358 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



about the units themselves, and that is why the suc 

 cessive states of the world might be spread out all at 

 once in space without his having to change anything 

 in his science or to cease talking about time. But for 

 us, conscious beings, it is the units that matter, for we 

 do not count extremities of intervals, we feel and live 

 the intervals themselves/&quot; TTow, *we areTbnscious of 

 these intervals as of definite intervals. Let me come 

 back again to the sugar in my glass of water : l why 

 must I wait for it to melt ? While the duration of 

 the phenomenon is relative for the physicist, since it is 

 reduced to a certain number of units of time and the 

 units themselves are indifferent, this duration is an 

 absolute for my consciousness, for it coincides with a 

 certain degree of impatience which is rigorously deter 

 mined. Whence comes this determination ? What is 

 it that obliges me to wait, and to wait for a certain 

 length of psychical duration which is forced upon me, 

 over which I have no power ? If succession, in so far 

 as distinct from mere juxtaposition, has no real efficacy, 

 if time is not a kind of force, why does the universe 

 unfold its successive states with a velocity which, in 

 regard to my consciousness, is a veritable absolute ? 

 Why with this particular velocity rather than any 

 other ? Why not with an infinite velocity ? Why, 

 in other words, is not everything given at once, as on 

 the film of the cinematograph ? The more I consider 

 this point, the more it seems to me that, if the future is 

 bound to succeed the present instead of being given 

 alongside of it, it is because the future is not altogether 

 determined at the present moment, and that if the 

 time taken up by this succession is something other 

 than a number, if it has for the consciousness that is 



1 See page TOT 



