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