machines. Unquestionably, too, the terms in which Clausius generalized it were mathematical, and a cal- culable magnitude, " entropy," was, in fact, the final conception to which he was led. Such precision is necessary for practical applications, But the law might have been vaguely conceived, and, if absolutely necessary, it might have been roughly fonnulatcd, even though no one had ever thought of measuring the different energies of the physical world, even though the concept of energy had not been created. Essentially, it expresses the fact that all physical changes have a tendency to be degraded into heat, and that heat tends to be distributed among bodies in a uniform manner. In this less precise form, it becomes independent of any convention; it is the most metaphysi- cal of the laws of physics since it points out without inter- posed symbols, without artificial devices of measurements, the direction in which the world is going. It tells us that changes that are visible and heterogeneous will be more and more diluted into changes that are invisible and homo- geneous, and that the instability to which we owe the rich- ness and variety of the changes taking place in our solar system will gradually give way to the relative stability of elementary vibrations continually and perpetually repeated. Just so with a man who keeps up his strength as he grows old, but spends it less and less in actions, and comes, in the end, to employ it entirely in making his lungs breathe and his heart beat.
From this point of view, a world like our solar system is seen to be ever exhausting something of the muta- bihty it contains. In the beginning, it had the maximum of possible utihzation of energy: this mutability has gone on diminishing unceasingly. Whence does it come? We might at first suppose that it has come from some other point of space, but the difficulty is only set back, and for
244 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [okaK'
liiiB external source of mutability the same question springs up. True, it might be added that the number of worlds capable of passing mutability to each other is unlimited, that the sum of mutability contained in the universe is in- finite, that there is therefore no ground on which to seek ita origin orto foresee its end. A hypothesis of this kind is as irrefutable as it is indemonstrable; but to speak of an infinite universe is to admit a perfect coincidence of matter with abstract space, and consequently an absolute externality of all the parts of matter in relation to one another. We have seen above what we must think of this theory, and how difficult it is to reconcile with the idea of a reciprocal influence of all the parts of matter on one another, an influence to which indeed it itself makes appeal. Again it might be supposed that the general instability has arisen from a general state of stability; that the period in which we now are, and in which the utilizable energy is diminishing, has been preceded by a period in which the mutability was increasing, and that the altematicoa of increase and diminution succeed each other for ever. This hypothesis is theoretically conceivable, as has been demonstrated quite recently; but, according to the cal- culations of Boltzmann, the mathematical improbabil- ity of it passes all imagination and practically amounts to absolute impossibility,' In reality, the problem re- mains insoluble as long as we keep on the ground of physics, for the physicist is obliged to attach energy to extended particles, and, even if he regards the particles only as reser\'oirs of energy, he remains in space: he would belie his r61e if he sought the origin of these energies in an extra- spatial process. It is there, however, in our opinion, that it must be sought. I8 it extension in general that we are considering in
■BoltDnuui. Vorletwi^tn xihtr Gattheorie, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 253 S.
Ideal Genesis of ]
abslractof Extension, we saiJ, appears only as a tension which 13 intemipted. Or, are we considering the con- crete reality that fills this extension? The order which reigns therej and which is manifested by the laws of nature, is an order which must be born of itself when the inverse order is suppressed; a detension of the will would produce precisely this suppression. Lastly, we find that the direction, which this reality takes, suggests to us the idea of a thing unmaking itself; such, no doubt, is one of the essential characters of materiaUty. What conclusion are we to draw from all this, if not that the process by which this thing makes itself is directed in a contrary way to that of physical processes, and that it is therefore, by its very definition, immaterial? The vision we have of the material world is that of a weight which falls: no image drawn from matter, properly so called, will ever give us the idea of the weight rising. But this conclusion will come home to us with still greater force if we press nearer to the concrete reality, and if we consider, no longer only matter in general, but, within this matter, living bodies.
All our analj^ses show us, in life, an effort to re-mount the incline that matter descends. In that, they reveal to us the possibility, the necessity even of a process the inverse of materiality, creative of matter by its in- terruption alone. The life that evolves on the surface of our planet is indeed attached to matter. If it were pure consciousness, a fortiori if it were supraconscious- ness, it would be pure creative activity. In fact, it is riveted to an organism that subjects it to the general laws of inert matter. But everything happens as if it were doing its utmost to set itself free from these laws. It has not the power to reverse the direction of physical changes, such as the principle of Camot determines it. It does, however, behave absolutely as a force would
