46 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



Real duration is that duration which gnaws on things, 

 and leaves on them the mark of its tooth. If everything 

 is in time, everything changes inwardly, and the same 

 concrete reality never recurs. Repetition is therefore 

 possible only in the abstract: what is repeated is some 

 aspect that our senses, and especially our intellect, have 

 singled out from reality, just because our action, upon 

 which all the effort of our intellect is directed, can move 

 only among repetitions. Thus, concentrated on that 

 which repeats, solely preoccupied in welding the same 

 to the same, intellect turns away from the vision of time. 

 It dislikes what is fluid, and solidifies everything it touches. 

 We do not think real time. But we live it, because life 

 transcends intellect. The feeling we have of our evolution 

 and of the evolution of all things in pure duration is there, 

 forming around the intellectual concept properly so-called 

 an indistinct fringe that fades off into darkness. Mechan- 

 ism and finalism agree in taking account only of the bright 

 nucleus shining in the centre. They forget that this 

 nucleus has been formed out of the rest by condensation, 

 and that the whole must be used, the fluid as well as and 

 more than the condensed, in order to grasp the inner move- 

 ment of life. 



Indeed, if the fringe exists, however delicate and in- 

 distinct, it should have more importance for philosophy 

 than the bright nucleus it surrounds. For it is its presence 

 that enables us to affirm that the nucleus is a nucleus, that 

 pure intellect is a contraction, by condensation, of a more 

 extensive power. And, just because this vague intuition 

 is of no help in directing our action on things, which action 

 takes place exclusively on the surface of reality, we may 

 presume that it is to be exercised not merely on the sur- 

 face, but below. 



As soon as we go out of the encasings in which radical 



