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5
BASIC PRINCIPLES *1
1902
Let us briefly examine the general relationships of adaptation and repetition, which in the biological,
physical, and social worlds are the two fundamental processes. Everywhere there are harmonies
which repeat themselves: a wave is actually a harmonious succession of movements, equilibrium in
motion, falling back on itself like a musical phrase. It is the same, though more complex, with a living
being, which we may see as a very complicated wave that is born, grows, and declines like a wave of
liquid or sound, and whose adult state corresponds to what the physicists call the antinode of the
wave. Similarly, any sort of imitative act—a word or phrase spoken, a religious ritual performed, a
job executed, or a legal procedure enacted—each of these is a whole having a beginning, middle, and
end and comprising a series of integrated and unified changes collecting around a center of gravity—
the accented syllable of the word, the accented word of the phrase, the essential act in the religious
ritual, the central point of the job or procedure.
How were these harmonies formed? It is extremely important not to confuse this problem with that
of how they repeat themselves—a confusion we find hidden in the heart of the Darwinian idea. It was
pointed out to Darwin that the struggle for existence presupposes the association for life, that is, an
organization, which the multiplying repetitions of organisms and ensuing battles do not explain but
imply. It is as if one wished to explain the formation of undulating chemical molecules by the impact
of undulations or to explain the genesis of imitative inventions by competition in imitation.
Not that these battles, impacts, competitions and oppositions need not be considered. Opposition
is a general fact, though less general than adaptation and repetition, which must take its place between
and below them, as a frequently necessary but still simple auxiliary or intermediary. Because of their
multiplying repetitions, repeating harmonies can occasionally harmonize directly with one another
simply by meeting and can thus form higher adaptations. But more often they are in some way
opposed, and through clashes and mutual corrections they prepare the way for higher harmonizations,
which these conflicts and clashes condition and provoke rather than cause. Everywhere in the social
and biological worlds and even the physical world we see harmonious things which, by multiplying,
come into conflict with one another; we see adaptations which oppose each other, microbes against
cells, organism against organism, corporation against corporation, nation against nation, molecule
against molecule—a conflagration preceding chemical combination, which appears to be an
innumerable multitude of impacts, and so forth. And everywhere, because of this crisis, we see
oppositions which adapt: phenomena of commensalism and acclimatization, fecundations, treaties of
alliance, chemical combinations. The passage from militarism to industrialism can be cited as a
noteworthy example of this same transformation.
Since we have identified three major concentric circles of reality, the physical circle, the
biological circle, and the social circle (the latter two being more closely linked to each other than to
the first)—circles which could easily be subdivided or synthesized—we shall have no difficulty
distinguishing in each a form of adaptation, a form of repetition, and a form of opposition which
characterizes and dominates in it. 1 A typical physical adaptation is chemical combination, whose
internal equilibrium of linked movements is perhaps only vastly amplified in the mobile equilibrium
of the solar system (for the law of magnification seems applicable to exterior nature). Is not