40 CREATIVE EVOLUTION tcHAP. 



confused perception, relative to the human standpoint, 

 a perception which would vanish, like a rising mist, for a 

 mind seated at the centre of things. 



Yet finalism is not, like mechanism, a doctrine with 

 fixed rigid outlines. It admits of as many inflections 

 as we like. The mechanistic philosophy is to be taken 

 or left : it must be left if the least grain of dust, by straying 

 from the path foreseen by mechanics, should show the 

 slightest trace of spontaneity. The doctrine of final causes, 

 on the contrary, will never be definitively refuted. If 

 one form of it be put aside, it will take another. Its 

 principle, which is essentially psychological, is very flexible. 

 It is so extensible, and thereby so comprehensive, that one 

 accepts something of it as soon as one rejects pure mech- 

 anism. The theory we shall put forward in this book will 

 therefore necessarily partake of finalism to a certain ex- 

 tent. For that reason it is important to intimate exactly 

 what we are going to take of it, and what we mean to leave. 



Let us say at once that to thin out the Leibnizian finalism 

 by breaking it into an infinite number of pieces seems to 

 us a step in the wrong direction. This is, however, the 

 tendency of the doctrine of finality. It fully realizes that 

 if the universe as a whole is the carrying out of a plan, 

 this cannot be demonstrated empirically, and that even 

 of the organized world alone it is hardly easier to prove 

 all harmonious: facts would equally well testify to the 

 contrary. Nature sets living beings at discord with one 

 another. She everywhere presents disorder alongside 

 of order, retrogression alongside of progress. But, though 

 finality cannot be affirmed either of the whole of matter or 

 of the whole of life, might it not yet be true, says the 

 finalist, of each organism taken separately? Is there 

 not a wonderful division of labor, a marvellous solidarity 

 among the parts of an organism, perfect order in infinite 



