where a quack "answers" the question of "Why does opium cause sleep?" with "Because of its soporific power". However, Huxley happily used the term élan vital in a more metaphorical sense: The author and popular Christian theologian C. S. Lewis rejected Bergson's concept in his essay The Weight of Glory stating "...even if all the happiness they promised could come to man on earth, yet still each generation would lose it by death, including the last generation of all, and the whole story would be nothing, not even a story, for ever and ever. Hence all the nonsense that Mr. Shaw puts into the final speech of Lilith, and Bergson's remark that the élan vital is capable of surmounting all obstacles, perhaps even death—as if we could believe that any social or biological development on this planet will delay the senility of the sun or reverse the second law of thermodynamics." See also Conatus Emergence Joie de vivre Hylozoism Orthogenesis Parable of the Invisible Gardener Vis viva References Henri Bergson Vitalism Concepts in metaphysics Emergence