The history of the development of beings shows us a higher and higher consciousness, succeeding in effecting its progress upon the ruins of a multitude of organisms so delicate that their existence was perpetually menaced. If the spring of life had been in matter, it would have been impossible for any progress to be transmissible from one cell to the others which were destined to succeed it. Progress is impossible if each individual ends in death.

On the contrary, the soul, changing only its body, little by little, and by degrees, is never abruptly deprived of its organs.1 Life is founded upon life: a multitude of simple lives must have profited by a first experiment to associate themselves in an organ. Elementary souls, already rich in acquired memories, and new aptitudes came to unite in better organs.

All the forces which must concur in future realizations worked then, in the invisible, in materialization of the organs most indispensable to the manifestations of life on the physical plane. From the molecular ancestor to the organic construction which has made possible the manifestation of the human soul, everything that has ever lived in the past survives in the present of human beings.

In order that man might appear in the world it was necessary that he be preceded by an immense elaboration of organic life. The Darwinian theory of selection is accommodated easily to the animistic theory. Darwin explains the modifications of beings; but as to their origin, he says not a word.

1 Monadology, by Leibnitz, § 2.

So we were saying that a will, of the same essence as that which we feel within ourselves, has already influenced the cellular organizations of atomic lives. From the first hour, telepathic action was affirmed in the simple association of several cells. Will, sensibility, memory have all progressed, because they have survived in associating themselves together. It is the persistence of animistic substance after death which permits individuals of the same species to reconstitute themselves into similar organs in following lives. Animals, declares Leibnitz, do not die absolutely.

Arcella Vulgaris - the simple globule of the protoplasm - is a being which already communicates by telepathy in the small sphere which obeys its suggestions. It is a materialization of the most elementary order. Progress comes later, arising on the ascending scale of species, and it is thus that we may carry our origin back to the monocellular ancestor.

But it would be an error to consider the philo-genetic ascension as a filiation of individuals, issuing one from the other, a kind of tree of Jesse ending in man. The multitude of simple elements which must have been materialized from the beginning would lead us to think that creation arose everywhere at the same time. At the base of evolution species were infinite in number: they are infinitely reduced at the summit. From the time that they had consciousness of being, certain forms, evolving side by side, elaborated analogous organs. These are always the digestive, respiratory, visual, and auditory systems that the entities have realized in grouping round themselves billions of unities, similar to themselves, which, however, specialized in new functions. It follows that an association goes back to very confused sources, and that it has innumerable ancestors rather than a single ancestor, whence the difficulty in botany, as in zoology, of making a rational classification.

The primitive species must at different degrees have realized analogous types. Two ovula, similar in origin, have been able to give birth to the crab and the lobster, but we cannot say that the crab is an intermediary stage in the evolution of the lobster. Similar forms have been able to constitute themselves side by side, without issuing one from the other.

The same appetites have created the same organs; and the identical needs, in response to environment, realized the same mechanism. It was always, for example, an intestine, a bony structure, or a respiratory mechanism of which each one solved the problem according to its fashion, some by different means, many by identical means. Thus the same ocular mechanism is always found in man and the animals which have no relationship with him.

The fundamental law of Haeckel is that the plant, the animal, and man have their origin in a simple cell, the same for all, which increased by absorption and propagated by dividing itself in 2, 4, 8, 16, etc. This method of increase is very far from the ordinary popular idea: it obliges us to conceive a plastic force acting on matter. It is true that a living cell was the first manifestation of terrestial life, but when Haeckel tells us that this is our ancestor, he means simply that the ovulum of a human embryo is a cell similar to the primitive cell. If we go back over the ascendent chain of human genesis, we shall find at the end not an ancestral unity, but an elementary multiplicity of which man has become the summit and the directing unity. The creation formed in the womb of a woman is but a repetition of that which has been evolved throughout time, a preparation of animal forms, of which the human soul will come to take possession by a slow induction. When one asks why man, if he himself constructs his organs, has no consciousness of them, we may answer: "Because the animal souls do this work without him and that in their successive formations they have acted spontaneously."

How may a cell proceed to its multiplication if it be not a center of plastic force, acting upon matter? We do not know of any cause of movement outside of this will which is in us; it is a conscious force which calls forth life. The machine which creates its own movement and suspends its action at the right time differs essentially from mechanical processes which act of necessity. The machine has nothing of this spontaneity which retards movement up to the precise moment when it says, "I will." And let no one speak to us of a process of inhibition like a wick in a lamp. The amoeba, which is only a semi-liquid cell, resists the evaporation of solar action which would dry up an inert drop. Hence there is life there - that is to say, a will which resists - and we attest, once again, that we find in inferior organs the two constituent elements of animic essence, sensation and effort. Effort tends to association and organization: modifications are produced at random, by accidental meetings or under the influence of suitable surroundings. The simple being wishes to grow and becomes pluricellular. The pluricellular individuals wish to move, to nourish themselves, to know the exterior world, and they tend to the creation of organs. Species are different because each one represents the sum of the aggregates organized by it according to its appetites. Agreeable or disagreeable sensations are the factors which determine the choice. Thus life is an experimental test, and memory persisting, the being progresses.