104 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



in every direction in which life evolves, the propagation 

 is in a straight line. But, as a matter of fact, there are 

 species which are arrested; there are some that retrogress. 

 Evolution is not only a movement forward; in many cases 

 we observe a marking-time, and still more often a deviation 

 or turning back. It must be so, as we shall show further 

 on, and the same causes that divide the evolution move- 

 ment often cause life to be diverted from itself, hypnotized 

 by the form it has just brought forth. Thence results an 

 increasing disorder. No doubt there is progress, if pro- 

 gress mean a continual advance in the general direction 

 determined by a first impulsion; but this progress is ac- 

 complished only on the two or three great lines of evolution 

 on which forms ever more and more complex, ever more 

 and more high, appear; between these lines run a crowd 

 of minor paths in which, on the contrary, deviations, 

 arrests, and set-backs, are multiplied. The philosopher, 

 who begins by laying down as a principle that each detail 

 is connected with some general plan of the whole, goes from 

 one disappointment to another as soon as he comes to 

 examine the facts; and, as he had put everything in the 

 same rank, he finds that, as the result of not allowing for 

 accident, he must regard everything as accidental. For 

 accident, then, an allowance must first be made, and a 

 very liberal allowance. We must recognize that all is 

 not coherent in nature. By so doing, we shall be led to 

 ascertain the centres around which the incoherence crystal- 

 lizes. This crystallization itself will clarify the rest; 

 the main directions will appear, in which life is moving 

 whilst developing the original impulse. True, we shall not 

 witness the detailed accomplishment of a plan. Nature 

 is more and better than a plan in course of realization. 

 A plan is a term assigned to a labor: it closes the future 

 whose form it indicates. Before the evolution of life, on 



