6 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



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 

 consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. 

 The circumstances may still be the same, but they will 

 act no longer on the same person, since they find him 

 at a new moment of his history. Our personality, 

 which is being built up each instant with its accumulated 

 experience, changes without ceasing. By changing, it 

 prevents any 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 memory 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 

 riot only something new, but something unforeseeable. 

 Doubtless, my present state is explained by what was 

 in me and by what was acting on me a moment ago. 

 In analysing 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 organiza 

 tion. For to foresee consists of projecting into the 

 future what has been perceived in the past, or of 

 imagining for a later time a new grouping, in a new 

 order, of elements already perceived. But that which 

 has never been perceived, and which is at the same 



