oncrete reality that fills this extension?
The order which reigns there, and which is manifested by the laws of
nature, is an order which must be born of itself when the inverse order
is suppressed; a detension of the will would produce precisely this
suppression. Lastly, we find that the direction, which this reality
takes, suggests to us the idea of a thing _unmaking itself_; such, no
doubt, is one of the essential characters of materiality. What
conclusion are we to draw from all this, if not that the process by
which this thing _makes itself_ is directed in a contrary way to that of
physical processes, and that it is therefore, by its very definition,
immaterial? The vision we have of the material world is that of a weight
which falls: no image drawn from matter, properly so called, will ever
give us the idea of the weight rising. But this conclusion will come
home to us with still greater force if we press nearer to the concrete
reality, and if we consider, no longer only matter in general, but,
within this matter, living bodies.

All our analyses show us, in life, an effort to remount the incline that
matter descends. In that, they reveal to us the possibility, the
necessity even of a process the inverse of materiality, creative of
matter by its interruption alone. The life that evolves on the surface
of our planet is indeed attached to matter. If it were pure
consciousness, _a fortiori_ if it were supra-consciousness, it would be
pure creative activity. In fact, it is riveted to an organism that
subjects it to the general laws of inert matter. But everything happens
as if it were doing its utmost to set itself free from these laws. It
has not the power to reverse the direction of physical changes, such as
the principle of Carnot determines it. It does, however, behave
absolutely as a force would behave which, left to itself, would work in
the inverse direction. Incapable of _stopping_ the course of material
changes downwards, it succeeds in _retarding_ it. The evolution of life
really continues, as we have shown, an initial impulsion: this
impulsion, which has determined the development of the chlorophyllian
function in the plant and of the sensori-motor system in the animal,
brings life to more and more efficient acts by the fabrication and use
of more and more powerful explosives. Now, what do these explosives
represent if not a storing-up of the solar energy, the degradation of
which energy is thus provisional