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fecundation, the fruitful coupling which results in a new variety or a new viable race, the most perfect
example of biological adaptation? And is not the typical elementary example of psycho-social
adaptation found in invention, by which I mean viable, imitable invention, which begins by linking
ideas and ends by linking men? For at the origin of every association between men there is an
association between ideas which made it possible; and everything now effected through collaboration
owes its origins to conception and an individual process. This fact tends to be forgotten when the
marvels created by individual genius are attributed to collective work, the so-called spontaneous
division and association of work. If hundreds of workers collaborate in the same workshop, it is
because the work they do together (weaving, metallurgy, ceramics) was first conceived in its entirety
by an illustrious or obscure inventor and then developed by an entrepreneur. And if hundreds of shops
collaborate without any overall direction, but with an apparent spontaneity, to make the same
products, such as a locomotive or silk materials, it is because the locomotive or the silk materials
were invented by some particular person.
The marked difference between the three forms of universal harmony just compared is that the first
two remain very mysterious while the nature of the third is fairly clear. Every invention signifies
either that facts, previously unrelated or apparently so (the movement of the moon and an apple
falling, an electric spark and thunder), were perceived as consequences of the same principle,
confirmation of the same proposition, diverse affirmations of the same basic thing—or that
procedures and tools which were previously useless to each other (rails, wheels, and steam engines;
sewing needles and a pedal; electric current and writing) were placed in a relation to one another
such that they served reciprocally as means to the same end, that is, they responded to a desire for one
particular thing. It clearly appears here that social concord, or social harmony, basically consists of a
set of judgments which affirms the same idea or of actions which imply the pursuit of the same goal.
But what is the harmonious accord of two invisible movements produced by chemical combination?
Is it certain that this is common gravitation around the same center, and is it only this? Do we know
any more about the harmony of organic functions born of the fertilized ovum? Is it convergence to one
end or toward multiple associated goals? Or is it perhaps a concordance of another sort that we
would be wrong to confuse with finality, differing from the latter as a theory differs from a machine?
Nothing could be more of a conjecture.
There are also three forms of universal repetition which I identified long ago. The physical form is
the most widespread: undulation, whose spherical and interlaced radiations fill the immense ether,
while its more restricted and polarized radiation or linear series penetrates bodies to their innermost
depths. The biological form is generation, by which competing and growing populations of plants and
animals cover the earth, the air, and the seas. . . .
Finally there are forms of opposition specific to each sphere of reality. The clearest form of
physical opposition is an impact, the encounter of two diametrically opposed movements on the same
straight line. The sharpest form of biological opposition is murder in the most general sense of the
term, which includes the suffocation of one plant by another or the destruction of a plant by an animal
as well as a fatal duel between two animals. The most violent form of social opposition is war, which
appears to be no more than the magnification of an animal duel but which basically differs greatly
from the latter by the nature and precise awareness of its internal cause: the contradiction of the
judgments or the contrariness of the schemes involved.
General considerations can be formulated—call them laws if you will, a slight misuse of
vocabulary but one with the convenience of a monosyllable—concerning the various forms of
adaptation, repetition, and opposition. We have seen that the general law of the three forms of