bergson's philosophy of the organism. 29 



it is bound up with a highly conjectural hypothesis of 



variation, and sooner or later in all discussions of the 



nature of transformism we come to the question of the 



origin of variations — the most fundamental of all. Let 



us state this problem in its most difficult form. If we 



examine the thousands of ova produced by an animal, we 



will find that in respect of any one measurable character 



there is more or less deviation of each ovum from the 



imaginary mean. Let us admit that some of this 



deviation may be accounted for in various ways : there 



remains a residue of A r ariations which have all the 



appearance of spontaneity, of arising de novo. But our 



reason rebels against the assumption that these differences 



have no causes, and immediately we are faced with the 



tremendous problem of the causes of variations. Now is 



it not possible to argue that this is only a pseudo-problem ? 



We know that a great number of the ova arise from the 



division of one mother-cell. They ought to be identical, 



we think, and if they are not identical there should exist 



causes why they vary from each other. But why are we 



forced to postulate this identity? It is again because our 



intellect is essentially practical. Its object is to act on 



things, to manufacture in short. Let us think of a 



minting machine making coins and we see that 



practical reasons dictate the desirability of these coins 



being identical in form and weight. So we make more 



and more perfect minting-engines, each of which turns 



out sovereigns more nearly identical than the last one. 



In the limit we conceptualise a machine which makes 



coins absolutely identical with each other, and our 



actual varying sovereigns differ from each other because 



the action of the machine in each operation is not quite 



the same. Then we apply this concept of a mechanism, 



an artifice of practical and not of speculative value, to 



the reproductive process. If intellect and life were the 