246 CREATIVE EVOLUTION (ohap.'
behave which, left to itself, would work in the inverse direction, Incapable of stopping the course of material changes downwards, it succeeds in retarding it. The evolution of life really continues, as we have shown, an initial impulsion: this impulsion, which has deter- mined the development of the chlorophyllian function in the plant and of the sensori-motor system in the ani- mal, brings life to more and more efficient acts by the fabrication and use of more and more powerful explosives. Now, what do these explosives represent if not a storing- Up of the solar energy, the degradation of wiiich energy is thus provisionally suspended on some of the points where it was being poured forth? The usable energy which the explosive conceals will be expended, of course, at the moment of the explosion; but it would have been expended sooner if an organism had not happened to be there to arrest its dissipation, in order to retain it and save it up. As we see it to-day, at the point to which it was brought by a scission of the mutually complementary tendencies which it contained within itself, Ufe is entirely dependent on the chlorophyllian function of the plant. This means that, looked at in its initial impulsion, before any scission, life was a tendency to accumulate in a reservoir, aa do especially the green parts of vegetables, with a view to an instantaneous effective discharge, like that which an animal brings about, something that would have otherwise flowed away. It is like an effort to raise the weight which falls. True, it succeeds only in retarding the fall. But at least it can give us an idea of what the raising of the weight was.'
* Inabooknehiafactsand ia'ide&B^LaDistoliUionoppoaieaVivolviion, pAtiB, 1899), M. Andrt Lulandc shows lu everything going lowaids death, in B[nle of the momentary resistance which organisms seem to oppose. — But, even from the side of unoi^nized matter, have wb the right t« extend to the entire imiverae consideretions drawn from
in. I
Genesis of Matter
Let us imagine a vessel full of steam at a high pressure, and here and there in its sides a crack through which the steam is escaping in a jet. The steam thrown into the air la nearly all condensed into little drops which fall back, and this condensation and this fall represent simply the loss of something, an interruption, a deficit. But a small part of the jet of steam subsists, uncondensed, for some seconds; it is making an effort to raise the drops which arc falling; it succeeds at most in retarding their fall. So, from an immense reservoir of life, jets must be gushing out unceasingly, of which each, falling back, is a world. The evolution of living species within this world repre- sents what subsists of the primitive direction of the original jet, and of an impulsion which continues itself in a direction the inverse of materiality. But let us not carry too far this comparison. It gives us but a feeble and even deceptive image of reality, for the crack, the jet of steam, the forming of the drops, are deter- mined necessarily, whereas the creation of a world is a free act, and the life within the material world partici- pates in this liberty. Let us think rather of an action like that of raising the arm; then let us suppose that the arm, left to itself, falls back, and yet that there sub- sists in it, striving to raise it up again, something of the will that animates it. In this image of a creative action which unmakes itself we have already a more exact re-
the present state of our solar system? Beaide the worlds which e.n dyiDg. there are without doubt worlds that are being bora. On the other hand, in the organized world, the death of individuals does not Been) at all like a diminution of "life in general," or like a necessity whioh life submits to reluctantly. As has lieen more than once re- marked, life has never mode an eflort to prolong indefinitely the exist- ence of the individual, although on so many other points it has made HO many successful elTorts. Everything ia as ij this death had been willed, or at Itut atxepled, f'^r the greater pnogreaa of life ia general.
248 CREATIVE EVOLUTION icmp.
presentation of matter. In vital activity we see, then,
that which subsists of the direct movement in the inverted
movement, a reality which is making itself in a reality
which is umnakiTig itself.
Everything is obscure in the idea of creation if we think of things which are created and a thing which createa, aa we habitually do, as the understanding cannot help doing. We shall show the origin of this illusion in our next chapter. It is natural to our intellect, whose function is essentially practical, made to present to us things and states rather than changes and acts. But things and states are only views, taken by our mind, of becoming. There are no things, there are only actions. More particu- larly, if I consider the world in which we live, I find that the automatic and strictly determined evolution of this well-knit whole is action which is unmaking itself, and that the unforeseen forms which life cuts out in it, forms capable of being themselves prolonged into unforeseen movements, represent the action that is making itself. Now, I have every reason to believe that the other worlds are analogous to ours, that things happen there in the same way. And I know they were not all constructed at the same time, since observation shows me, even to-day, nebulae in course of concentration. Now, if the same kind of action is going on everywhere, whether it is that which is unmaking itself or whether it is that which is striving to remake itself, I simply express this probable similitude when I speak of a centre from which worlds shoot out like rockets in a fire-works display — provided, however, that I do not present this centre as a thing, but as a continuity of shoot- ing out. God thus defined, has nothing of the already made; He is unceasing life, action, freedom. Creation, 80 conceived, is not a mystery; we experience it in our- selves when we act freely. That new things can join
ni.i