84 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



by an eminent biologist 1 have not been made, we must 

 keep to the actual results of observation. Now, even if 

 we take the most favorable view of the theory of the trans- 

 missibility of acquired characters, and assume that the 

 ostensible acquired character is not, in most cases, the 

 more or less tardy development of an innate character, 

 facts show us that hereditary transmission is the excep- 

 tion and not the rule. How, then, shall we expect it 

 to develop an organ such as the eye? When we think 

 of the enormous number of variations, all in the same 

 direction, that we must suppose to be accumulated before 

 the passage from the pigment-spot of the Infusorian 

 to the eye of the mollusc and of the vertebrate is possible, 

 we do not see how heredity, as we observe it, could ever 

 have determined this piling-up of differences, even sup- 

 posing that individual efforts could have produced each 

 of them singly. That is to say that neo-Lamarckism is 

 no more able than any other form of evolutionism to 

 solve the problem. 



In thus submitting the various present forms of evo- 

 lutionism to a common test, in showing that they all 

 strike against the same insurmountable difficulty, we 

 have in no wise the intention of rejecting them altogether. 

 On the contrary, each of them, being supported by a 

 considerable number of facts, must be true in its way. 

 Each of them must correspond to a certain aspect of the 

 process of evolution. Perhaps even it is necessary that 

 a theory should restrict itself exclusively to a particular 

 point of view, in order to remain scientific, i.e. to give a 

 precise direction to researches into detail. But the reality 

 of which each of these theories takes a partial view must 

 transcend them all. And this reality is the special object 

 of philosophy, which is not constrained to scientific pre- 



1 Giard, Controverses trans formistes, Paris, 1904, p. 147. 



