ath, and more distressing to our vital feelings than is
the pleasing assimilation of grass and mutton in our bellies. Yet I
can see no ground, except a desire to flatter oneself, for not
crediting the _elan vital_ with some such digestive intention. M.
Bergson's system would hardly be more speculative if it entertained
this possibility, and it would seem more honest.

[Footnote 6: This argument against mechanism is a good instance of the
difficulties which mythological habits of mind import unnecessarily
into science. An equilibrium would not displace itself! But an
equilibrium is a natural result, not a magical entity. It is
continually displaced, as its constituents are modified by internal
movements or external agencies; and while many a time the equilibrium
is thereby destroyed altogether, sometimes it is replaced by a more
elaborate and perilous equilibrium; as glaciers carry many rocks down,
but leave some, here and there, piled in the most unlikely pinnacles
and pagodas.]

The vital impulse is certainly immortal; for if we take it in the
naturalistic exoteric sense, for a force discovered in biology, it is
an independent agent coming down into matter, organising it against
its will, and stirring it like the angel the pool of Bethesda. Though
the ripples die down, the angel is not affected. He has merely flown
away. And if we take the vital impulse mystically and esoterically, as
the _only_ primal force, creating matter in order to play with it, the
immortality of life is even more obvious; for there is then nothing
else in being that could possibly abolish it. But when we come to
immortality for the individual, all grows obscure and ambiguous. The
original tendency of life was certainly cosmic and not distinguished
into persons: we are told it was like a wireless message sent at the
creation which is being read off at last by the humanity of to-day. In
the naturalistic view, the diversity of persons would seem to be due
to the different material conditions under which one and the same
spiritual purpose must fight its way towards realisation in different
times and places. It is quite conceivable, however, that in the
mystical view the very sense of the original message should comport
this variety of interpretations, and that the purpose should always
have been to produce diverse individuals.

The first view, as usual, is the one which M. Bergson has prevailingly
in mind, and communicates most plausibly; while h