"Life does not add to the stock of any human form of energy, nor does death affect the sum of energy in any known way."[10] "Life can generate no trace of energy, it can only guide its transmutations."[11] "My contention then is--and in this contention I am practically speaking for my brother physicists--that whereas life or mind can neither generate energy nor directly exert force, yet it can cause matter to exercise force on matter, and so can exercise guidance and control; it can so prepare any scene of activity, by arranging the position of existing material, and timing the liberation of existing energy, as to produce results concordant with an idea or scheme or intention; it can, in short, 'aim' and 'fire.'"[12] "It is impossible to explain all this fully by the laws of mechanics alone."[13] "On a stagnant and inactive world life would be {84} powerless: it could only make dry bones stir in such a world if it were itself a form of energy. It is only potent where inorganic energy is mechanically 'available'--to use Lord Kelvin's term--that is to say, is either potentially or actually in process of transfer and transformation. In other words, life can generate no trace of energy, it can only guide its transformation."[14] "Life possesses the power of vitalising the complex material aggregates which exist on this planet, and of utilising their energies for a time to display itself amid terrestrial surroundings; and then it seems to disappear or evaporate whence it came."[15] To these voices from Germany or England we can add that of M. Bergson from France. In many respects, as he says, he is at one with Sir Oliver Lodge. If he goes beyond him, it is mainly in these ways. He emphasises the element of Freedom, the power of choice as shewn by every living thing. It appears, he says, "from the top to the bottom of the animal scale," "although the lower we go, the more vaguely it is seen." "In very truth, I believe no living organism is absolutely without the faculty of performing actions and moving spontaneously; for we see that even in the vegetable world, where {85} the organism is for the most part fixed to the ground, the faculty of motion is asleep rather than absent altogether. Sometimes it wakes up, just when it is likely to be useful." And this is not all. What is specially characteristic of M. Bergson is the insistence that this power of choice is an evidence of Consciousness. "Life," he declares, "is nothing but consciousness using matter for its purposes." "There is behind life an impulse, an immense impulse to climb higher and higher, to run greater and greater risks in order to arrive at greater and greater efficiency." "Obviously there is a vital impulse."[16]