110 CREATIVE EVOLUTION ichap. 



ments. The more the nervous system develops, the more 

 numerous and more precise become the movements among 

 which it can choose; the clearer, also, is the consciousness 

 that accompanies them. But neither this mobility nor 

 this choice nor consequently this consciousness involves 

 as a necessary condition the presence of a nervous system; 

 the latter has only canalized in definite directions, and 

 brought up to a higher degree of intensity, a rudimentary 

 and vague activity, diffused throughout the mass of the 

 organized substance. The lower we descend in the ani- 

 mal series, the more the nervous centres are simplified, 

 and the more, too, they separate from each other, till 

 finally the nervous elements disappear, merged in the mass 

 of a less differentiated organism. But it is the same with 

 all the other apparatus, with all the other anatomical 

 elements; and it would be as absurd to refuse consciousness 

 to an animal because it has no brain as to declare it in- 

 capable of nourishing itself because it has no stomach. 

 The truth is that the nervous system arises, like the other 

 systems, from a division of labor. It does not create the 

 function, it only brings it to a higher degree of intensity 

 and precision by giving it the double form of reflex and 

 voluntary activity. To accomplish a true reflex move- 

 ment, a whole mechanism is necessary, set up in the spinal 

 cord or the medulla. To choose voluntarily between 

 several definite courses of action, cerebral centres are 

 necessary, that is, crossways from which paths start, 

 leading to motor mechanisms of diverse form but equal 

 precision. But where nervous elements are not yet canal- 

 ized, still less concentrated into a system, there is some- 

 thing from which, by a kind of splitting, both the reflex 

 and the voluntary will arise, something which has neither 

 the mechanical precision of the former nor the intelli- 

 gent hesitations of the latter, but which, partaking of 



