26o CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



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 con 

 tained within itself, life 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, as 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. 1 



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 is 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 



1 In a book rich in facts and in ideas (La Dissolution oppos/c h revolution, 

 Paris, 1899), M. Andre Lalande shows us everything going towards death, 

 in spite of the momentary resistance which organisms seem to oppose. But, 

 even from the side of unorganized matter, have we the right to extend to 

 the entire universe considerations drawn from the present state of our solar 

 system ? Beside the worlds which are dying, there are without doubt worlds 

 that are being born. On the other hand, in the organized world, the death 

 of individuals does not seem at all like a diminution of &quot;life in general,&quot; 

 or like a necessity which life submits to reluctantly. As has been more than 

 once remarked, life has never made an effort to prolong indefinitely the 

 existence of the individual, although on so many other points it has made 

 so many successful efforts. Everything is as // this death had been willed, 

 or at least accepted, for the greater progress of life in general 



