in LAWS AND GENERA 



243 



experience also presents to us independent terms, the 

 living genera being something quite different from 

 systems of laws, one half, at least, of our knowledge 

 bears on the &quot; thing-in-itself,&quot; the very reality. This 

 knowledge may be very difficult, just because it no 

 longer builds up its own object and is obliged, on the 

 contrary, to submit to it ; but, however little it cuts 

 into its object, it is into the absolute itself that it bites. 

 We may go further : the other half of knowledge is no 

 longer so radically, so definitely relative as certain 

 philosophers say, if we can establish that it bears on 

 a reality of inverse order, a reality which we always 

 express in mathematical laws, that is to say in relations 

 that imply comparisons, but which lends itself to this 

 work only because it is weighted with spatiality and 

 consequently with geometry. Be that as it may, it is 

 the confusion of two kinds of order that lies behind 

 the relativism of the moderns, as it lay behind the 

 dogmatism of the ancients. 



We have said enough to mark the origin of this 

 confusion. It is due to the fact that the &quot; vital &quot; order, 

 which is essentially creation, is manifested to us less in 

 its essence than in some of its accidents, those which 

 imitate the physical and geometrical order ; like it, they 

 present to us repetitions that make generalization 

 possible, and in that we have all that interests us. 

 There is no doubt that life as a whole is an evolution, 

 that is, an unceasing transformation. But life can 

 progress only by means of the living, which are its 

 depositaries. Innumerable living beings, almost alike, 

 have to repeat each other in space and in time for the 

 novelty they are working out to grow and mature. 

 It is like a book that advances towards a new 

 edition by going through thousands of reprints with 



