object, is in perception, not perception
in the subject--at least not primitively. So that it is by a trick of
speech that the theses of fundamental relativity take root: they vanish
when we return to immediacy; that is to say, when we present problems as
they ought to be presented, in terms which do not suppose any conceptual
analysis yet accomplished.

VI. The Problem of Evolution: Life and Matter.

After the problem of consciousness Mr Bergson was bound to approach that
of evolution, for psychological liberty is only truly conceivable if
it begins in some measure with the first pulsation of corporal life.
"Either sensation has no raison d'etre or it is a beginning of liberty";
that is what the "Essay on the Immediate Data" (Page 25.) already told
us.

It was easy then to foresee the necessity of a general theoretical frame
in which our duration might take a position which would render it more
intelligible by removing its appearance of singular exception.

Thus in 1901, I wrote ("Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale", May
1901) with regard to the new philosophy considered as a philosophy of
becoming: "It has been prepared by contemporary evolution, which is
investigates and perfects, sifting it from its ore of materialism, and
turning it into genuine metaphysics. Is not this the philosophy suited
to the century of history? Perhaps it indicates that a period has
arrived in which mathematics, losing its role as the regulating science,
is about to give place to biology." This is the programme carried
out, in what an original manner we are well aware, by the doctrine of
Creative Evolution.

When we examine ancient knowledge, one characteristic of it is at once
visible. It studies little but certain privileged moments of changing
reality, certain stable forms, certain states of equilibrium.
Ancient geometry, for example, is almost always limited to the static
consideration of figures already traced. Modern science is quite
different. Has not the greatest progress which it has realised in the
mathematical order really been the invention of infinitesimal analysis;
that is to say, an effort to substitute the process for the resultant,
to follow the moving generation of phenomena and magnitudes in its
continuity, to place oneself along becoming at any moment whatsoever, or
rather, by degrees at all successive moments? This fundamental tendency,
coupled with the development of biological research, was bound to
incline