254 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



of the universe that we are considering at once. At the 

 root of this habit of mind lies the prejudice which we 

 will analyse in our next chapter, the idea, common to 

 materialists and to their opponents, that there is no 

 really acting duration, and that the absolute matter or 

 mind can have no place in concrete time, in the time 

 which we feel to be the very stuff of our life. From 

 which it follows that everything is given once for all, 

 and that it is necessary to posit from all eternity either 

 material multiplicity itself, or the act creating this 

 multiplicity, given in block in the divine essence. 

 Once this prejudice is eradicated, the idea of creation 

 becomes more clear, for it is merged in that of growth. 

 But it is no longer then of the universe in its totality 

 that we must speak. 



Why should we speak of it ? The universe is an 

 assemblage of solar systems which we have every 

 reason to believe analogous to our own. No doubt 

 they are not absolutely independent of one another. 

 Our sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest 

 planet, and, on the other hand, our entire solar system 

 is moving in a definite direction as if it were drawn. 

 There is, then, a bond between the worlds. But this 

 bond may be regarded as infinitely loose in comparison 

 with the mutual dependence which unites the parts of 

 the same world among themselves ; so that it is not 

 artificially, for reasons of mere convenience, that we 

 isolate our solar system : nature itself invites us to 

 isolate it. As living beings, we depend on the planet 

 on which we are, and on the sun that provides for it, 

 but on nothing else. As thinking beings, we may 

 apply the laws of our physics to our own world, and 

 extend them to each of the worlds taken separately ; 

 but nothing tells us that they apply to the entire 



