it: it is due to the very nature of life.

Essential also is the progress to reflexion. If our analysis is correct,
it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, that is at the
origin of life. Consciousness, or supra-consciousness, is the name for
the rocket whose extinguished fragments fall back as matter;
consciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket
itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them up into
organisms. But this consciousness, which is a _need of creation_, is
made manifest to itself only where creation is possible. It lies dormant
when life is condemned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the
possibility of a choice is restored. That is why, in organisms
unprovided with a nervous system, it varies according to the power of
locomotion and of deformation of which the organism disposes. And in
animals with a nervous system, it is proportional to the complexity of
the switchboard on which the paths called sensory and the paths called
motor intersect--that is, of the brain. How must this solidarity between
the organism and consciousness be understood?

We will not dwell here on a point that we have dealt with in former
works. Let us merely recall that a theory such as that according to
which consciousness is attached to certain neurons, and is thrown off
from their work like a phosphorescence, may be accepted by the scientist
for the detail of analysis; it is a convenient mode of expression. But
it is nothing else. In reality, a living being is a centre of action. It
represents a certain sum of contingency entering into the world, that is
to say, a certain quantity of possible action--a quantity variable with
individuals and especially with species. The nervous system of an animal
marks out the flexible lines on which its action will run (although the
potential energy is accumulated in the muscles rather than in the
nervous system itself); its nervous centres indicate, by their
development and their configuration, the more or less extended choice it
will have among more or less numerous and complicated actions. Now,
since the awakening of consciousness in a living creature is the more
complete, the greater the latitude of choice allowed to it and the
larger the amount of action bestowed upon it, it is clear that the
development of consciousness will appear to be dependent on that of the
nervous centres. On the other hand, every state of consciousness being,
in one asp