object:2.02 - THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
book class:The Phenomenon of Man
author class:Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
subject class:Christianity
subject class:Integral Theory
class:chapter
CHAPTER TWO
THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
When a physicist wants to study the development of a wave, he
begins by calculating the pulsation of a single particle. Then he
reduces the vibrating medium to its main characteristics and
directions of elasticity, and generalises the results found in the
instance of the element. He thus obtains an overall picture as
close as possible to the movement of the whole he is trying to
determine.
When he faces the task of describing the ascent of life, the
biologist is obliged to follow a similar method in his own special
way. It is impossible to reduce tins enormous and complex
phenomenon to order without first analysing the processes dis-
covered by life for its advance in each of its elements taken in
isolation. It is equally impossible to distinguish the general
behaviour adopted by the total multitude of individual pro-
gressions without choosing the most expressive and luminous
features of their resultant effect.
In the pages that follow I intend to develop a simplified but
structural representation of life evolving on earth ; a vision so
homogeneous and coherent that its truth is irresistible. I provide
no minor details and no arguments, but only a perspective that
the reader may sec and accept — or not see.
The gist of what I mean comes under these three headings :
1. The elemental movements of life,
2. The spontaneous ramification of the living mass,
3. The tree of life.
All this will first be studied at the surface and from without. We
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THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
shall only start probing into the within of tilings in the subsequent
chapter.
i. THE ELEMENTAL MOVEMENTS OF LIFE
A. Reproduction
At the base of the entire process whereby the envelope of the
biosphere spreads its web over the face of the earth stands the
meclianism of reproduction which is typical of life. Sooner or
later each cell divides (by mitotic, or amitotic division) and gives
birth to another cell similar to itself. First, a single centre ; then
two. Everything in the subsequent development of life stems
from this potent primordial phenomenon.
In itself, cell division seems to be due to the simple need of
the living particle to find a remedy for its molecular fragility
and for the structural difficulties involved in continued growth.
The process is one of rejuvenation and shedding. The more
limited groups of atoms, the micro-molecules, have an almost
indefinite longevity, and with it an equivalent rigidity. The cell,
continually in the toils of assimilation, must split in two to con-
tinue to exist. At first sight reproduction appears as a simple
process thought up by nature to ensure the permanence of the
unstable in the case of these vast molecular edifices.
But, as always happens in die world, what was at first a happy
accident or means of survival, is promptly transformed and used
as an instrument of progress and conquest. Life at fust seems to
have reproduced itself only in self-defence ; but this was a mere
prelude to its vast conquests.
B. Multiplication
For, once introduced into the stuff of the universe, the principle
of the duplication of living particles knows no limits other than
those of the quantity of matter provided. It has been calculated
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THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
that, in a few generations, a single infusorian could by simple
division of itself and its descendants cover the whole surface of
the earth. Every volume, however great, succumbs to the effects
of geometrical progression, and this is not a pure extrapolation
of the mind. In its ability to double itself and to go on doubling
itself without let or hindrance, life possesses a force of expansion
as invincible as that of a body that dilates or vaporises. But
whereas in the case of so-called inert matter the increase in
volume soon reaches a point of equilibrium, no such limit appears
to be set to the expansion of living substance. The more the
phenomenon of cellular division spreads, the more it gains in
virulence. Once fission has started, nothing from within can
arrest its devouring and creative conflagration, because it is
spontaneous. Nor is there any external influence powerful
enough to check, the process.
c. Renovation
Yet this is only the first result and only the quantitative side of
the process. Reproduction doubles the mother cell. Thus, by a
mechanism which is the inverse of chemical disintegration, it
multiplies without crumbling. At the same time, however, it trans-
forms what was only intended to be prolonged. Closed in on
itself, the living clement reaches more or less quickly a state of
immobility. It becomes stuck and coagulated in its evolution.
Then by the act of reproduction it regains the faculty for inner
re-adjustment and consequendy takes on a new appearance and
direction. The process is one of pluralisation in form as well as in
number. The elemental ripple of life that emerges from each
individual unit does not spread outwards in a monotonous circle
formed of individual units exactly like itself. It is diffracted and
becomes iridescent, with an indefinite scale of variegated tonal-
ides. The living unit is a centre of irresistible multiplication, and
ipso facto an equally irresistible focus of diversification.
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THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
D. Conjugation
And then, so it seems, so as to enlarge the breach thus made by
its first inroads in the ramparts of the unorganised world, life
discovered the wonderful process of conjugation. It would take
a whole book to describe and extol the growth and sublimation
of sexual dualism in the course of evolution from the cell to man.
At the early stages that we are now considering, the phenomenon
appears in the main as a means of accelerating and intensifying
the double effect (multiplication and diversification) obtained by
asexual reproduction such as is still prevalent in many of the lower
organisms and even with the individual cells of our own bodies.
By the first conjugation of two elements, however little they
may as yet have been differentiated into male and female, the door
was thrown open to diose modes of generation whereby a single
individual can pulverise itself into a myriad of germs. Simul-
taneously we find coming into play the endless permutations and
combinations of ' characters ' so dear to modern geneticists.
Instead of simply radiating from each centre in process of division,
the rays of life now anastomose — exchanging and varying their
respective riches. We no more dream of being astonished at this
prodigious invention than at the discoveries of fire, bread or
writing. Yet what chances and what fumblings — and what
endless ages therefore — were necessary before this fundamental
discovery from which we have sprung was matured. And how
much longer still before it found its complement and natural
fulfdment in the no less revolutionary innovation of association'.
E. Association
In first analysis — and supposing we ignore deeper factors for die
moment — the grouping of living particles into complex organ-
isms is an almost inevitable consequence of their multiplication.
Cells tend to congregate because they press against each other or
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THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
are even born in clusters. But the purely mechanical necessity or
opportunity to get together engendered in the long run a definite
method of biological improvement.
We still seem to be able to see all the stages of this still un-
finished march of nature towards the unification or synthesis of
the ever-increasing products of living reproduction. At the
bottom we find the simple aggregate, as in bacteria and the lower
fungi. One stage higher comes the colony of attached cells, not
yet centralised, though distinct specialisation has begun, as with
the higher vegetable forms and the bryozoa. Higher still is the
metazoan cell of cells, in which by a prodigious critical transforma-
tion an autonomous centre is established (as though by excessive
shrinking) over the organised group of living particles. And still
farther on, to round oft the list, at the present limit of our experi-
ence and of life's experiments, comes society — that mysterious
association of free metazoans in which (with varying success)
the formation of hyper-complex units by ' mega-svnthesis '
seems to be being attempted.
The last part of this book will be particularly devoted to this
last and highest form of aggregation, in which the self-organising
effort of matter culminates perhaps in society as capable of reflec-
tion. Here wc must confine ourselves to pointing out that
association, considered at all its levels, is not a sporadic or acciden-
tal appearance in the animal kingdom. On the contrary, it
represents one of die most universal and constant expedients (and
thus one of the most significant) used by life in its expansion. Two
of its advantages are immediately obvious. Thanks to it, living
substance is able to build itself up in sufficient bulk to escape
innumerable external obstacles (capillary attraction, osmotic
pressure, chemical variation of the medium, etc.) winch paralyse
the microscopic organisms. In biology, as in navigation, a certain
size is physically necessary for certain movements. Thanks to it
again, the organism (here too because of its increased volume) is
able to find room inside itself to lodge the countless mechanisms
added successively in the course of its differentiation.
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THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
F. Controlled Additivity
Reproduction, conjugation, association . . . No matter how far
they are extended, these various activities of the cell in themselves
only lead to a surface deployment of the organisms. If it had been
left to their resources alone, life would have spread and varied,
but always on the same level. It would have been like an aero-
plane which can taxi but not become airborne. It would never
have taken off.
