now hear of are possible only if 

 a process of incubation, or rather of maturing, is going 



1 We have dwelt on this point and tried to make it clear in the Essai 

 sur Us donn€es immediates de la conscience, pp. 140-151. 



