234 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



exclamations that prose and poetry are two forms of 

 language reserved for books, and that these learned 

 forms have come and overlaid a language which was 

 neither prose nor verse. Speaking of this thing which 

 is neither verse nor prose, he would suppose, moreover, 

 that he was thinking of it : it would be only a pseudo- 

 idea, however. Let us go further still : the pseudo- 

 idea would create a pseudo-problem, if M. Jourdain 

 were to ask his professor of philosophy how the prose 

 form and the poetry form have been superadded to 

 that which possessed neither the one nor the other, 

 and if he wished the professor to construct a theory of 

 the imposition of these two forms upon this formless 

 matter. His question would be absurd, and the 

 absurdity would lie in this, that he was hypostasizing 

 as the substratum of prose and poetry the simultaneous 

 negation of both, forgetting that the negation of the 

 one consists in the affirmation of the other. 



Now, suppose that there are two species of order, and 

 that these two orders are two contraries within one and 

 the same genus. Suppose also that the idea of disorder 

 arises in our mind whenever, seeking one of the two 

 kinds of order, we find the other. The idea of disorder 

 would then have a clear meaning in the current practice 

 of life : it would objectify, for the convenience of 

 language, the disappointment of a mind that finds 

 before it an order different from what it wants, an 

 order with which it is not concerned at the moment, 

 and which, in this sense, does not exist for it. But the 

 idea would not admit a theoretical use. So if we claim, 

 notwithstanding, to introduce it into philosophy, we 

 shall inevitably lose sight of its true meaning. It 

 denotes the absence of a certain order, but to the profit 

 of another (with which we are not concerned) ; only, as 



