Let us say at once that to thin out the Leibnizian finalism by breaking it into an infinite number of pieces seems to us a step in the wrong direction. This is, however, the tendency of the doctrine of finality. It fully realizes that if the universe as a whole is the carrying out of a plan, this cannot be demonstrated empirically, and that even of the organized world alone it is hardly easier to prove all harmonious: facts would equally well testify to the contrary. Nature sets living beings at discord with one another. She everywhere presents disorder alongside of order, retrogression alongside of progress. But, though finality cannot be affirmed either of the whole of matter or of the whole of life, might it not yet be true, says the finalist, of each organism taken separately? Is there not a wonderful division of labor, a marvellous solidarity among the parts of an organism, perfect order in infinite
Radical Finalism
Veomplexity? Does not each living being thus reahze. a plan inimaneat in its substance? — This theory con- Eists, at bottom, in breaking up the original notion of finality into bits. It does not accept, indeed it ridicules, the idea of an extemoL finality, according to which living beings are ordered with regard to each other: to suppose the grass made for the cow, the lamb for the wolf — that is all acknowledged to be absurd. But there is, we are told, an internal finality: each being is made for itself, all its parts conspire for the greatest good of the whole and are intelligently organized in view of that end, Such is the notion of finafity which has long been classic. Finalism
»has shrunk to the point of never embracing more than one living being at a time. By making itself smaller, it probably thought it would offer less surface for blows.
The truth is, it lay open to them a great deal more.
Radical as our on-n theory may appear, finality is external
or it is nothing at all.
Consider the most complex and the most harmonious
organism. All the elements, we are told, conspire for
the greatest good of the whole. Very well, but let us
tnot foi^et that each of these elements may itself be an organism in certain cases, and that in subordinating the existence of this small organism to the life of the great', one we accept the principle of an eternal finality. The idea of a finality that is always internal is therefore a self- destructive notion. An organism is composed of tissues. Beach of which lives for itself. The cells of which the tissues rare made have also a certain independence. Strictly speak- ing, if the subordination of all the elements of the individ- ual to the individual itself were complete, we might contend that they are not organisms, reserve the name organism for the individual, and recognize only internal finality. But every one knows that these elements may possess a true au-
tonomy. To say nothing of phagocj-tes, which push inde- pendence to the point of attacking the organism that nourishes them, or of germinal cells, which have their own life alongside the somatic cells — the facts of regeneration are enough: here an element or a group of elements sud- denly reveals that, however limited its normal space and function, it can transcend them occasionally; it may even, in certain cases, be regarded as the equivalent of the whole.
There lies the stumbling-block of the vitalistic theories. We shall not reproach them, as is ordinarily done, with replying to the question by the question itself: the "vital principle" may indeed not explain much, but it is at least a sort of label affixed to our ignorance, so as to remind us of this occasionally,' while mechanism invites us to ignore that ignorance. But the position of vitalism is rendered very difficult by the fact that, in nature, there is neither purely internal finality nor absolutely distinct individuality. The organized dements composing the individual have themselves a certain individuality, and each will claim its vital principle if the individual pre- tends to have its own. But, on the other hand, the in- dividual itself is not sufficiently independent, not sufficiently cut off from other things, for us to allow it a " vital princi-
There are really two lines to follow in contemporary neo-vitalisn: OD the one hand, the assertion that pure mechanism is inaufGcient, which Bfisumes great authority when mode hy such scientists as Driescb or Reinke, for example; and, on the other hand, the hj'potheses which this vitalism superposes on mechanism (the "entelechiea" of Driesch, and the"dominants'' of Reinke, etc.). Of these two parts, the fonner is perhaps the more interesting. See the admirable studies of Driesch — Die LokaliscUion morphogenetiaeher Vorgange, Leipzig, 1S09; Die oryon- uchen Ae^uioltonen, Leipzig, 1901; Naturbegriffc and NaiuTuHeilc^heip- ■ig, 1904; Der VHalismug aU GeschichU und all Z^hre. Leipzig, 1905; and of Reinke— i>M WtU aU Tat, Berlin, 1899; Binleilung in di« Iftwretitche Biologie, Berlin, 1001; PhUotophie der Botanih, Leipzig,
Radical Finalism
pie" of its own. An orgaaisra such as a higher vertebrate is the most individuated of all organisms; yet, if we take into account that it is only the development of an ovum forming part of the body of its mother and of a spermato- zoon belonging to the body of its father, that the egg (i.e. the ovum fertihzed) is a connecting link between the two progenitora since it is common to their two sub- Btances, we shall reaUze that every individual organism, ;«ven that of a man, is merely a bud that has sprouted on the combined body of both its parents. Where, then, does the vital principle of the individual begin or end? Gradually we shall be carried further and further back, up to the individual's remotest ancestors: we shall find him solidary with each of them, solidary with that little mass of protoplasmic jelly which is probably at the root of the genealogical tree of life. Being, to a certain extent, one with this primitive ancestor, he is also solidary with all that descends from the ancestor in divergent directions. In this sense each individual may be said to remain united with the totality of living beings by invisible bonds. So it is of no use to try to restrict finality to the individuality of the hving being. If there is finality in the world of life, it includes the whole of life in a single indivisible embrace. This life common to ail the living undoubtedly presents many gaps and incoherences, and again it is not so mathe- matically one that it cannot allow each being to become individuahzed to a certain degree. But it forms a single whole, none the less; and we have to choose between the out-and-out negation of finality and the hypothesis which co-ordinates not only the parts of an organism with the iitirganism itself, but also each Hving being with the col-
rtive whole of all others.
