94 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



* 



earth had been brought cart-load by cart-load; finalism 

 would add that it had not been dumped down at random, 

 that the carters had followed a plan. But both theories 

 would be mistaken, for the canal has been made in another 

 way. 



With greater precision, we may compare the process 

 by which nature constructs an eye to the simple act by 

 which we raise the hand. But we supposed at first that 

 the hand met with no resistance. Let us now imagine 

 that, instead of moving in air, the hand has to pass through 

 iron filings which are compressed and offer resistance 

 to it in proportion as it goes forward. At a certain moment 

 the hand will have exhausted its effort, and, at this very 

 moment, the filings will be massed and coordinated in a 

 certain definite form, to wit, that of the hand that is stopped 

 and of a part of the arm. Now, suppose that the hand and 

 arm are invisible. Lookers-on will seek the reason of the 

 arrangement in the filings themselves and in forces within 

 the mass. Some will account for the position of each filing 

 by the action exerted upon it by the neighboring filings: 

 these are the mechanists. Others will prefer to think that 

 a plan of the whole has presided over the detail of these 

 elementary actions, they are the finalists. But the truth 

 is that there has been merely one indivisible act, that of 

 the hand passing through the filings: the inexhaustible 

 detail of the movement of the grains, as well as the order 

 of their final arrangement, expresses negatively, in a way, 

 this undivided movement, being the unitary form of a 

 resistance, and not a synthesis of positive elementary 

 actions. For this reason, if the arrangement of the grains 

 is termed an "effect" and the movement of the hand a 

 "cause," it may indeed be said that the whole of the effect 

 is explained by the whole of the cause, but to parts of the 

 cause parts of the effect will in no wise correspond. In 



