m.j THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 257 



at the very moment when, as the effect of an inverse move- 

 ment, the nebular matter appears. 



It is therefore conceivable that life might have assumed 

 a totally different outward appearance and designed forms 

 very different from those we know. With another chemical 

 substratum, in other physical conditions, the impulsion 

 would have remained the same, but it would have split 

 up very differently in course of progress; and the whole 

 would have traveled another road — whether shorter or 

 longer who can tell? In any case, in the entire series of 

 living beings no term would have been what it now is. 

 Now, was it necessary that there should be a series, or 

 terms? Why should not the unique impetus have been 

 impressed on a unique body, which might have gone on 

 evolving? 



This question arises, no doubt, from the comparison 

 of life to an impetus. And it must be compared to an 

 impetus, because no image borrowed from the physical 

 world can give more nearly the idea of it. But it is only 

 an image. In reality, life is of the psychological order, 

 and it is of the essence of the psychical to enfold a 

 confused plurality of interpenetrating terms. In space, 

 and in space only, is distinct multiplicity possible: a point 

 is absolutely external to another point. But pure and 

 empty unity, also, is met with only in space; it is that 

 of a mathematical point. Abstract unity and abstract 

 multiplicity are determinations of space or categories of 

 the understanding, whichever we will, spatiality and in- 

 tellectuality being molded on each other. But what is of 

 psychical nature cannot entirely correspond with space, 

 nor enter perfectly into the categories of the understanding. 

 Is my own person, at a given moment, one or manifold? 

 If I declare it one, inner voices arise and protest — those 

 of the sensations, feelings, ideas, among which my in- 



