consciousness, in which the past presses against the present and causes
the upspringing of a new form of consciousness, incommensurable with its
antecedents. That the appearance of a vegetable or animal species is due
to specific causes, nobody will gainsay. But this can only mean that if,
after the fact, we could know these causes in detail, we could explain
by them the form that has been produced; foreseeing the form is out of
the question.[9] It may perhaps be said that the form could be foreseen
if we could know, in all their details, the conditions under which it
will be produced. But these conditions are built up into it and are part
and parcel of its being; they are peculiar to that phase of its history
in which life finds itself at the moment of producing the form: how
could we know beforehand a situation that is unique of its kind, that
has never yet occurred and will never occur again? Of the future, only
that is foreseen which is like the past or can be made up again with
elements like those of the past. Such is the case with astronomical,
physical and chemical facts, with all facts which form part of a system
in which elements supposed to be unchanging are merely put together, in
which the only changes are changes of position, in which there is no
theoretical absurdity in imagining that things are restored to their
place; in which, consequently, the same total phenomenon, or at least
the same elementary phenomena, can be repeated. But an original
situation, which imparts something of its own originality to its
elements, that is to say, to the partial views that are taken of it, how
can such a situation be pictured as given before it is actually
produced?[10] All that can be said is that, once produced, it will be
explained by the elements that analysis will then carve out of it. Now,
what is true of the production of a new species is also true of the
production of a new individual, and, more generally, of any moment of
any living form. For, though the variation must reach a certain
importance and a certain generality in order to give rise to a new
species, it is being produced every moment, continuously and insensibly,
in every living being. And it is evident that even the sudden
"mutations" which we now hear of are possible only if a process of
incubation, or rather of maturing, is going on throughout a series of
generations that do not seem to change. In this sense it might be said
of life, as of conscious