duration, nothing but the instantaneous which dies and is bom again endlessly. Is the existence of matter of this nature? Not altogether, for analysis resolves it into elementary vibrations, the shortest of whioh are of very slight duration, almost vanishing, but not nothing. It may be presumed, nevertheless, that physical existence inclines in this second direction, as psychical existence in the first.
Behind "spirituality" on the one hand, and " materiality" with intellectuality on the other, there are then two pro- cesses opposite in their direction, and we pass from the first to the second by way of inversion, or perhaps even by simple interruption, if it is true that inversion and in- terruption are two terms which in this case must be held to be synonymous, as we shall show at more length later on. This presumption is confirmed when we consider things from the point of view of extension, and no longer from that of duration alone.
The more we succeed in making ourselves conscious of our progress in pure duration, the more we feel the different parts of our being enter into each other, and our whole personaUty concentrate itself in a point, or rather a sharp edge, pressed against the future and cutting into it unceasingly. It is in this that life and action are free. But suppose we let ourselves go and, instead of acting, dream. At once the self is scattered; our past, which till then was gathered together into the indivisible impulsion it communicated to us, is broken up into a thousand recollections made external to one another. They give up interpenetrating in the degree that they become fixed. Our personality thus descends in the direction of space. It coasts around it continually in sensation. We will not dwell here on a point we have studied elsewhere. Let us merely recall that extension
[Oh^^^^
admits of degrees, that all sensation is extensive in a cert^ measure, and that the idea of unextended sensations, artificially localized in space, is a mere view of the mind, suggested by an unconscious metaphysic much more than by psychological observation.
No doubt we make only the first steps in the direction of the extended, even when we let ourselves go as much as we can. But suppose for a moment that matter con- sists in this very movement pushed further, and that physics is simply psychics inverted. We shall now under- stand why the mind feels at its case, moves about naturally in space, when matter suggests the more distinct idea of it. This space it already possessed as an implicit idea in its own eventual delension, that is to say, of its own possible extensi(m. The mind finds space in things, but could have got it without them if it had had imagination strong enough to push the inversion of its own natural movement to the end. On the other hand, we are able to explain how matter accentuates still more its materiality, when viewed by the mind. Matter, at first, aided mind to run down its own incHne; it gave the impulsion. But, the impulsion once received, mind continues its course. The idea that it forms of pure space is only the schema of the limit at which this movement would end. Once in possession of the form of space, mind uses it like a net with meshes that can be made and unmade at will, which, thrown over matter, divides it as the needs of our action demand. Thus, the space of our geometry and the spatiality of things are mutually engendered by the reciprocal action and reaction of two terms which are essentially the same, but which move each in the direction inverse of the other. Neither is space so foreign to our nature as we ima^e, nor is matter as completely extended in space as our senses and intellect represent it.
Intellect and Materiality
We have treated of the fin>t point elsewhere. As to the second, we will limit ourselves to pointing out that perfect spatiality would consist in a perfect externality of parts in their relation to one another, that is to say, in a complete reciprocal independence. Now, there is no material point that does not act on every other material point. When we observe that a thing really is there where it acts, we shall be led to say {as Faraday' was) that all the atoms inteqjenetratc and that each of them fills the world. On such a hypothesis, the atom or, more generally, the material point, becomes simply a view of the mind, a view which we come to take when we continue far enough the work (wholly relative to our faculty of acting) by which we subdivide matter into bodies. Yet it is undeniable that matter lends itself to this subdivision, and that, in supposing it breakable into parts external to one another, we are constructing a science sufficiently representative of the real. It ia undeniable that if there be no entirely isolated system, yet science finds means of cutting up the universe into systems relatively independent of each other, and commits no appreciable error in doing so. 'What else can this mean but that matter extends itself in space with- out being absolutely extended therein, and that in regarding matter as decomposable into isolated systems, in attribut- ing to it quite distinct elements which change in relation to each other without changing in themselves (which are "dLspIaced," shall we say, without being "altered"), ia short, in conferring on matter the properties of pure space, we are transporting ourselves to the terminal point of the movement of which matter simply indicates the direction?
What the Transcendental Aestkeiic of Kant appears
' Faraday, A Speeuiation concemiig Eketrie Condiuiion (Pkiksophi- eai Magatine, 3d. series, vol. sxiv.).
to have established once for all is that extension is not a material attribute of the same kind as others. We cannot reason indefinitely on the notions of heat, color, or weight: in order to know the modalities of weight {»■ of heat, we must have recourse to experience. Not so of the notion of space. Supposing even that it is given empirically by sight and touch (and Kant has not questioned the fact) there is this about it that is remarlcable that our mind, speculating on it with its own powers alone, cuts out in it, a priori, figures whose propert,ies we determine a priori: experience, with which we have not kept in touch, yet follows us through the infinite complications of our reasonings and invariably justifies them. That is the fact. Kant has set it in clear light. But the explanation of the fact, we believe, must be sought in a different direction to that which Kant followed.
