tell us that there is a "memory of solids." These are all very positive
facts which pure mechanism passes over. In addition, must we not first of
all postulate what will afterwards be preserved or deteriorated? Whence we
get another aspect of things: that of genesis and creation; and in reality
we register the ascending effort of life as a reality no less startling
than mechanic inertia.

Finally, we have a double movement of ascent and descent: such is what
life and matter appear to immediate observation. These two currents meet
each other, and grapple. It is the drama of evolution, of which Mr Bergson
once gave a masterly explanation, in stating the high place which man fills
in nature:

"I cannot regard the general evolution and progress of life in the whole of
the organised world, the co-ordination and subordination of vital functions
to one another in the same living being, the relations which psychology and
physiology combined seem bound to establish between brain activity and
thought in man, without arriving at this conclusion, that life is an
immense effort attempted by thought to obtain of matter something which
matter does not wish to give it. Matter is inert; it is the seat of
necessity; it proceeds mechanically. It seems as if thought seeks to
profit by this mechanical inclination in matter to utilise it for actions,
and thus to convert all the creative energy it contains, at least all that
this energy possesses which admits of play and external extraction, into
contingent movements in space and events in time which cannot be foreseen.
With laborious research it piles up complications to make liberty out of
necessity, to compose for itself a matter so subtile, and so mobile, that
liberty, by a veritable physical paradox, and thanks to an effort which
cannot last long, succeeds in maintaining its equilibrium on this very
mobility.