Bergson so justly criticises in Spencer: that of
reconstructing evolution with fragments of its product.

If we wish thoroughly to grasp the reality of things, we must think
otherwise. Neither of these ready-made concepts, mechanism and finality,
is in place, because both of them imply the same postulate, viz. that
"everything is given," either at the beginning or at the end, whilst
evolution is nothing if it is not, on the contrary, "that which gives."
Let us take care not to confound evolution and development. There is
the stumbling-block of the usual transformist theories, and Mr Bergson
devotes to it a closely argued and singularly penetrating criticism, by
an example which he analyses in detail. ("Creative Evolution", chapter
i.) These theories either do not explain the birth of variation, and
limit themselves to an attempt to make us understand how, once born,
it becomes fixed, or else through need of adaptation they look for a
conception of its birth. But in both cases they fail.

"The truth is that adaptation explains the windings of the movement of
evolution, but not the general directions of the movement, still less
the movement itself. The road which leads to the town is certainly
obliged to climb the hills and go down the slopes; it adapts itself to
the accidents of the ground; but the accidents of the ground are not
the cause of the road, any more than they have imparted its direction."
("Creative Evolution", pages 111-112.)

At the bottom of all these errors there are only prejudices of practical
action. That is of course why every work appears to be an outside
construction beginning with previous elements; a phase of anticipation
followed by a phase of execution, calculation, and art, an effective
projecting cause, and a concerted goal, a mechanism which hurls to
a finality which aims. But the genuine explanation must be sought
elsewhere. And Mr Bergson makes this plain by two admirable analyses in
which he takes to pieces the common ideas of disorder and nothingness in
order to explain their meaning relative to our proceedings in industry
or language.

Let us come back to facts, to immediate experience, and try to translate
its pure data simply. What are the characteristics of vital evolution?
First of all it is a dynamic continuity, a continuity of qualitative
progress; next, it is essentially a duration, an irreversible rhythm, a
work of inner maturation. By the memory inherent in it, the whole of i