mid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to
disappear or evaporate whence it came."[15]

To these voices from Germany or England we can add that of M. Bergson
from France. In many respects, as he says, he is at one with Sir
Oliver Lodge. If he goes beyond him, it is mainly in these ways. He
emphasises the element of Freedom, the power of choice as shewn by
every living thing. It appears, he says, "from the top to the bottom
of the animal scale," "although the lower we go, the more vaguely it is
seen." "In very truth, I believe no living organism is absolutely
without the faculty of performing actions and moving spontaneously; for
we see that even in the vegetable world, where {85} the organism is for
the most part fixed to the ground, the faculty of motion is asleep
rather than absent altogether. Sometimes it wakes up, just when it is
likely to be useful."

And this is not all. What is specially characteristic of M. Bergson is
the insistence that this power of choice is an evidence of
Consciousness. "Life," he declares, "is nothing but consciousness
using matter for its purposes." "There is behind life an impulse, an
immense impulse to climb higher and higher, to run greater and greater
risks in order to arrive at greater and greater efficiency."
"Obviously there is a vital impulse."[16]

"Life appears in its entirety as an immense wave which, starting from a
centre, speeds outwards, and which on almost the whole of its
circumference is stopped"--that is, as he explains, by matter--"and
converted into oscillation; at one point the obstacle has been forced,
the impulsion has poured freely. It is this freedom that the human
form registers. Everywhere but in man consciousness has had to come to
a stand; in man alone it has kept on its way. Man continues the vital
movement indefinitely, although he does not draw along with him all
that life carries in itself. On other {86} lines of evolution there
have travelled other tendencies which life implied"--the reference is
more especially to powers of instinct as distinguished from those of
intelligence--"and of which, since everything interpenetrates, man has
doubtless kept something, but of which he has kept only a little."[17]

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about M. Bergson's philosophy is his
unreadiness to allow that the consciousness, which he says is
everywhere at work, has any deliberate purpose in its working. Mr.
Balfour has called attention