58 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



has forced its own shape on the matter. But, in the 

 adaptation of an organism to the circumstances it has to 

 live in, where is the pre-existing form awaiting its matter? 

 The circumstances are not a mold into which life is inserted 

 and whose form life adopts : this is indeed to be fooled by 

 a metaphor. There is no form yet, and the life must 

 create a form for itself, suited to the circumstances which 

 are made for it. It will have to make the best of these 

 circumstances, neutralize their inconveniences and utilize 

 their advantages — in short, respond to outer actions by 

 building up a machine which has no resemblance to them. 

 Such adapting is not repeating, but replying, — an entirely 

 different thing. If, there is still adaptation, it will be in 

 the sense in which one may say of the solution of a problem 

 of geometry, for example, that it is adapted to the con- 

 ditions. I grant indeed that adaptation so understood 

 explains why different evolutionary processes result in 

 similar forms: the same problem, of course, calls for the 

 same solution. But it is necessary then to introduce, 

 as for the solution of a problem of geometry, an intelligent 

 activity, or at least a cause which behaves in the same way. 

 This is to bring in finality again, and a finality this time 

 more than ever charged with anthropomorphic elements. 

 In a word, if the adaptation is passive, if it is mere repetition 

 in the relief of what the conditions give in the mold, it 

 will build up nothing that one tries to make it build ; and 

 if it is active, capable of responding by a calculated solu- 

 tion to the problem which is set out in the conditions, 

 that is going further than we do — too far, indeed, in our 

 opinion — in the direction we indicated in the beginning. 

 But the truth is that there is a surreptitious passing from 

 one of these two meanings to the other, a flight for refuge 

 to the first whenever one is about to be caught in flagrante 

 delicto of finalism by employing the second. It is really 



