the tiniest cell, of which the infinity of times and spaces does not offer
two identical specimens.

But the reef which lies in its way, and on which too often it founders, is
habit; habit would be a better and more powerful means of action if it
remained free, but in so far as it congeals and becomes materialised, is a
hindrance and an obstacle. First of all we have the average types round
which fluctuates an action which is decreasing and becoming reduced in
breadth. Then we have the residual organs, the proofs of dead life, the
encrustations from which the stream of consciousness gradually ebbs; and
finally we have the inert gear from which all real life has disappeared,
the masses of shipwrecked "things" rearing their spectral outlines where
once rolled the open sea of mind. The concept of mechanism suits the
phenomena which occur within the zone of wreckage, on this shore of
fixities and corpses. But life itself is rather finality, if not in the
anthropomorphic sense of premeditated design, plan, or programme, at least
in this sense, that it is a continually renewed effort of growth and
liberation. And it is from here we get Mr Bergson's formulae: vital
impetus and creative evolution.

In this conception of being consciousness is everywhere, as original and
fundamental reality, always present in a myriad degrees of tension or
sleep, and under infinitely various rhythms.

The vital impulse consists in a "demand for creation"; life in its humblest
stage already constitutes a spiritual activity; and its effort sends out a
current of ascending realisation which again determines the counter-current
of matter. Thus all reality is contained in a double movement of ascent
and descent. The first only, which translates an inner work of creative
maturation, is essentially durable; the second might, in strictness, be