contrary to M. Bergson's philosophy,
but to daily observation and scientific knowledge; for we know that life
_is_ directive, purposive, and progressive, and if evolution teaches us
anything, it tells us that it must have been so always. We are thus
driven into this dilemma: life must be an energy--but, as such, it
cannot be purposive! Life _is_ purposive, yet it must be an energy--for
otherwise it could not affect the bodily energies and the material
world! Here then is an apparent paradox--a flat contradiction--incapable
of solution or further elucidation.

M. Bergson (and before him Sir Oliver Lodge and others) has attempted to
meet this difficulty by supposing that the energy of the body is a
"physical" energy, derived from food, and, as such, blind and subject to
the law of conservation. This energy, they assert, is however
manipulated and directed by the power of life or consciousness, which
makes "use" of it, directs, and guides it. But this theory is, it seems
to me, refuted by the arguments just advanced, which show that life and
consciousness cannot affect energy in this way unless they themselves be
energy; and thus we are in a "vicious circle" again, with no hope of
ever getting out.

The whole difficulty has arisen, it seems to me, because of the
conception of the nature of life usually held. Were this altered these
problems would be found to have a ready solution. M. Bergson has gone
half way toward finding this solution, but has stopped there; he has
clung to the most fallacious part of the theory, and for this reason has
been unable to emerge altogether from the difficulties above mentioned.
Only when we change our conception of the nature of the life-force will
these problems become clearer--these questions find their true solution.

Have I, then, any theory to offer as to the nature of this power of life
which is essentially new to physiology and biology? I believe that I
have--not new as to facts, but as to the interpretation of facts (the
latter remain the same on either theory).

In order to make the theory which follows plain in as few words as
possible, it will be necessary to refer for a moment to the current
conception of vital energy--of life--in the human body. It has been
stated by Bergson himself with admirable clearness (_Hibbert Journal_,
October 1911, pp. 35-36; _Creative Evolution_, pp. 253-54, etc.), and is
briefly this:

Food, when broken down and oxidised in the body, gives forth