UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



rise to other species through the accumulation of 

 insensible variations, but Darwin looked upon the 

 whole process as mechanical and fortuitous. He did 

 not hit upon any adequate reason for variation itself. 



It has been aptly said that while natural selection 

 may account for the survival of the fittest, it does 

 not account for the arrival of the fittest. In Dar- 

 win's scheme, Nature was always blindly experi- 

 menting and then profiting by her lucky strokes, but 

 why she should experiment, why she should try to 

 improve upon her old models, what it was and is in 

 the evolutionary process that struggles and aspires 

 and pushes on and on, did not enter into Darwin's 

 scheme. He did not share the Bergsonian concep- 

 tion of life as a primordial creative impulse flowing 

 through matter. This were to transcend the sphere 

 of legitimate scientific inquiry to which he applied 

 himself. As living forms had to begin somewhere, 

 somehow, Darwin starts with the act of the Creator 

 breathing the breath of life into one or into a few 

 forms, and then through the operation of the laws 

 which the same Creator impressed upon matter, the 

 whole drama of organic evolution follows. Second- 

 ary causes, by which he seems to mean the laws of 

 matter and force, complete the work begun by the 

 Creator. 



After all, the differences between Darwin's and 

 Bergson's views of evolution are not fundamental. 

 They conceive of the creative energy under different 



218 



