Chapter IV (4)

It is true that, after having concentrated in God the whole of the real, it became difficult for them to pass from God to things, from eternity to time. The difficulty was even much greater for these philosophers than an Aristotle or a Plotinus. The God of Aristotle, indeed, had been obtained by the compression and reciprocal compenetration of the Ideas that represent, in their finished state or in their culminating point, the changing things of the world. He was, therefore, transcendent to the world, and the duration of things was juxtaposed to His eternity, of which it was only a weakening. But in the principle to which we are led by the consideration of universal mechanism, and which must serve as its substratum, it is not concepts or _things_, but laws or _relations_ that are condensed. Now, a relation does not exist separately. A law connects changing terms and is immanent in what it governs. The principle in which all these relations are ultimately summed up, and which is the basis of the unity of nature, cannot, therefore, be transcendent to sensible reality; it is immanent in it, and we must suppose that it is at once both in and out of time, gathered up in the unity of its substance and yet condemned to wind it off in an endless chain. Rather than formulate so appalling a contradiction, the philosophers were necessarily led to sacrifice the weaker of the two terms, and to regard the temporal aspect of things as a mere illusion. Leibniz says so in explicit terms, for he makes of time, as of space, a confused perception. While the multiplicity of his monads expresses only the diversity of views taken of the whole, the history of an isolated monad seems to be hardly anything else than the manifold views that it can take of its own substance: so that time would consist in all the points of view that each monad can assume towards itself, as space consists in all the points of view that all monads can assume towards God. But the thought of Spinoza is much less clear, and this philosopher seems to have sought to establish, between eternity and that which has duration, the same difference as Aristotle made between essence and accidents: a most difficult undertaking, for the [Greek: ylê] of Aristotle was no longer there to measure the distance and explain the passage from the essential to the accidental, Descartes having eliminated it for ever. However that may be, the deeper we go into the Spinozistic conception of the "inadequate," as related to the "adequate," the more we feel ourselves moving in the direction of Aristotelianism--just as the Leibnizian monads, in proportion as they mark themselves out the more clearly, tend to approximate to the Intelligibles of Plotinus.[109] The natural trend of these two philosophies brings them back to the conclusions of the ancient philosophy.

To sum up, the resemblances of this new metaphysic to that of the ancients arise from the fact that both suppose ready-made--the former above the sensible, the latter within the sensible--a science one and complete, with which any reality that the sensible may contain is believed to coincide. _For both, reality as well as truth are integrally given in eternity._ Both are opposed to the idea of a reality that creates itself gradually, that is, at bottom, to an absolute duration.

* * * * *

Now, it might easily be shown that the conclusions of this metaphysic, springing from science, have rebounded upon science itself, as it were, by ricochet. They penetrate the whole of our so-called empiricism. Physics and chemistry study only inert matter; biology, when it treats the living being physically and chemically, considers only the inert side of the living: hence the mechanistic explanations, in spite of their development, include only a small part of the real. To suppose _a priori_ that the whole of the real is resolvable into elements of this kind, or at least that mechanism can give a complete translation of what happens in the world, is to pronounce for a certain metaphysic--the very metaphysic of which Spinoza and Leibniz have laid down the principles and drawn the consequences. Certainly, the psycho-physiologist who affirms the exact equivalence of the cerebral and the psychical state, who imagines the possibility, for some superhuman intellect, of reading in the brain what is going on in consciousness, believes himself very far from the metaphysicians of the seventeenth century, and very near to experience. Yet experience pure and simple tells us nothing of the kind. It shows us the interdependence of the mental and the physical, the necessity of a certain cerebral substratum for the psychical state--nothing more. From the fact that two things are mutually dependent, it does not follow that they are equivalent. Because a certain screw is necessary to a certain machine, because the machine works when the screw is there and stops when the screw is taken away, we do not say that the screw is the equivalent of the machine. For correspondence to be equivalence, it would be necessary that to any part of the machine a definite part of the screw should correspond--as in a literal translation in which each chapter renders a chapter, each sentence a sentence, each word a word. Now, the relation of the brain to consciousness seems to be entirely different. Not only does the hypothesis of an equivalence between the psychical state and the cerebral state imply a downright absurdity, as we have tried to prove in a former essay,[110] but the facts, examined without prejudice, certainly seem to indicate that the relation of the psychical to the physical is just that of the machine to the screw. To speak of an equivalence between the two is simply to curtail, and make almost unintelligible, the Spinozistic or Leibnizian metaphysic. It is to accept this philosophy, such as it is, on the side of Extension, but to mutilate it on the side of Thought. With Spinoza, with Leibniz, we suppose the unifying synthesis of the phenomena of matter achieved, and everything in matter explained mechanically. But, for the conscious facts, we no longer push the synthesis to the end. We stop half-way. We suppose consciousness to be coextensive with a certain part of nature and not with all of it. We are thus led, sometimes to an "epiphenomenalism" that associates consciousness with certain particular vibrations and puts it here and there in the world in a sporadic state, and sometimes to a "monism" that scatters consciousness into as many tiny grains as there are atoms; but, in either case, it is to an incomplete Spinozism or to an incomplete Leibnizianism that we come back. Between this conception of nature and Cartesianism we find, moreover, intermediate historical stages. The medical philosophers of the eighteenth century, with their cramped Cartesianism, have had a great part in the genesis of the "epiphenomenalism" and "monism" of the present day.

