ii.] LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 181 



be chosen, is what we have tried to prove, in a former 

 work, by the study of facts that best bring into relief 

 the relation of the conscious state to the cerebral state, 

 the facts of normal and pathological recognition, in particu- 

 lar the forms of aphasia. 1 But it could have been proved 

 by pure reasoning, before even it was evidenced by facts. 

 We have shown on what self-contradictory postulate, 

 on what confusion of two mutually incompatible symbol- 

 isms, the hypothesis of equivalence between the cerebral 

 state and the psychic state rests. 2 



The evolution of life, looked at from this point, receives 

 a clearer meaning, although it cannot be subsumed under 

 any actual idea. It is as if a broad current of conscious- 

 ness had penetrated matter, loaded, as all consciousness 

 is, with an enormous multiplicity of interwoven potential- 

 ities. It has carried matter along to organization, but its 

 movement has been at once infinitely retarded and in- 

 finitely divided. On the one hand, indeed, consciousness 

 has had to fall asleep, like the chrysalis in the envelope 

 in which it is preparing for itself wings; and, on the other 

 hand, the manifold tendencies it contained have been 

 distributed among divergent series of organisms which, 

 moreover, express these tendencies outwardly in move- 

 ments rather than internally in representations. In the 

 course of this evolution, while some beings have fallen 

 more and more asleep, others have more and more complete- 

 ly awakened, and the torpor of some has served the activity 

 of others. But the waking could be effected in two different 

 ways. Life, that is to say consciousness launched into 

 matter, fixed its attention either on its own movement or 

 on the matter it was passing through; and it has thus 



1 Matiere et m&mmre, chaps, ii. and iii. 



* "Le Paralogisme psycho -physiologique" {Revue de mitaphysique, 

 Nov. 1904). 



