LIFE AND CHANCE 
without that which hampers and holds it would not 
be life; it would have no reality, no expression. The 
struggle and the antagonism give it body and power. 
It also opens the door to chance, or fortune, as the 
ancients called it. 
The living has to adapt itself to the non-living. 
The latter is uncompromising; it goes its own way if 
all life perishes. But life is plastic, inventive, com- 
promising; it takes what it can get; under the pres- 
sure of outward conditions it is perpetually chang- 
ing; it flows on like a stream, taking the form that 
external conditions impose upon it, but ever flow- 
ing. It would not be life without this inherent 
movement. 
All life asks is opportunity; it takes its chances in 
the clash of opposing forces; it loses at one point and 
gains at another; the hazards of time and change 
modify it, hindering or helping it, but do not ex- 
tinguish it. 
Forms grow old, but the life-impulse does not grow 
old. The animal brain suddenly began to increase 
In size in Tertiary times. Why? To account for evo- 
lution, as I see it, I have to substitute something like 
the creative impulse of Bergson for the mechanical 
and fortuitous selection of Darwin. The process of 
evolution would have stopped, or never have begun, 
had there not been the inherent tendency of life to 
struggle up to higher and more complex forms, 
Mechanical forces seek rest; life forces seek action 
Q45 