It is at this point that the phenomenon of additivity intervenes
and acts as a vertical component.
There seems to be no lack of examples, in the course of bio-
logical evolution, of transformations acting horizontally by pure
crossing of characters. One example is the mutation we call
Mendelian. But when we look deeper and more generally we
sec that the rejuvenations made possible by each reproduction
achieve something more than mere substitution. They add, one to
the other, and their sum increases in a pre-determined direction.
Dispositions are accentuated, organs are adjusted or supplemented.
We get diversification, the growing specialisation of factors
forming a single genealogical sequence — in other words, the
apparition of the line as a natural unit distinct from the individual.
This law of controlled complication, the mature stage of the pro-
cess in which we get first the micro-molecule then the mega-
molecule and finally the first cells, is known to biologists as
orthogenesis. 1
Orthogenesis is the dynamic and only complete form of
heredity. The word conceals deep and real springs of cosmic
extent. We shall find this out little by litde, but meanwhile one
1 On the pretext of its being used in various questionable or restricted senses,
or of its having a metaphysical flavour, some biologists would like to suppress
the word ' orthogenesis '. But my considered opinion is that the word is
essentia] and indispensable for singling out and affirming the manifest property
of living matter to form a system in which ' terms succeed each other experi-
mentally, following constandy increasing degrees of centro-complexity '.
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THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
point already stands out clearly at the present stage of our inquiry.
Thanks to its characteristic additive power, living matter (unlike
the matter of the physicists) finds itself ' ballasted ' with complica-
tions and instability. It falls, or rather rises, towards forms that
are more and more improbable.
Without orthogenesis life would only have spread ; with it
there is an ascent of life that is invincible.
A Corollary : The Ways of Life
At this point let us pause for a moment. Before we try to see
where these various laws regulating the movements of the isolated
particle lead us, when extended to the whole of life, let us attempt
to distinguish the general lines of behaviour or attitudes which, in
accordance with these elementary laws, characterise life in move-
ment at all levels and in all circumstances.
These attitudes or ways of proceeding can be reduced to three:
profusion, ingenuity and (judged from our individual point of
view) indifference.
a. Let us first consider profusion, which is born of unlimited
multiplication.
Life advances by mass effects, by dint of multitudes flung into
action without apparent plan. Milliards of germs and millions of
adults jostling, shoving and devouring one another, fight
for elbow room and for the best and largest living space. Despite
all the waste and ferocity, all the mystery and scandal it involves,
there is, as we must be fair and admit, a great deal of biological
efficiency in the struggle {or life. In the course of this implacable
contest between masses of living substance in irresistible expan-
sion, the individual unit is undeniably tried to the limits of its
strength and resources. ' Survival of the fittest by natural selec-
tion ' is not a meaningless expression, provided it is not taken to
imply either a final ideal or a final explanation.
But it is not the individual unit that seems to count for most
in the phenomenon. What we find within the struggle to live is
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THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
something deeper than a series of duels ; it is a conflict of chances.
By reckless self-reproduction life takes its precautions against
mishap. It increases its chances of survival and at the same time
multiplies its chances of progress.
Once more, this time on the plane of animate particles, we find
the fundamental technique of groping, the specific and invincible
weapon of all expanding multitudes. This groping strangely
combines the blind fantasy of large numbers with the precise
orientation of a specific target. It would be a mistake to see it as
mere chance. Groping is directed chance. It means pervading
everything so as to try everything, and trying everything so as to
find everything. Surely in the last resort it is precisely to develop
this procedure (always increasing in size and cost in proportion
as it spreads) that nature has had recourse to profusion.
b. Next comes ingenuity. This is the indispensable condition, or
more precisely the constructive facet, of additiviry.
To accumulate characters in stable and coherent aggregates,
life has to be very clever indeed. Not only has it to invent the
machine but, like an engineer, so design it that it occupies the
minimum space and is simple and resilient. And this implies and
involves, as regards the structure of organisms (particularly die
higher ones), a property which must never be forgotten.
What can be put together can be taken apart.
At an early stage of their discoveries biologists were surprised
and fascinated by the fact that living beings, however perfect
(or even more perfect) their spontaneity, were always decom-
posable into an endless chain of dosed mechanisms. From this
they thought they could deduce universal materialism. But they
overlooked the essential difference between a natural whole and
the elements into which it is analysed.
By its very construction, it is true, every organism is always
and inevitably reducible into its component parts. But it by no
means follows that the sum of the parts is the same as the whole,
or that, in the whole, some specifically new value may not
emerge. That what is ' free ', even in man, can be broken down
into determinisms, is no proof that the world is not based on
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THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
freedom — as indeed I maintain that it is. It is simply the result of
ingenuity — a triumph of ingenuity — on the part of life.
c. Lastly, for individual units, comes indifference.
How often have artists, poets and even philosophers depicted
nature as a blind Fury trampling existence in the dust ?
Profusion is the first trace of this apparent brutality : like
Tolstoy's grasshoppers, life passes over a bridge made up of
accumulated corpses, and this is a direct effect of multiplication.
But in the same ' inhuman ' direction orthogenesis and association
also operate, in their fashion.
By the phenomenon of association, the living particle is
wrenched from itself. Caught up in an aggregate greater than
itself, it becomes to some extent its slave. It no longer belongs to
itself.
And what organic or social incorporation does to extend it in
space, its accession to a line of descent achieves no less inexorably
in time. By die force of orthogenesis the individual unit becomes
part of a chain. From being a centre it is changed into being an
intermediary, a link — no longer existing, but transmitting ; and,
as it has been put, life is more real than lives.
On the one hand the individual unit is lost in number, on the
other it is torn apart in the collectivity, and in yet a third direction
it stretches out in becoming. This dramatic and perpetual
opposition between the one born of the many and the many
constantly being born of the one runs right through evolution.
As the general movement of life becomes regular, the conflict,
despite occasional counter-attacks, tends to resolve itself. Yet it
remains painfully noticeable to the end. The antinomy only
clears up with the appearance of mind where it attains its paroxysm
in feeling, and the indifference of the world for its constituents is
transformed into an immense solicitude. This is the sphere of the
person.
But we have not yet come to that point.
Groping profusion ; constructive ingenuity ; indifference
towards whatever is not future and totality ; — these arc the three
headings under which life rises up by virtue of its elementary
in
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
mechanisms. There is also a fourth heading which embraces them
all — that of global unity.
This we have come across already — first in primordial matter,
then on the early earth, then in the genesis of the fust cells. Here
it reappears in a still more emphatic way. Though the prolifera-
tions of living matter are vast and manifold, they never lose their
solidarity. A continuous adjustment co-adapts them from with-
out. A profound equilibrium gives them balance within. Taken
in its totality, the living substance spread over the earth — from
the very first stages of its evolution— traces the lineaments of one
single and gigantic organism.
I repeat this same thing like a refrain on every rung of the
ladder that leads to man ; for, if this thing is forgotten, nothing
can be understood.
To see life properly we must never lose sight of the unity of
the biosphere that lies beyond the plurality and essential rivalry of
individual beings. This unity was still diffuse in the early stages
— a unity in origin, framework and dispersed impetus rather than
in ordered grouping ; yet a unity which, together with life's
ascent, was to grow ever sharper in outline, to fold in upon itself,
and, finally, to centre itself under our eyes.
i. THE RAMIFICATIONS OF THE
LIVING MASS
Now let us study, over the whole extent of the living earth, the
various movements whose aspect we have analysed in the instance
of cells or groups of cells taken in isolation. Seen on such a huge
scale one might well expect the multitude to be entangled in
utter confusion. Or, inversely, we might expect that their total,
in the process of harmonising, should create a continuous wave
like the radiating ripple from a stone in a pool. But what actually
happens is a third alternative. As we see it under our very eyes
today, the ' front ' of advancing life is neither chaotic nor con-
tinuous. It is an aggregate of fragments at one and the same time
112
THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
divergent and arranged in tiers — classes, orders, families, genera,
species. In other words what we see is the whole scale of groups
whose variety, order of size and relationships our modern
systematic biology tries to express in names.
