i DURATION 5 



past into the actual, no evolution, no concrete duration. 

 Duration is the continuous progress of the past which 

 gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances. 

 And as the past grows without ceasing, so also there is 

 no limit to its preservation. Memory, as we have tried 

 to prove, 1 is not a faculty of putting away recollections 

 in a drawer, or of inscribing them in a register. There 

 is no register, no drawer ; there is not even, properly 

 speaking, a faculty, for a faculty works intermittently, 

 when it will or when it can, whilst the piling up of 

 the past upon the past goes on without relaxation. In 

 reality, the past is preserved by itself, automatically. 

 In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant ; 

 all that we have felt, thought and willed from our 

 earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which 

 is about to join it, pressing against the portals of con 

 sciousness that would fain leave it outside. The cerebral 

 mechanism is arranged just so as to drive back into the 

 unconscious almost the whole of this past, and to admit 

 beyond the threshold only that which can cast light 

 on the present situation or further the action now 

 being prepared in short, only that which can give 

 useful work. At the most, a few superfluous recollec 

 tions may succeed in smuggling themselves through 

 the half-open door. These memories, messengers 

 from the unconscious, remind us of what we are 

 dragging behind us unawares. But, even though we 

 may have no distinct idea of it, we feel vaguely that our 

 past remains present to us. What are we, in fact, what 

 is our character, if not the condensation of the history 

 that we have lived from our birth nay, even before 

 our birth, since we bring with us prenatal dispositions ? 

 Doubtless we think with only a small part of our pastj 



1 Mattire ft mSmoi*-e, Paris, 1896, chaps, ii. and iii. 



