rv MODERN SCIENCE (357 



consciousness that is independent of it and that would 

 perceive the variation by the quite qualitative feeling 

 that it would have of it : whatever the variation had 

 been, since the movement of T would participate in 

 this variation, I should have nothing to change in my 

 equations nor in the numbers that figure in them. 



Let us go further. Suppose that the rapidity of the 

 flux becomes infinite. Imagine, as we said in the first 

 pages of this book, that the trajectory of the mobile 

 T is given at once, and that the whole history, past, 

 present and future, of the material universe is spread 

 out instantaneously in space. The same mathematical 

 correspondences will subsist between the moments of 

 the history of the world unfolded like a fan, so to 

 speak, and the divisions T 15 T 2 , T 3 , ... of the 

 line which will be called, by definition, &quot; the course 

 of time.&quot; In the eyes of science nothing will have 

 changed. But if, time thus spreading itself out in space 

 and succession becoming juxtaposition, science has 

 jipthing to change in what it tells us, we must conclude 

 .that, in what it tells us ? it takes account neither of succes 

 sion in what of it is specific nor of time in what there is 



- in it. that is fluent. It has no sjgn to .express what . 



_ strikes our consciqujnje^^ and duration. 



It no more applies to becoming, so far asT~tnin 

 moving, than the bridges thrown here and there 

 across the stream follow the water that flows under 

 their arches. 



Yet succession exists ; I am conscious of it ; it is a 

 fact. When a physical process is going on before my 

 eyes, my perception and my inclination have nothing 

 to do with accelerating or retarding it. What is 

 important to the physicist is the number of units of 

 duration the process fills ; he does not concern himself 



