nil THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 261 



is the composition of an undefined number of potential 

 individualities potentially associated. But, from top to 

 bottom of the series of living beings, the same law is mani- 

 fested. And it is this that we express when we say that 

 unity and multiplicity are categories of inert matter, 

 that the vital impetus is neither pure unity nor pure 

 multiplicity, and that if the matter to which it communi- 

 cates itself compels it to choose one of the two, its choice 

 will never be definitive: it will leap from one to the other 

 indefinitely. The evolution of life in the double direction 

 of individuality and association has therefore nothing 

 accidental about it : it is due to the very nature of life. 



Essential also is the progress to reflextion. If our analysis 

 is correct, it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, 

 that is at the origin of life. Consciousness, or supra- 

 consciousness, is the name for the rocket whose extin- 

 guished fragments fall back as matter; consciousness, 

 again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket 

 itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them 

 up into organisms. But this consciousness, which is a 

 need of creation, is made manifest to itself only where 

 creation is possible. It lies dormant when life is con- 

 demned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the possi- 

 bility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms 

 unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according 

 to the power of locomotion and of deformation of which 

 the organism disposes. And in animals with a nervous 

 system, it is proportional to the complexity of the switch- 

 board on which the paths called sensory and the paths 

 called motor intersect — that is, of the brain. How must 

 this solidarity between the organism and consciousness 

 be understood? 



We will not dwell here on a point that we have dealt 

 with in former works. Let us merely recall that a theory 



