382 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



could be more contrary to the letter, and perhaps also 

 to the spirit, of the Critique of Pure Reason. No doubt, 

 knowledge is presented to us in it as an ever-open roll, 

 experience as a push of facts that is for ever going on. 

 But, according to Kant, these facts are spread out on 

 one plane as fast as they arise ; they are external to 

 each other and external to the mind. Of a knowledge 

 from within, that could grasp them in their springing 

 forth instead of taking them already sprung, that would 

 dig beneath space and spatialized time, there is never 

 any question. Yet it is indeed beneath this plane that 

 our consciousness places us ; there flows true duration. 

 In this respect, also, Kant is very near his pre 

 decessors. Between the non-temporal, and the time that 

 is spread out in distinct moments, he admits no mean. 

 And as there is indeed no intuition that carries us 

 into the non-temporal, all intuition is thus found to 

 be sensuous, by definition. But between physical 

 existence, which is spread out in space, and non- 

 temporal existence, which can only be a conceptual and 

 logical existence like that of which metaphysical dog 

 matism speaks, is there not room for consciousness and 

 for life ? There is, unquestionably. We perceive it 

 when we place ourselves in duration in order to go 

 from that duration to moments, instead of starting 



J o 



from moments in order to bind them again and to 

 construct duration. 



Yet it was to a non-temporal intuition that the 

 immediate successors of Kant turned, in order to 

 escape from the Kantian relativism. Certainly, the 

 ideas of becoming, of progress, of evolution, seem to 

 occupy a large place in their philosophy. But does 

 duration really play a part in it ? Real duration is that 

 in which each form flows out of previous forms, while 



