214 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



It is not necessary indeed to think geometrically, nor even 

 to think at all, in order to expect from the same conditions 

 a repetition of the same fact. The consciousness of the 

 animal already does this work, and indeed, independently 

 of all consciousness, the living body itself is so constructed 

 that it can extract from the successive situations in which 

 it finds itself the similarities which interest it, and so 

 respond to the stimuli by appropriate reactions. But 

 it is a far cry from a mechanical expectation and reaction 

 of the body, to induction properly so called, which is 

 an intellectual operation. Induction rests on the belief 

 that there are causes and effects, and that the same effects 

 follow the same causes. Now, if we examine this double 

 belief, this is what we find. It implies, in the first place, 

 that reality is decomposable into groups, which can be 

 practically regarded as isolated and independent. If I 

 boil water in a kettle on a stove, the operation and the 

 objects that support it are, in reality, bound up with a 

 multitude of other objects and a multitude of other oper- 

 ations; in the end, I should find that our entire solar 

 system is concerned in what is being done at this particular 

 point of space. But, in a certain measure, and for the 

 special end I am pursuing, I may admit that things happen 

 as if the group water-kettle-stove were an independent 

 microcosm. That is my first affirmation. Now, when I 

 say that this microcosm will always behave in the same 

 way, that the heat will necessarily, at the end of a certain 

 time, cause the boiling of the water, I admit that it is 

 sufficient that a certain number of elements of the system 

 be given in order that the system should be complete; 

 it completes itself automatically, I am not free to complete 

 it in thought as I please. The stove, the kettle and the 

 water being given, with a certain interval of duration, 

 it seems to me that the boiling, which experience showed 



