nce, as on the film of the
cinematograph? The more I consider this point, the more it seems to me
that, if the future is bound to _succeed_ the present instead of being
given alongside of it, it is because the future is not altogether
determined at the present moment, and that if the time taken up by this
succession is something other than a number, if it has for the
consciousness that is installed in it absolute value and reality, it is
because there is unceasingly being created in it, not indeed in any such
artificially isolated system as a glass of sugared water, but in the
concrete whole of which every such system forms part, something
unforeseeable and new. This duration may not be the fact of matter
itself, but that of the life which reascends the course of matter; the
two movements are none the less mutually dependent upon each other. _The
duration of the universe must therefore be one with the latitude of
creation which can find place in it._

When a child plays at reconstructing a picture by putting together the
separate pieces in a puzzle game, the more he practices, the more and
more quickly he succeeds. The reconstruction was, moreover,
instantaneous, the child found it ready-made, when he opened the box on
leaving the shop. The operation, therefore, does not require a definite
time, and indeed, theoretically, it does not require any time. That is
because the result is given. It is because the picture is already
created, and because to obtain it requires only a work of recomposing
and rearranging--a work that can be supposed going faster and faster,
and even infinitely fast, up to the point of being instantaneous. But,
to the artist who creates a picture by drawing it from the depths of his
soul, time is no longer an accessory; it is not an interval that may be
lengthened or shortened without the content being altered. The duration
of his work is part and parcel of his work. To contract or to dilate it
would be to modify both the psychical evolution that fills it and the
invention which is its goal. The time taken up by the invention, is one
with the invention itself. It is the progress of a thought which is
changing in the degree and measure that it is taking form. It is a vital
process, something like the ripening of an idea.

The painter is before his canvas, the colors are on the palette, the
model is sitting--all this we see, and also we know the painter's
style: do we foresee what will appear on the c