LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 115 



If we ask ourselves how a conscious animal 

 succeeds in obtaining from matter that is to say, 

 from its body the execution of movements on 

 which it has decided, we find that its method con- 

 sists in making use of special substances which 

 might be called " explosives." These substances 

 are the foodstuffs, more particularly those called 

 ternary, the essential elements of which are 

 carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. In these food- 

 stuffs is stored up a considerable amount of 

 potential energy, ready to burst out suddenly, 

 like the energy stored up in gunpowder. This 

 energy has been slowly, gradually, borrowed from 

 the sun by plants ; and the animal which feeds on 

 a plant, or on another animal that has fed on a 

 plant, or on an animal that has fed on another 

 animal that has fed on a plant, etc., thus passes 

 into his own body an explosive made by life 

 through a storage of solar energy : when this 

 animal performs voluntary movements, it does so 

 by simply producing the infinitesimal spark which 

 sets off the explosive by, as it were, just brush- 

 ing the trigger of a pistol and thus setting free a 

 considerable force in the direction chosen at will. 

 Now if, in the beginning, the first living beings 

 swayed between animal and vegetable conditions, 

 sharing at once in both one and the other, it is 

 because life at its origin had to perform the 

 double work of making the explosive and turning 

 it to account. In proportion as plants and 

 animals differentiated, life split up into two king- 



