340 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



it is because there is unceasingly being created in it, not 

 indeed in any such artificially isolated system as a glass 

 of sugared water, but in the concrete whole of which every 

 such system forms part, something unforeseeable and new. 

 This duration may not be the fact of matter itself, but that 

 of the life which reascends the course of matter; the two 

 movements are none the less mutually dependent upon each 

 other. The duration of the universe must therefore be one 

 with the latitude of creation which can find place in it. 



When a child plays at reconstructing a picture by putting 

 together the separate pieces in a puzzle game, the more he 

 practices, the more and more quickly he succeeds. The 

 reconstruction was, moreover, instantaneous, the child 

 found it ready-made, when he opened the box on leaving 

 the shop. The operation, therefore, does not require a 

 definite time, and indeed, theoretically, it does not require 

 any time. That is because the result is given. It is be- 

 cause the picture is already created, and because to obtain 

 it requires only a work of recomposing and rearranging — 

 a work that can be supposed going faster and faster, and 

 even infinitely fast, up to the point of being instantaneous. 

 But, to the artist who creates a picture by drawing it from 

 the depths of his soul, time is no longer an accessory; it is 

 not an interval that may be lengthened or shortened with- 

 out the content being altered. The duration of his work 

 is part and parcel of his work. To contract or to dilate 

 it would be to modify both the psychical evolution that 

 fills it and the invention which is its goal. The time taken 

 up by the invention, is one with the invention itself. It 

 is the progress of a thought which is changing in the degree 

 and measure that it is taking form. It is a vital process, 

 something like the ripening of an idea. 



The painter is before his canvas, the colors are on the 

 palette, the model is sitting — all this we see, and also we 



