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"The truth is that adaptation explains the sinuosities of the movement of Evolution, but not the general directions of the movement, still less the movement itself. Moreover, the mechanistic view, where all is "given," is quite inadequate to explain the facts. The finalist or teleological conception is not any more tenable, for Evolution is not simply the realization of a plan.
Mathematics prove an order, a constancy, a reason in the series of mechanical phenomena, but they 'do not prove that this reason is conscious of itself. This reason is a logical necessity, but the logical necessity does not prove the teleological or finalist necessity. And where there is no finality there is no personality, there is no consciousness.
Already the finalist theory of life eludes all precise verification. What if we go beyond it in one of its directions? Here, in fact, after a necessary digression, we are back at the question which we regard as essential: can the insufficiency of mechanism be proved by facts? We said that if this demonstration is possible, it is on condition of frankly accepting the evolutionist hypothesis.
Work of Darwin and Spencer Bergson's L'Evolution creatrice Life L'elan vital Evolution not progress in a straight line Adaptation an insufficient explanation Falsity of mechanistic view Finalist conception of reality as fulfilling a plan false Success along certain lines only Torpor, Instinct, and Intelligence Genesis of matter Humanity the crown of evolution Contingency and Freedom The Future is being created.
And if the pieces on a chessboard were endowed with consciousness, they would probably have little difficulty in ascribing their moves to freewill that is to say, they would claim for them a finalist rationality.
What more could the most confirmed finalist say, in order to mark out so exceptional a physico-chemistry?
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?
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