Creative Evolution · 36 of 50

III · Footnotes

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 78: We have developed this point in Matière et mémoire, chaps. ii. and iii., notably pp. 78-80 and 169-186.]

[Footnote 79: Faraday, A Speculation concerning Electric Conduction (Philosophical Magazine, 3d. series, vol. xxiv.).]

[Footnote 80: Our comparison does no more than develop the content of the term [Greek: logos], as Plotinus understands it. For while the [Greek: logos] of this philosopher is a generating and informing power, an aspect or a fragment of the [Greek: psychê], on the other hand Plotinus sometimes speaks of it as of a discourse. More generally, the relation that we establish in the present chapter between "extension" and "detension" resembles in some aspects that which Plotinus supposes (some developments of which must have inspired M. Ravaisson) when he makes extension not indeed an inversion of original Being, but an enfeeblement of its essence, one of the last stages of the procession, (see in particular, Enn. IV. iii. 9-11, and III. vi. 17-18). Yet ancient philosophy did not see what consequences would result from this for mathematics, for Plotinus, like Plato, erected mathematical essences into absolute realities. Above all, it suffered itself to be deceived by the purely superficial analogy of duration with extension. It treated the one as it treated the other, regarding change as a degradation of immutability, the sensible as a fall from the intelligible. Whence, as we shall show in the next chapter, a philosophy which fails to recognize the real function and scope of the intellect.]

[Footnote 81: Bastian, The Brain as an Organ of the Mind, pp. 214-16.]

[Footnote 82: We have dwelt on this point in a former work. See the Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, Paris, 1889, pp. 155-160.]

[Footnote 83: Op. cit. chaps. i. and ii. passim.]

[Footnote 84: Cf. especially the profound studies of M. Ed. Le Roy in the Revue de métaph. et de morale.]

[Footnote 85: Matière et mémoire, chapters iii. and iv.]

[Footnote 86: See in particular, Phys., iv. 215 a 2; v. 230 b 12; viii. 255 a 2; and De Caelo, iv. 1-5; ii. 296 b 27; iv. 308 a 34.]

[Footnote 87: De Caelo, iv. 310 a 34 [Greek: to d' eis ton autou topon pherethai hekaoton to eis to autou eidos esti pheresthai].]

[Footnote 88: On these differences of quality see the work of Duhem, L'Évolution de la mécanique, Paris, 1905, pp. 197 ff.]

[Footnote 89: Boltzmann, Vorlesungen über Gastheorie, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 253 ff.]

[Footnote 90: In a book rich in facts and in ideas (La Dissolution opposée a l'évolution, Paris, 1899), M. André Lalande shows us everything going towards death, in spite of the momentary resistance which organisms seem to oppose.--But, even from the side of unorganized matter, have we the right to extend to the entire universe considerations drawn from the present state of our solar system? Beside the worlds which are dying, there are without doubt worlds that are being born. On the other hand, in the organized world, the death of individuals does not seem at all like a diminution of "life in general," or like a necessity which life submits to reluctantly. As has been more than once remarked, life has never made an effort to prolong indefinitely the existence of the individual, although on so many other points it has made so many successful efforts. Everything is as if this death had been willed, or at least accepted, for the greater progress of life in general.]

[Footnote 91: We have dwelt on this point in an article entitled "Introduction à la métaphysique" (Revue de métaphysique et de morale, January, 1903, pp. 1-25).]

[Footnote 92: Cf. a paper written (in Russian) by Serkovski, and reviewed in the Année biologique, 1898, p. 317.]

[Footnote 93: Ed. Perrier, Les Colonies animales, Paris, 1897 (2nd edition).]

[Footnote 94: Delage, L'Hérédité, 2nd edition, Paris, 1903, p. 97. Cf. by the same author, "La Conception polyzoïque des êtres" (Revue scientifique, 1896, pp. 641-653).]

[Footnote 95: This is the theory maintained by Kunstler, Delage, Sedgwick, Labbé, etc. Its development, with bibliographical references, will be found in the work of Busquet, Les êtres vivants, Paris, 1899.]