he has
carried it, in his various writings.

The view which M. Bergson adopts is somewhat as follows: Life is
directive and creative; it utilizes the chemical and physical forces of
the body for the purposes of its manifestation. It is the "spark" which
sets off the explosive; it is the "hair-trigger" which liberates the
enormous energy contained in the cartridge, etc. To apply the analogy:
life utilizes and directs the energy obtained from food (by a species of
chemical combustion) so that the bodily energy, as such, is, so to say,
a "physical" energy, and subject to the law of conservation; while the
power that guides, controls, and directs it is conscious life--the power
of choice, the guider, the controller.

This view of the case is, I believe, unsound, and for two reasons. In
the first place, it does not, I think, go far enough in its
interpretation; and, in the second place, we are face to face with a
paradox--the problem of no-energy affecting energy. Let us take the
second of these objections first.

If a solid body, a fluid or a gas, be moving in a certain direction, a
certain amount of energy must be exercised in order to divert its
course--for otherwise it would continue in a straight line. Similarly,
any energy will continue to exert itself in one direction, unless its
course of activity be diverted into another channel; and this
"divertion" constitutes a pressure, as it were, upon the energy; and
this "pressure" can only be brought about by a "physical" force or
energy--and so be within the law of conservation. No matter how _slight_
this pressure--this guidance--may be, it is nevertheless _there_; and in
so far as it directs the flow of energy, it must itself _be_ energy--for
otherwise it could not direct or divert it. Even the analogy of the
banks of a river fails us, because in that case every atom of the banks
is acting upon the body of the water by a material pressure; and hence
the banks as a whole are. Either life must be energy, or it must be
no-energy. If the first of these suppositions be true, things would be
intelligible; but if the second were true, they would not be, because
no-energy cannot effect or guide or control energy without itself being
energy; and this would either make life a "physical" energy, or remove
its power of guidance altogether. I do not see how these alternatives
are to be avoided.

M. Bergson apparently tries to evade this issue by supposing that life
only affects