334 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



Yet becoming exists : it is a fact. How, then, having 

 posited immutability alone, shall we make change come 

 forth from it ? Not by the addition of anything, for, 

 by the hypothesis, there exists nothing positive outside 

 Ideas. It must therefore be by a diminution. So at 

 the base of ancient philosophy lies necessarily this postu 

 late : that there is more in the motionless than in the 

 moving, and that we pass from immutability to becom 

 ing by way of diminution or attenuation. 



It is therefore something negative, or zero at most, 

 that must be added to Ideas to obtain change. In that 

 consists the Platonic &quot; non-being,&quot; the Aristotelian 

 &quot; matter &quot; a metaphysical zero which, joined to the 

 Idea, like the arithmetical zero to unity, multiplies 

 it in space and time. By it the motionless and 

 simple Idea is refracted into a movement spread out 

 indefinitely. In right, there ought to be nothing but 

 immutable Ideas, immutably fitted to each other. In 

 fact, mutter comes to add to them its void, and thereby 

 lets loose the universal becoming. It is an elusive 

 nothing, that creeps between the Ideas and creates 

 endless agitation, eternal disquiet, like a suspicion 

 insinuated between two loving hearts. Degrade the 

 immutable Ideas : you obtain, by that alone, the per 

 petual flux of things. The Ideas or Forms are the 



I O 



whole of intelligible reality, that is to say, of truth, 

 in that they represent, all together, the theoretical equi 

 librium of Being. As to sensible reality, it is a perpetual 

 oscillation from one side to the other of this point of 

 equilibrium. 



Hence, throughout the whole philosophy of Ideas 

 there is a certain conception of duration, as also of the 

 relation of time to eternity. He who installs himself 

 in becoming sees in duration the very life of things, 