* * * * *

These doctrines are thus found to fall short of the Kantian criticism. Certainly, the philosophy of Kant is also imbued with the belief in a science single and complete, embracing the whole of the real. Indeed, looked at from one aspect, it is only a continuation of the metaphysics of the moderns and a transposition of the ancient metaphysics. Spinoza and Leibniz had, following Aristotle, hypostatized in God the unity of knowledge. The Kantian criticism, on one side at least, consists in asking whether the whole of this hypothesis is necessary to modern science as it was to ancient science, or if part of the hypothesis is not sufficient. For the ancients, science applied to _concepts_, that is to say, to kinds of _things_. In compressing all concepts into one, they therefore necessarily arrived at a _being_, which we may call Thought, but which was rather thought-object than thought-subject. When Aristotle defined God the [Greek: noêseôs noêsis], it is probably on [Greek: noêseôs], and not on [Greek: noêsis] that he put the emphasis. God was the synthesis of all concepts, the idea of ideas. But modern science turns on laws, that is, on relations. Now, a relation is a bond established by a mind between two or more terms. A relation is nothing outside of the intellect that relates. The universe, therefore, can only be a system of laws if phenomena have passed beforehand through the filter of an intellect. Of course, this intellect might be that of a being infinitely superior to man, who would found the materiality of things at the same time that he bound them together: such was the hypothesis of Leibniz and of Spinoza. But it is not necessary to go so far, and, for the effect we have here to obtain, the human intellect is enough: such is precisely the Kantian solution. Between the dogmatism of a Spinoza or a Leibniz and the criticism of Kant there is just the same distance as between "it may be maintained that--" and "it suffices that--." Kant stops this dogmatism on the incline that was making it slip too far toward the Greek metaphysics; he reduces to the strict minimum the hypothesis which is necessary in order to suppose the physics of Galileo indefinitely extensible. True, when he speaks of the human intellect, he means neither yours nor mine: the unity of nature comes indeed from the human understanding that unifies, but the unifying function that operates here is impersonal. It imparts itself to our individual consciousnesses, but it transcends them. It is much less than a substantial God; it is, however, a little more than the isolated work of a man or even than the collective work of humanity. It does not exactly lie within man; rather, man lies within it, as in an atmosphere of intellectuality which his consciousness breathes. It is, if we will, a _formal_ God, something that in Kant is not yet divine, but which tends to become so. It became so, indeed, with Fichte. With Kant, however, its principal rôle was to give to the whole of our science a relative and _human_ character, although of a humanity already somewhat deified. From this point of view, the criticism of Kant consisted chiefly in limiting the dogmatism of his predecessors, accepting their conception of science and reducing to a minimum the metaphysic it implied.

But it is otherwise with the Kantian distinction between the matter of knowledge and its form. By regarding intelligence as pre-eminently a faculty of establishing relations, Kant attributed an extra-intellectual origin to the terms between which the relations are established. He affirmed, against his immediate predecessors, that knowledge is not entirely resolvable into terms of intelligence. He brought back into philosophy--while modifying it and carrying it on to another plane--that essential element of the philosophy of Descartes which had been abandoned by the Cartesians.

Thereby he prepared the way for a new philosophy, which might have established itself in the extra-intellectual matter of knowledge by a higher effort of intuition. Coinciding with this matter, adopting the same rhythm and the same movement, might not consciousness, by two efforts of opposite direction, raising itself and lowering itself by turns, become able to grasp from within, and no longer perceive only from without, the two forms of reality, body and mind? Would not this twofold effort make us, as far as that is possible, re-live the absolute? Moreover, as, in the course of this operation, we should see intellect spring up of itself, cut itself out in the whole of mind, intellectual knowledge would then appear as it is, limited, but not relative.

Such was the direction that Kantianism might have pointed out to a revivified Cartesianism. But in this direction Kant himself did not go.

He _would_ not, because, while assigning to knowledge an extra-intellectual matter, he believed this matter to be either coextensive with intellect or less extensive than intellect. Therefore he could not dream of cutting out intellect in it, nor, consequently, of tracing the genesis of the understanding and its categories. The molds of the understanding and the understanding itself had to be accepted as they are, already made. Between the matter presented to our intellect and this intellect itself there was no relationship. The agreement between the two was due to the fact that intellect imposed its form on matter. So that not only was it necessary to posit the intellectual form of knowledge as a kind of absolute and give up the quest of its genesis, but the very matter of this knowledge seemed too ground down by the intellect for us to be able to hope to get it back in its original purity. It was not the "thing-in-itself," it was only the refraction of it through our atmosphere.

If now we inquire why Kant did not believe that the matter of our knowledge extends beyond its form, this is what we find. The criticism of our knowledge of nature that was instituted by Kant consisted in ascertaining what our mind must be and what Nature must be _if_ the claims of our science are justified; but of these claims themselves Kant has not made the criticism. I mean that he took for granted the idea of a science that is one, capable of binding with the same force all the parts of what is given, and of coördinating them into a system presenting on all sides an equal solidity. He did not consider, in his _Critique of Pure Reason_, that science became less and less objective, more and more symbolical, to the extent that it went from the physical to the vital, from the vital to the psychical. Experience does not move, to his view, in two different and perhaps opposite ways, the one conformable to the direction of the intellect, the other contrary to it. There is, for him, only _one_ experience, and the intellect covers its whole ground. This is what Kant expresses by saying that all our intuitions are sensuous, or, in other words, infra-intellectual. And this would have to be admitted, indeed, if our science presented in all its parts an equal objectivity. But suppose, on the contrary, that science is less and less objective, more and more symbolical, as it goes from the physical to the psychical, passing through the vital: then, as it is indeed necessary to perceive a thing somehow in order to symbolize it, there would be an intuition of the psychical, and more generally of the vital, which the intellect would transpose and translate, no doubt, but which would none the less transcend the intellect. There would be, in other words, a supra-intellectual intuition. If this intuition exist, a taking possession of the spirit by itself is possible, and no longer only a knowledge that is external and phenomenal. What is more, if we have an intuition of this kind (I mean an ultra-intellectual intuition) then sensuous intuition is likely to be in continuity with it through certain intermediaries, as the infra-red is continuous with the ultra-violet. Sensuous intuition itself, therefore, is promoted. It will no longer attain only the phantom of an unattainable thing-in-itself. It is (provided we bring to it certain indispensable corrections) into the absolute itself that it will introduce us. So long as it was regarded as the only material of our science, it reflected back on all science something of the relativity which strikes a scientific knowledge of spirit; and thus the perception of bodies, which is the beginning of the science of bodies, seemed itself to be relative. Relative, therefore, seemed to be sensuous intuition. But this is not the case if distinctions are made between the different sciences, and if the scientific knowledge of the spiritual (and also, consequently, of the vital) be regarded as the more or less artificial extension of a certain manner of knowing which, applied to bodies, is not at all symbolical. Let us go further: if there are thus two intuitions of different order (the second being obtained by a reversal of the direction of the first), and if it is toward the second that the intellect naturally inclines, there is no essential difference between the intellect and this intuition itself. The barriers between the matter of sensible knowledge and its form are lowered, as also between the "pure forms" of sensibility and the categories of the understanding. The matter and form of intellectual knowledge (restricted to its own object) are seen to be engendering each other by a reciprocal adaptation, intellect modeling itself on corporeity, and corporeity on intellect.

