i UNORGANIZED BODIES n 



possible in others. We shall see that matter has a 

 tendency to constitute isolable systems, that can be 

 treated geometrically. In fact, we shall define matter 

 by just this tendency. But it is only a tendency. 

 Matter does not go to the end, and the isolation 

 is never complete. If science does go to the 

 end and isolate completely, it is for convenience of 

 study ; it is understood that the so-called isolated 

 system remains subject to certain external influences. 

 Science merely leaves these alone, either because it 

 finds them slight enough to be negligible, or because 

 it intends to take them into account later on. It is 

 none the less true that these influences are so many 

 threads which bind up the system to another more 

 extensive, and this to a third which includes both, and 

 so on to the system most objectively isolated and most 

 independent of all, the solar system complete. But, 

 even here, the isolation is not absolute. Our sun 

 radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet. 

 And, on the other hand, it moves in a certain fixed 

 direction, drawing with it the planets and their satellites. 

 The thread attaching it to the rest of the universe 

 is doubtless very tenuous. Nevertheless it is along 

 this thread that is transmitted down to the smallest 

 particle of the world in which we live the duration 

 immanent to the whole of the universe. 



The universe endures. The more we study the 

 nature of time, the more we shall comprehend that 

 duration means invention, the creation of forms, the 

 continual elaboration of the absolutely new. The 

 systems marked off by science endure only because they 

 are bound up inseparably with the rest of the universe. 

 It is true that in the universe itself two opposite 

 movements are to be distinguished, as we shall see 