Considered as a whole, life's advances go hand in hand with
segmentation. As life expands, it splits spontaneously into large,
natural, hierarchical units. It ramifies. And the moment has come
to study this ramification, a particular phenomenon as essential
to large animate masses as mitotic division was to cells.
A number of different factors contribute to drawing up or
accentuating the branches of life. Again, I shall reduce them to
three : a. Aggregates of growth, giving birth to ' phyla.' b.
Florescence (or disjunctions) of maturity, periodically producing
' verticils '. c. Effects of distance : the elimination (from view)
of the ' peduncles '.
A. Aggregates of Growth
Let us return to the living element in the process of reproduction
and multiplication. From this element, taken as centre, we have
seen different lines radiating orthogenetically, each recognisable
by the accentuation of certain characters. By their construction
these lines diverge and tend to separate. Yet, so far, we have no
reason to suppose that they may not meet with other lines
radiating from neighbouring elements, become enmeshed with
them and so form an impenetrable network.
By ' aggregate of growth ' I mean the new and unexpected
fact that a dispersion oj simple type occurs precisely where the play
of chance would have made us most fear a complicated tangle.
When poured out on the ground, a sheet of water quickly breaks
up into streamlets and then into definite streams. Similarly, under
the influence of various causes (such as the native parallelism of
elementary orthogenesis, the attraction and mutual adjustment of
lines, the selective influence of the environment and so on) the
fibres of a living mass in the process of diversification tend to
draw together, to bind, following a restricted number of domi-
113
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
nant directions. In the beginning this concentration of forms
round a few privileged axes is indistinct and indefinite ; it
involves a mere increase, in certain sectors, of the number or
density of the lines. Then gradually the movement takes shape.
True nervures become visible, though without breaking up the
limb of the leaf in which they appear. At this stage the fibres may
still partially escape from the network which is trying to contain
them. From nervure to nervure, they may still touch one another,
anastomose, or cross one another. The zoologist would say that
the group is still at the racial stage. And at this point there takes
place what may be called the final aggregation or final separation
(according to the point of view we take). For, having reached a
certain degree of mutual cohesion, the lines isolate themselves in a
closed sheaf that can no longer be penetrated by neighbouring
sheaves. From now on, their association, the ' bundle ', will
evolve on its own, autonomously. The species has become
individualised. The phylum has been born.
The phylum. The living ' bundle '; the line of lines. Many
observers still refuse to see or admit the reality of this strand of
life in the process of evolution. They do not know how to see,
how to make the necessary adjustments in their vision.
The phylum is first of all a collective reality. Therefore, to see
it clearly, we need to look from a sufficient height and distance.
Examined too closely, it crumbles into unevenness and confusion.
We fail to see the wood for the trees.
Secondly, the phylum is polymorphous and elastic. Like a
molecule, which ranges through all sizes and degrees of complica-
tion, it can be as small as a single species or as vast as a sub-king-
dom. There are simple phyla and phyla composed of phyla.
Phylctic unity is not so much quantitative as structural ; so we
must be ready to recognise it on every scale of dimension.
Lastly, the phylum has a dynamic nature. It only comes
properly into view at a certain depth of duration, in other words
only in movement. When immobilised in time, it loses its features
and, as it were, its soul. Its morion is killed by a ' still '.
Considered without these provisos, the phylum might well
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THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
be thought to be just one more artificial entity carved for classifica-
tion purposes out of the continuum of life. But looked at in
proper magnification and light, it can be seen to be a perfectly
defined structural reality.
What defines the phylum in the first place is its ' initial angle
of divergence ', that is to say the particular direction in which it
groups itself and evolves as it separates off from neighbouring
forms.
What defines it in the second place is its ' initial section '.
About this point (already touched on when we were considering
the first cells, and which will assume outstanding importance in
the case of man) we are still very much in the dark. But at least
one thing is certain at the outset. Just as it is physically impossible
for a drop of water to condense save at a certain volume — or
again, as it is impossible for a chemical reaction to take place
unless a certain quantity of matter is present — the phylum cannot
establish itself biologically unless, from the start, it has gathered
up in itself a sufficient number and variety of potentialities. The
lack of a certain initial modicum of consistency and richness (or
the failure to break away at a sufficient angle) is enough to prevent
a new branch from attaining individuality. The rule is strict. But
how, in concrete terms, are we to express the ride and visualise
its operation ? — in terms of a diffuse segregation of a mass within
a mass, or as an effect of contagion propagating around a narrowly
limited area of mutation ? What surface representation can we
give to the birth of a species ? We are still hesitant and the
question may perhaps involve a variety of answers. But we have
gone a long way towards solving a problem once we are able to
formulate it.
Lastly what serves not only to define the phylum, but also to
classify it without ambiguity as one of the natural units of the
world, is ' its power and singular law of autonomous develop-
ment '. If wc say that it behaves ' like a living thing ' this is no
mere figure of speech ; in its own way it grows and flourishes.
"5
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
b. The Flourishing oj Maturity
In virtue of analogies which correspond, as we shall discover
later, to a deep bond of nature, the development of a phylum is
strangely parallel to the successive stages undergone by an inven-
tion made by men. We know those stages well from having
seen them for about a century constantly around us. Roughly
the idea first takes the shape of a theory or a provisional mechan-
ism. Then follows a period of rapid modifications. The rough
model is continually touched up and adjusted until it is practically
completed. On the attainment of this stage, the new creation
enters its phase of expansion and equilibrium. As regards quality
it now only undergoes minor changes ; it has reached its ceiling.
But quantitatively it spreads out and reaches full consistence.
It is the same story with all modern inventions, from the bicycle
to the aeroplane, from photography to the cinema and radio.
In just this way the naturalist sees the curve of growth followed
by the branches of life. At the outset the phylum corresponds to
the ' discovery ', by groping, of a new type of organism that is
both viable and advantageous. But this new type will not attain
its most economical or efficient form all at once. For a certain
period of time it devotes all its strength, so to speak, to groping
about within itself. Try-out follows try-out, without being
finally adopted. Then at last perfection comes within sight, and
from that moment the rhythm of change slows down. The new
invention, having reached the limit of its potentialities, enters its
phase of conquest. Stronger now than its less perfected neigh-
bours, the newly bom group spreads and at the same time con-
solidates. It multiplies, but without further diversification. It
has now entered its fully grown period and at the same time its
period of stability.
The flourishing of the phylum by simple dilatation or by the
thickening of the initial stalk — except in the case of a branch that
has reached the limits of its evolutionary power — this elementary
procedure is never completely realised. However decisive and
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THE EXPANSION OP LIFE
xiumphant the solution brought by the new form to the problems
■aiscd by existence, it still admits of a certain number of variants.
\nd because each of these variants brings its own particular
idvantage, they have no power or reason to eliminate each other.
That explains why, as it grows, the phylum tends to split up
nto secondary phyla, each being a variant or ' harmonic ' of
:he fundamental type. It splits up as it were along the whole
iront of its expansion. It subdivides qualitatively at the same time
is it spreads quantitatively. Disjunction starts again. Sometimes
:he new subdivisions seem merely to correspond to superficial
liversifications — they are effects of chance or of a playful inven-
ive exuberance. But at other times they are precise adaptations
)f the general type to particular needs or habitats. Hence the
ays (' radiations ') that are clearly marked, as we shall see, in
he case of the vertebrates. As is to be expected, the mech-
mism tends to come into action again, in a more attenuated form,
nside each ray. The rays, in their turn, show immediate signs of
"arming out in fresh lines of segmentation. Theoretically there is
10 end to this process. But in fact, as we know by experience, the
phenomenon quickly begins to peter out. The process of fanning
jut soon stops ; and the terminal dilatation of the branches goes
m without any further appreciable splitting up.
