CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP 



no idea, in physical conditions to which it seems to 

 us, from the point of view of our physiology, to be 

 absolutely opposed. If its essential aim is to catch up 

 usable energy in order to expend it in explosive actions, 

 it probably chooses, in each solar system and on each 

 planet, as it does on the earth, the fittest means to get 

 this result in the circumstances with which it is con 

 fronted. That is at least what reasoning by analogy leads 

 to, and we use analogy the wrong way when we declare 

 life to be impossible wherever the circumstances with 

 which it is confronted are other than those on the 

 earth. The truth is that life is possible wherever 

 energy descends the incline indicated by Carnot s law 

 and where a cause of inverse direction can retard the 

 descent that is to say, probably, in all the worlds 

 suspended from all the stars. We go further : it is 

 not even necessary that life should be concentrated 

 and determined in organisms properly so called, that 

 is, in definite bodies presenting to the flow of energy 

 ready-made though elastic canals. It can be conceived 

 (although it can hardly be imagined) that energy might 

 be saved up, and then expended on varying lines 

 running across a matter not yet solidified. Every 

 essential of life would still be there, since there would 

 still be slow accumulation of energy and sudden release. 

 There would hardly be more difference between this 

 vitality, vague and formless, and the definite vitality 

 we know, than there is, in our psychical life, between 

 the state of dream and the state of waking. Such 

 may have been the condition of life in our nebula 

 before the condensation of matter was complete, if it 

 be true that life springs forward at the very moment 

 when, as the effect of an inverse movement, the 

 nebular matter appears. 



