116 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



ceasing, energy borrowed from the sun, and on the other 

 hand to expend it, in a discontinuous and explosive way, 

 in movements of locomotion. Even to-day, perhaps, a 

 chlorophyl-bearing Infusorian such as the Euglena may 

 symbolize this primordial tendency of life, though in a 

 mean form, incapable of evolving. Is the divergent 

 development of the two kingdoms related to what one may 

 call the oblivion of each kingdom as regards one of the 

 two halves of the programme? Or rather, which is more 

 likely, was the very nature of the matter, that life found 

 confronting it on our planet, opposed to the possibility 

 of the two tendencies evolving very far together in the same 

 organism? What is certain is that the vegetable has 

 trended principally in the first direction and the animal 

 in the second. But if, from the very first, in making the 

 explosive, nature had for object the explosion, then it is 

 the evolution of the animal, rather than that of the vege- 

 table, that indicates, on the whole, the fundamental di- 

 rection of life. 



The "harmony" of the two kingdoms, the comple- 

 mentary characters they display, might then be due 

 to the fact that they develop two tendencies which at first 

 were fused in one. The more the single original tendency 

 grows, the harder it finds it to keep united in the same 

 living being those two elements which in the rudimentary 

 state implied each other. Hence a parting in two, hence 

 two divergent evolutions; hence also two series of char- 

 acters opposed in certain points, complementary in others, 

 but, whether opposed or complementary, always preserving 

 an appearance of kinship. While the animal evolved, 

 not without accidents along the way, toward a freer and 

 freer expenditure of discontinuous energy, the plant per- 

 fected rather its system of accumulation without moving. 

 We shall not dwell on this second point. Suffice it to 



