ed, decomposed.

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

"But it is caught in the snare. The eddy on which it was poised seizes
and drags it down. It becomes prisoner of the mechanism it has set up.
Automatism lays hold of it, and life, inevitably forgetting the end
which it had determined, which was only to be a means in view of a
superior end, is entirely used up in an effort to preserve itself by
itself. From the humblest of organised beings to the higher vertebrates