are dragging behind us unawares. But, even though we may have no
distinct idea of it, we feel vaguely that our past remains present to
us. What are we, in fact, what is our _character_, if not the
condensation of the history that we have lived from our birth--nay, even
before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal dispositions?
Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with
our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we
desire, will and act. Our past, then, as a whole, is made manifest to us
in its impulse; it is felt in the form of tendency, although a small
part of it only is known in the form of idea.

From this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go
through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same,
but they will act no longer on the same person, since they find him at a
new moment of his history. Our personality, which is being built up each
instant with its accumulated experience, changes without ceasing. By
changing, it prevents any state, although superficially identical with
another, from ever repeating it in its very depth. That is why our
duration is irreversible. We could not live over again a single moment,
for we should have to begin by effacing the memory of all that had
followed. Even could we erase this memory from our intellect, we could
not from our will.

Thus our personality shoots, grows and ripens without ceasing. Each of
its moments is something new added to what was before. We may go
further: it is not only something new, but something unforeseeable.
Doubtless, my present state is explained by what was in me and by what
was acting on me a moment ago. In analyzing it I should find no other
elements. But even a superhuman intelligence would not have been able to
foresee the simple indivisible form which gives to these purely abstract
elements their concrete organization. For to foresee consists of
projecting into the future what has been perceived in the past, or of
imagining for a later time a new grouping, in a new order, of elements
already perceived. But that which has never been perceived, and which is
at the same time simple, is necessarily unforeseeable. Now such is the
case with each of our states, regarded as a moment in a history that is
gradually unfolding: it is simple, and it cannot have been already
perceived, since it concentrates in its indivisibility all that has been
perceived and what the pr