LIFE AND CONSCIOUSNESS 119 



common origin, seems to me probable. I believe 

 that the first is a reversal of the second, that while 

 consciousness is action that continually creates 

 and multiplies, matter is action which continually 

 unmakes itself and wears out; and I believe also 

 that neither the matter constituting a world nor 

 the consciousness which utilises this matter can 

 be explained by themselves, and that there is a 

 common source of both this matter and this con- 

 sciousness. But I cannot now enter deeply into 

 this question. Let it suffice to say that I see in 

 the whole evolution of life on our planet an effort 

 of this essentially creative force to arrive, by 

 traversing matter, at something which is only 

 realised in man, and which, moreover, even in 

 man, is realised only imperfectly. 



There is no need to recall here all the facts 

 which, since Lamarck in France and Darwin in 

 England, have been adduced to confirm the idea 

 of an evolution of species, that is to say, of the 

 generation of some species from others, com- 

 mencing by forms probably of infinite simplicity. 

 I think that on this head it is impossible to dis- 

 pute the results accepted to-day by practically all 

 biologists. And it is impossible not to admire 

 the enormous amount of effort expended during 

 the last fifty years to show the part played in the 

 evolution of living beings by the necessity these 

 labour under to adapt themselves to their 

 environment. But this necessity of adaptation 

 explains, to my thinking, the arrests of life at 



