BIOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY 49 



everything it toudjL^&r We &quot;do nor~Mnk^jce^\ time. 

 But we live it, beau$e_life transcends intellect. The 

 feeling we have of our evoTuTi^rr and^o^flte evolution 

 of all things in pure duration is there, forming around 

 the intellectual concept properly so-called an indistinct 

 fringe that fades off into darkness. Mechanism and 



o 



finalism agree in taking account only of the bright 

 nucleus shining in the centre. They forget that this 

 nucleus has been formed out of the rest by con 

 densation, and that the whole must be used, the fluid 

 as well as and more than the condensed, in order to 

 grasp the inner movement of life. 



Indeed, if the fringe exists, however delicate and 

 indistinct, it should have more importance for philo 

 sophy than the bright nucleus it surrounds. For it is 

 its presence that enables us to affirm that the nucleus 

 is a nucleus, that pure intellect is a contraction, by con 

 densation, of a more extensive power. And, just 

 because this vague intuition is of no help in directing 

 our action on things, which action takes place ex 

 clusively on the surface of reality, we may presume 

 that it is to be exercised not merely on the surface, 

 but below. 



As soon as we go out of the encasings in which 

 radical mechanism and radical finalism confine our 

 thought, reality appears as a ceaseless upspringing of 

 something new, which has no sooner arisen to make 

 the present than it has already fallen back into the 

 past ; at this exact moment it falls under the glance 

 of the intellect, whose eyes are ever turned to the rear. 

 This is already the case with our inner life. For each 

 of our acts we shall easily find antecedents of which it 

 may in some sort be said to be the mechanical resultant. 

 And it may equally well be said that each action is the 



