rganizing forces only entered space reluctantly. The spermatozoon,
which sets in motion the evolutionary process of the embryonic life, is
one of the smallest cells of the organism; and it is only a small part
of the spermatozoon which really takes part in the operation.

But these are only superficial differences. Digging beneath them, we
think, a deeper difference would be found.

A manufactured thing delineates exactly the form of the work of
manufacturing it. I mean that the manufacturer finds in his product
exactly what he has put into it. If he is going to make a machine, he
cuts out its pieces one by one and then puts them together: the machine,
when made, will show both the pieces and their assemblage. The whole of
the result represents the whole of the work; and to each part of the
work corresponds a part of the result.

Now I recognize that positive science can and should proceed as if
organization was like making a machine. Only so will it have any hold on
organized bodies. For its object is not to show us the essence of
things, but to furnish us with the best means of acting on them. Physics
and chemistry are well advanced sciences, and living matter lends itself
to our action only so far as we can treat it by the processes of our
physics and chemistry. Organization can therefore only be studied
scientifically if the organized body has first been likened to a
machine. The cells will be the pieces of the machine, the organism their
assemblage, and the elementary labors which have organized the parts
will be regarded as the real elements of the labor which has organized
the whole. This is the standpoint of science. Quite different, in our
opinion, is that of philosophy.

For us, the whole of an organized machine may, strictly speaking,
represent the whole of the organizing work (this is, however, only
approximately true), yet the parts of the machine do not correspond to
parts of the work, because _the materiality of this machine does not
represent a sum of means employed, but a sum of obstacles avoided_: it
is a negation rather than a positive reality. So, as we have shown in a
former study, vision is a power which should attain _by right_ an
infinity of things inaccessible to our eyes. But such a vision would not
be continued into action; it might suit a phantom, but not a living
being. The vision of a living being is an _effective_ vision, limited to
objects on which the being can act: it is a vision tha