226 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



in the causes. But that is only a comparison; on re- 

 flection, we find that there can be no foreman, for the 

 very simple reason that there are no workers. The causes 

 and elements that physico-chemical analysis discovers 

 are real causes and elements, no doubt, as far as the facts 

 of organic destruction are concerned; they are then 

 limited in number. But vital phenomena, properly so 

 called, or facts of organic creation open up to us, when we 

 analyze them, the perspective of an analysis passing away 

 to infinity: whence it may be inferred that the manifold 

 causes and elements are here only views of the mind, at- 

 tempting an ever closer and closer imitation of the operation 

 of nature, while the operation imitated is an indivisible 

 act. The likeness between individuals of the same species 

 has thus an entirely different meaning, an entirely different 

 origin, to that of the likeness between complex effects ob- 

 tained by the same composition of the same causes. But 

 in the one case as in the other, there is likeness, and 

 consequently possible generalization. And as that is 

 all that interests us in practice, since our daily life is and 

 must be an expectation of the same things and the same 

 situations, it is natural that this common character, 

 essential from the point of view of our action, should bring 

 the two orders together, in spite of a merely internal 

 diversity between them which interests speculation only. 

 Hence the idea of a general order of nature, everywhere the 

 same, hovering over life and over matter alike. Hence 

 our habit of designating by the same word and represent- 

 ing in the same way the existence of laws in the domain 

 of inert matter and that of genera in the domain of life. 



Now, it will be found that this confusion is the origin 

 of most of the difficulties raised by the problem of know- 

 ledge, among the ancients as well as among the moderns. 

 The generality of laws and that of genera having been 