FinaUty will not go down any easier for bemg taken a powder. Either the hypothesis of a finality im-
"-U Creative Evolution
manent in life should be rejected aa a whole, or it must undergo a treatment very different from pulverization.
The error of radical finalism, as also that of radical mechanism, is to extend too far the application of certain concepts that are natural to our intellect. Originally, we thinli only in order to act. Our intellect has been cast in the mold of action. Speculation is a luxury, while action is a necessity. Now, in order to act, we begin by proposing an end; we make a plan, then we go on to the detail of the mechanism which will bring it to pass. This latter operation is possible only if wc know what we can reckon on. We must therefore have managed to extract resemblances from nature, which enable us to anticipate the future. Thus we must, consciously or unconsciously, have made use of the law of causality. Moreover, the more sharply the idea of efficient causality is defined in our mind, the more it takes the form of a meckanieal causality. And this scheme, in its turn, is the more mathematical according as it expresses a more rigorous necessity. That is why we have only to follow the bent of our mind to become mathematicians. But, on the other band, this natural mathematics is only the rigid unconscious skeleton beneath our conscious supple habit of linking the same causes to the same effects ; and the usual object of this habit is to guide actions inspired by in- tentions, or, what comes to the same, to direct movements combined with a view to reproducing a pattern. We are bom artisans as we are bom geometricians, and indeed we are geometricians only because we are artisans. Thus the human intellect, inasmuch as it is fashioned for the needs of human action, is an intellect which proceeds at the same time by intention and by calculation, by adapt- ing means to ends and by thinking out mechanisms of
Bit)
Osophy
more and more geometrical form. Whether nature be conceived as an immense machine regulated by mathe- matical laws, or as the realization of a plan, these two ways of regarding it are only the consummation of two tendencies Lof mind which are complementary to each other, and which
lave their origin in the same vital necessities. For that reason, radical finalism is very near radical
mechanism on many points. Both doctrines are reluc-
kOt to see in the course of things generally, or even simply
1 the development of life, an unforeseeable creation of
porm. In considering reality, mechanism regards only
he aspect of similarity or repetition. It is therefore dominated by this law, that in nature there is only like reproducing like. The more the geometry in mechanism Is emphasized, the less can mechanism admit that any- thing is ever created, even pure form. In so far as we are geometricians, then, we reject the unforeseeable. We might accept it, assuredly, in so far as we are artists, for art lives on creation and implies a, latent belief in the spontandty of nature. But disinterested art is a luxury, like pure speculation. Long before being artists, we are artisans; and all fabrication, however rudimentary, hves on likeness and repetition, like the natural geometry which serves as its fulcrum. Fabrication works on models which it sets out to reproduce; and even when it invents, it proceeds, or imagines itself to proceed, by a new ar- rangement of elements already known. Its principle is that "we must have like to produce like." In short, the strict application of the principle of finality, like that of the principle of mechanical causality, leads to the con- clusion that "all is given." Both principles say the same tting in their respective languages, because they respond
D the same need. Hiat is why agun they agree in doing away with time.
Real duration is that duration which gnaws on things, and leaves on them the mark of its tooth. If everything is in time, everj-thing changes inwardly, and the same concrete reality never recurs. Repetition is therefore possible only in the abstract: what is repeated is some aspect that our senses, and especially our intellect, have singled out from reality, just because our action, upon which all the effort of our intellect is directed, can move i only among repetitions. Thus, concentrated on that which repeats, solely preoccupied in welding the same to the same, intellect turns away from the vision of time. It dislikes what is fluid, and solidifies everything it touches. We do not think real time. But we live it, because life transcends intellect. The feeling we have of our evolution and of the evolution of all things in pure duration is there, forming around the intellectual concept properly so-called an indistinct fringe that fades off into darkness. Mechan- ism and finalism agree in taking account only of the bright nucleus shining in the centre. They forget that this nucleus has been formed out of the rest by condensation, and that the whole must be used, the fluid as well as and more than the condensed, in order to grasp the inner move- ment of hfe.
Indeed, if the fringe exists, however dehcate and in- distinct, it should have more importance for philosophy than the bright nucleus it surrounds. For it is its presence that enables us to afRrm that the nucleus is a nucleus, that pure intellect is a contraction, by condensation, of a more extensive power. And, just because this vague intiution is of no help in directing our action on things, which action takes place exclusively on the surface of reality, we may presume that it is to be exercised not merely on the aui^ face, but below.
As soon as we go out of the encasing in which radical