Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/61

 ture apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration. This is the reason why the notion of an instant of time, conceived as a primary simple fact, is nonsense.

But even yet we have not exhausted the notion of creation which is essential to the understanding of Natute. We must add yet another character to our description of life. This missing characteristic is “aim”. By this term “aim” is meant the exclusion of the boundless wealth. of alternative potentiality, and the inclusion of that definite factor of novelty which constitutes the selected way of entertaining those data in that process of unification. The aim is at that complex of feeling which is the enjoyment of those data in that way. “That way of enjoyment” is selected from the boundless weaith of alternatives. It has been aimed at for actualization in that process,

Thus, the characteristics of life are abso-