Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/171

Rh free, creative activity. Man shows that forth in himself in the creation, improvement and pursuit of ideals. He follows no prescribed path; he is perfectly free to choose, except that he may not go contrary to the broad course of evolution, i. e., the direction of flow of the vital impetus.

While consciousness (vital impetus) is thus creation and choice, it is also memory. Beings advance in time, treading, as it were, upon a carpet which they weave with whatever colors and texture they wish, but they are ever rolling this carpet up behind them and carrying it with them. Thus all of the past is preserved, though not indeed all as self-conscious memories. It is this whole past which, "gnawing into the future, swelling as it advances," Bergson calls duration. The biologic law of recapitulation takes cognizance of a part of this memory.

Thus instead of a finalistic or a mechanistic universe with its course known or foreseeable, Bergson postulates one creating itself endlessly along an indeterminable course, constantly enlarging with the volume of its past experiences.