“A PROPHET OF THE SOUL” 
inert matter in order to draw it little by little, mag- 
netized, as it were, to another track.” “Ages of 
effort and prodigies of subtlety were probably 
necessary for life to get past this new obstacle”” — 
the tendency of organized matter to reach the limits 
of its expansion. 
Thus on every page does Bergson visualize and 
materialize his ideas. He envisages the process of 
evolution of the whole organic world. He sees one 
tremendous effort pervading it from bottom to top. 
He sees thought or life caught in the net of matter, 
It becomes a prisoner of the mechanism by which it has 
climbed. From the humblest of organic beings to the 
highest vertebrates which just antecede man we are 
watching an endeavor always missing success, always re- 
undertaken with an increasingly wise art. Man has tri- 
umphed — but with difficulty, and so partially that it 
needs only a moment of relaxation or inattention for 
automatism to recapture him. 
The creative impulse does not itself know the 
next step it will take, or the next form that will arise, 
any more than the creative artist determines before- 
hand all the thoughts and forms his inventive genius 
will bring forth. He has the impulse or the inspira- 
tion to do a certain thing, to let himself go in a cer- 
tain direction, but just the precise form his creation 
will take is as unknown to him as to you and me. 
Some stubbornness or obduracy in his material, or 
some accident of time or place, may make it quite 
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