ih.j LAWS AND GENERA 227 



designated by the same word and subsumed under the same 

 idea, the geometrical order and the vital order are accord- 

 ingly confused together. According to the point of view, 

 the generality of laws is explained by that of genera, or 

 that of genera by that of laws. The first view is character- 

 istic of ancient thought; the second belongs to modern 

 philosophy. But in both ancient and modern philosophy 

 the idea of "generality" is an equivocal idea, uniting in its 

 denotation and in its connotation incompatible objects 

 and elements. In both there are grouped under the same 

 concept two kinds of order which are alike only in the 

 facility they give to our action on things. We bring 

 together the two terms in virtue of a quite external like- 

 ness, which justifies no doubt their designation by the 

 same word for practice, but which does not authorize 

 us at all, in the speculative domain, to confuse them in 

 the same definition. 



The ancients, indeed, did not ask why nature submits 

 to laws, but why it is ordered according to genera. The 

 idea of genus corresponds more especially to an objective 

 reality in the domain of life, where it expresses an un- 

 questionable fact, heredity. Indeed, there can only be 

 genera where there are individual objects; now, while 

 the organized being is cut out from the general mass of 

 matter by his very organization, that is to say naturally, 

 it is our perception which cuts inert matter into distinct 

 bodies. It is guided in this by the interests of action, 

 by the nascent reactions that our body indicates — that is, 

 as we have shown elsewhere, 1 by the potential genera 

 that are trying to gain existence. In this, then, genera 

 and individuals determine one another by a semi-artificial 

 operation entirely relative to our future action on things. 

 Nevertheless the ancients did not hesitate to put all genera 



1 Matter e et m&moire, chapters iii. and iv. 