But this duality of intuition Kant neither would nor could admit. It would have been necessary, in order to admit it, to regard duration as the very stuff of reality, and consequently to distinguish between the substantial duration of things and time spread out in space. It would have been necessary to regard space itself, and the geometry which is immanent in space, as an ideal limit in the direction of which material things develop, but which they do not actually attain. Nothing could be more contrary to the letter, and perhaps also to the spirit, of the _Critique of Pure Reason_. No doubt, knowledge is presented to us in it as an ever-open roll, experience as a push of facts that is for ever going on. But, according to Kant, these facts are spread out on one plane as fast as they arise; they are external to each other and external to the mind. Of a knowledge from within, that could grasp them in their springing forth instead of taking them already sprung, that would dig beneath space and spatialized time, there is never any question. Yet it is indeed beneath this plane that our consciousness places us; there flows true duration.

In this respect, also, Kant is very near his predecessors. Between the non-temporal, and the time that is spread out in distinct moments, he admits no mean. And as there is indeed no intuition that carries us into the non-temporal, all intuition is thus found to be sensuous, by definition. But between physical existence, which is spread out in space, and non-temporal existence, which can only be a conceptual and logical existence like that of which metaphysical dogmatism speaks, is there not room for consciousness and for life? There is, unquestionably. We perceive it when we place ourselves in duration in order to go from that duration to moments, instead of starting from moments in order to bind them again and to construct duration.

Yet it was to a non-temporal intuition that the immediate successors of Kant turned, in order to escape from the Kantian relativism. Certainly, the ideas of becoming, of progress, of evolution, seem to occupy a large place in their philosophy. But does duration really play a part in it? Real duration is that in which each form flows out of previous forms, while adding to them something new, and is explained by them as much as it explains them; but to deduce this form directly from one complete Being which it is supposed to manifest, is to return to Spinozism. It is, like Leibniz and Spinoza, to deny to duration all efficient action. The post-Kantian philosophy, severe as it may have been on the mechanistic theories, accepts from mechanism the idea of a science that is one and the same for all kinds of reality. And it is nearer to mechanism than it imagines; for though, in the consideration of matter, of life and of thought, it replaces the successive degrees of complexity, that mechanism supposed by degrees of the realization of an Idea or by degrees of the objectification of a Will, it still speaks of degrees, and these degrees are those of a scale which Being traverses in a single direction. In short, it makes out the same articulations in nature that mechanism does. Of mechanism it retains the whole design; it merely gives it a different coloring. But it is the design itself, or at least one half of the design, that needs to be re-made.

If we are to do that, we must give up the method of _construction_, which was that of Kant's successors. We must appeal to experience--an experience purified, or, in other words, released, where necessary, from the molds that our intellect has formed in the degree and proportion of the progress of our action on things. An experience of this kind is not a non-temporal experience. It only seeks, beyond the spatialized time in which we believe we see continual rearrangements between the parts, that concrete duration in which a radical recasting of the whole is always going on. It follows the real in all its sinuosities. It does not lead us, like the method of construction, to higher and higher generalities--piled-up stories of a magnificent building. But then it leaves no play between the explanations it suggests and the objects it has to explain. It is the detail of the real, and no longer only the whole in a lump, that it claims to illumine.

* * * * *

That the thought of the nineteenth century called for a philosophy of this kind, rescued from the arbitrary, capable of coming down to the detail of particular facts, is unquestionable. Unquestionably, also, it felt that this philosophy ought to establish itself in what we call concrete duration. The advent of the moral sciences, the progress of psychology, the growing importance of embryology among the biological sciences--all this was bound to suggest the idea of a reality which _endures_ inwardly, which is duration itself. So, when a philosopher arose who announced a doctrine of evolution, in which the progress of matter toward perceptibility would be traced together with the advance of the mind toward rationality, in which the complication of correspondences between the external and the internal would be followed step by step, in which change would become the very substance of things--to him all eyes were turned. The powerful attraction that Spencerian evolutionism has exercised on contemporary thought is due to that very cause. However far Spencer may seem to be from Kant, however ignorant, indeed, he may have been of Kantianism, he felt, nevertheless, at his first contact with the biological sciences, the direction in which philosophy could continue to advance without laying itself open to the Kantian criticism.

But he had no sooner started to follow the path than he turned off short. He had promised to retrace a genesis, and, lo! he was doing something entirely different. His doctrine bore indeed the name of evolutionism; it claimed to remount and redescend the course of the universal becoming; but, in fact, it dealt neither with becoming nor with evolution.

We need not enter here into a profound examination of this philosophy. Let us say merely that _the usual device of the Spencerian method consists in reconstructing evolution with fragments of the evolved_. If I paste a picture on a card and then cut up the card into bits, I can reproduce the picture by rightly grouping again the small pieces. And a child who working thus with the pieces of a puzzle-picture, and putting together unformed fragments of the picture finally obtains a pretty colored design, no doubt imagines that he has _produced_ design and color. Yet the act of drawing and painting has nothing to do with that of putting together the fragments of a picture already drawn and already painted. So, by combining together the most simple results of evolution, you may imitate well or ill the most complex effects; but of neither the simple nor the complex will you have retraced the genesis, and the addition of evolved to evolved will bear no resemblance whatever to the movement of evolution.

Such, however, is Spencer's illusion. He takes reality in its present form; he breaks it to pieces, he scatters it in fragments which he throws to the winds; then he "integrates" these fragments and "dissipates their movement." Having _imitated_ the Whole by a work of mosaic, he imagines he has retraced the design of it, and made the genesis.

