12 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP 



later on, &quot;descent&quot; and &quot;ascent.&quot; The first only 

 unwinds a roll ready prepared. In principle, it might 

 be accomplished almost instantaneously, like releasing 

 a spring. But the ascending movement, which corre 

 sponds to an inner work of ripening or creating, endures 

 essentially, and imposes its rhythm on the first, which 

 is inseparable from it. 



There is no reason, therefore, why a duration, and 

 so a form of existence like our own, should not be attri 

 buted to the systems that science isolates, provided such 

 systems are reintegrated into the Whole. But they 

 must be so reintegrated. The same is even more 

 obviously true of the objects cut out by our perception. 

 The distinct outlines which we see in an object, and 

 which give it its individuality, are only the design of a 

 certain kind of influence that we might exert on a 

 certain point of space : it is the plan of our eventual 

 actions that is sent back to our eyes, as though by a 

 mirror, when we see the surfaces and edges of things. 

 Suppress this action, and with it consequently those 

 main directions which by perception are traced out for 

 it in the entanglement of the real, and the individuality 

 of the body is re-absorbed in the universal interaction 

 which, without doubt, is reality itself. 



Now, we have considered material objects generally. 

 Are there not some objects privileged ? The bodies we 

 perceive are, so to speak, cut out of the stuff of nature 

 by our perception^ and the scissors follow, in some way, 

 the marking of lines along which action might be taken. 

 But the body which is to perform this action, the body 

 which marks out upon matter the design of its eventual 

 actions even before they are actual, the body that has 

 only to point its sensory organs on the flow of the rea) 



