228 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



superimposed on that of yesterday, the latter must have 

 waited for the former, time must have halted, and 

 everything become simultaneous : that happens in 

 geometry, but in geometry alone. Induction therefore 

 implies first that, in the world of the physicist as in 

 that of the geometrician, time does not count. But it 

 implies also that qualities can be superposed on each 

 other like magnitudes. If, in imagination, I place the 

 stove and fire of to-day on that of yesterday, I find 

 indeed that the form has remained the same ; it suffices, 

 for that, that the surfaces and edges coincide ; but 

 what is the coincidence of two qualities, and how can 

 they be superposed one on another in order to ensure 

 that they are identical ? Yet I extend to the second 

 order of reality all that applies to the first. The 

 physicist legitimates this operation later on by reducing, 

 as far as possible, differences of quality to differences 

 of magnitude ; but, prior to all science, I incline to 

 liken qualities to quantities, as if I perceived behind 

 the qualities, as through a transparency, a geometrical 

 mechanism. 1 The more complete this transparency, 

 the more it seems to me that in the same conditions 

 there must be a repetition of the same fact. Our 

 inductions are certain, to our eyes, in the exact degree 

 in which we make the qualitative differences melt into 

 the homogeneity of the space which subtends them, 

 so that geometry is the ideal limit of our inductions 

 as well as of our deductions. The movement at the 

 end of which is spatiality lays down along its course 

 the faculty of induction as well as that of deduction, 

 in fact, intellectuality entire. 



It creates them in the mind. But it creates also, in 



* Op, cit. chaps, i. and ii. passim. 



