170 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



miracle: in one form or another we shall appeal to in- 

 telligence. We shall suppose that it is by an effort, more 

 or less conscious, that the living being develops a higher 

 instinct. But then we shall have to admit that an acquired 

 habit can become hereditary, and that it does so regularly 

 enough to ensure an evolution. The thing is doubtful, 

 to put it mildly. Even if we could refer the instincts of 

 animals to habits intelligently acquired and hereditarily 

 transmitted, it is not clear how this sort of explanation 

 could be extended to the vegetable world, where effort 

 is never intelligent, even supposing it is sometimes con- 

 scious. And yet, when we see with what sureness and 

 precision climbing plants use their tendrils, what mar- 

 velously combined manoeuvres the orchids perform to 

 procure their fertilization by means of insects, 1 how can 

 we help thinking that these are so many instincts? 



This is not saying that the theory of the neo-Darwinians 

 must be altogether rejected, any more than that of the 

 neo-Lamarckians. The first are probably right in holding 

 that evolution takes place from germ to germ rather than 

 from individual to individual; the second are right in 

 saying that at the origin of instinct there is an effort 

 (although it is something quite different, we believe, from 

 an intelligent effort). But the former are probably wrong 

 when they make the evolution of instinct an accidental 

 evolution, and the latter when they regard the effort from 

 which instinct proceeds as an individual effort. The effort 

 by which a species modifies its instinct, and modifies 

 itself as well, must be a much deeper thing, dependent 

 solely neither on circumstances nor on individuals. It 

 is not purely accidental, although accident has a large 

 place in it; and it does not depend solely on the initia- 



1 See the two works of Darwin, Climbing Plants and The Fertili- 

 zation of Orchids by Insects. 



