From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



This vital impulse pertains to an immanent principle 

 which is life, intelligence, and matter. It transcends 

 them all, in the past, the present, and the future. It 

 presupposes them, contains them, and precreates them, 

 so to say, in proportion as they come into realisation. 



This immanent principle, however, has no final 

 completeness in itself; it comes into existence progres- 

 sively as it creates the evolving universe. It constitutes 

 what M. Bergson calls * Duration.' This * Duration ' 

 is not very easily understood. An eminent disciple of 

 M. Bergson describes it as follows. 



'It is a melodious evolution of moments in 

 which each has the resonance of the preceding 

 moment and foretells that which will succeed it; 

 it is an amplification which never stops, and a 

 perpetual origin of new manifestations. It is a 

 Becoming, indivisible, qualitative, organic, beyond 

 Space, and not amenable to number. . . . Imagine 

 a symphony which should be conscious of itself 

 and creative of itself: it is after this manner that 

 Duration is best understood.' 1 



It is duration, with its vital impulse, which is the 

 essential cause of evolution, and not Darwinian or 

 Lamarckian adaptation. 



How are we to conceive of evolution from ' dura- 

 tion ? ' Everything happens as if there were a centre 

 whence worlds are thrown off like fireworks in a vast 

 illumination. 



But this centre is not a concrete thing; it is * a 

 continuity of outflow/ 



This centre is God; but ' God, thus defined, has 

 no completed existence: He is ceaseless life, He is 

 action, He is liberty. Creation, thus conceived of, is 

 no mystery: we experience it in ourselves as soon as 

 we act freely.' 



1 Le Roy : Une Philosophie Nouvellt. 

 164 