Intelligence, as Kant re]*resents it to us, is bathed in an atmosphere of spatiality to which it is as inseparably united as the living body to the air it breathes. Our perceptions reach us only after having passed through this atmosphere. They have been impregnated in ad- vance by our geometry, so that our faculty of thinking only finds again in matter the mathematical properties which our faculty of perceiving has already deposed there. We are assured, therefore, of seeing matter yield itself with docility to our reasonings; but this matter, in all that it has that is inteUigible, is our own work; of the reality "in itself we know nothing and never shall know anj'thing, since we only get its refraction through the forms of our faculty of perceiving. So that if we claim to affirm some- thing of it, at once there rises the contrary affirmation, equally demonstrable, equally plausible. The ideality of space is proved directly by the analysis of knowledge indirectly by the antinomies to which the opposite theory
INTELLECr AND
leads. Such is the goveming idea of the Kantian criticism. It has inspired Kant with a peremptory refutation of "empiricist" theories of knowledge. It is, in our opinion, definitive in what it denies. But, in what it affirms, does it give U3 the solution of the problem?
With Kant, space is given as a ready-made form of our perceptive faculty — a veritable deus ex mackina, of which we see neither how it arises, nor why it is what it is rather than anything else. " Things-in-themgelves" are also given, of which he claims that we can know noth- ing: by what right, then, can he affinB their existence, even aa "problematic"? If the unknowable reality pro- jects into our perceptive faculty a "sensuous manifold" capable of fitting into it exactly, is it not, by that very fact, in part known? And when we examine this exact fitting, shall we not be led, in one point at least, to suppose a pre-estabUshed harmony between things and our mind — an idle hypothesis, which Kant was right in wishing to avoid? At bottom, it is for not having distinguished degrees in spatiality that he has had to take space ready- made as given — whence the question how the "sensuous manifold" is adapted to it. It is for the same reason that he has supposed matter wholly developed into jiarts absolutely external to one another;— whence antinomies, of which we may plainly see that the thesis and antithesis suppose the perfect coincidence of matter with geometrical space, but which vanish the moment we cease to extend to matter what is true only of pure space. Whence, finally, the conclusion that there are three alternatives, and three only, among which to choose a theory of know- ledge: either the mind is determined by things, or things are determined by the mind, or between mind and things we must suppose a mysterious agreement.
But the truth is that there is a fourth, which does not
206 CREATIVE EVOLUTION iohjlp.
seem to have occurred to Kant — in the first place because he did not think that the mind overflowed the Intellect, and in the second place (and this is at bottom thesame thing) because he did not attribute to duration an absolute exist- ence, having put time, a priori, on the same plane as space. This alternative consists, first of all, in regarding the intel- lect as a special function of the mind, essentially turned toward inert matter; then in saying that neither does mat- ter determine the form of the intellect, nor does the in- tellect impose its form on matter, nor have matter and intellect been regulated in regard to one another by we know not what pre-established harmony, but that intellect and matter have progressively adapted themselves one to the other in order to attain at last a common form. This adaptaiion has, moreover, been brought about quite rmturally, because it is the same inversion of the same movement which creates ai once ihe inteilectucUity of mind and the materiality of things.
From this point of view the knowledge of matter that our perception on one hand and science on the other give to us appears, no doubt, as approximative, but not as relative. Our perception, whose r6le it is to hold up a light to our actions, works a dividing up of matter that is always too sharply defined, always subordinated to practi- cal needs, consequently always requiring revision, science, which aspires to the mathematical form, over*"' accentuates the spatiality of matter; its formulae are, in general, too precise, and ever need remaking. For a scientific theory to be final, the mind would have to em- brace the totality of things in block and place each thing in its exact relation to every other thing; but in reality we are obliged to consider problems one by one, in terms which are, for that very reason, provisional, so that the solution of each problem will have to be corrected indefi-
iver^^^H
Intellect and Materulity
nitely by the solution that will be given to the problems that will follow: thus, science as a whole is relative to the particular order in which the problems happen to have been put. It is in this meaning, and to this degree, that science must be regarded as conventional. But it is a conventionality of fact so to speak, and not of right. In principle, positive science bears on reahty itself, pro- vided it does not overstep the limits of its own domain, which is inert matter.