The final picture generally presented by a phylum in full
jloom is that of a verticil of consolidated forms.
And now — last touch to the whole phenomenon — we find
it the heart of each clement of the verticil a profound inclination
:owards socialisation. On the subject of socialisation I must
repeat my general observations made above on the vital power of
issociation. Since definite groupings of organised and diffcren-
iated individuals or aggregates (ants, bees, mankind) are relatively
:are in nature, we might be tempted to think of them as freaks of
:volution. But this early impression soon gives way to the
apposite conviction — that they exemplify one of the most
:ssential laws of organised matter. Is it the last resort employed
oy the living group to augment by mutual adherence its resis-
:ance to destruction and its capacity for conquest ? Is it a useful
117
THE PHENOMENON OP MAN
means for increasing inner wealth by pooling resources ? What-
ever the fundamental reason may be, the fact is there : once
they have attained their definitive form at the end of each verti-
cillate ray, the elements of a phylum tend to come together and
form societies just as surely as the atoms of a solid body tend to
crystallise.
Once it has achieved this last progress in consolidating and
individualising the extremities of its ramification, the phylum
can be said to have attained its full maturity. It will persist, from
now on, until it is thinned out and then eliminated either by
internal weakening or external competition. Then, except for the
accidental survival of a few permanently fixed lines, its story has
come to an end — unless by a process of self-fertilisation it starts
somewhere or other shooting out a new bud.
To understand the mechanism of this revivification, we must
return once again to the idea or symbol of groping. As we have
already seen, the formation of a verticil is explained in the first
place by the phylum's need to pluralise itself in order to cope
with a variety of different needs or possibilities. But since the
number of stems is always on the increase, and since, moreover,
each stem that splits up increases the number of individuals,
' trials ' and ' experiments ' increase in number too. The fanning
out of the phylum involves a forest of exploring antennae. And
when one of these chances upon the fissure, the formula, giving
access to a new compartment of life, then instead of becoming
fixed or merely spreading out in monotonous variations, the
branch finds all its mobility once more. It enters on mutation.
Through the new opening, another pulsation of life surges, soon
to divide in its turn into verticils under the influence of the
combined forces of aggregation and disjunction. A new phylum
appears, grows, and spreads out above tnc branch on which it
was born though without necessarily stifling or exhausting it.
And so the process continues. Perhaps a third branch germinates
on the second, and yet a fourth on the third— always provided
the branches are on the right path and the general equilibrium
of the biosphere is favourable.
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THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
c. Effects of Distance
Thus, by the very rhythm of its development, each line of life
follows a process of alternate contraction and expansion. It takes
on the appearance of a series of knots and bidges, strung like
beads, a sequence of narrow peduncles and spreading leaves.
But this gives only a theoretical representation of what
happens. For the process to be seen as it really is, we should
require a terrestrial witness simultaneously present through the
whole of duration, and the very idea is monstrous. In reality, the
ascent of life can only be apprehended by us from the standpoint
of a short instant, that is through an immense layer of lapsed
time. What is granted to our experience and which subsequently
constitutes the ' phenomenon ' is thus not the evolutionary
movement in itself; it is this movement corrected according to
its alteration by the effects of distance. How does this alteration
show itself ? Quite simply through the accentuation (rapidly
increasing with the distance) of the fan-structure deriving from
the phyletic radiations of life. This happens, moreover, in two
different ways ; first by exaggeration of the apparent dispersion
of the phyla and subsequently by the apparent suppression of the
peduncles.
Exaggeration of the apparent dispersion oj the phyla. This first
optical illusion, affecting all observation, is due to the ageing and
to the ' decimation ' of the living branches as a result of age.
Only an infinitesimal number of the organisms that have grown
successively on the tree of life exist for us to inspect today. And,
despite all the efforts of palaeontology, many extinct forms will
remain unknown to us for ever. As a result of this destruction,
many gaps are continually forming in the ramifications of the
animal and vegetable kingdom, and the farther back we go, the
larger the gaps are. Dried up branches have broken off. Leaves
have fallen. Many transitional forms have disappeared and their
absence often makes the surviving lines of generation look gaunt
119
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
and solitary. Duration, which with one hand multiplies its
creations ahead, works no less diligently with the other hand
thinning out the ranks in the rear. By so doing, it separates them
off and isolates them more and more in our vision, while at the
same time, by another and more subde process, it gives us the
illusion of seeing them floating like clouds, rootless, over the
abyss of past ages.
Suppression of the peduncles. Since the heroic times of Lamarck
and Darwin, the favourite argument employed against the trans-
formists has always lain in pointing out their incapacity to prove
the birth of a species in terms of material traces. ' Admittedly you
show us,' say these objectors, ' a succession of varying forms in
past ages, and we will even concede that you are able to demon-
strate the transformation of those forms within certain limits.
But however primitive it is, your first mammalian is already a
mammal, your first equine already a horse, and so on all along
the line. Accordingly, though there may well be evolution
within a given type, we see no new type produced by evolution.'
So the increasingly rare survivors of the ' fixed-type ' school
still contend.
Quite apart from all the arguments that can be based, as we
shall see, on the continual accumulation of palaeontological
evidence, there is a more weighty answer (a conclusive proof in
fact) with which the ' fixed-type ' school's case can be rebutted.
It consists in denying the initial assumption. What die anti-
transformists are demanding is nothing less than that we should
show them the ' peduncle ' of a phylum. But this demand is both
poindess and unreasonable. To satisfy it we should have to
change the very nature of the world and the conditions under
which we perceive it.
Nothing is so delicate and fugitive by its very nature as a
beginning. As long as a zoological group is young, its characters
remain indeterminate, its structure precarious and its dimensions
scant. It is composed of relatively few individual units, and these
change rapidly. In space as in duration, the peduncle (or, which
comes to the same thing, the bud) of a living branch corresponds
120
THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
to a minimum of differentiation, expansion and resistance. What,
then, will be the effect of time on this area of weakness ?
Inevitably to destroy all vestiges of it.
Beginnings have an irritating but essential fragility, and one
that should be taken to heart by all who occupy themselves with
history.
It is the same in every domain : when anything really new
begins to germinate around us, we cannot distinguish it — for the
very good reason that it could only be recognised in the light of
what it is going to be. Yet, if, when jt has reached full growth,
we look back to find its starting point, we only find that the
starting point itself is now hidden from our view, destroyed or
forgotten. Close as they are to us, where are the first Greeks and
Romans ? Where are the first shutdes, chariots or hearth-stones ?
And where, even after the shortest lapse of time, are the first
motor-cars, aeroplanes or cinemas ? In biology, in civilisation, in
linguistics, as in all things, time, like a draughtsman with an
eraser, rubs out every weak line in the drawing of life. By a
mechanism whose detail in each individual case seems avoidable
and accidental, but which, taken over a wide range, expresses a
fundamental condition of our knowledge, embryos, peduncles
and all early stages of growth fade and vanish as they recede into
the past. Except for the fixed maxima, the consolidated achieve-
ments, nothing, neither trace nor testimony, subsists of what has
gone before. In other words, the terminal enlargements of the
fans are only prolonged into the present by their survivors or
their fossils.
