114 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



in the plant. What corresponds in it to the directing will 

 of the animal is, we believe, the direction in which it bends 

 the energy of the solar radiation when it uses it to break 

 the connection of the carbon with the oxygen in carbonic 

 acid. What corresponds in it to the sensibility of the ani- 

 mal is the impressionability, quite of its kind, of its chloro- 

 phyl light. Now, a nervous system being pre-eminently 

 a mechanism which serves as intermediary between sen- 

 sations and volitions, the true " nervous system" of the 

 plant seems to be the mechanism or rather chemicism 

 sui generis which serves as intermediary between the im- 

 pressionability of its chlorophyl to light and the produc- 

 ing of starch: which amounts to saying that the plant can 

 have no nervous elements, and that the same impetus that 

 has led the animal to give itself nerves and nerve centres must 

 have ended, in the plant, in the chlorophyllian function. 1 



This first glance over the organized world will enable 

 us to ascertain more precisely what unites the two king- 

 doms, and also what separates them. 



Suppose, as we suggested in the preceding chapter, 

 that at the root of life there is an effort to engraft on to 

 the necessity of physical forces the largest possible amount 

 of indetermination. This effort cannot result in the 

 creation of energy, or, if it does, the quantity created 

 does not belong to the order of magnitude apprehended 



1 Just as the plant, in certain cases, recovers the faculty of moving 

 actively which slumbers in it, so the animal, in exceptional circum- 

 stances, can replace itself in the conditions of the vegetative life and 

 develop in itself an equivalent of the chlorophyllian function. It 

 appears, indeed, from recent experiments of Maria von Linden, that 

 the chrysalides and the caterpillars of certain lepidoptera, under the 

 influence of light, fix the carbon of the carbonic acid contained in 

 the atmosphere (M. von Linden, "L'Assimilation de 1'acide carbonique 

 par les chrysalides de Le'pidopteres, " C. R. de la Soc. de biologie, 1905, 

 pp. 692 ff .). 



