70 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



We have already called attention to the ambiguity of 

 the term "adaptation." The gradual complication of a 

 form which is being better and better adapted to the mold' 

 of outward circumstances is one thing, the increasingly 

 complex structure of an instrument which derives more and 

 more advantage from these circumstances is another. In 

 the former case, the matter merely receives an imprint; 

 in the second, it reacts positively, it solves a problem. Ob- 

 viously it is this second sense of the word " adapt" that 

 is used when one says that the eye has become better and 

 better adapted to the influence of light. But one passes 

 more or less unconsciously from this sense to the other, and 

 a purely mechanistic biology will strive to make the passive 

 adaptation of an inert matter, which submits to the in- 

 fluence of its environment, mean the same as the active 

 adaptation of an organism which derives from this in- 

 fluence an advantage it can appropriate. It must be 

 owned, indeed, that Nature herself appears to invite our 

 mind to confuse these two kinds of adaptation, for she 

 usually begins by a passive adaptation where, later on, 

 she will build up a mechanism for active response. Thus, 

 in the case before us, it is unquestionable that the first 

 rudiment of the eye is found in the pigment-spot of the 

 lower organisms; this spot may indeed have been pro- 

 duced physically, by the mere action of light, and there are 

 a great number of intermediaries between the simple spot 

 of pigment and a complicated eye like that of the verte- 

 brates. — But, from the fact that we pass from one thing 

 to another by degrees, it does not follow that the two 

 things are of the same nature. From the fact that an 

 orator falls in, at first, with the passions of his audience 

 in order to make himself master of them, it will not be 

 concluded that to follow is the same as to lead. Now, liv- 

 ing matter seems to have no other means of turning cir- 



