i.] BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 51 



with other forms of life. Harmony, therefore, does not 

 exist in fact; it exists rather in principle; I mean that 

 the original impetus is a common impetus, and the higher 

 we ascend the stream of life the more do diverse tendencies 

 appear complementary to each other. Thus the wind 

 at a street-corner divides into diverging currents which 

 are all one and the same gust. Harmony, or rather " com- 

 plementarity, " is revealed only in the mass, in tendencies 

 rather than in states. Especially (and this is the point 

 on which finalism has been most seriously mistaken) 

 harmony is rather behind us than before. It is due to an 

 identity of impulsion and not to a common aspiration. 

 It would be futile to try to assign to life an end, in the 

 human sense of the word. To speak of an end is to think 

 of a pre-existing model which has only to be realized. It 

 is to suppose, therefore, that all is given, and that the future 

 can be read in the present. It is to believe that life, in its 

 movement and in its entirety, goes to work like our in- 

 tellect, which is only a motionless and fragmentary view 

 of life, and which naturally takes its stand outside of time. 

 Life, on the contrary, progresses and endures in time. Of 

 course, when once the road has been traveled, we can 

 glance over it, mark its direction, note this in psychological 

 terms and speak as if there had been pursuit of an end. 

 Thus shall we speak ourselves. But, of the road which 

 was going to be traveled, the human mind could have 

 nothing to say, for the road has been created pari passu 

 with the act of traveling over it, being nothing but the 

 direction of this act itself. At every instant, then, evo- 

 lution must admit of a psychological interpretation which 

 is, from our point of view, the best interpretation; but 

 this explanation has neither value nor even significance 

 except retrospectively. Never could the finalistic inter- 

 pretation, such as we shall propose it, be taken for an 