With that understood, there is nothing surprising in our
finding, when we look back, that everything seems to have burst
into the world ready made. 1 That which moves automatically
tends to disappear from our view (by the selective absorption of
1 If our machines (cars, planes, etc.) were swallowed up in some cataclysm
and ' fossilised ', future geologists, finding them, would get the same im-
pression as we get from the pterodactyl. Represented only by the latest makes,
these products of our invention would seem to them to have been created
without any previous evolutionary groping — completed and ' fixed ' at the
first attempt.
121
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
the ages) to become resolved into a discontinuous succession of
levels and stabilities throughout the whole domain of what
appears to us. 1
The destructiveness of the past, superimposed on the con-
structiveness of growth, enables us in the light of science to
distinguish and make a diagram of the ramifications of the tree
of life.
Let us try to see it in its concrete reality, and to measure it.
3. THE TREE OF LIFE
A. The Main Lines
a. A Quantitative Unit of Evolution : the Layer of the Mammals.
It follows directly from what has gone before that, to get a clear
view of the tree of Life, we must ' make our eyes see ' that part of
it only moderately affected by the corrosive action of time. Not
too close, or the leaves will get in the way ; not too far, or the
branches will lack detail.
Where in nature today can we find such a privileged region ?
Undoubtedly in that great family, the mammals.
If mankind constitutes a group which is still ' immature ', the
mammals form a group which is both adult and fresh. Geology
provides us with positive evidence of this, and a simple inspection
of the internal structure of the group is enough to prove it. Not
reaching full florescence until the Tertiary era, their grouping
stiU leaves visible an appreciable number of their most delicate
appendices. That is why the kingdom of the mammals has long
been and still is the happy hunting-ground for transformist ideas.
1 I remark later (footnote p. 186) on the subject of monogenism ' on the
non-fortuitous impossibility wc find ourselves in (for fortuitous reasons in
every case — cf. Coumot) to get beyond a certain limit of precision (of separa-
tion ') in our perception of the very distant past. In all directions (towards the
very old and very small, but also towards the very big and very slow) our
view is eventually blurred, and outside a certain radius we distinguish nothing
at all.
122
Mammalia
/ PERMIAN
diagram i. The development oj the Tetrapods in Layers
(Birds omitted). The figures on the left indicate millions
of years.
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
Diag. i shows us the main lines of the group. But let us begin
by focussing our attention on the younger and more progressive
branch of the mammals — die placentals. 1
From an evolutionary (one could even say a ' physiological ')
point of view, the placental mammals, taken in the mass, con-
stitute what I shall speak of here as a biota. By this I mean a
verticillate group whose elements are not only related by birth
but are mutually auxiliary and complementary in the effort to
subsist and multiply.
To begin to understand this important point which the
American school of palaeontology is fond of emphasising, we
have only to observe in a suitable light the distribution of those
animal forms with which we are all most familiar — the herbivores
and the rodents who get their food directly from the vegetable
kingdom, the insectivores similarly predatory on the arthropoda,
the carnivores battening on both these groups, and the omnivores
who dine at every table. Those are the four dominant radiations
and they coincide substantially with die generally accepted
classification of phyla.
Let us now consider these four stems or sectors separately.
They sub-divide, splitting up easily into subordinate units. Take
for instance the richest of them at present — the herbivores.
According to the two different ways in which the extremities of
the limbs are transformed into feet for running (by the hyper-
development of two fingers or the single median one), we see
this group separating into two great families, the Artiodactyla
and the Perissodactyla, each formed by a collection of large and
distinct lineages. In the Perissodactyla we find the obscure
crowd of tapirs, the short but astonishing branch of the Titano-
theridae, the Chalicotheridae with digging claws which man
in his early days may possibly have seen, the Rhinocerotidae
horned and hornless, and lastly the solipedal Equidae, imitated
in South America by a completely independent phylum. In
1 So called in contrast to the a-placentals (marsupials, etc.) the embryo being
nourished by a special organ, the placenta, which enables it to develop to
maturity in the uterus.
124
THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
the Artiodactyla we find the Suidae, the Camelidac, the Cervidae
and the Antilopidae — to say nothing of other less vigorous stems
which are nevertheless as differentiated and as interesting to the
palaeontologist. And we have not mentioned that abundant
and robust group, the Proboscidia. Conforming to the rule
of the 'suppression of the peduncles', the early history of
each of these groups is lost in the mists of the past. But once
they have appeared wc can follow each one of them through
the principal phases of their geographical expansion ; also
through their successive sub-divisions into sub-verticils which
proceed almost indefinitely; and lastly by the exaggeration due
to orthogenesis of certain skeletal characteristics, dental or cranial,
which generally end up by making them monstrous or delicate.
Nor is this all. For we can distinguish, superimposed on
this florescence of genera and species issued from die four funda-
mental radiations, another network corresponding to attempts
made here, and there to abandon life on the ground and take to
the air, the water, or even to an underground existence. Besides
forms specialised for running there are arboreal and even flying
forms, swimming forms, and burrowing forms. The Cetacea
and Sirenia seem to have developed surprisingly quickly from
the carnivores and the herbivores. Others (such as the chiroptera,
moles and mole-rats) are derived from the oldest elements of the
placental group, the insectivores and the rodents both dating
from the end of the Secondary era.
One has only to consider this elegantly balanced functional
whole to be convinced that it represents an organic and natural
grouping which is sui generis. This conviction gathers strength
when we realise that it docs not correspond to an isolated except-
ional case, but that similar units have periodically appeared in
the course of the history of life. We only need mention two
examples within the confines of the mammals.
Geology teaches us that during the Tertiary era a fragment
of the placental biota, then in full process of evolution, was cut
off by the sea and imprisoned in the southern half of the American
continent. Now how did this off-shoot react to its isolation ?
125
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
Exactly like a plant — that is to say, it reproduced on a smaller
scale the same design as the trunk from which it had been
separated. It set to work to grow its pseudo-elephants, its pseudo-
rodents, its pseudo-horses and its pseudo-monkeys (Platyrrhini).
A complete biota in miniature, a sub-biota within the original
one.
And now for our second example, furnished by the mar-
supials.
To judge by their relatively primitive method of reproduction
and also by dieir present geographical distribution (in surviving
pockets), the marsupials or a-placentals represent a peculiar
stage at the base of the mammalian stem. They must have
flourished before the placentals, forming a separate earlier biota
of their own. On the whole, except for a few strange types (like
that fossil pseudo-Machaerodus recendy found in Patagonia), 1
this marsupial biota has disappeared without leaving a trace.
On the other hand, one of its sub-biota accidentally developed
and conserved in Australia before die Tertiary era and again
through isolation, shows such sharpness of contour and perfection
as still to make the naturalists marvel. At the time of its discovery
by Europeans, Australia, as is well known, was inhabited only
by marsupials. 2 They were of great variety, however, being of
all shapes, sizes and habitats — herbivorous and cursorial mar-
supials, carnivorous marsupials, insectivorous marsupials, mar-
supial rats, marsupial moles, etc. It would be impossible to
imagine a more striking example of the power inherent in every
phylum to differentiate itself into a sort of closed and physio-
logically complete organism.
This grasped, let us now lift our eyes to the vast system
enclodse by the two biota, the placentals and a-placentals, con-
sidered together. Zoologists noticed at an early date that in all
the forms composing these two groups, the molar teeth were
1 Machaerodus or sabre-toothed tiger. Tliis big feline, common at the end
of the Tertiary era and at the beginning of the Quaternary era, is strangely
mimicked by the Pliocene carnivorous marsupial of South America.
