i.j BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 45 



more and more geometrical form. Whether nature be 

 conceived as an immense machine regulated by mathe- 

 matical laws, or as the realization of a plan, these two ways 

 of regarding it are only the consummation of two tendencies 

 of mind which are complementary to each other, and which 

 have their origin in the same vital necessities. 



For that reason, radical finalism is very near radical 

 mechanism on many points. Both doctrines are reluc- 

 tant to see in the course of things generally, or even simply 

 in the development of life, an unforeseeable creation of 

 form. In considering reality, mechanism regards only 

 the aspect of similarity or repetition. It is therefore 

 dominated by this law, that in* nature there is only like 

 reproducing like. The more the geometry in mechanism 

 is emphasized, the less can mechanism admit that any- 

 thing is ever created, even pure form. In so far as we are 

 geometricians, then, we reject the unforeseeable. We 

 might accept it, assuredly, in so far as we are artists, for 

 art lives on creation and implies a latent belief in the 

 spontaneity of nature. But disinterested art is a luxury, 

 like pure speculation. Long before being artists, we are 

 artisans; and all fabrication, however rudimentary, lives 

 on likeness and repetition, like the natural geometry which 

 serves as its fulcrum. Fabrication works on models 

 which it sets out to reproduce; and even when it invents, 

 it proceeds, or imagines itself to proceed, by a new ar- 

 rangement of elements already known. Its principle 

 is that "we must have like to produce like." In short, 

 the strict application of the principle of finality, like that 

 of the principle of mechanical causality, leads to the con- 

 clusion that "all is given." Both principles say the same 

 thing in their respective languages, because they respond 

 to the same need. 



That is why again they agree in doing away with time. 



