bergson's philosophy of the organism. 33 



controlled movement. That is the result to which our 

 study of the organism as a mechanism leads. But does 

 it not widen immensely our conception of life in general? 

 It is not necessary that life should he tied down to plastic 

 carbon and nitrogen compounds, to limy and siliceous 

 skeletons, to cytoplasm and chromidia. It is a non- 

 essential incident that the life which we know is 

 manifested in this way. Everything that we know of the 

 universe shows us irreversible processes and energy 

 undergoing degradation, and the experimental results of 

 physics point unequivocally to the progress of this energy 

 degradation towards the ultimate cessation of all 

 becoming. The most general view that we can take of 

 life is that of a physical process in which the counter- 

 tendency to degradation is exhibited, in which entropy is 

 diminished. There must exist such a tendency, but how 

 is it to be expressed? The only physical image that we 

 can shape is that of a clock spring winding itself up or 

 of a weight rising. But we have also the image of 

 Maxwell's sorting demons. If we were able to control 

 the motions of individual molecules we should arrest the 

 growth of entropy. Now our postulate of a vital impetus 

 is just as hard to imagine. It is not any form of energy, 

 but rather the possibility of conferring direction on the 

 course of energetic changes. It is difficult to understand, 

 but no less so is the physical concept of the ether of 

 space. There is nothing in life that is not in material 

 and energy transformations, but in the organic the 

 direction of these energy transformations is the reverse 

 of that in the inorganic; and in some way or other the 

 consciousness of the organism is to be associated with this 

 interruption, or reversal of tendency, it is useless to 

 speculate how. 



There is something naif in the discussions as to the 

 nature and origin of life, of which modern mechanistic 

 C 



