If a solid body, a fluid or a gas, be moving in a certain direction, a certain amount of energy must be exercised in order to divert its course--for otherwise it would continue in a straight line. Similarly, any energy will continue to exert itself in one direction, unless its course of activity be diverted into another channel; and this "divertion" constitutes a pressure, as it were, upon the energy; and this "pressure" can only be brought about by a "physical" force or energy--and so be within the law of conservation. No matter how _slight_ this pressure--this guidance--may be, it is nevertheless _there_; and in so far as it directs the flow of energy, it must itself _be_ energy--for otherwise it could not direct or divert it. Even the analogy of the banks of a river fails us, because in that case every atom of the banks is acting upon the body of the water by a material pressure; and hence the banks as a whole are. Either life must be energy, or it must be no-energy. If the first of these suppositions be true, things would be intelligible; but if the second were true, they would not be, because no-energy cannot effect or guide or control energy without itself being energy; and this would either make life a "physical" energy, or remove its power of guidance altogether. I do not see how these alternatives are to be avoided. M. Bergson apparently tries to evade this issue by supposing that life only affects the energies of the body (derived from food) _very slightly_ by a sort of "hair-trigger" action, which releases a vast amount of energy, quite disproportionate to the energy of direction applied. But surely this is a mere begging of the question! One is reminded of Marryat's character, who asked to have her illegitimate baby excused "because it was such a little one!" No matter how _slight_ the amount of energy may be, if it is capable of affecting energy at all, it _is_ energy, and hence subject to the law of conservation. Life, as energy, must lie wholly outside the law (in which case all talk of "control" and "guidance" must go by the board), or it must lie wholly within it (in which case life becomes a purely "physical" energy, like any other, and cannot well be thought to exercise this "guidance").[15] We have thus seen that the second of our two alternatives (that life is no-energy) is untenable. Let us now return to the first--that life _is_ energy--and see whither it leads us.