takes the form of an eternal equilibrium in which "nothing is created,
nothing destroyed." The idea does not need much forcing to end in the old
supposition of a cyclic return which restores everything to its original
conditions. Everything is thus conceived in astronomical periods. All
that is left of the universe henceforward is a whirl of atoms in which
nothing counts but certain fixed quantities translated by our systems of
equations; the rest has vanished "in algebraical smoke." There is
therefore nothing more or less in the effect than in the group of causes;
and the causal relation moves towards identity as towards its asymptote.

Such a view of nature is open to many objections, even if it were only a
question of inorganised matter. Simple physics already betoken the
insufficiency of a purely mechanic conception. The stream of phenomena
flows in an irreversible direction and obeys a determined rhythm. "If I
wish to prepare myself a glass of sugar and water, I may do what I like,
but I must wait for my sugar to melt." ("Creative Evolution", page 10.)
Here are facts which pure mechanism does not take into account, regarding
as it does only statically conceived relations, and making time into a
measure only, something like a common denominator of concrete successions,
a certain number of coincidences from which all true duration remains
absent, which would remain unchanged even if the world's history, instead
of opening out in consecutive phases, were to be unfolded before our eyes
all at once like a fan. Do we not indeed speak today of aging and atomic
separation. If the quantity of energy is preserved, at least its quality
is continually deteriorating. By the side of something which remains
constant, the world also contains something which is being used up,
dissipated, exhausted, decomposed.

Further still, a specimen of metal, in its molecular structure, preserves
an indelible trace of the treatment it has undergone; natural philosophers