Is it matter that is in question? The diffused elements which he integrates into visible and tangible bodies have all the air of being the very particles of the simple bodies, which he first supposes disseminated throughout space. They are, at any rate, "material points," and consequently unvarying points, veritable little solids: as if solidity, being what is nearest and handiest to us, could be found at the very origin of materiality! The more physics progresses, the more it shows the impossibility of representing the properties of ether or of electricity--the probable base of all bodies--on the model of the properties of the matter which we perceive. But philosophy goes back further even than the ether, a mere schematic figure of the relations between phenomena apprehended by our senses. It knows indeed that what is visible and tangible in things represents our possible action on them. It is not by dividing the evolved that we shall reach the principle of that which evolves. It is not by recomposing the evolved with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which it is the term.

Is it the question of mind? By compounding the reflex with the reflex, Spencer thinks he generates instinct and rational volition one after the other. He fails to see that the specialized reflex, being a terminal point of evolution just as much as perfect will, cannot be supposed at the start. That the first of the two terms should have reached its final form before the other is probable enough; but both the one and the other are _deposits_ of the evolution movement, and the evolution movement itself can no more be expressed as a function solely of the first than solely of the second. We must begin by mixing the reflex and the voluntary. We must then go in quest of the fluid reality which has been precipitated in this twofold form, and which probably shares in both without being either. At the lowest degree of the animal scale, in living beings that are but an undifferentiated protoplasmic mass, the reaction to stimulus does not yet call into play one definite mechanism, as in the reflex; it has not yet choice among several definite mechanisms, as in the voluntary act; it is, then, neither voluntary nor reflex, though it heralds both. We experience in ourselves something of this true original activity when we perform semi-voluntary and semi-automatic movements to escape a pressing danger. And yet this is but a very imperfect imitation of the primitive character, for we are concerned here with a mixture of two activities already formed, already localized in a brain and in a spinal cord, whereas the original activity was a simple thing, which became diversified through the very construction of mechanisms like those of the spinal cord and brain. But to all this Spencer shuts his eyes, because it is of the essence of his method to recompose the consolidated with the consolidated, instead of going back to the gradual process of consolidation, which is evolution itself.

Is it, finally, the question of the correspondence between mind and matter? Spencer is right in defining the intellect by this correspondence. He is right in regarding it as the end of an evolution. But when he comes to retrace this evolution, again he integrates the evolved with the evolved--failing to see that he is thus taking useless trouble, and that in positing the slightest fragment of the actually evolved he posits the whole--so that it is vain for him, then, to pretend to make the genesis of it.

For, according to him, the phenomena that succeed each other in nature project into the human mind images which represent them. To the relations between phenomena, therefore, correspond symmetrically relations between the ideas. And the most general laws of nature, in which the relations between phenomena are condensed, are thus found to have engendered the directing principles of thought, into which the relations between ideas have been integrated. Nature, therefore, is reflected in mind. The intimate structure of our thought corresponds, piece by piece, to the very skeleton of things--I admit it willingly; but, in order that the human mind may be able to represent relations between phenomena, there must first be phenomena, that is to say, distinct facts, cut out in the continuity of becoming. And once we posit this particular mode of cutting up such as we perceive it to-day, we posit also the intellect such as it is to-day, for it is by relation to it, and to it alone, that reality is cut up in this manner. Is it probable that mammals and insects notice the same aspects of nature, trace in it the same divisions, articulate the whole in the same way? And yet the insect, so far as intelligent, has already something of our intellect. Each being cuts up the material world according to the lines that its action must follow: it is these lines of _possible action_ that, by intercrossing, mark out the net of experience of which each mesh is a fact. No doubt, a town is composed exclusively of houses, and the streets of the town are only the intervals between the houses: so, we may say that nature contains only facts, and that, the facts once posited, the relations are simply the lines running between the facts. But, in a town, it is the gradual portioning of the ground into lots that has determined at once the place of the houses, their general shape, and the direction of the streets: to this portioning we must go back if we wish to understand the particular mode of subdivision that causes each house to be where it is, each street to run as it does. Now, the cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience already allotted as given, whereas the true problem is to know how the allotment was worked. I agree that the laws of thought are only the integration of relations between facts. But, when I posit the facts with the shape they have for me to-day, I suppose my faculties of perception and intellection such as they are in me to-day; for it is they that portion the real into lots, they that cut the facts out in the whole of reality. Therefore, instead of saying that the relations between facts have generated the laws of thought, I can as well claim that it is the form of thought that has determined the shape of the facts perceived, and consequently their relations among themselves: the two ways of expressing oneself are equivalent; they say at bottom the same thing. With the second, it is true, we give up speaking of evolution. But, with the first, we only speak of it, we do not think of it any the more. For a true evolutionism would propose to discover by what _modus vivendi_, gradually obtained, the intellect has adopted its plan of structure, and matter its mode of subdivision. This structure and this subdivision work into each other; they are mutually complementary; they must have progressed one with the other. And, whether we posit the present structure of mind or the present subdivision of matter, in either case we remain in the evolved: we are told nothing of what evolves, nothing of evolution.

And yet it is this evolution that we must discover. Already, in the field of physics itself, the scientists who are pushing the study of their science furthest incline to believe that we cannot reason about the parts as we reason about the whole; that the same principles are not applicable to the origin and to the end of a progress; that neither creation nor annihilation, for instance, is inadmissible when we are concerned with the constituent corpuscles of the atom. Thereby they tend to place themselves in the concrete duration, in which alone there is true generation and not only a composition of parts. It is true that the creation and annihilation of which they speak concern the movement or the energy, and not the imponderable medium through which the energy and the movement are supposed to circulate. But what can remain of matter when you take away everything that determines it, that is to say, just energy and movement themselves? The philosopher must go further than the scientist. Making a clean sweep of everything that is only an imaginative symbol, he will see the material world melt back into a simple flux, a continuity of flowing, a becoming. And he will thus be prepared to discover real duration there where it is still more useful to find it, in the realm of life and of consciousness. For, so far as inert matter is concerned, we may neglect the flowing without committing a serious error: matter, we have said, is weighted with geometry; and matter, the reality which _descends_, endures only by its connection with that which _ascends_. But life and consciousness are this very ascension. When once we have grasped them in their essence by adopting their movement, we understand how the rest of reality is derived from them. Evolution appears and, within this evolution, the progressive determination of materiality and intellectuality by the gradual consolidation of the one and of the other. But, then, it is within the evolutionary movement that we place ourselves, in order to follow it to its present results, instead of recomposing these results artificially with fragments of themselves. Such seems to us to be the true function of philosophy. So understood, philosophy is not only the turning of the mind homeward, the coincidence of human consciousness with the living principle whence it emanates, a contact with the creative effort: it is the study of becoming in general, it is true evolutionism and consequently the true continuation of science--provided that we understand by this word a set of truths either experienced or demonstrated, and not a certain new scholasticism that has grown up during the latter half of the nineteenth century around the physics of Galileo, as the old scholasticism grew up around Aristotle.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 96: The part of this chapter which treats of the history of systems, particularly of the Greek philosophy, is only the very succinct résumé of views that we developed at length, from 1900 to 1904, in our lectures at the Collège de France, especially in a course on the _History of the Idea of Time_ (1902-1903). We then compared the mechanism of conceptual thought to that of the cinematograph. We believe the comparison will be useful here.]

