itself more and more; at the limit would be eternity, no longer conceptual eternity, which is an eternity of death, but an eternity of life and change—­a living, and therefore still moving, eternity in which our own particular duree would be included as the vibrations are in light, [Footnote:  Speaking in Matter and Memory on the Tension of la duree, Bergson calls attention to the “trillions of vibrations” which give rise to our sensation of red light, p. 272 (Fr. p. 229) Cf.  La Conscience et la Vie in L’Energie spirituelle, p. 16.] an eternity which would be the concentration of all duree.  Altering the old classical phrase sub specie aeternitatis, to suit his special view of Time, Bergson urges us to strive to perceive all things sub specie durationis. [Footnote:  La Perception du Changement, p. 36.]

Finally, Bergson reminds us that if our existence were composed of separate states, with an impassive Ego to unite them, for us there would be no duration, for an Ego which does not change, does not endure.  La duree, however, is the foundation of our being and is, as we feel, the very substance of the world in which we live.  Associating his view of Real Time with the reality of change, he points out that nothing is more resistant or more substantial than la duree, for our duree is not merely one instant replacing another—­if it were there would never be anything but the present, no prolonging of the past into the actual, no growth of personality, and no evolution of the universe.  La duree is the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances, leaving on all things its bite, or the mark of its tooth.  This being so, consciousness cannot go through the same state twice; history does never really repeat itself.  Our personality is being built up each instant with its accumulated experience; it shoots, grows, and ripens without ceasing.  We are reminded of George Eliot’s lines: 

     “Our past still travels with us from afar
      And what we have been makes us what we are.”

For our consciousness this is what we mean by the term “exist.”  “For a conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, and to go on creating oneself endlessly.” [Footnote:  Creative Evolution, p. 8 (Fr. p. 8).] Real Time has, then, a very vital meaning for us as conscious beings, indeed for all that lives, for the organism which lives is a thing that “endures.”  “Wherever anything lives,” says Bergson, “there is a register in which Time is being inscribed.  This, it will be said, is only a metaphor.  It is of the very essence of mechanism in fact, to consider as metaphorical every expression which attributes to Time an effective action and a reality of its own.  In vain does immediate experience show us that the very basis of our conscious existence is Memory—­that is to say, the prolongation of the past into the present, or in a word, duree, acting and irreversible.” [Footnote:  Creative Evolution, p. 17 (Fr. pp.