248 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



presentation of matter. In vital activity we see, then, 

 that which subsists of the direct movement in the inverted 

 movement, a reality which is making itself in a reality 

 which is unmaking itself. 



Everything is obscure in the idea of creation if we 

 think of things which are created and a thing which creates, 

 as we habitually do, as the understanding cannot help 

 doing. We shall show the origin of this illusion in our 

 next chapter. It is natural to our intellect, whose function 

 is essentially practical, made to present to us things and 

 states rather than changes and acts. But things and 

 states are only views, taken by our mind, of becoming. 

 There are no things, there are only actions. More particu- 

 larly, if I consider the world in which we live, I find that 

 the automatic and strictly determined evolution of this 

 well-knit whole is action which is unmaking itself, and that 

 the unforeseen forms which life cuts out in it, forms capable 

 of being themselves prolonged into unforeseen movements, 

 represent the action that is making itself. Now, I have 

 every reason to believe that the other worlds are analogous 

 to ours, that things happen there in the same way. And 

 I know they were not all constructed at the same time, 

 since observation shows me, even to-day, nebulae in 

 course of concentration. Now, if the same kind of action 

 is going on everywhere, whether it is that which is unmaking 

 itself or whether it is that which is striving to remake 

 itself, I simply express this probable similitude when I 

 speak of a centre from which worlds shoot out like rockets 

 in a fire-works display — provided, however, that I do not 

 present this centre as a thing, but as a continuity of shoot- 

 ing out. God thus defined, has nothing of the already 

 made; He is unceasing life, action, freedom. Creation, 

 so conceived, is not a mystery; we experience it in our- 

 selves when we act freely. That new things can join 



