The Breath of Life | Page 7

generation to generation,
augmenting in force as it advances. It is one with spirit, and is incessant
creation; the whole organic world is filled, from bottom to top, with
one tremendous effort. It was long ago felicitously stated by Whitman
in his "Leaves of Grass," "Urge and urge, always the procreant urge of

the world."
This conception of the nature and genesis of life is bound to be
challenged by modern physical science, which, for the most part, sees
in biology only a phase of physics; but the philosophic mind and the
trained literary mind will find in "Creative Evolution" a treasure-house
of inspiring ideas, and engaging forms of original artistic expression.
As Mr. Balfour says, "M. Bergson's 'Evolution Créatrice' is not merely
a philosophical treatise, it has all the charm and all the audacities of a
work of art, and as such defies adequate reproduction."
It delivers us from the hard mechanical conception of determinism, or
of a closed universe which, like a huge manufacturing plant, grinds out
vegetables and animals, minds and spirits, as it grinds out rocks and
soils, gases and fluids, and the inorganic compounds.
With M. Bergson, life is the flowing metamorphosis of the poets,--an
unceasing becoming,--and evolution is a wave of creative energy
overflowing through matter "upon which each visible organism rides
during the short interval of time given it to live." In his view, matter is
held in the iron grip of necessity, but life is freedom itself. "Before the
evolution of life ... the portals of the future remain wide open. It is a
creation that goes on forever in virtue of an initial movement. This
movement constitutes the unity of the organized world--a prolific unity,
of an infinite richness, superior to any that the intellect could dream of,
for the intellect is only one of its aspects or products."
What a contrast to Herbert Spencer's view of life and evolution! "Life,"
says Spencer, "consists of inner action so adjusted as to balance outer
action." True enough, no doubt, but not interesting. If the philosopher
could tell us what it is that brings about the adjustment, and that profits
by it, we should at once prick up our ears. Of course, it is life. But what
is life? It is inner action so adjusted as to balance outer action!
A recent contemptuous critic of M. Bergson's book, Hugh S. R. Elliot,
points out, as if he were triumphantly vindicating the physico-chemical
theory of the nature and origin of life, what a complete machine a
cabbage is for converting solar energy into chemical and vital

energy--how it takes up the raw material from the soil by a chemical
and mechanical process, how these are brought into contact with the
light and air through the leaves, and thus the cabbage is built up. In like
manner, a man is a machine for converting chemical energy derived
from the food he eats into motion, and the like. As if M. Bergson, or
any one else, would dispute these things! In the same way, a
steam-engine is a machine for converting the energy latent in coal into
motion and power; but what force lies back of the engine, and was
active in the construction?
The final question of the cabbage and the man still remains--Where did
you get them?
You assume vitality to start with--how did you get it? Did it arise
spontaneously out of dead matter? Mechanical and chemical forces do
all the work of the living body, but who or what controls and directs
them, so that one compounding of the elements begets a cabbage, and
another compounding of the same elements begets an oak--one mixture
of them and we have a frog, another and we have a man? Is there not
room here for something besides blind, indifferent forces? If we make
the molecules themselves creative, then we are begging the question.
The creative energy by any other name remains the same.
IV
If life itself is not a force or a form of energy, yet behold what energy it
is capable of exerting! It seems to me that Sir Oliver Lodge is a little
confusing when he says in a recent essay that "life does not exert
force--not even the most microscopical force--and certainly does not
supply energy." Sir Oliver is thinking of life as a distinct
entity--something apart from the matter which it animates. But even in
this case can we not say that the mainspring of the energy of living
bodies is the life that is in them?
Apart from the force exerted by living animal bodies, see the force
exerted by living plant bodies. I thought of the remark of Sir Oliver one
day not long after reading it, while I was walking in a beech wood and
noted how the