d by evolution during the course of progress; it is cut
out of something larger, or, rather, it is only the projection,
necessarily on a plane, of a reality that possesses both relief and
depth. It is this more comprehensive reality that true finalism ought to
reconstruct, or, rather, if possible, embrace in one view. But, on the
other hand, just because it goes beyond intellect--the faculty of
connecting the same with the same, of perceiving and also of producing
repetitions--this reality is undoubtedly creative, _i.e._ productive of
effects in which it expands and transcends its own being. These effects
were therefore not given in it in advance, and so it could not take them
for ends, although, when once produced, they admit of a rational
interpretation, like that of the manufactured article that has
reproduced a model. In short, the theory of final causes does not go far
enough when it confines itself to ascribing some intelligence to nature,
and it goes too far when it supposes a pre-existence of the future in
the present in the form of idea. And the second theory, which sins by
excess, is the outcome of the first, which sins by defect. In place of
intellect proper must be substituted the more comprehensive reality of
which intellect is only the contraction. The future then appears as
expanding the present: it was not, therefore, contained in the present
in the form of a represented end. And yet, once realized, it will
explain the present as much as the present explains it, and even more;
it must be viewed as an end as much as, and more than, a result. Our
intellect has a right to consider the future abstractly from its
habitual point of view, being itself an abstract view of the cause of
its own being.

It is true that the cause may then seem beyond our grasp. Already the
finalist theory of life eludes all precise verification. What if we go
beyond it in one of its directions? Here, in fact, after a necessary
digression, we are back at the question which we regard as essential:
can the insufficiency of mechanism be proved by facts? We said that if
this demonstration is possible, it is on condition of frankly accepting
the evolutionist hypothesis. We must now show that if mechanism is
insufficient to account for evolution, the way of proving this
insufficiency is not to stop at the classic conception of finality,
still less to contract or attenuate it, but, on the contrary, to go
further.

Let us indicate at once