presents to immediate observation. Whether spiritual activity
unconsciously presides over biological evolution, or whether it simply
prolongs it, we always find here and there the essential features of
duration.

But I spoke just now of "individuality." Is it really one of the
distinctive marks of life? We know how difficult it is to define it
accurately. Nowhere, not even in man, is it fully realised; and there are
beings in existence in which it seems a complete illusion, though every
part of them reproduces their complete unity.

True, but we are now dealing with biology, in which geometrical precision
is inadmissible, where reality is defined not so much by the possession of
certain characteristics as by its tendency to accentuate them. It is as a
tendency that individuality is more particularly manifested; and if we look
at it in this light, no one can deny that it does constitute one of the
fundamental tendencies of life. Only the truth is that the tendency to
individuality remains always and everywhere counterbalanced, and therefore
limited, by an opposing tendency, the tendency to association, and above
all to reproduction. This necessitates a correction in our analysis.
Nature, in many respects, seems to take no interest in individuals. "Life
appears to be a current passing from one germ to another through the medium
of a developed organism." ("Creative Evolution", page 29.)

It seems as if the organism played the part of a thoroughfare. What is
important is rather the continuity of progress of which the individuals are
only transitory phases. Between these phases again there are no sharp
severances; each phase resolves and melts imperceptibly into that which
follows. Is not the real problem of heredity to know how, and up to what
point, a new individual breaks away from the individuals which produced it?