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1side. The cerebral mechanism is arranged just so as to drive back into the unconscious almost the whole of this past, and to admit beyond the threshold only that which can cast light on the present situation or further the action now being pre- pared — in short, only that which can give useful work. At the most, a few superfluous recollections may succeed in smuggling themselves through the half-open door. (^lese memories, messengers from the unconscious, remind VB of what we are dragging behind us unawares. But, even though we may have no distinct idea of it, we feel vaguely that our past remains present to us. ^\^lat are i we, in fact, what is our ckarader, if not the condensation of the history that we have lived from our birth — nay, ! even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal | disp>ositions? Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small part of it only is known in the form of idea. From this survival of the past it follows that conscious- I ness cannot go through the same state twice. The cir- cumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person, since they 5nd hlra at a new j moment of hia history. Our personality, which is being built up each instant with its accumulated experience, CREATIVE EVOLUTION lOBAP. , changes without ceasing. By changing, it prevents any 1 state, although superficially identical with another, from ever repeating it in its very depth. That is why our duration is irreversible. We could not live over again a single moment, for we should have to begin by effacing the raeniory of all that had followed. Even could we erase this memory from our intellect, we could not from our will. Thus our personality shoots, grows and ripens with- out ceasing. Each of its moments is something new added to what was before. We may go further: it is not only something new, but something unforeseeable. Doubt- less, my present state is explained by what was in me and by what was acting on me a moment ago. In analyzing it I should find no other elements. But even a superhuman intelligence would not have been able to foresee the simple indivisible form which gives to these purely abstract elements their concrete organization. For to foresee con- sists of projecting into the future what has been perceived in the past, or of imagining for a later time a new group- ing, in a new order, of elements already perceived. But that which has never been perceived, and which is at the same time simple, is necessarily unforeseeable.
2For to foresee con- sists of projecting into the future what has been perceived in the past, or of imagining for a later time a new group- ing, in a new order, of elements already perceived. But that which has never been perceived, and which is at the same time simple, is necessarily unforeseeable. Now such is the case with each of our states, regarded as a moment in a history that is gradually unfolding: it is simple, and it cannot have been already perceived, since it concen- trates in its indivisibility all that has been perceived and what the present is adding to it besides. It is an original moment of a no less original history. The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by the nature of the artist, by the colors spread out on the palette; but, even with the knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, could have fore- seen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it would have been to produce it before it was produced — U DURATION W B^ftD absurd hypotbesb which is its own refutation. Even 50 with regard to the moments of our life, of which we are the artisans. Each of them is a kind of creation. And just as the talent of the painter is formed or defonned — I in any case, is modified — under the very influence of the R works he produces, so each of our states, at the moment " of its issue, modifies our personality, being indeed the new form that we are just assuming. It is then right to say that what we do depends on what we are ; but it is necessary »to add also that we are, to a certain extent, what we do, and that we are creating ourselves continually. This creation of self by self is the more complete, the more one reasons on what one does. For reason does not proceed in such matters as in geometry, where impersonal premisses | -( are given once for all, and an impersonal conclusion must perforce be drawn. Here, on the contrary, the same reasons may dictate to different persons, or to the same person at different moments, acts profoundly different, although equally reasonable. The truth is that they are not quite the same reasons, since they are not those of the same person, nor of the same moment. That is Lvhy we cannot deal with them in the abstract, from out- ride, as in geometry, nor solve for another the problems r which he is faced in life. Each must solve them from rithin, on his own account. But we need not go mora deeply into this. We are seeking only the precise meamng "that our consciousness gives to this word "exist," and we find that, for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself ^endlessly. Should the same be said of existence in general? A material object, of whatever kind, presents opposite iharactere to those which we have just been describing.
3nd we find that, for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself ^endlessly. Should the same be said of existence in general? A material object, of whatever kind, presents opposite iharactere to those which we have just been describing. Sither it remains as it is, or else, if it changes under the 8 CREATIVE EVOLUTION influence of an external force, our idea of this change is that of a displacement of parts which themselves do not change. If these parts took to changing, we should split them up in their turn. We should thus descend to the molecules of which the fragments are made, to the atoms that make up the molecules, to the corpuscles that generate the atoms, to the "imponderable" within which the corpuscle is perhaps a mere vortcv. In short, we should push the division or analysis as far as necessary. But we should stop only before the unchangeable. Now, we say that a composite object changes by the displacement of its parts. But when a part has left its position, there is nothing to prevent its return to it. A group of elements which has gone through a state can therefore always find its way back to that state, if not by itself, at least by means of an external cause able to restore everything to its place. This amounts to saying that any state of the group may be repeated as often as desired, I and consequently that the group does not grow old. It has no history. Thus nothing is created therein, neither form nor matter. What the group will be is already present in what it is, provided "what it is" includes all the points of the iini- verse with which it is related. A superhuman intellect could calculate, for any moment of time, the position of any point of the systcn:i in space. And as there is nothing more in the form of the whole than the arrangement of its parts, the future forms of the system are theoretically visible in its present configuration. All our belief in objects, all our operations on the systems that science isolates, rest in fact on the idea that time does not bite into them. We have touched on this question in an earlier work, and shall return to it in the course of the present study. For the moment, we will confine our- d UNORGANIZED BODIES r Hflelves to pointing out that the abstract time t attributed *" by science to a material object or to an isolated system consists only in a certain number of simultaneities or more generally of correspondences, and that this number re- mains the same, whatever be the nature of the intervals between the correspondences. With these intervals we are never concerned when dealing with inert matter; or, I if they are considered, it is in order to count therein fresh oorrespondences, between which again we shall not care nrhai happens.