. DURATION 7 



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 concentrates 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 colours 

 spread out on the palette ; but, even with the know 

 ledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, 

 could have foreseen exactly what the portrait would be, 

 for to predict it would have been to produce it before 

 it was produced an absurd hypothesis which is its 

 own refutation. Even so 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 deformed in any case, is 

 modified under the very influence of the 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 our 

 selves 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 



