All that is necessary to visualize this is to suppose that there is an infinitesimal tendency in things to acquire habits, a tendency which is itself an accidental variation grown habitual. We shall then be on the road to explain the evolution and existence of the limited uniformities actually prevailing in the physical world. A good deal of the foregoing may sound somewhat mythologic. But even if it were so it would have the merit of offering a rational alternative to the mechanical mythology according to which all the atoms in the universe are to-day precisely in the same condition in which they were on the day of creation, a mythology which is forced to regard all the empirical facts of spontaneity and novelty as illusory, or devoid of substantial truth. The doctrine of the primacy of chance naturally suggests the primacy of mind. Just as law is a chance habit so is matter inert mind. The principal law of mind is that ideas literally spread themselves continuously and become more and more general or inclusive, so that people who form communities of any sort develop general ideas in common. When this continuous reaching-out of feeling becomes nurturing love, such, e.g., which parents have for their offspring or thinkers for their ideas, we have creative evolution. James and Royce have called attention to the similarity between Peirce’s doctrine of tychistic-agapism (chance and love) and the creative evolution of Bergson. But while both philosophies aim to restore life and growth in their account of the nature of things, Peirce’s approach seems to me to have marked advantages, owing to its being in closer touch with modern physics. Bergson’s procedure is largely based on the contention that mechanics cannot explain certain empirical facts, such as the supposed identity of the vertebrate eye and the eye of the scallop. But the fact here is merely one of a certain resemblance of pattern, which may well be explained by the mechanical principles of convergent evolution. Peirce’s account involves no rejection of the possibility of mechanical explanations. Indeed, by carrying chance into the laws of mechanics he is enabled to elaborate a positive and highly suggestive theory of protoplasm to explain the facts of plasticity and habit.[4] Instead of postulating with Spencer and Bergson a continuous growth of diversity, Peirce allows for growth of habits both in diversity and in uniformity. The Spencerian mechanical philosophy reduces all diversity to mere spatial differences. There can be no substantial novelty; only new forms or combinations can arise in time. The creative evolution of Bergson though intended to support the claims of spontaneity is still like the Spencerian in assuming all evolution as proceeding from the simple to the complex. Peirce allows for diversity and specificity as part of the original character or endowment of things, which in the course of time may increase in some respects and diminish in others.