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1side. The cerebral mechanism is arranged just so as to drive back into the unconscious almost the whole of this past, and to admit beyond the threshold only that which can cast light on the present situation or further the action now being pre- pared — in short, only that which can give useful work. At the most, a few superfluous recollections may succeed in smuggling themselves through the half-open door. (^lese memories, messengers from the unconscious, remind VB of what we are dragging behind us unawares. But, even though we may have no distinct idea of it, we feel vaguely that our past remains present to us. ^\^lat are i we, in fact, what is our ckarader, if not the condensation of the history that we have lived from our birth — nay, ! even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal | disp>ositions? Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small part of it only is known in the form of idea. From this survival of the past it follows that conscious- I ness cannot go through the same state twice. The cir- cumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person, since they 5nd hlra at a new j moment of hia history. Our personality, which is being built up each instant with its accumulated experience, CREATIVE EVOLUTION lOBAP. , changes without ceasing. By changing, it prevents any 1 state, although superficially identical with another, from ever repeating it in its very depth. That is why our duration is irreversible. We could not live over again a single moment, for we should have to begin by effacing the raeniory of all that had followed. Even could we erase this memory from our intellect, we could not from our will. Thus our personality shoots, grows and ripens with- out ceasing. Each of its moments is something new added to what was before. We may go further: it is not only something new, but something unforeseeable. Doubt- less, my present state is explained by what was in me and by what was acting on me a moment ago. In analyzing it I should find no other elements. But even a superhuman intelligence would not have been able to foresee the simple indivisible form which gives to these purely abstract elements their concrete organization. For to foresee con- sists of projecting into the future what has been perceived in the past, or of imagining for a later time a new group- ing, in a new order, of elements already perceived. But that which has never been perceived, and which is at the same time simple, is necessarily unforeseeable.
2For to foresee con- sists of projecting into the future what has been perceived in the past, or of imagining for a later time a new group- ing, in a new order, of elements already perceived. But that which has never been perceived, and which is at the same time simple, is necessarily unforeseeable. Now such is the case with each of our states, regarded as a moment in a history that is gradually unfolding: it is simple, and it cannot have been already perceived, since it concen- trates in its indivisibility all that has been perceived and what the present is adding to it besides. It is an original moment of a no less original history. The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by the nature of the artist, by the colors spread out on the palette; but, even with the knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, could have fore- seen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it would have been to produce it before it was produced — U DURATION W B^ftD absurd hypotbesb which is its own refutation. Even 50 with regard to the moments of our life, of which we are the artisans. Each of them is a kind of creation. And just as the talent of the painter is formed or defonned — I in any case, is modified — under the very influence of the R works he produces, so each of our states, at the moment " of its issue, modifies our personality, being indeed the new form that we are just assuming. It is then right to say that what we do depends on what we are ; but it is necessary »to add also that we are, to a certain extent, what we do, and that we are creating ourselves continually. This creation of self by self is the more complete, the more one reasons on what one does. For reason does not proceed in such matters as in geometry, where impersonal premisses | -( are given once for all, and an impersonal conclusion must perforce be drawn. Here, on the contrary, the same reasons may dictate to different persons, or to the same person at different moments, acts profoundly different, although equally reasonable. The truth is that they are not quite the same reasons, since they are not those of the same person, nor of the same moment. That is Lvhy we cannot deal with them in the abstract, from out- ride, as in geometry, nor solve for another the problems r which he is faced in life. Each must solve them from rithin, on his own account. But we need not go mora deeply into this. We are seeking only the precise meamng "that our consciousness gives to this word "exist," and we find that, for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself ^endlessly. Should the same be said of existence in general? A material object, of whatever kind, presents opposite iharactere to those which we have just been describing.
3nd we find that, for a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself ^endlessly. Should the same be said of existence in general? A material object, of whatever kind, presents opposite iharactere to those which we have just been describing. Sither it remains as it is, or else, if it changes under the 8 CREATIVE EVOLUTION influence of an external force, our idea of this change is that of a displacement of parts which themselves do not change. If these parts took to changing, we should split them up in their turn. We should thus descend to the molecules of which the fragments are made, to the atoms that make up the molecules, to the corpuscles that generate the atoms, to the "imponderable" within which the corpuscle is perhaps a mere vortcv. In short, we should push the division or analysis as far as necessary. But we should stop only before the unchangeable. Now, we say that a composite object changes by the displacement of its parts. But when a part has left its position, there is nothing to prevent its return to it. A group of elements which has gone through a state can therefore always find its way back to that state, if not by itself, at least by means of an external cause able to restore everything to its place. This amounts to saying that any state of the group may be repeated as often as desired, I and consequently that the group does not grow old. It has no history. Thus nothing is created therein, neither form nor matter. What the group will be is already present in what it is, provided "what it is" includes all the points of the iini- verse with which it is related. A superhuman intellect could calculate, for any moment of time, the position of any point of the systcn:i in space. And as there is nothing more in the form of the whole than the arrangement of its parts, the future forms of the system are theoretically visible in its present configuration. All our belief in objects, all our operations on the systems that science isolates, rest in fact on the idea that time does not bite into them. We have touched on this question in an earlier work, and shall return to it in the course of the present study. For the moment, we will confine our- d UNORGANIZED BODIES r Hflelves to pointing out that the abstract time t attributed *" by science to a material object or to an isolated system consists only in a certain number of simultaneities or more generally of correspondences, and that this number re- mains the same, whatever be the nature of the intervals between the correspondences. With these intervals we are never concerned when dealing with inert matter; or, I if they are considered, it is in order to count therein fresh oorrespondences, between which again we shall not care nrhai happens.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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