and by this initial stimulation
prevents the average man from slumbering and drives the superior man to
mount still higher. But our brain, our society, and our language are
only the external and various signs of one and the same internal
superiority. They tell, each after its manner, the unique, exceptional
success which life has won at a given moment of its evolution. They
express the difference of kind, and not only of degree, which separates
man from the rest of the animal world. They let us guess that, while at
the end of the vast spring-board from which life has taken its leap, all
the others have stepped down, finding the cord stretched too high, man
alone has cleared the obstacle.

It is in this quite special sense that man is the "term" and the "end"
of evolution. Life, we have said, transcends finality as it transcends
the other categories. It is essentially a current sent through matter,
drawing from it what it can. There has not, therefore, properly
speaking, been any project or plan. On the other hand, it is abundantly
evident that the rest of nature is not for the sake of man: we struggle
like the other species, we have struggled against other species.
Moreover, if the evolution of life had encountered other accidents in
its course, if, thereby, the current of life had been otherwise divided,
we should have been, physically and morally, far different from what we
are. For these various reasons it would be wrong to regard humanity,
such as we have it before our eyes, as pre-figured in the evolutionary
movement. It cannot even be said to be the outcome of the whole of
evolution, for evolution has been accomplished on several divergent
lines, and while the human species is at the end of one of them, other
lines have been followed with other species at their end. It is in a
quite different sense that we hold humanity to be the ground of
evolution.

From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave
which, starting from a centre, spreads outwards, and which on almost the
whole of its circumference is stopped and converted into oscillation: at
one single point the obstacle has been forced, the impulsion has passed
freely. It is this freedom that the human form registers. Everywhere but
in man, consciousness has had to come to a stand; in man alone it has
kept on its way. Man, then, continues the vital movement indefinitely,
although he does not draw along with him all that life carries in