ess, being as it were the shifting tangent to
the curve of becoming?

Let us did that according to the new philosophy the whole of our past
survives for ever in us, and by means of us results in action. It is
then literally true that our acts do to a certain extent involve
the whole universe, and its whole history: the act which we make it
accomplish will exist henceforward for ever, and will for ever tinge
universal duration with its indelible shade. Does not that imply an
imperious, urgent, solemn, and tragic problem of action? Nay, more;
memory makes a persistent reality of evil, as of good. Where are we to
find the means to abolish and reabsorb the evil? What in the individual
is called memory becomes tradition and joint responsibility in the race.

On the other hand, a directing law is immanent in life, but in the
shape of an appeal to endless transcendence. In dealing with this future
transcendent to our daily life, with this further shore of present
experience, where are we to seek the inspiring strength? And is there
not ground for asking ourselves whether intuitions have not arisen here
and there in the course of history, lighting up the dark road of the
future for us with a prophetic ray of dawn? It is at this point that the
new philosophy would find place for the problem of religion.

But this word "religion," which has not come once so far from Mr
Bergson's pen, coming now from mine, warns me that it is time to end. No
man today would be justified in foreseeing the conclusions to which the
doctrine of creative evolution will one day undoubtedly lead on this
point. More than any other, I must forget here what I myself may have
elsewhere tried to do in this order of ideas. But it was impossible
not to feel the approach of the temptation. Mr Bergson's work is
extraordinarily suggestive. His books, so measured in tone, so tranquil
in harmony, awaken in us a mystery of presentiment and imagination; they
reach the hidden retreats where the springs of consciousness well up.
Long after we have closed them we are shaken within; strangely moved,
we listen to the deepening echo, passing on and on. However valuable
already their explicit contents may be, they reach still further than
they aimed. It is impossible to tell what latent germs they foster. It
is impossible to guess what lies behind the boundless distance of the
horizons they expose. But this at least is sure: these books have verily
begun a new work in the