10 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



in space. It coincides with my impatience, that is to say, 

 with a certain portion of my own duration, which I cannot 

 protract or contract as I like. It is no longer something 

 thought, it is something lived. It is no longer a relation, 

 it is an absolute. What else can this mean than that the 

 glass of water, the sugar, and the process of the sugar's 

 melting in the water are abstractions, and that the Whole 

 within which they have been cut out by my senses and un- 

 derstanding progresses, it may be in the manner of a 

 consciousness? 



Certainly, the operation by which science isolates and 

 closes a system is not altogether artificial. If it had no 

 objective foundation, we could not explain why it is clearly 

 indicated in some cases and impossible in others. We 

 shall see that matter has a tendency to constitute isoloble 

 systems, that can be treated geometrically. In fact, we 

 shall define matter by just this tendency. But it is only 

 a tendency. Matter does not go to the end, and the 

 isolation is never complete. If science does go to the 

 end and isolate completely, it is for convenience of study; 

 it is understood that the so-called isolated system remains 

 subject to certain external influences. Science merely 

 leaves these alone, either because it finds them slight 

 enough to be negligible, or because it intends to take them 

 into account later on. It is none the less true that these 

 influences are so many threads which bind up the system 

 to another more extensive, and to this a third which in- 

 cludes both, and so on to the system most objectively 

 isolated and most independent of all, the solar system com- 

 plete. But, even here, the isolation is not absolute. Our 

 sun radiates heat and light beyond the farthest planet. 

 And, on the other hand, it moves in a certain fixed direction, 

 drawing with it the planets and their satellites. The 

 thread attaching it to the rest of the universe is doubtless 



