Ill 



PHYSICAL LAWS 229 



things, the &quot; order &quot; which our induction, aided by 

 deduction, finds there. This order, on which our 

 action leans and in which our intellect recognizes itself, 

 seems to us marvellous. Not only do the same general 

 causes always produce the same general effects, but 

 beneath the visible causes and effects our science dis 

 covers an infinity of infinitesimal changes which work 

 more and more exactly into one another, the further we 

 push the analysis : so much so that, at the end of this 

 analysis, matter becomes, it seems to us, geometry itself. 

 Certainly, the intellect is right in admiring here the 

 growing order in the growing complexity ; both the 

 one and the other must have a positive reality for it, 

 since it looks upon itself as positive. But things change 

 their aspect when we consider the whole of reality as 

 an undivided advance forward to successive creations. 

 It seems to us, then, that the complexity of the material 

 elements and the mathematical order that binds them 

 together must arise automatically when within the whole 

 a partial interruption or inversion is produced. More 

 over, as the intellect itself is cut out of mind by a 

 process of the same kind, it is attuned to this order 

 and complexity, and admires them because it recog 

 nizes itself in them. But what is admirable in itself, 

 what really deserves to provoke wonder, is the ever- 

 renewed creation which reality, whole and undivided, 

 accomplishes in advancing ; for no complication of the 

 mathematical order with itself, however elaborate we may 

 suppose it, can introduce an atom of novelty into the 

 world, whereas this power of creation once given (and 

 it exists, for we are conscious of it in ourselves, at least 

 when we act freely) has only to be diverted from itself 

 to relax its tension, only to relax its tension to extend, 

 only to extend for the mathematical order of the 



