we conceive an absolute extrinsic determination, when the act in birth only
makes one with the finished sum of its conditions, when these conditions
are complete only on the threshold of the action beginning, including the
fresh and irreducible contribution added by its very date in our history?
We can only explain afterwards, we can only foresee when it is too late, in
retrospect, when the accomplished action has fallen into the plan of
matter.

Thus our inner life is a work of enduring creation: of phases which mature
slowly, and conclude at long intervals the decisive moments of emancipating
discovery. Undoubtedly matter is there, under the forms of habit,
threatening us with automatism, seeking at every moment to devour us,
stealing a march on us whenever we forget. But matter represents in us
only the waste of existence, the mortal fall of weakened reality, the swoon
of the creative action falling back inert; while the depths of our being
still pulse with the liberty which, in its true function, employs mechanism
itself only as a means of action.

Now, does not this conception make a singular exception of us in nature, an
empire within an empire? That is the question we have yet to investigate.



II.

We have just attempted to grasp what being is in ourselves; and we have
found that it is becoming, progress, and growth, that it is a creative
process which never ceases to labour incessantly; in a word, that it is
duration. Must we come to the same conclusion about external being, about
existence in general?