256 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



different. Alone, the sensori-motor function would have 

 been preserved, if not in its mechanism, at least in its 

 effects. It is therefore probable that life goes on in other 

 planets, in other solar systems also, under forms of which 

 we have no idea, in physical conditions to which it seems to 

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

 solutely 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 con- 

 ceived (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 es- 

 sential 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 



