Febbuaet 11, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



207 



a creator— lie formulates a creative prin- 

 ciple that does not postulate the doctrine 

 of finality. His elan vital adjusts itself 

 to each new need that arises; does not 

 -work on a preconceived or foreordained 

 plan, but adapts itself to the matter and to 

 the situation in the same way in which an 

 inventor will take the materials at hand 

 and shape them to his purpose with the 

 tools at his command. 



It seems to me— I may be wrong— that 

 this theory of the origin of adaptation will 

 not find wide acceptance with the militant 

 evolutionist of to-day ; and I shall attempt 

 to formulate the reasons why it seems to 

 me he is likely to refuse to accept so at- 

 tractive a view, even when so persuasively 

 presented. 



In the first place, the theory tells us 

 everything and tells us nothing. It solves 

 the problem by begging the question. An 

 internal principle of which we know noth- 

 ing steps in like the fairy in the story and 

 does all that is required. 



In the second place, Bergson's theory at- 

 tempts to solve one of the ultimate prob- 

 lems of biology by a priori argument — a 

 method from which science has suffered 

 much and has come to look upon askance. 

 Our experience in studying living things 

 teaches us that only by patient labor ex- 

 tending over many years are we likely to 

 gain a little insight into even the simplest 

 modes of action. We feel that there is no 

 royal road to the solution of such complex 

 questions. 



And lastly, Bergson's theory, like many 

 of its kind, directs its attention to that 

 side of the problem that is entirely beyond 

 our present ken, namely, the intimate na- 

 ture of the reaction itself. It lays in con- 

 sequence on the problem an emphasis that 

 is foreign to our scientific discipline. It 

 may be good philosophy or excellent meta- 

 physics, but it distracts the scientist from 



his more modest aspirations. It is as 

 though the physicist directed his attention 

 to an explanation of why hydrogen com- 

 bining with oxygen should give the quali- 

 ties that we recognize in water ; or why the 

 particle of sodium chloride should give a 

 crystal having the form of a cube. If the 

 chemist or physicist disclaims any such 

 ambition, how much more must the biol- 

 ogist disclaim any knowledge— nay, the 

 possibility of any such knowledge, at pres- 

 ent, of the behavior of highly complicated 

 organic matter. 



If from the point of view of the working- 

 evolutionist I have ventured to criticize- 

 Bergson's "L 'Evolution Creatriee," I beg 

 that you will not understand me to say- 

 that I am unappreciative of its value in- 

 other directions. On the contrary, as a; 

 contribution to speculative metaphysics^ 

 it has unusual fascination; as a contribu- 

 tion to that higher form of literary art 

 that we call philosophy, it is an admitted 

 masterpiece. But the day is fast disap- 

 pearing when the scientific study of evo- 

 lution can be exploited for literary pur- 

 poses—except for literary purposes. Paper 

 evolution has fallen into disrepute. 



If then we fail to find intellectual satis- 

 faction in the idea that adaptations have 

 arisen as a conscious response of the ani- 

 mal, what alternative does the theory of 

 chance offer? 



The only legitimate sense in which 

 chance can be applied is, as I have said, 

 that the variations happened, i. e., chanced, 

 to find an environment suited to them. 

 In this sense we speak of evolution as a 

 chance result. Nevertheless, I think most 

 of us feel, as I have said, that there must 

 be some closer bond than chance that in- 

 sures the continuance in a given direction 

 of variations once begun. Even Weis- 

 mann, a typical neo-Darwinian, admitted 

 in his interesting essay on Germinal Selee- 



