172 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



called to the internal change of one of these states ? 

 At once we decompose it into another series of states 

 which, reunited, will be supposed to make up this 

 internal modification. Each of these new states must 

 be invariable, or else their internal change, if we are 



O * 



forced to notice it, must be resolved again into a fresh 

 series of invariable states, and so on to infinity. Here 

 again, thinking consists in reconstituting, and, natur 

 ally, it is with given elements, and consequently with 

 stable elements, that we reconstitute. So that, though 



O 



we may do our best to imitate the mobility of becoming 

 by an addition that is ever going on, becoming itself 

 slips through our fingers just when we think we are 

 holding it tight. 



Precisely because it is always trying to reconstitute, 

 and to reconstitute with what is given, the intellect lets 

 what is new in each moment of a history escape. It 

 does not admit the unforeseeable. It rejects all 

 creation. That definite antecedents bring forth a 

 definite consequent, calculable as a function of them, 

 is what satisfies our intellect. That a definite end 

 calls forth definite means to attain it, is what we also 

 understand. In both cases we have to do with the known 

 which is combined with the known, in short, with the 

 old which is repeated. Our intellect is there at its ease ; 

 and, whatever be the object, it will abstract, separate, 

 eliminate, so as to substitute for the object itself, if 

 necessarv, an approximate equivalent in which things 

 will happen in this way. But that each instant is a 

 fresh endowment, that the new is ever upspringing, 

 that the form just come into existence (although, 

 when once produced, it may be regarded as an effect 

 determined by its causes) could never have been 

 foreseen because the causes here, unique in their 