[Footnote 97: The analysis of the idea of the nought which we give here (pp. 275-298) has appeared before in the _Revue philosophique_ (November 1906).]

[Footnote 98: Kant, _Critique of Pure Reason_, 2nd edition, p. 737: "From the point of view of our knowledge in general ... the peculiar function of negative propositions is simply to prevent error." Cf. Sigwart, _Logik_, 2nd edition, vol. i. pp. 150 ff.]

[Footnote 99: That is, we do not consider the sophism of Zeno refuted by the fact that the geometrical progression _a_(1 + 1/_n_ + 1/_n_2 + 1/_n_3 +,... etc.)--in which _a_ designates the initial distance between Achilles and the tortoise, and _n_ the relation of their respective velocities--has a finite sum if _n_ is greater than 1. On this point we may refer to the arguments of F. Evellin, which we regard as conclusive (see Evellin, _Infini et quantité_, Paris, 1880, pp. 63-97; cf. _Revue philosophique_, vol. xi., 1881, pp. 564-568). The truth is that mathematics, as we have tried to show in a former work, deals and can deal only with lengths. It has therefore had to seek devices, first, to transfer to the movement, which is not a length, the divisibility of the line passed over, and then to reconcile with experience the idea (contrary to experience and full of absurdities) of a movement that is a length, that is, of a movement _placed upon_ its trajectory and arbitrarily decomposable like it.]

[Footnote 100: Plato, _Timaeus_, 37 D.]

[Footnote 101: We have tried to bring out what is true and what is false in this idea, so far as spatiality is concerned (see Chapter III.). It seems to us radically false as regards _duration_.]

[Footnote 102: Aristotle, _De anima_, 430 a 14 [Greek: kai hestin ho men toioutos nous tô pynta ginesthai, ho de tô panta poiein, ôs hexis tis, oion to phôs. tropon gar tina ka to phôs poiei ta dynamei onta chrômata energeia chrômata].]

[Footnote 103: _De caelo_, ii. 287 a 12 [Greek: tês eschatês periphoras oute kenon estin exôthen oute topos.] _Phys._ iv. 212 a 34 [Greek: to de pan esti men hôs kinêsetai hesti d' hôs ou. hôs men gar holon, hama ton topon hou metaballei. kyklô de kinêsetai, tôn moriôn gar outos ho topos].]

[Footnote 104: _De caelo_, i. 279 a 12 [Greek: oude chronos hestin hexô tou ouranou]. _Phys._ viii. 251 b 27 [Greek: ho chronos pathos ti kinêseôs].]

[Footnote 105: Especially have we left almost entirely on one side those admirable but somewhat fugitive intuitions that Plotinus was later to seize, to study and to fix.]

[Footnote 106: See page 10.]

[Footnote 107: Descartes, _Principes_, ii. § 29.]

[Footnote 108: Descartes, _Principes_, ii. §§ 36 ff.]

[Footnote 109: In a course of lectures on Plotinus, given at the Collège de France in 1897-1898, we tried to bring out these resemblances. They are numerous and impressive. The analogy is continued even in the formulae employed on each side.]

[Footnote 110: "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (_Revue de métaphysique et de morale_, Nov. 1904, pp. 895-908). Cf. _Matière et mémoire_, Paris, 1896, chap. i.]

INDEX

(Compiled by the Translator)

Abolition of everything a self-contradiction, 280, 283, 296, 298
idea of, 279, 282, 283, 295, 296.
_See_ Nought

Absence of order, 231, 234, 274.
_See_ Disorder

Absolute and freedom, 277
reality, 99, 228-9, 269, 358, 361
reality of the person, 269
time and the, 239, 240, 298, 340, 344

Absoluteness of duration, 206
of understanding, xi, 47, 152, 190, 197, 199

Abstract becoming, 304-7
multiplicity, 257-9
time, 9, 17, 20-2, 37, 39, 46, 51, 163, 318-9, 336, 352-3

Accident and essence in Aristotle's philosophy, 353
in evolution, 86-7, 104, 114-5, 127, 169, 170, 252, 254-5, 266, 267,
326-7

Accidental variations, 55, 63, 68, 69, 74, 85-6, 168

Accumulation of energy, function of vegetable organisms, 253, 255

Achilles and tortoise, in Zeno, 311, 312-3

Acquired characters, inheritance of, 76-9, 83-4, 87, 169, 170, 173, 231

Act, consciousness as inadequacy of, to representation, 144
form (or essence), quality, three classes of representation, 302-3

Action, creativeness of free, 192, 247
and concepts, 160, 297
and consciousness, xiii, 5, 143-4, 145, 179-80, 207, 262
discontinuity of, 154, 307
freedom of, in animals, 130
as function of nervous system, 262-3
indivisibility of, 94, 95, 308-9
and inert matter, 96, 136, 141-2, 156, 187, 198, 226, 366
instinct and, 136, 141
instrument of, consciousness, 180
instrument of, life, 162
instrument of matter, 161, 198-9
as instrument of consciousness, 180
and intellect. _See_ Intellect and action
intensity of consciousness varies with ratio of possible, to real, 145
meaning of, 301-3
moves from want to fulness, 297, 298
organism a machine for, 252, 254, 300
and perception, 5, 11, 12, 93, 188, 189, 206, 227-30, 300, 307, 368
possible, 12, 13, 96, 144, 145, 146-7, 159, 165, 179-81, 188, 264
and science, 93, 195-6, 198-9, 329-30
and space, 203
sphere of the intellect, 155
tension in a free, 200, 207, 238, 240, 301-2