2 Except for a group of rodents and (the latest arrivals) man and his dog.
iz6
THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
essentially tritubercular, the projections of upper and lower teeth
neady fitting beside each other ; an insignificant trait in itself,
but intriguing because of its constancy. How explain the
universality of such an accidental characteristic ? The key to
the enigma has been provided by a discovery made in certain
Jurassic beds in England. In the Middle Jurassic period, in a
flash, we get a glimpse of a first pulsation of mammals — a
world of small animals no bigger than rats or shrews. And in
these tiny creatures, already extraordinarily varied, the dental
type is not yet fixed, as it is in nature at the present day. Among
them we can already find the tritubercular type ; but alongside
it all sorts of other combinations may be observed in the develop-
ment and opposition of molars and cusps. These other com-
binations have been eliminated long since. From this only one
conclusion can be drawn. With the possible exception of the
Ornithorhynchus and the Echidna (paradoxical oviparous forms
sometimes supposed to be a prolongation of the ' multi-
tubercular ' type), existing mammals all derive from one narrow
unique group. Taken all together they represent (in a state of
florescence) but a single one of the many stems into which the Jurassic
verticil of the mammals was divided — namely the tritubercular. 1
At this point we have almost reached the limit of what the
opacity of the past will allow us to see. Beneath this level,
except for the probable existence right at the end of the Triassic
period of yet another verticil to which the multitubercular type
would seem to belong, the story of the mammals is lost to us.
But at least we can say that towards die top and all round
it, their group, naturally isolated by the rupture of its peduncle,
stands out with sufficient sharpness and individuality for us to
accept it as a practical unit of evolutionary mass '.
Let us call this unit a layer.
We shall be needing that unit at once.
b. A Layer of Layers : the Tetrapods. When diey measure the
1 Which might alternatively be called the ' scptem-vertcbraces ' since, by
another coincidence which is equally unexpected and significant, all have
seven cervical vertebrae whatever the length of the neck.
127
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
distance of the nebulae, astronomers calculate in light years. If
we, working back from the mammals, want to enlarge and
prolong our vision of the tree of life downwards, we must
calculate in layers.
Let us begin with the layer of the reptiles of the Secondary era.
When we lose sight of it below the Jurassic period, the mam-
malian branch does not disappear into a sort of vacuum. Instead
we find it enveloped and covered over by a thick living growth
of an entirely different appearance : of Dinosaurians, Pterc-
saurians, Ichthyosaurians, Crocodilia and many other monsters
less familiar to the layman in palaeontology. Amongst these,
the zoological distances between the various forms are consider-
ably greater than between the various orders of mammals. Yet
three characteristics strike us at once. Firstly, we are dealing
with a ramifying system. Secondly, the ramifications are already
far advanced or even nearing the end of their florescence. Thirdly,
by and large, the whole group represents nothing else than an
immense and perhaps complex biota. The herbivorous forms
are often gigantic. Their satellites and enemies, the carnivores,
are heavy or leaping types. Besides there are the flying types,
with their bat-like membranes or their birds' feathers. Lasdy,
swimming types, as streamlined as dolphins.
In the distance this reptilian world seems to us more com-
pressed than the mammalian, yet, judged by its expansion and
its final complexity, it must be assumed to have lasted at least
as long. Anyhow, it disappears into the depths in die same way.
About the middle of the Triassic age, Dinosaurians can still be
recognised ; but hardly emerging from another layer which
itself is approaching its decline, diat of the Permian reptiles, best
typified in the Theromorphs.
Clumsy and deformed and rare in our museums, the Thero-
morphs are much less popular than the Diplodocus or the
Iguanodons. This does not prevent their taking a position of
growing importance on the zoological horizon. At first regarded
merely as freaks belonging exclusively to South Africa, they
have now been definitively identified as the sole representatives
128
THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
of a complete and special stage in continental vertebrate life.
At one moment, before the Dinosaurs, before the mammals,
they were the creatures that occupied and possessed all land that
was not covered by sea. Standing squarely on their strongly
articulated limbs, and often provided with teeth of molar form,
they might well be called the first quadrupeds to be firmly estab-
lished on terra firma. In the age in which we become aware of
their presence, we find them abounding in a strange variety of
forms — horned, crested, armoured — indicating (as always) a
group at the end of its evolutionary career. A rather mono-
tonous group, as a matter of fact, under its superficial extrava-
gances. One, moreover, which does not yet exhibit clearly the
nervures of a true biota. It is nevertheless a fascinating group by
virtue of die spread and the potentialities of its verticil. On the
one hand there are the unchangeable tortoises, and at the other
extreme, types which in their agility and cranial construction
are very progressive. We have every reason to believe that
it was among the latter that the long dormant shoot finally
appeared which was to become the mammalian branch.
Then another ' tunnel '. At these distances, the slices of
duration are increasingly compressed under the weight of the
past. When, at the lowest level of the Permian era and below it,
we discern another surface of the inhabited earth, we find it now
occupied only by amphibians crawling over the slime. The
amphibians — a throng of squat or serpentine creatures among
which it is often difficult to distinguish adult from larval forms ;
skin glabrous or armoured ; vertebrae tubular or in a mosaic of
tiny bones. Here again, following the general rule, we can only
find an already highly differentiated world, almost coming to an
end ; and there may well be many other layers that we confuse
in this writhing mass, through sediments about whose thickness
and immense duration we are still unclear. But one thing is sure.
At this level we are witnessing the emergence of an animal
group from the waters in which it was nourished and formed.
And at this extreme beginning of their sub-aerial life, the
vertebrates display a surprising characteristic which we must
129
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
pause to consider. In every variety the skeletal formula is the
same, particularly in the number and composition of the loco-
motory limbs, to say nothing of the marvellous similarities of
the cranial bones. What is the reason for this ?
The fact that all amphibians, reptiles and mammals have four
legs, and only four, might be explained in terms of mere con-
vergence towards a particularly simple mode of locomotion
(though the insects never have less than six legs). But how are
we to justify in purely mechanical terms the complete similarity
of structure in these four appendices ? In the anterior pair, the
single humerus, then the two bones of the forearm and the five
digits of the hand. Is not this, yet again, one of those accidental
combinations which could only once have been discovered and
accomplished ? If so, the conclusion already forced upon us in
the case of the tritubercularity of mammals looms up again.
Despite their extraordinary variety, terrestrial air-breathing
animals can only represent variation superposed on a very special
solution of life.
Thus when we go back towards its origins, the immense and
complicated ramification of the walking vertebrates folds back
and closes in upon itself in a single stem.
A single peduncle closes and defines at its base a layer of
layers — the world of four-footcdness.
c. The Branch oj the Vertebrates. In the case of mammals, we
have been able to pick out the verticil from which the ' tri-
tubercular stem shot off and isolated itself. Science has made
less progress about the origin of the amphibians. We have no
hesitation, however, in pointing to the only region of life in
which four-footedness could have germinated amongst other
tentative combinations. It must have done so somewhere among
fish with lobed and ' limb-like ' fins whose layer, once wide-
spread, is now represented only by a few ' living fossils ' — the
Dipnoi (or lung-fishes) and, a very recent surprise, the ' Crosso-
pterygian ', recently fished up in the southern seas.
Made superficially ' homogenic ' by mechanical adaptation
to swimming, the fish (it would be better to call them the Pisci-
130
THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
formes) are an assembly of monstrous complexity. We seem
to find here more than anywhere numbers of layers accumulated
and confused under the same heading. There are relatively
young layers developing in the oceans at the very time when
those of the four-footed were spreading over the continents.
There are also ancient layers, still more numerous, ending up
at a very low stage near the Silurian, at a fundamental verticil
from which we see two principal stems diverging : Pisciformes
with one nostril and no jaws, represented in nature today by the
lamprey alone, and Pisciformes with jaws and two nostrils,
from which all the rest have been derived.
After what I have said above about the concatenation of
terrestrial forms, I will no longer attempt to unearth and analyse
this other world. I prefer to draw attention to a fact of a dif-
ferent order which we meet here for the first time. The oldest
fishes we know are for the most part strongly, even abnormally,
scaly. 1 Under this first and apparently rather fruitless attempt
at external consolidation was an internal skeleton still entirely
cartilaginous. As we go back, the vertebrates appear less and less
ossified internally. That is why we lose trace of them, no vestige
remaining even in sediments that have come down to us intact.
