176 TIME 



point of view. Those who are tempted to deny it need only 

 pass in review the conquests of physics since the discovery of 

 radio-activity. Whether they wish it or not, they will be 

 obliged to admit that our brain has reduced the universe, as 

 we said above, to velocities and accelerations; that is to say, to 

 space and time. Even ether, the unreal reality which could 

 give our predecessors the illusion of a substratum of pheno- 

 mena, has been suppressed.^ We find ourselves confronted 

 by a world characterized by a number of statistical properties,- 

 the resultant at our scale of different elementary phenomena. 

 These elementary phenomena escape us because we ourselves 

 are a statistical resultant. But it is they which are the Universe 

 itself, the universe considered in the absence of Man. 



Man is too curious not to ask himself whether the universe 

 exists outside of him. He already agitated the question in 

 olden days when his intelligence, genius, and faith were the 

 only elements he possessed to solve this immense problem. 

 We have progressed since Leibnitz and his monads, but we 

 seem to travel in a closed circuit. One of two things: either 

 we shall continue to accumulate facts which will raise an 

 unsurmountable wall around us, or else we shall have the 

 courage to climb to the top of the tower in which we imprison 

 ourselves, so as to throw a circular glance around and take our 

 bearings without any preconceived ideas. We never sus- 

 pected, when we decided to abandon dialectics and philosophy 

 and to lean exclusively on science, that the latter would lead 

 us so rapidly to the edge of the abyss. We are the victims of 

 a 'Cartesianism' pushed to the extreme limit, and now we 

 are caught in our own trap. We must jump the fence or stay 

 where we are. We will not be able to experiment on pure 

 time and space by means of our beautiful instruments, nor 

 can we apply to them the reasoning and rigorous laws which 

 have no value outside of our presence. How shall we manage 



^ There are many excellent books on the subject. I have cited a 

 few of them, but new ones appear continually in every country. 



- One should read the admirable book of Ch. E. Guye on this 

 subject, U Evolution physico-chimique, to which I have already referred 

 the reader (note, pp. 24, 27). 