Activity, dissatisfaction the starting-point of, 297
of instinct, continuous with vital process, 139, 140
life as, 128-9, 247
mutually inverse factors in vital, 248
and nervous system, 110, 130, 132-3, 134-5, 180, 252, 261-3
organism as, 174
potential. _See_ Action, possible
tension of free, 200, 202, 207-8, 223-4, 237, 239, 300-1
and torpor in evolution, 109, 111, 113, 114, 119-20, 129-30,
135-6, 181, 292
vital, has evolved divergently, 134
_See_ Divergent lines of evolution

Adaptation, 50-1, 55, 57-8, 59, 70, 101, 129, 133, 192, 255, 270, 305-6
and causation, 102
mutual, between materiality and intellectuality, 187, 206-7
and progress, 101-2

Adequate and inadequate in Spinoza, 353

Adjectives, substantives and verbs, 303-4, 315

Aesthetics and philosophy, 177

Affection, Role of, in the idea of chance, 234
in the idea of nought, 281-3, 289, 293, 295, 296
in negation, 286-7

Affirmation and negation, 285-6, 293

Age and individuality, 15-6

Albuminoid substances, 121-2

Alciope, 96

Alexandrian philosophy, 322, 323

Algae in illustration of probable consciousness in vegetable forms, 112

Alimentation, 113-4, 117, 247

Allegory of the Cave, 191

Alternations of increase and decrease of mutability of the universe, 245-6

Alveolar froth, 33-4

Ambiguity of the idea of "generality" in philosophy, 230-1, 320-1
of primitive organisms, 99, 112, 113, 129-30

Ammophila hirsuta, paralyzing instinct in, 173

Amoeba, in illustration of imitation of the living by the unorganized, 33-6
in illustration of the ambiguity of primitive organisms, 99
in illustration of the mobility characteristic of animals, 108
in illustration of the "explosive" expenditure of energy characteristic
of animals, 120, 253

Anagenesis, 34

Anarchy, idea of, 233, 234.
_See_ Disorder

Anatomy, comparative, and transformism, 25

Ancient philosophy, Achilles and tortoise, 311-2
Alexandrian philosophy, 322-3
Allegory of the Cave, 191
Anima (De), 322 _note_
Apogee of sensible object, 344, 345, 349
Archimedes, 343-4
Aristotle, 135, 174-5, 227-8, 314, 316, 321, 323, 324, 328-33, 347, 349,
353, 356, 370
Arrow of Zeno, 308-13
ascent toward God, in Aristotle, 323
Astronomy, ancient and modern, 334-6
attraction and impulsion in, 323-4
becoming in, 313-4, 317
bow and indivisibility of motion, 308-9
Caelo (De), of Aristotle, 322 _note_, 324 _note_
and Cartesian geometry, 334-5
causality in, 323, 325-6
change in, 313-4, 317, 328-9, 342-3
cinematographical nature of, 315
circularity of God's thought, 323-4
concentric spheres, 328
concepts, 326-7, 356
"conversion" and "procession" in, 323
degradation of ideas into sensible flux, 317-8, 321, 323-4, 327, 328,
343-5, 352-3
degrees of reality, 323-4, 327
diminution, derivation of becoming by. _See_ Degradation of Ideas, etc.
duration, 317-9 _note_, 323-4, 327-9
Eleatic philosophy, 308, 314
Enneads of Plotinus, 210 _note_
essence and accident, 354
essence or form, 314-5
eternal, 317-8, 324-6
Eternity, 317-8, 320, 324, 328-9
extension, 210 _note_, 318, 324, 327
form or idea, 314-20, 322, 327, 329-31, 352
geometry, Cartesian, and ancient philosophy, 334
God of Aristotle, 196-7, 322-4, 349, 352, 356
[Greek: hylê], 353
Idea, 314-22, 352-3
and indivisibility of motion, 307-8, 311
intelligible reality in, 326
intelligibles of Plotinus, 353
[Greek: logos], of Plotinus, 210 _note_
matter in Aristotle's philosophy, 316, 327
and modern astronomy, 333-4, 335
and modern geometry, 333-4
and modern philosophy, 226-7, 228-9, 232, 281-2, 344-5, 346, 349-51, 364,
369
and modern science, 329-30, 336, 342-3, 344-5, 357
motion in, 307-8, 312-3
necessity in, 327
[Greek: noêseôs noêsis], 356
non-being, 316, 327
[Greek: nous poiêtikos], 322
oscillation about being, sensible reality as, 317-8
Physics of Aristotle, 227-8 _note_, 324 _note_, 330-1
Plato, 48, 156, 191, 210 _note_, 316-8, 321-4, 327, 330, 348, 349
Plotinus, 210, 316, 323, 326 _note_, 349, 352-4
procession in Alexandrian philosophy, 323
[Greek: psychê], 210 _note_, 350
realism in, 232
refraction of idea through matter or non-being, 317
sectioning of becoming, 318-9
sensible reality, 314, 316-8, 321, 327-9, 352-3
[Greek: sôma], 350
space and time, 317-9, 320
Timaeus, 318 _note_
time in ancient and in modern science, 330-1, 336-7, 341-4
time and space, 317-9, 320
vision of God in Alexandrian philosophy, 322
Zeno, 308, 313

Ancient science and modern, 329-31, 336-7, 342-5, 357

Anima (De), of Aristotle, 322 _note_

Animal kingdom, 12, 105-6, 119-21, 126, 129, 131-2, 134-6, 137-8, 139, 179,
184-5

