eing born. On the other hand, in the organized world, the death of
individuals does not seem at all like a diminution of "life in general,"
or like a necessity which life submits to reluctantly. As has been more
than once remarked, life has never made an effort to prolong
indefinitely the existence of the individual, although on so many other
points it has made so many successful efforts. Everything is _as if_
this death had been willed, or at least accepted, for the greater
progress of life in general.]

[Footnote 91: We have dwelt on this point in an article entitled
"Introduction a la metaphysique" (_Revue de metaphysique et de morale_,
January, 1903, pp. 1-25).]

[Footnote 92: Cf. a paper written (in Russian) by Serkovski, and
reviewed in the _Annee biologique_, 1898, p. 317.]

[Footnote 93: Ed. Perrier, _Les Colonies animales_, Paris, 1897 (2nd
edition).]

[Footnote 94: Delage, _L'Heredite_, 2nd edition, Paris, 1903, p. 97. Cf.
by the same author, "La Conception polyzoique des etres" (_Revue
scientifique_, 1896, pp. 641-653).]

[Footnote 95: This is the theory maintained by Kunstler, Delage,
Sedgwick, Labbe, etc. Its development, with bibliographical references,
will be found in the work of Busquet, _Les etres vivants_, Paris, 1899.]

CHAPTER IV

THE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND THE MECHANISTIC
ILLUSION--A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY OF SYSTEMS[96]--REAL BECOMING AND
FALSE EVOLUTIONISM.

It remains for us to examine in themselves two theoretical illusions
which we have frequently met with before, but whose consequences rather
than principle have hitherto concerned us. Such is the object of the
present chapter. It will afford us the opportunity of removing certain
objections, of clearing up certain misunderstandings, and, above all, of
defining more precisely, by contrasting it with others, a philosophy
which sees in duration the very stuff of reality.

Matter or mind, reality has appeared to us as a perpetual becoming. It
makes itself or it unmakes itself, but it is never something made. Such
is the intuition that we have of mind when we draw aside the veil which
is interposed between our consciousness and ourselves. This, also, is
what our intellect and senses themselves would show us of matter, if
they could obtain a direct and disinterested idea of it. But,
preoccupied before everything with the necessities of action, the
intellect, like the senses, is limited to taking, at intervals,