Now this is only a particular example of a general phenomenon
of immense importance— whatever living group we take, it
always ends by drowning itself in the depths of mollification. This
is an infallible way of causing peduncles to vanish.
Thus below the Devonian level the Pisciformes disappear
into a sort of foetal or larval phase, incapable of fossilisation.
Were it not for the accidental survival of the strange Amphioxus,
we should have no idea of the multiple stages that the Chotdate
type had to go through before being ready to fill the waters,
pending its invasion of the land.
So at the base a vast vacuum ends the story of that enormous
edifice which includes all the quadrupeds and all the fishes, the
branch oj the vertebrates.
1 Without this ossified integument they would have left nothing behind
them and we should never have known of them.
131
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
d. The Remaining Branches of Life. With the vertebrate branch
we have, within the biosphere, the greatest definite group known
to systematic biology. Two other branches, and two only,
besides the vertebrate, contribute to forming the main ramifi-
cation of life — one consituted by the worms (Annelida) and
arthropods, the other by the vegetable kingdom. The first
consolidated by chitin or calcareous matter, the second by
cellulose, they, too, succeeded in breaking out of their watery
prison, to spread vigorously in the atmosphere. Indeed, in
nature today, plants and insects are locked in a struggle with
boned animals for the world's available space.
It would be possible to analyse these two other branches as
we have just analysed the vertebrates, but I think we can dis-
pense with that. At the top we find the newer groups, rich in
delicate verticils ; deeper, the layers with stems more firmly
drawn but less well equipped ; and right at the base the fading-
away into a world of unstable chemical forms. Thus we see
the same general pattern of development ; but because in the
latter case the branches are obviously older, there is greater com-
plication and, in the instance of the insects, we observe extreme
forms of socialisation.
There seems no reason to doubt that in the abysses of time
these various lines converge towards some common pole of
dispersion. But long before we reach the junction of the Chor-
dates, the Annelids and the plants (the junction of the first two
being among the mctazoa, while their junction with the plants
is much lower still and among the protozoa), their respective
trunks vanish into a complex of extremely strange forms :
Porifera, Echinodermata, Coelenterata. All tentative answers
to the problem of life, a thicket of abortive branches.
All this emerges beyond question (though we arc unable to
say how, so wide is the breach of continuity caused by duration)
from another world quite unbelievably old and multiform :
infusoria, various protozoa and bacteria — free cells, naked or
shelled in which the kingdoms of life, arc confused and which
science is unable to classify. Applied to them, the words animal
132
THE EXPANSION OF UFE
or vegetable lose all meaning. We are no longer able to deter-
mine whether we are dealing with layers piled on layers and
branches on branches, or a ' mycelium ' of confused fibres such
as we find in a mushroom. Nor can wc say from what all this
germinated. Below the Precambrian stage, the unicellular
creatures too lose every kind of calcareous or siliceous skeletal
form. And so the roots of the tree of life are lost to view in
the unknowable world of soft tissue and the metamorphosis of
primaeval slime.
b. The Dimensions
So we bring to a close our very sketchy diagram of the forms
that have been observed and labelled by the patient labour of
naturalists from Aristotle to Linnaeus and onwards. In the course
of describing it, we have already tried to communicate the
enormous complexity of the world we were attempting to
resuscitate. It remains for us, by a final effort of vision and
facing it as a whole, to realise more explicitly its prodigious
dimensions. Of their own accord our minds always tend, not
only to clarify (which is their function) but also to condense
and abbreviate the realities they touch. They falter, over-
burdened by the weight of distances and multitudes. So having
sketched, for what it is worth, the expansion of life, it is incum-
bent on us to restore to the elements of our diagram their true
dimensions, in number, in volume and in duration.
Let us now attempt this.
First of all, in number, for the sake of simplicity our sketch
of the animate world had to be made in bold strokes — families,
orders, biota, layers, branches. But in dealing with these
collective units, have we really even begun to imagine die multi-
tudes that in fact we were dealing with ? Anyone who wishes
to think in terms of evolution, or write about it, should start
off by wandering through one of those great museums — there
are four or five in the world — in which (at the cost of efforts
whose heroism and spiritual value will one day be under-
133
THE PHENOMENON OP MAN
stood) a host of travellers has succeeded in concentrating in a
handful of rooms the entire spectrum of life. There, without
bothering about names, let him surrender himself to what he
sees around him, and become impregnated by it : by the uni-
verse of the insects whose ' reliable ' species are counted in tens
of thousands ; by the molluscs, thousands more, inexhaustibly
variegated in their marblings and their convolutions ; by the
fishes, unexpected, capricious, and as prettily marked as butter-
flies ; by the birds, hardly less extravagant, of every form,
feather, and beak ; by the antelopes of every coat, carriage, and
diadem. And so on, and so on. And for each word, which brings
to our minds a dozen manageable forms, what multiplicity, what
impetus, what effervescence ! And to think that all we sec are
merely the survivors ! What would it be like if all the others
were there too ? In every epoch of the earth, on every level
of" evolution, other museums would have displayed the same
teeming luxuriance. Added together, the hundreds of thousands
of names in our catalogues do not amount to one millionth of
the leaves that have sprouted so far on the tree of lile.
Next, in volume. By this I mean : what is the relative import-
ance, quantitatively, of the various zoological and botanical
groups in nature ? What share belongs to each, materially, in
the general assemblage of organised beings ?
To give a rough idea of their proportion, I am reproducing
here the very illuminating diagram in which a master in this
field, M. Cu£not, has shown the principal departments of the
animal kingdom, in the light of the most recent advances in
science. This is a diagram of position rather than of structure,
but it answers precisely the question 1 am asking.
Looking at it, we may well receive an initial shock — the sort
of shock we get when an astronomer speaks of our solar system
as a simple star, of all our stars as a single Milky Way, and
of our Milky Way as a mere atom among other galaxies.
Mammals — does not that word normally sum up our idea of
'animal ' ? Here it is, a poor little lobe, a belated offshoot on
the tree of life. Around it, on the other hand, and beneath —
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diagram 2. The ' Tree of Life' after Cuenot. On litis
diagram each principal lobe (or bunch) represents a grade ill
least as important (morplwlogically and quantitatively) as
that of the whole of the Mammalia taken together. Below
the line AB, the forms are aquatic; above it they live on land.
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
what a teeming rivalry of types, of whose existence, magnitude
and multitude we have been unaware ! Mysterious creatures
we may well have come upon, hopping among dead leaves or
crawling over a beach, and upon which we may have bestowed
an idle glance without pausing to wonder about their origin or
significance— creatures negligible in size and today probably in
number too. Here these despised forms come into their own.
By the wealth of their modalities, by the length of time it took
nature to produce them, they represent each of them a world
as important as ours. Quantitatively— I emphasise the word— we
are only one among these others, and the latest comers at that.
Lastly, in duration. This is, as usual, the most difficult recon-
struction for our imaginations. As I have said already, the
different levels of the past are compressed and telescoped in our
vision even more than the horizons of space. How are we to
separate them out ?
To put the depths of life into their true perspective, we had
best return to what I have called above the layer of the mammals.
Because this layer is relatively young, we have some idea of the
time required for its development from the moment at the end of
the Cretaceous period when it clearly emerges above the reptiles :
the whole of the Tertiary era and a little more— some eighty
million years. Let us now assume that, on a given zoological
branch, the lateral layers strike off at regular intervals, as on
the trunk of a pine-tree. So that their periods of maximum
florescence (which alone are clearly registrable) follow one
another in the case of the vertebrates at a distance of eighty
million years apart. All we need to do to estimate the approxi-
mate duration of a zoological interval is to count up the number
of layers in it and multiply by 80,000,000. We have three layers,
for instance, at the lowest estimate, between the mammals and
the base of the tetrapods. The figures become imposing. But
they taJly well enough with current geological ideas as to the
immensity of the Triassic, Permian and Carboniferous ages.
