n8 HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURES 



now from the side of movement. Consciousness 

 behaves just like a power entering matter in order 

 to draw the highest possible advantage from the 

 elasticity it finds therein, to take possession of 

 matter from the side of movement as well as from 

 that of sensation : from the side of movement, by 

 an explosive action setting free, in a flash, energy 

 drawn from matter through years and years, and 

 directing this energy in a chosen way; from the 

 side of sensation, by an effort of concentration 

 which seizes as a whole, in one moment, billions 

 of events happening in things, and thus allows 

 us to control them. 



Thus all the lines of facts we follow seem to 

 converge on the same point, a point at which we 

 seem to see the following image arise : on the one 

 hand, matter subject to necessity, a kind of 

 immense machine, without memory, or at least 

 having only just sufficient memory to bridge the 

 interval between one instant and the next, each 

 of the states of the material world being capable, 

 or almost so, of mathematical deduction from the 

 preceding state, and consequently adding nothing 

 thereto; on the other hand, consciousness that 

 is to say, on the contrary, a force essentially free 

 and essentially memory, a force whose very 

 character is to pile up the past on the past, like a 

 rolling snowball, and at every instant of duration 

 to organise with this past something new which is 

 a real creation. That these two forms of exist- 

 ence, matter and consciousness, have indeed a 



