6 CREATIVE EVOLUTION rcHAP. 



changes without ceasing. By changing, it prevents any- 

 state, although superficially identical with another, from 

 ever repeating it in its very depth. That is why our 

 duration is irreversible. We could not live over again 

 a single moment, for we should have to begin by effacing 

 the memory of all that had followed. Even could we erase 

 this memory from our intellect, we could not from our will. 



Thus our personality shoots, grows and ripens with- 

 out ceasing. Each of its moments is something new added 

 to what was before. We may go further: it is not only 

 something new, but something unforeseeable. Doubt- 

 less, my present state is explained by what was in me and 

 by what was acting on me a moment ago. In analyzing 

 it I should find no other elements. But even a superhuman 

 intelligence would not have been able to foresee the simple 

 indivisible form which gives to these purely abstract 

 elements their concrete organization. For to foresee con- 

 sists of projecting into the future what has been perceived 

 in the past, or of imagining for a later time a new group- 

 ing, in a new order, of elements already perceived. But 

 that which has never been perceived, and which is at the 

 same time simple, is necessarily unforeseeable. Now such 

 is the case with each of our states, regarded as a moment 

 in a history that is gradually unfolding: it is simple, and 

 it cannot have been already perceived, since it concen- 

 trates in its indivisibility all that has been perceived and 

 what the present is adding to it besides. It is an original 

 moment of a no less original history. 



The finished portrait is explained by the features of 

 the model, by the nature of the artist, by the colors spread 

 out on the palette; but, even with the knowledge of what 

 explains it, no one, not even the artist, could have fore- 

 seen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict 

 it would have been to produce it before it was produced — 



