224 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



does not deduce explicitly, if he does not form 

 explicit concepts, neither does he form the idea of a 

 homogeneous space. You cannot present this space to 

 yourself without introducing, in the same act, a virtual 

 geometry which will, of itself, degrade itself into logic. 

 All the repugnance that philosophers manifest towards 

 this manner of regarding things comes from this, that 

 the logical work of the intellect represents to their eyes 

 a positive spiritual effort. But, if we understand by 

 spirituality a progress to ever new creations, to con 

 clusions incommensurable with the premisses and inde 

 terminable by relation to them, we must say of an idea 

 that moves among relations of necessary determination, 

 through premisses which contain their conclusion in 

 advance, that it follows the inverse direction, that of 

 materiality. What appears, from the point of view of 

 the intellect, as an effort, is in itself a letting go. And 

 while, from the point of view of the intellect, there is a 

 petitio principii in making geometry arise automatically 

 from space, and logic from geometry, on the contrary, 

 if space is the ultimate goal of the mind s movement of 

 detention^ space cannot be given without positing also 

 logic and geometry, which are along the course of the 

 movement of which pure spatial intuition is the goal. 



It has not been enough noticed how feeble is the 

 reach of deduction in the psychological and moral 

 sciences. From a proposition verified by facts, verifiable 

 consequences can here be drawn only up to a certain 

 point, only in a certain measure. Very soon appeal has 

 to be made to common sense, that is to say, to the 

 continuous experience of the real, in order to inflect the 

 consequences deduced and bend them along the sinu 

 osities of life. Deduction succeeds in things moral only 

 metaphorically, so to speak, and just in the measure 



