in IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 259 



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 analyses show us, in life, an effort to remount 

 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 Carnot determines it. 

 It does, however, behave absolutely as a force would 

 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 

 animal, 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 which 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 



