Hi IDEAL GENESIS OF MATTER 261 



steam subsists, uncondensed, for some seconds ; it is 

 making an effort to raise the drops which are 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 

 participates 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 subsists in it, striving to raise it up again, some 

 thing of the will that animates it. In this image of 

 a creative action which unmakes itself we have already a 

 more exact representation 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 unmaking itself. 



Everything is obscure in the idea of creation if we 

 think of things which are created and a thing which 

 creates, as 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 particularly, if I consider the world in 



