“A PROPHET OF THE SOUL” 
symbols, and as working in different ways, but it is 
finally, in both cases, the same energy. Whether 
living beings are evolved as the result of laws im- 
pressed upon matter at the first, or whether they 
arise by the ceaseless activity of a psychic principle 
launched into matter, at a definite time and place, 
as Bergson teaches, is mainly a difference in the use 
of terms. Both theories start from the same centre; 
they diverge only as they are worked out toward the 
periphery. Darwin conceives of primary and sec- 
ondary causes, Bergson conceives of an original 
creative spirit, ceaselessly struggling to evolve living 
forms out of inert matter. Creation as a special 
event is a past history with Darwin; it is an ever- 
present event with Bergson. New species are acci- 
dental with Darwin, they are contingent and unfore- 
seeable with Bergson; the creative impulse, like the 
genius of the creative artist, does not know the form 
it is looking for till it has found it; on other planets, 
amid other conditions, evolution may result in quite 
other forms. 
When I try to conceive of Darwin’s laws im- 
pressed upon matter, I can see only the creative 
energy immanent in matter. I see the élan vital of 
Bergson framed in another concept. When I recall 
the famous utterance of Tyndall in his Belfast ad- 
dress of over thirty years ago, — namely, that in 
matter itself he saw the promise and the potency 
of all terrestrial life, —I see, in another guise, 
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