But, once you grant that the fact which you know directly really changes, there is, according to Bergson, no getting away from the conclusion that it must form a creative process of duration. For he thinks that creative duration is the only possible way in which the transition between past and present, which is the essential feature of change and time, could be accomplished: all passing from past to present, all change, therefore, and all time, _must_, he says, form a creative process of duration. The alternative is to suppose that time and change form logical series of events in temporal relations of before and after, but, according to Bergson, this not only leaves out the transition altogether but is, even as it stands, unintelligible. The argument is this. If time and change are real, then, when the present is, the past simply is not. But it is impossible to see how, in that case, there can be any relation between past and present, for a relation requires at least two terms in between which it holds, while in this case there could never be more than one term, the present, _ipso facto_, abolishing the past. If, on the other hand, the past is preserved, distinct from the present, then temporal relations can indeed hold between them, but in that case there is no real change nor time at all. This dilemma all follows, of course, from regarding “past” and “present” as mutually exclusive and distinct, and requiring to be united by external relations, in short as terms in a logical series: for Bergson himself this difficulty simply does not arise since he denies that, within the actual changing fact directly known, there are any clear cut logical distinctions such as the words “past” and “present” imply. But when it comes to describing this changing fact distinct terms have to be employed because there are no others, and this creates pseudo-problems such as this question of how, assuming past and present to be distinct, the transition between them ever can be effected. The real answer is that the transition never is effected because past and present are, in fact, not distinct.