ly suspended on some of the points where
it was being poured forth? The usable energy which the explosive
conceals will be expended, of course, at the moment of the explosion;
but it would have been expended sooner if an organism had not happened
to be there to arrest its dissipation, in order to retain it and save it
up. As we see it to-day, at the point to which it was brought by a
scission of the mutually complementary tendencies which it contained
within itself, life is entirely dependent on the chlorophyllian function
of the plant. This means that, looked at in its initial impulsion,
before any scission, life was a tendency to accumulate in a reservoir,
as do especially the green parts of vegetables, with a view to an
instantaneous effective discharge, like that which an animal brings
about, something that would have otherwise flowed away. It is like an
effort to raise the weight which falls. True, it succeeds only in
retarding the fall. But at least it can give us an idea of what the
raising of the weight was.[90]

Let us imagine a vessel full of steam at a high pressure, and here and
there in its sides a crack through which the steam is escaping in a jet.
The steam thrown into the air is nearly all condensed into little drops
which fall back, and this condensation and this fall represent simply
the loss of something, an interruption, a deficit. But a small part of
the jet of steam subsists, uncondensed, for some seconds; it is making
an effort to raise the drops which are falling; it succeeds at most in
retarding their fall. So, from an immense reservoir of life, jets must
be gushing out unceasingly, of which each, falling back, is a world. The
evolution of living species within this world represents what subsists
of the primitive direction of the original jet, and of an impulsion
which continues itself in a direction the inverse of materiality. But
let us not carry too far this comparison. It gives us but a feeble and
even deceptive image of reality, for the crack, the jet of steam, the
forming of the drops, are determined necessarily, whereas the creation
of a world is a free act, and the life within the material world
participates in this liberty. Let us think rather of an action like that
of raising the arm; then let us suppose that the arm, left to itself,
falls back, and yet that there subsists in it, striving to raise it up
again, something of the will that animates it. In this image of a
_creative action