258 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



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 alternations 

 of increase and diminution succeed each other for ever. 

 This hypothesis is theoretically conceivable, as has 

 been demonstrated quite recently ; but, according to 

 the calculations of Boltzmann, the mathematical im 

 probability of it passes all imagination and practically 

 amounts to absolute impossibility. 1 In reality, the 

 problem remains 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 reservoirs of energy, he remains in 

 space : he would belie his role 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. 

 Is it extension in general that we are considering in 

 abstracto ? Extension, we said, appears only as a tension 

 which is interrupted. Or, are we considering the con 

 crete reality that fills this extension ? The order which 

 reigns there, 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 materiality. 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 



* Boltzmann, Vorlesungcn nber Gastheorie, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 253 ff. 



