l happen to the vapor of the breath in a cold winter's day."
In such a doctrine, time is still spoken of: one pronounces the word,
but one does not think of the thing. For time is here deprived of
efficacy, and if it _does_ nothing, it _is_ nothing. Radical mechanism
implies a metaphysic in which the totality of the real is postulated
complete in eternity, and in which the apparent duration of things
expresses merely the infirmity of a mind that cannot know everything at
once. But duration is something very different from this for our
consciousness, that is to say, for that which is most indisputable in
our experience. We perceive duration as a stream against which we cannot
go. It is the foundation of our being, and, as we feel, the very
substance of the world in which we live. It is of no use to hold up
before our eyes the dazzling prospect of a universal mathematic; we
cannot sacrifice experience to the requirements of a system. That is why
we reject radical mechanism.

* * * * *

But radical finalism is quite as unacceptable, and for the same reason.
The doctrine of teleology, in its extreme form, as we find it in Leibniz
for example, implies that things and beings merely realize a programme
previously arranged. But if there is nothing unforeseen, no invention or
creation in the universe, time is useless again. As in the mechanistic
hypothesis, here again it is supposed that _all is given_. Finalism thus
understood is only inverted mechanism. It springs from the same
postulate, with this sole difference, that in the movement of our finite
intellects along successive things, whose successiveness is reduced to a
mere appearance, it holds in front of us the light with which it claims
to guide us, instead of putting it behind. It substitutes the attraction
of the future for the impulsion of the past. But succession remains none
the less a mere appearance, as indeed does movement itself. In the
doctrine of Leibniz, time is reduced to a confused perception, relative
to the human standpoint, a perception which would vanish, like a rising
mist, for a mind seated at the centre of things.

Yet finalism is not, like mechanism, a doctrine with fixed rigid
outlines. It admits of as many inflections as we like. The mechanistic
philosophy is to be taken or left: it must be left if the least grain of
dust, by straying from the path foreseen by mechanics, should show the
slightest trace of spontaneit