II BIOLOGY, PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY 29 



on throughout a series of generations that do not seem to 

 change. In this sense it might be said of life, as of con- 

 sciousness, that at every moment it is creating something. 1 

 But against this idea of the absolute originality and un- 

 foreseeability of forms our whole intellect rises in revolt. 

 The essential function of our intellect, as the evolution 

 of life has fashioned it, is to be a light for our conduct, 

 to make ready for our action on things, to foresee, for 

 a given situation, the events, favorable or unfavorable, 

 which may follow thereupon. Intellect therefore in- 

 stinctively selects in a given situation whatever is like 

 something already known; it seeks this out, in order 

 that it may apply its principle that " like produces like. " 

 In just this does the prevision of the future by common 

 sense consist. Science carries this faculty to the highest 

 possible degree of exactitude and precision, but does not 

 alter its essential character. Like ordinary knowledge, 

 in dealing with things science is concerned only with the 

 aspect of repetition. Though the whole be original, science 

 will always manage to analyze it into elements or aspects 

 which are approximately a reproduction of the past. 

 Science can work only on what is supposed to repeat it- 

 self — that is to say, on what is withdrawn, by hypothesis, 

 from the action of real time. Anything that is irreducible 



1 In his fine work on Genius in Art (Le Genie dans I'art), M. Seailles 

 develops this twofold thesis, that art is a continuation of nature and 

 that life is creation. We should willingly accept the second formula; 

 but by creation must we understand, as the author does, a synthesis of 

 elements? Where the elements pre-exist, the synthesis that will be 

 made is virtually given, being only one of the possible arrangements. 

 This arrangement a superhuman intellect could have perceived in ad- 

 vance among all the possible ones that surround it. We hold, on the 

 contrary, that in the domain of life the elements have no real and sepa- 

 rate existence. They are manifold mental views of an indivisible 

 process. And for that reason there is radical contingency in progress, 

 incommensurability between what goes before and what follows — in 

 short, duration. 



