grees. But the more the feeling is deep and the
coincidence complete, the more the life in which it replaces us absorbs
intellectuality by transcending it. For the natural function of the
intellect is to bind like to like, and it is only facts that can be
repeated that are entirely adaptable to intellectual conceptions. Now,
our intellect does undoubtedly grasp the real moments of real duration
after they are past; we do so by reconstituting the new state of
consciousness out of a series of views taken of it from the outside,
each of which resembles as much as possible something already known; in
this sense we may say that the state of consciousness contains
intellectuality implicitly. Yet the state of consciousness overflows the
intellect; it is indeed incommensurable with the intellect, being itself
indivisible and new.

Now let us relax the strain, let us interrupt the effort to crowd as
much as possible of the past into the present. If the relaxation were
complete, there would no longer be either memory or will--which amounts
to saying that, in fact, we never do fall into this absolute passivity,
any more than we can make ourselves absolutely free. But, in the limit,
we get a glimpse of an existence made of a present which recommences
unceasingly--devoid of real duration, nothing but the instantaneous
which dies and is born again endlessly. Is the existence of matter of
this nature? Not altogether, for analysis resolves it into elementary
vibrations, the shortest of which are of very slight duration, almost
vanishing, but not nothing. It may be presumed, nevertheless, that
physical existence inclines in this second direction, as psychical
existence in the first.

Behind "spirituality" on the one hand, and "materiality" with
intellectuality on the other, there are then two processes opposite in
their direction, and we pass from the first to the second by way of
inversion, or perhaps even by simple interruption, if it is true that
inversion and interruption are two terms which in this case must be held
to be synonymous, as we shall show at more length later on. This
presumption is confirmed when we consider things from the point of view
of extension, and no longer from that of duration alone.

The more we succeed in making ourselves conscious of our progress in
pure duration, the more we feel the different parts of our being enter
into each other, and our whole personality concentrate itself in a
point, or rather a