s 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? Is not the real mystery of heredity the difference, not the
resemblance, occurring between one term and another?

Whatever be its solution, all the individual phases mutually extend and
interpenetrate one another. There is a racial memory by which the past
is continually accumulated and preserved. Life's history is embodied
in its present. And that is really the ultimate reason of the perpetual
novelty which surprised us just now. The characteristics of biological
evolution are thus the same as those of human progress. Once again we
find the very stuff of reality in duration. "We must not then speak any
longer of life in general as an abstraction, or a mere heading under
which we write down all living beings." ("Creative Evolution", page 28.)
On the contrary, to it belongs the primordial function of reality. It
is a very real current transmitted from generation to generation,
organising and passing through bodies, without failing or becoming
exhausted in any one of them.

We may, already, then, draw one conclusion: Reality, at bottom, is
becoming. But such a thesis runs counter to all our familiar ideas.
It is imperative that we should submit it to the test of critical
examination and positive verification.