Animals, 105-47, 167, 170, 181, 183, 187, 212, 214, 246, 252, 253, 254,
262-5, 267, 271, 293, 301
deduction in, 212
induction in, 214
and man, 139-43, 183, 187, 188, 212, 263, 264, 267
and man in respect to brain, 183, 184-5, 263-5
and man in respect to consciousness, 139-43, 180, 183, 187, 188, 192,
212, 263-8
and man in respect to instruments of action, 139-43, 150-1
and man in respect to intelligence, 137-8, 187, 188, 191-2, 212
and plants, 105-39, 124-6, 143, 145, 146-7, 168-70, 181-2, 253, 254, 293
and plants in respect to activity of consciousness, 109, 111, 113,
119-21, 128-9, 132, 134-6, 142-3, 144, 181-2, 293
and plants in respect to function, 117-8, 121-2, 127
and plants in respect to instinct, 167, 170
and plants in respect to mobility, 109, 110, 113, 129-30, 132-3, 135, 181
and plants in respect to nature of consciousness, 134-5

Antagonistic currents of the vital impetus, 129, 135-6, 181, 184, 250,
258-9

Anthophora, 146-7

Antinomies of Kant, 204, 205

Antipathy. _See_ Sympathy, Feeling, Divination

Antithesis and thesis, 205

Ants, 101, 134, 140, 157

Ape's brain and consciousness contrasted with man's, 263

Aphasia, 181

Apidae, social instinct in the, 171

Apogee of instinct in the hymenoptera and of intelligence in man, 174-5
_See_ Evolutionary superiority

Apogee of sensible object, in philosophy of Ideas, 343-4, 349

Approximateness of the knowledge of matter, 206-7

Approximation, in matter, to the mathematical order, 218.
_See_ Order

Archimedes, 333-4

Aristotle. _See_ Ancient Philosophy, Aristotle

Arrow, Flying, of Zeno, 308-9, 310, 312-3

Art, 6-7, 29 _note_, 45, 89, 177

Artemia Salina, transformations of, 72, 73

Arthropods in evolution, 130-5, 142

Articulate species, 133

Articulations of matter relative to action, 156, 367
of motion, 310-1
of real time, 332-3

Artificial, how far scientific knowledge is, 197, 218-9
instruments, 138, 139, 140-1

Artist, in illustration of the creativeness of duration, 340-1

Ascending cosmic movement, 11, 208, 275, 369

Ascent toward God, in Aristotle, 323

Association of organisms, 260.
_See_ Individuation
universal oscillation between association and individuation, 259, 260.
_See_ Societies

Astronomy and deduction, 213
and the inert order, 224
modern, in reference to ancient science, 334-6

Atmosphere of spatiality bathing intelligence, 204

Atom, 240, 254, 255
as an intellectual view of matter, 203, 250
and interpenetration, 207

Attack and defence in evolution, 131-2

Attention, 2, 148-9, 154, 184, 209
discontinuity of, 2
in man and in lower animals, 184.
_See_ Tension and instinct, Tension as inverted extension,
Tension of personality, Sympathetic appreciation, etc.,
Relaxation and intellect

Attraction and impulsion in Greek philosophy, 323, 324

Attribute and subject, 148

Automatic activity, 145
as instrument of voluntary, 252
order, 224, 231-4.
_See_ Negative movement, etc., Geometrical order

Automatism, 127, 143-4, 174, 223-4, 261, 264

Background of instinct and intelligence, consciousness as, 186

Backward-looking attitude of the intellect, 47, 48, 237

Baldwin, J.M., 27 _note_

Ballast of intelligence, 152, 230, 239, 369-70

Bastian, 212 _note_

Bateson, 63

Becoming, 164, 236, 248-9, 273, 299-304, 307-8, 313-4, 316, 337-8,
342-3, 345, 363
in ancient philosophy, 313-4, 317
in Descartes's philosophy, 346
in Eleatic philosophy, 313-4, 315
in general, or abstract becoming, 304, 306-7
instantaneous and static views of, 272, 304-5
states of, falsely so called, 164, 247-8, 273, 298-301, 307-8
in the successors of Kant, 363.
_See_ Change, New, Duration, Time, Views of reality

Bees, 101, 140, 142, 146, 166, 172

Beethoven, 224

Berthold, 34 _note_

Bethe, 176 _note_

Bifurcations of tendency, 54.
_See_ Divergent lines of evolution

Biology, 12, 25, 26, 31-2, 43, 168-9, 174-5, 194-6
evolutionist, 168-9
and philosophy, 43, 194-6
and physico-chemistry, 26

Blaringhem, 85

Bodies, 156, 188, 189, 300-1, 360.
_See_ Inert matter as a relaxation of the unextended into the
extended defined as bundles of qualities, 349

Bois-Reymond (Du), 38

Boltzmann, 245

Bombines, social instincts in, 171

Bouvier, 142 _note_

Bow, strain of, illustrating indivisibility of motion, 308-10

Brain and consciousness, 5, 109, 110, 179-80, 183-4, 212 _note_, 252,
261-4, 270, 354, 356, 366.
_See_ Nervous System in man and lower animals, 183, 184, 263-5

Brandt, 66 _note_

Breast-Plate, in reference to animal mobility, 130, 131.
_See_ Carapace, Cellulose envelope

Brown-Séquard, 80-2

Bulb, medullary, in the development of the nervous system, 110, 252

Busquet, 259 _note_

Bütschli, 33 _note_

Buttel-Reepen, 171 _note_

Butterflies, in illustration of variation from evolutionary type, 72

Caelo (De), of Aristotle, 322 _note_, 324 _note_

Calcareous sheath, in reference to animal mobility, 130-1

Calkins, 16 _note_

Canal, in illustration of the relation of function and structure, 93

Canalization, in illustration of the function of animal organisms, 93,
95, 110, 126, 256, 270

Canvas, embroidering "something" on the, of "nothing," 297

Caprice, an attribute not of freedom but of mechanism, 47

Carapace, in reference to animal mobility, 130-1

Carbohydrates, in reference to the function of the animal organism, 121-2

Carbon, in reference to the function of organisms, 107, 113, 114, 117,
254, 255

Carbonic acid, in reference to the function of organisms, 254, 255

Carnot, 243, 246, 256

Cartesian geometry, compared with ancient, 334

Cartesianism, 345, 356, 358

Cartesians, 358. _See_ Spinoza, Leibniz

Carving, the, of matter by intellect, 155

Categorical propositions, characteristic of instinctive knowledge, 149-50

Categories, conceptual, x, xiii, 48, 147, 148-9, 165, 189-90, 195-7, 207,
220-1, 257-60, 265, 358, 361.
_See_ Concept deduction of, and genesis of the intellect, 196, 207, 359.
_See_ Genesis of matter and of the intellect
innate, 147, 148-9
misfit for the vital, x, xiii, 48, 165, 195-9, 220-1, 257-9
in reference to the adaptation to each other of the matter and form of
knowledge, 361

