Art_ (_Le Genie dans
l'art_), M. Seailles develops this twofold thesis, that art is a
continuation of nature and that life is creation. We should willingly
accept the second formula; but by creation must we understand, as the
author does, a _synthesis_ of elements? Where the elements pre-exist,
the synthesis that will be made is virtually given, being only one of
the possible arrangements. This arrangement a superhuman intellect could
have perceived in advance among all the possible ones that surround it.
We hold, on the contrary, that in the domain of life the elements have
no real and separate existence. They are manifold mental views of an
indivisible process. And for that reason there is radical contingency in
progress, incommensurability between what goes before and what
follows--in short, duration.]

[Footnote 12: Butschli, _Untersuchungen uber mikroskopische Schaume und
das Protoplasma_, Leipzig, 1892, First Part.]

[Footnote 13: Rhumbler, _Versuch einer mechanischen Erklarung der
indirekten Zell-und Kernteilung_ (_Roux's Archiv_, 1896).]

[Footnote 14: Berthold, _Studien uber Protoplasmamechanik_, Leipzig,
1886, p. 102. Cf. the explanation proposed by Le Dantec, _Theorie
nouvelle de la vie_, Paris, 1896, p. 60.]

[Footnote 15: Cope, _The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution_, Chicago,
1896, pp. 475-484.]

[Footnote 16: Maupas, "Etude des infusoires cilies" (_Arch. de zoologie
experimentale_, 1883, pp. 47, 491, 518, 549, in particular). P. Vignon,
_Recherches de cytologie generale sur les epitheliums_, Paris, 1902, p.
655. A profound study of the motions of the Infusoria and a very
penetrating criticism of the idea of tropism have been made recently by
Jennings (_Contributions to the Study of the Behavior of Lower
Organisms_, Washington, 1904). The "type of behavior" of these lower
organisms, as Jennings defines it (pp. 237-252), is unquestionably of
the psychological order.]

[Footnote 17: E.B. Wilson, _The Cell in Development and Inheritance_,
New York, 1897, p. 330.]

[Footnote 18: Dastre, _La Vie et la mort_, p. 43.]

[Footnote 19: Laplace, _Introduction a la theorie analytique des
probabilites_ (_OEuvres completes_, vol. vii., Paris, 1886, p. vi.).]

[Footnote 20: Du Bois-Reymond, _Uber die Grenzen des Naturerkennens_,
Leipzig, 1892.]

[Footnote 21: There are really two lines to follow in contemporary
neo-vitalism: on the one hand, the assertion that pure mechanism is
insufficient, which assume