i.j UNORGANIZED BODIES 11 



very tenuous. Nevertheless it is along this thread that 

 is transmitted down to the smallest particle of the world 

 in which we live the duration immanent to the whole 

 of the universe. 



The universe endures. The more we study the nature 

 of time, the more we shall comprehend that duration means 

 invention, the creation of forms, the continual elaboration 

 of the absolutely new. The systems marked off by science 

 endure only because they are bound up inseparably with 

 the rest of the universe. It is true that in the universe 

 itself two opposite movements are to be distinguished, 

 as we shall see later on, "descent" and "ascent." The 

 first only unwinds a roll ready prepared. In principle, 

 it might be accomplished almost instantaneously, like 

 releasing a spring. But the ascending movement, which 

 corresponds to an inner work of ripening or creating, 

 endures essentially, and imposes its rhythm on the first, 

 which is inseparable from it. 



There is no reason, therefore, why a duration, and so a 

 form of existence like our own, should not be attributed 

 to the systems that science isolates, provided such sys- 

 tems are reintegrated into the Whole. But they must 

 be so reintegrated. The same is even more obviously 

 true of the objects cut out by our perception. The dis- 

 tinct outlines which we see in an object, and which give 

 it its individuality, are only the design of a certain kind 

 of influence that we might exert on a certain point of space: 

 it is the plan of our eventual actions that is sent back to 

 our eyes, as though by a mirror, when we see the surfaces 

 and edges of things. Suppress this action, and with it 

 consequently those main directions which by perception 

 are traced out for it in the entanglement of the real, and 

 the individuality of the body is re-absorbed in the universal 

 interaction which, without doubt, is reality itself. 



