Definitions
Definitions
What are we, in fact, what is our character, if not the condensation of the history that we have lived from our birth - nay, even before our birth, since we bring with us prenatal dispositions? Doubtless we think with only a small part of our past, but it is with our entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire, will and act.
From this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person, since they find him at a new moment of his history. Our personality, which is being built up each instant with its accumulated experience changes without ceasing.
Creative Evolution. Henri Bergson. 1911.