We can try to follow another method in a more approximate
way from branch to branch. Within one and the same layer—
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THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
such as the mammals, once again — we can apprehend vaguely
the average structural divergence of types, a divergence which,
as we have seen, took some eighty million years. Now compare
the mammals, the insects and the higher plants ; unless (which
is possible) the three branches at whose ends these three groups
flourish did not strike off exactly from the same stem but shot
up separately from a common ' mycelium '. What length of
time was necessary to effect the gigantic divergence we see ?
Here the zoologist's figures would seem as if tending to contradict
the geologist's. Physicists, having measured the lead-content of
a radiferous Precambrian mineral, are prepared to allow only
fifteen hundred million years from the earliest sediment of
carbon onwards. Must not the first organisms have existed long
before these first vestiges ? Besides, if there is disagreement,
which of the two time-measurements shall we trust to count
the years of the earth ? The slow disintegration of radium or the
slow aggregation of living matter ?
If it takes five thousand years for a mere sequoia to reach
its full growth (and no one yet has seen one die a natural death)
what can be the total age of the tree of life ?
c. The Evidence
Now we can see the tree of life standing before us. A strange
tree, no doubt. We could call it the negative of a tree, for
contrary to what happens with our great forest trees, its branches
and trunk arc revealed to our eyes only by ever-widening gaps ;
an almost petrified tree, as it appears to us, so long do the buds take
to open. Many that are half-opened now we shall never know
in any other state. A clearly drawn tree, none the less, with its
superimposed foliage of living species. In its main lines and
vast dimensions, it stands there before us covering all the earth.
Before attempting to probe the secret of its lite, let us take a
good look at it. For, from a merely external contemplation of
it, there is a lesson and a force to be drawn from it : the sense
of its testimony.
137
THE PHENOMENON OF MAN
We still find here and there in the world people whose minds
are suspicious and sceptical as regards evolution. Having only
a book-knowledge of nature and naturalists these people imagine
that the transformist battle is still carried on as in the days
of Darwin. And because biologists continue to discuss the
mechanisms by which species could have been formed, they
imagine that biologists hesitate (or that they could hesitate
without suicide) about the fact and reality of such a develop-
ment.
But the real situation is quite otherwise.
In the course of this chapter devoted to die concatenations
of the organised world, the reader may have been surprised at
my failing so far to mention the still lively quarrels over the
distinction between the ' soma ' and the ' germplasin ', over the
existence and function of ' genes ', over the transmission or
non-transmission of acquired characters. The truth is that at
the point I have reached in my inquiry, these questions do not
concern me directly. To provide anthropogenesis with a natural
framework and man with a cradle — to guarantee, 1 mean, the
substantial objectivity ot an evolution — one thing, and one thing
only, is necessary. Namely that the general phylogenesis of life
(whatever the process and springboard of it may be) should be
as clearly recognisable as the individual orthogenesis through
which we see without the least astonishment every Living creature
pass.
Now a quasi-mechanical proof of this global growth of the
biosphere imposes itself inescapably on our nunds by the material
pattern at which we inevitably end up with each new effort to
fix, point by point, the contours and nervures of the organised
world.
No one would think of doubting the gyratory origin of the
spiral nebulae, the progressive accretion of particles at the heart
of a crystal or of a stalagmite or the concretion of the woody
' bundles ' round the axis of a stalk. Certain geometrical dis-
position, which seem to us perfecdy stable, arc the trace and
irrefutable sign of kinematics. How could we hesitate even for
138
THE EXPANSION OF LIFE
a moment about the evolutionary origins of the layer of life
on the earth ?
Under our efforts at analysis life sheds its husk. It breaks
down to an infinite degree into an anatomically and physio-
logically coherent system of overlapping fans. 1 We find barely
appreciable fans of sub-species and races ; larger ones of species
and genera ; still larger ones of biota, then of layers, then of
branches. And, to end with, the whole assemblage, animal and
vegetable, forming by association one single gigantic biota,
rooted perhaps, like a simple stem, in some verticil steeped in
the depths of the mega-molecular world. Life would thus be
a simple branch based on something else.
From top to bottom, from the biggest to the smallest, one
same visible structure whose design, reinforced by the very
disposition of the shadows and voids, is accentuated and pro-
longed (no hypothesis this!) by the quasi-spontaneous arrange-
ment of the unforeseen elements brought forth by the day.
Each newly-discovered form finds its natural place, though of
course nothing within the framework is absolutely ' new '.
What more do we need to be convinced that all this was bow,
that all this has grown ?
Thenceforward we can go on for years arguing about the way
in which the enormous organism could have come into being.
As we look closer at the bewildering complexity of the mechan-
ism, our brains begin to reel. How arc we to reconcile this
persistent growth with the determinism of the molecules, the
blind play of the chromosomes, the apparent incapacity to
transmit individual acquisitions by generation ? How, in other
words, arc we to reconcile the external, ' finalist ' evolution of
1 As regards these fans, it would ot course be possible to trace the connec-
tions in another way, especially in giving more importance to the parallelisms
and convergence. The tetrapods, tor example, could he regarded as a bundle
composed ot several stems derived from dirlcrent verticils, each one having
arrived similarly at the quadruped formula. Tliis polvphvletic scheme tits
the facts less well, in mv opinion. In anv case its truth would not in the least
affect my fundamental thesis, viz. that lite displays an organically articulated
unity which manifestly indicates the phenomenon ol growth.
139
THE PHENOMENON OP MAN
phenotypes with the internal, mechanistic evolution of genotypes ?
Though we take it apart, we still cannot understand how the
machine works. This may well be, but the machine is mean-
while standing in front of us ; and it works all the same. Be-
cause chemistry is still floundering over the formation of granites,
should we dispute the fact that the continents become more
granitic year by year ?
Like all things in a universe in which time is definitely estab-
lished as a fourth dimension, life is, and only can be, a reality of
evolutionary nature and dimension. Physically and historically
it corresponds with a function X which determines the position
of every living thing in space, in duration and in form.
This is the fundamental fact which requires an explanation :
but the evidence for it is henceforward above all verification, as
well as being immune from any subsequent contradiction by
experience.
At this degree of generalisation, it may be said that the
problem of transformism no longer exists. The question is
settled once and for all. To shake our belief now in the reality of
biogenesis, it would be necessary to uproot the tree of life and
undermine the entire structure of the world. 1
1 As a matter of fact, in view of the impossibility of empirically perceiving
any entity, animate or inanimate, otherwise than as engaged in the time-space
series, evolutionary theory has long since ceased to be a hypothesis, to become
a (dimensional) condition which all hypotheses of physics or biology must
henceforth satisfy. Biologists and palaeontologists are still arguing today
about the way things happen, and above ail about the mechanism of Life's
transformations, and whether there is a preponderance of chance (the Neo-
Darwinians) or of invention (the Nco-Lamarckians) in the emergence of new
characters. But on the general and fundamental fact that organic evolution
exists, applicable equally to life as a whole or to any given living creature in
particular, all scientists are today in agreement for die very good reason that
they couldn't practise science if they thought otherwise. The one regret wc
might express here (and not without astonishment) is that despite the clearness
of the facts, this unanimity does not go so far as to admit the 'galaxy ' of Living
forms constitutes (as posited in these pages) a vast 'orthogenetic ' movement
of involution on an ever-greater complexity and consciouness. But wc shall
return to this at the conclusion of this book.
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