126 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



fined track between one point of the periphery and an- 

 other, the one sensory, the other motor. It has therefore 

 canalized an activity which was originally diffused in the 

 protoplasmic mass. But, on the other hand, the elements 

 that compose it are probably discontinuous; at any rate, 

 even supposing they anastomose, they exhibit a functional 

 discontinuity, for each of them ends in a kind of cross- 

 road where probably the nervous current may choose 

 its course. From the humblest Monera to the best endowed 

 insects, and up to the most intelligent vertebrates, the 

 progress realized has been above all a progress of the nervous 

 system, coupled at every stage with all the new construc- 

 tions and complications of mechanism that this progress 

 required. As we foreshadowed in the beginning of this 

 work, the role of life is to insert some indetermination into 

 matter. Indeterminate, i.e. unforeseeable, are the forms 

 it creates in the course of its evolution. More and more 

 indeterminate also, more and more free, is the activity 

 to which these forms serve as the vehicle. A nervous 

 system, with neurones placed end to end in such wise that, 

 at the extremity of each, manifold ways open in which 

 manifold questions present themselves, is a veritable 

 reservoir of indetermination. That the main energy of 

 the vital impulse has been spent in creating apparatus 

 of this kind is, we believe, what a glance over the organ- 

 ized world as a whole easily shows. But concerning the 

 vital impulse itself a few explanations are necessary. 



It must not be forgotten that the force which is evolv- 

 ing throughout the organized world is a limited force, 

 which is always seeking to transcend itself and always 

 remains inadequate to the work it would fain produce. 

 The errors and puerilities of radical finalism are due to 

 the misapprehension of this point. It has represented 



