esent is adding to it besides. It is an
original moment of a no less original history.

The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by the
nature of the artist, by the colors spread out on the palette; but, even
with the knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist,
could have foreseen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict
it would have been to produce it before it was produced--an absurd
hypothesis which is its own refutation. Even so with regard to the
moments of our life, of which we are the artisans. Each of them is a
kind of creation. And just as the talent of the painter is formed or
deformed--in any case, is modified--under the very influence of the
works he produces, so each of our states, at the moment of its issue,
modifies our personality, being indeed the new form that we are just
assuming. It is then right to say that what we do depends on what we
are; but it is necessary to add also that we are, to a certain extent,
what we do, and that we are creating ourselves continually. This
creation of self by self is the more complete, the more one reasons on
what one does. For reason does not proceed in such matters as in
geometry, where impersonal premisses are given once for all, and an
impersonal conclusion must perforce be drawn. Here, on the contrary, the
same reasons may dictate to different persons, or to the same person at
different moments, acts profoundly different, although equally
reasonable. The truth is that they are not quite the same reasons, since
they are not those of the same person, nor of the same moment. That is
why we cannot deal with them in the abstract, from outside, as in
geometry, nor solve for another the problems by which he is faced in
life. Each must solve them from within, on his own account. But we need
not go more deeply into this. We are seeking only the precise meaning
that our consciousness gives to this word "exist," and we find that, for
a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to
mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly. Should the same be said
of existence in general?

* * * * *

A material object, of whatever kind, presents opposite characters to
those which we have just been describing. Either it remains as it is, or
else, if it changes under the influence of an external force, our idea
of this change is that of a displacement of parts which themselves do
not ch