Cats, in illustration of the law of correlation, 67

Causal relation in Aristotle, 325
between consciousness and movement, 111
in Greek philosophy, 324-5

Causality, mechanical, a category which does not apply to life, x, xiv, 177
in the philosophy of Ideas, 323-6

Causation and adaptation, 101, 102
final, involves mechanical, 44

Cause and effect as mathematical functions of each other, 20, 21
efficient, 238, 277, 323
efficient, in Aristotle's philosophy, 324
efficient, in Leibniz's philosophy, 353
final, 40, 44, 238
final, in Aristotle's philosophy, 324
by impulsion, release and unwinding, 73
mechanical, as containing effect, 14, 233, 269
in the vital order, 95, 164

Cave, Plato's allegory of the, 191

Cell, 16, 24, 33, 162, 166, 167, 260, 269
as artificial construct, 162
in the "colonial theory," 260
division, 16, 24, 33
instinct in the, 166, 167
in relation to the soul, 269

Cellulose envelope in reference to vegetable immobility and torpor, 108,
111, 130

Cerebral activity and consciousness, 5, 109-10, 180-1, 183-4, 212 _note_,
252, 253, 261, 264, 268, 270, 350, 351, 354, 355, 366
mechanism, 5, 252, 253, 262, 264, 366

Cerebro-spinal system, 124. _See_ Nervous system

Certainty of induction, 215, 216

Chance analogous to disorder, 233, 234.
_See_ Affection
in evolution, 86-7, 104, 114-5, 126, 169-70, 171, 252, 254, 255, 266,
267, 326-7.
_See_ Indetermination

Change, 1, 7-8, 18, 85-6, 248, 275, 294, 300-304, 308, 313-4, 317, 326,
328-9, 343-4, 344-5
in ancient philosophy, 313-4, 316-7, 325-6, 327-9, 343, 345
in Eleatic philosophy, 314
known only from within, 307-8

Chaos, 232.
_See_ Disorder

Character, moral, 5, 99-100

Charrin, 81 _note_

Chemistry, 27, 34-6, 55, 72, 74, 98, 194, 226, 256, 260

Child, intelligence in, 147-8
adolescence of, in illustration of evolutionary becoming, 311-3

Chipped stone, in paleontology, 139

Chlorophyllian function, 107-9, 114, 117, 246, 253

Choice, 110, 125, 143-5, 179, 180, 252, 260-4, 276, 366
and consciousness, 110, 179, 260-4

Chrysalis, 114 _note_

Cinematograph, 306-7, 339-40

Cinematographical character of ancient philosophy, 315-6
of intellectual knowledge, 306, 307, 312-8, 323-4, 331-3, 346
of language, 306-7, 312-5
of modern science, 329-31, 336-7, 341-3, 345, 346, 347

Circle of the given, broken by action, 192, 247
logical and physical, 277
vicious, in intellectualist philosophy, 193, 197, 320
vicious, in the intuitional method is only apparent, 192, 193

Circularity of God's thought in Aristotle's philosophy, 324
of each special evolution, 128

Circulation, protoplasmic, imitated, 32-3
in plants and animals, 108

Circumstances in the determination of evolution, 101-2, 128-9, 133, 138,
142, 150-1, 167, 168, 170-1, 193, 194, 252, 256
in relation to special instincts, 138, 168, 193

Classes of words corresponding to the three kinds of representation, 303-4

Clausius, 243

Clearness characteristic of intellect, 160

Cleft between the organized and the unorganized, 190, 196-9

Climbing plants, instincts of, 170 _note_

Coincidence of matter with space as in Kant, 206, 207, 244
of mind with intellect as in Kant, 48, 206
of qualities, 216
of seeing and willing, 237
of self with self, definition of the feeling of duration, 199-200

Coleopter, instinct in, 146

Colonial theory, 259, 260

Colonies, microbial, 259

Color variation in lizards, 72, 74

Coming and going of the mind between the without and the within gives rise
to the idea of "Nothing," 279
between nature and mind, the true method of philosophy, 239

Common-sense, 29, 153, 161, 213, 224, 277
defined as continuous experience of the real, 213

Comparison of ancient philosophy with modern, 226, 228-9, 232, 328-9,
345-6, 349-51, 353-4, 356

Compenetration, 352-3. _See_ Interpenetration

Complementarity of forms evolved, xii, xiii, 51, 101, 103, 113, 116-7,
135, 136, 254, 255
of instinct and intelligence, 146, 173.
_See_ Opposition of Instinct and Intelligence
of intuition and intellect, 343, 345
in the powers of life, 49, 96-7, 140-3, 177, 178-9, 183-5, 239, 246,
254, 343
of science and metaphysics, 344

Complexity of the order of mathematics, 208-10, 217, 251

Compound reflex, instinct as a, 174

Concentration, intellect as, 191, 301
of personality, 198-9, 201

Concentric spheres in Aristotle's philosophy, 328

Concept accessory to action, ix
analogy of, with the solid body, ix
in animals, 187
externality of, 160, 168, 175-8, 199-200, 251, 306, 311, 314
fringed about with intuition, 46
and image distinguished, 160, 279
impotent to grasp life, ix-xiii, 49
intellect the concept-making faculty, vi, 49
misfit for the vital, 48
representation of the act by which the intellect is fixed on things, 161
synthesis of, in ancient philosophy, 325-6, 356.
_See_ Categories, Externality, Frames, Image, Space, Symbol

Conditions, external, in evolution, 128-9, 133, 138, 141-2, 150-1, 166-7,
168, 170, 193, 194, 251, 256, 257
external, in determination of special instinct, 141-2, 150-1, 167,
168, 171

Conduct, mechanism and finality in the evolution of, 47.
_See_ Freedom, Determination, Indetermination

Confused plurality of life, 257

Conjugation of Infusoria, 16