272 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



individuality is distributed. But, if I make it distinctly 

 manifold, my consciousness rebels quite as strongly ; it 

 affirms that my sensations, my feelings, my thoughts 

 are abstractions which I effect on myself, and that each 

 of my states implies all the others. I am then (we 

 must adopt the language of the understanding, since 

 only the understanding has a language) a unity that is 

 multiple and a multiplicity that is one ; 1 but unity 

 and multiplicity are only views of my personality taken 

 by an understanding that directs its categories at me ; 

 I enter neither into one nor into the other nor into 

 both at once, although both, united, may give a fair 

 imitation of the mutual interpenetration and con 

 tinuity that I find at the base of my own self. Such 

 is my inner life, and such also is life in general. 

 While, in its contact with matter, life is comparable 

 to an impulsion or an impetus, regarded in itself it 

 is an immensity of potentiality, a mutual encroach 

 ment of thousands and thousands of tendencies which 

 nevertheless are &quot; thousands and thousands &quot; only 

 when once regarded as outside of each other, that is, 

 when sp;uialized. Contact with matter is what de 

 termines this dissociation. Matter divides actually 

 what was but potentially manifold ; and, in this 

 sense, individuation is in part the work of matter, 

 in part the result of life s own inclination. Thus, a 

 poetic sentiment, which bursts into distinct verses, 

 lines and words, may be said to have already con 

 tained this multiplicity of individuated elements, and 

 yet, in fact, it is the materiality of language that 

 creates it. 



But through the words, lines and verses runs the 



1 We have dwelt on this point in an article entitled &quot; Introduction a la 

 metaphysique &quot; (Rc&amp;lt;vue de mttaphysique et de morale, January 1903, pp. 1-25). 



