ro CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



the entire past, present, and future of material objects 

 or of isolated systems might be spread out all at once 

 in space, without there being anything to change either 

 in the formulae of the scientist or even in the language 

 of common sense. The number /would always stand for 

 the same thing ; it would still count the same number 

 of correspondences between the states of the objects or 

 systems and the points of the line, ready drawn, which 

 would be then the &quot;course of time.&quot; 



Yet succession is an undeniable fact, even in the 

 material world. Though our reasoning on isolated 

 systems may imply that their history, past, present, and 

 future, might be instantaneously unfurled like a fan, 

 this history, in point of fact, unfolds itself gradually, 

 as if it occupied a duration like our own. If I want to 

 mix a glass of sugar and water, I must, willy-nilly, 

 wait until the sugar melts. This little fact is big with 

 meaning. For here the time I have to wait is not that 

 mathematical time which would apply equally well to the 

 entire history of the material world, even if that history 

 were spread out instantaneously in space. It coincides 

 with my impatience, that is to say, with a certain portion 

 of my own duration, which I cannot protract or contract 

 as I like. It is no longer something thought, it is some 

 thing lived. It is no longer a relation, it is an absolute. 

 What else can this mean than that the glass of water, 

 the sugar, and the process of the sugar s melting in the 

 water are abstractions, and that the Whole within which 

 they have been cut out by my senses and understanding 

 progresses, it may be in the manner of a consciousness ? 



Certainly, the operation by which science isolates 

 and closes a system is not altogether artificial. If it 

 had no objective foundation, we could not explain 

 why it is clearly indicated in some cases and im- 



