224 CREATIVE EVOLUTION ichap. 



creative evolution, is something analogous; it transcends 

 finality, if we understand by finality the realization of an 

 idea conceived or conceivable in advance. The category 

 of finality is therefore too narrow for life in its entirety. 

 It is, on the other hand, often too wide for a particular 

 manifestation of life taken separately. Be that as it 

 may, it is with the vital that we have here to do, and the 

 whole present study strives to prove that the vital is 

 in the direction of the voluntary. We may say then 

 that this first kind of order is that of the vital or of the 

 willed, in opposition to the second, which is that of the 

 inert and the automatic. Common sense instinctively 

 distinguishes between the two kinds of order, at least 

 in the extreme cases; instinctively, also, it brings them 

 together. We say of astronomical phenomena that 

 they manifest an admirable order, meaning by this that 

 they can be foreseen mathematically. And we find an 

 order no less admirable in a symphony of Beethoven, 

 which is genius, originality, and therefore unforeseeability 

 itself. 



But it is exceptional for order of the first kind to take 

 so distinct a form. Ordinarily, it presents features that 

 we have every interest in confusing with those of the 

 opposite order. It is quite certain, for instance, that 

 if we could view the evolution of life in its entirety, the 

 spontaneity of its movement and the unforeseeability 

 of its procedures would thrust themselves on our at- 

 tention. But what we meet in our daily experience is a 

 certain determinate living being, certain special mani- 

 festations of life, which repeat, almost, forms and facts 

 already known; indeed, the similarity of structure that we 

 find everywhere between what generates and what is 

 generated — a similarity that enables us to include any 

 number of living individuals in the same group — is to our 



