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 
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