them an indissoluble bond. The complex and quasi-discontinuous
organism is thus made to function as would a continuous living mass
which had simply grown bigger.

But the real and profound causes of division were those which life bore
within its bosom. For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is
to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth,
divergent directions among which its impetus is divided. This we observe
in ourselves, in the evolution of that special tendency which we call
our character. Each of us, glancing back over his history, will find
that his child-personality, though indivisible, united in itself divers
persons, which could remain blended just because they were in their
nascent state: this indecision, so charged with promise, is one of the
greatest charms of childhood. But these interwoven personalities become
incompatible in course of growth, and, as each of us can live but one
life, a choice must perforce be made. We choose in reality without
ceasing; without ceasing, also, we abandon many things. The route we
pursue in time is strewn with the remains of all that we began to be, of
all that we might have become. But nature, which has at command an
incalculable number of lives, is in no wise bound to make such
sacrifices. She preserves the different tendencies that have bifurcated
with their growth. She creates with them diverging series of species
that will evolve separately.

These series may, moreover, be of unequal importance. The author who
begins a novel puts into his hero many things which he is obliged to
discard as he goes on. Perhaps he will take them up later in other
books, and make new characters with them, who will seem like extracts
from, or rather like complements of, the first; but they will almost
always appear somewhat poor and limited in comparison with the original
character. So with regard to the evolution of life. The bifurcations on
the way have been numerous, but there have been many blind alleys beside
the two or three highways; and of these highways themselves, only one,
that which leads through the vertebrates up to man, has been wide enough
to allow free passage to the full breath of life. We get this impression
when we compare the societies of bees and ants, for instance, with human
societies. The former are admirably ordered and united, but stereotyped;
the latter are open to every sort of progress, but divided, and
incessantly at strife wit