n LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 191 



the relation of the conscious state to the cerebral state, 

 the facts of normal and pathological recognition, in 

 particular the forms of aphasia. 1 But it could have 

 been proved by pure reasoning, before even it was 

 evidenced by facts. We have shown on what self- 

 contradictory postulate, on what confusion of two 

 mutually incompatible symbolisms, the hypothesis of 

 equivalence between the cerebral state and the psychic 



state rests. 2 



The evolution of life, looked at from this point, 

 receives a clearer meaning, although it cannot be sub 

 sumed under any actual idea. It is as if a broad 

 current of consciousness had penetrated matter, loaded, 

 as all consciousness is, with an enormous multiplicity 

 of interwoven potentialities. It has carried matter 

 along to organization, but its movement has been at 

 once infinitely retarded and infinitely divided. On 

 the one hand, indeed, consciousness has had to fall 

 asleep, like the chrysalis in the envelope in which it is 

 preparing for itself wings ; and, on the other hand, the 

 manifold tendencies it contained have been distributed 

 among divergent series of organisms which, moreover, 

 express these tendencies outwardly in movements rather 

 than internally in representations. In the course of 

 this evolution, while some beings have fallen more 

 and more asleep, others have more and more com 

 pletely awakened, and the torpor of some has served 

 the activity of others. But the waking could be 

 effected in two different ways. Life, that is to say 

 consciousness launched into matter, fixed its attention 

 either on its own movement or on the matter it was 



1 Mature et mtmoire^ chaps, ii. and iii. 

 8 &quot;Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique &quot; (Revue de 

 Nov. 1904). 



