82 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
past of the organism must be added to that moment, its heredity—ain fact, 
the whole of a very long history.” Now this is not to be brushed aside as 
a priort philosophising, it is absolutely in line with such a critical piece of 
work as Jennings’ study of behaviour in a starfish. In studying this behaviour 
Jennings proves that we have to take account of past stimuli and past 
activities. “The precise way each part shall act under the influence of the 
stimulus must be determined by the past history of that part; by the 
stimuli that have acted upon it, by the reactions which it has given, by the 
results which these actions have produced (as well as by the present relations 
of this part to other parts, and by the immediate effects of its present action). 
In other words, this complex, harmonious working of the parts together is 
only intelligible on the view that there is a history behind it; that it is the 
result of development. We cannot look upon it as a final thing (“etwas 
Letztes, Naturgegebenes”’), because there 7s a history behind it, and we know 
as solidly as we know anything in physiology that the history of the organism 
does modify it and its actions—in ways not yet thoroughly understood, 
doubtless, yet none the less real. The starfish that we have before us has 
an actual history of untold ages, in which it has existed as germ-plasm or 
otherwise, and there can be no greater mistake in physiology than to leave 
this out of account.” This from a biologist is a very interesting corroboration 
of Bergson’s conception of the organism as a historic being. Bergson’s view 
is this: “The world the mathematician deals with is a world that dies and is 
reborn at every instant,” but the development of a living creature implies 
“a real persistence of the past in the present.” Continuity of change, 
preservation of the past in the present, real duration—the living being seems, 
then, to share these attributes with consciousness. Can we @0 further and 
say that life, like conscious activity, is invention, is unceasing creation ? 
THe Fact oF VARIABILITY. 
The creativeness of life is evidenced in evolution—recapitulated every day, 
in some measure at least, in development. There has been a continuous 
progress of living creatures, the continuity being sustained by the chain of 
germ-cells, “Life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the 
medium of a developed organism.” “Organic evolution resembles the 
development of a consciousness, in which the past presses against the present 
and causes the upspringing of a new form of consciousness, incommensurable 
with its antecedents.” What we call, in Biology, variations—organic new 
departures—are just the larger steps in a continuous originality and 
unforeseeability of self-expression. Evolution is a continuous creation of 
unforeseeable form. 
