2i 8 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



CHAP. 



but not as relative. Our perception, whose role 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 practical needs, consequently always 

 requiring revision. Our 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 embrace 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 

 indefinitely 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 reality itself, provided it does not 

 overstep the limits of its own domain, which is inert 

 matter. 



Scientific knowledge, thus regarded, rises to a higher 

 plane. In return, the theory of knowledge becomes 

 an infinitely difficult enterprise, and which passes 

 the powers of the intellect alone. It is not enough 

 to determine, by careful analysis, the categories of 

 thought ; we must engender them. As regards space, 

 we must, by an effort of mind sui generis^ follow 

 the progression or rather the regression of the extra- 

 spatial degrading itself into spatiality. When we 

 make ourselves self-conscious in the highest possible 



