2 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



would cease to flow. Let us take the most stable of in- 

 ternal states, the visual perception of a motionless external 

 object. The object may remain the same, I may look at 

 it from the same side, at the same angle, in the same light; 

 nevertheless the vision I now have of it differs from that 

 which I have just had, even if only because the one is an 

 instant older than the other. My memory is there, which 

 conveys something of the past into the present. My men- 

 tal state, as it advances on the road of time, is continually 

 swelling with the duration which it accumulates: it goes 

 on increasing — rolling upon itself, as a snowball on the 

 snow. Still more is this the case with states more deeply 

 internal, such as sensations, feelings, desires, etc., which 

 do not correspond, like a simple visual perception, to an 

 unvarying external object. But it is expedient to dis- 

 regard this uninterrupted change, and to notice it only 

 when it becomes sufficient to impress a new attitude on 

 the body, a new direction on the attention. Then, and 

 then only, we find that our state has changed. The 

 truth is that we change without ceasing, and that the 

 state itself is nothing but change. 



This amounts to saying that there is no essential differ- 

 ence between passing from one state to another and per- 

 sisting in the same state. If the state which "remains 

 the same" is more varied than we think, on the other hand 

 the passing from one state to another resembles, more than 

 we imagine, a single state being prolonged; the transition 

 is continuous. But, just because we close our eyes to 

 the unceasing variation of every psychical state, we are 

 obliged, when the change has become so considerable 

 as to force itself on our attention, to speak as if a new state 

 were placed alongside the previous one. Of this new state 

 we assume that it remains unvarying in its turn, and so 

 on endlessly. The apparent discontinuity of the psychical 



