so as not to lose its cross-vistas and its mobility. There is no
reason, then, why individuals should not live for ever. But a
condition seems to be involved which may well make belief stagger. It
would be impossible for the universe to divide its images into
particular minds unless it preserved the images of their particular
bodies also. Particular minds arise, according to this philosophy, in
the interests of practice: which means, biologically, to secure a
better adjustment of the body to its environment, so that it may
survive. Mystically, too, the fundamental force is a half-conscious
purpose that practice, or freedom, should come to be; or rather, that
an apparition or experience of practice and freedom should arise; for
in this philosophy appearance is all. To secure this desirable
apparition of practice special tasks are set to various nuclei in felt
space (such, for instance, as the task to see), and the image of a
body (in this case that of an eye) is gradually formed, in order to
execute that task; for evidently the Absolute can see only if it
looks, and to look it must first choose a point of view and an optical
method. This point of view and this method posit the individual; they
fix him in time and space, and determine the quality and range of his
passive experience: they are his body. If the Absolute, then, wishes
to retain the individual not merely as one of its memories but as one
of its organs of practical life, it must begin by retaining the image
of his body. His body must continue to figure in that landscape of
nature which the absolute life, as it pulses, keeps always composing
and recomposing. Otherwise a personal mind, a sketch of things made
from the point of view and in the interests of that body, cannot be
preserved.

M. Bergson, accordingly, should either tell us that our bodies are
going to rise again, or he should not tell us, or give us to