in.] LAWS AND GENERA 231 



transformation. But life can progress only by means of 

 the living, which are its depositaries. Innumerable living 

 beings, almost alike, have to repeat each other in space 

 and in time for the novelty they are working out to grow 

 and mature. It is like a book that advances towards a 

 new edition by going through thousands of reprints with 

 thousands of copies. There is, however, this difference 

 between the two cases, that the successive impressions 

 are identical, as well as the simultaneous copies of the 

 same impression, whereas representatives of one and 

 the same species are never entirely the same, either in 

 different points of space or at different moments of time. 

 Heredity does not only transmit characters; it transmits 

 also the impetus in virtue of which the characters are 

 modified, and this impetus is vitality itself. That is why 

 we say that the repetition which serves as the base of our 

 generalizations is essential in the physical order, accidental 

 in the vital order. The physical order is "automatic;" 

 the vital order is, I will not say voluntary, but analogous 

 to the order "willed." 



Now, as soon as we have clearly distinguished be- 

 tween the order that is "willed" and the order that is 

 "automatic," the ambiguity that underlies the idea of 

 disorder is dissipated, and, with it, one of the principal 

 difficulties of the problem of knowledge. 



The main problem of the theory of knowledge is to 

 know how science is possible, that is to say, in effect, 

 why there is order and not disorder in things. That 

 order exists is a fact. But, on the other hand, disorder, 

 which appears to us to be less than order, is, it seems, of 

 right. The existence of order is then a mystery to be 

 cleared up, at any rate a problem to be solved. More 

 simply, when we undertake to found order, we regard 

 it as contingent, if not in things, at least as viewed by 



