iv PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 335 



the fundamental reality. The Forms, which the mind 

 isolates and stores up in concepts, are then only snap 

 shots of the changing reality. They are moments 

 gathered along the course of time ; and, just because 

 we have cut the thread that binds them to time, they 

 no longer endure. They tend to withdraw into their 

 own definition, that is to say, into the artificial 

 reconstruction and symbolical expression which is their 

 intellectual equivalent. They enter into eternity, if 

 you will ; but what is eternal in them is just what is 

 unreal. On the contrary, if we treat becoming by the 

 cinematographical method, the Forms are no longer 

 snapshots taken of the change, they are its constitutive 

 elements, they represent all that is positive in Becom 

 ing. Eternity no longer hovers over time, as an 

 abstraction ; it underlies time, as a reality. Such is 

 exactly, on this point, the attitude of the philosophy 

 of Forms or Ideas. It establishes between eternity 

 and time the same relation as between a piece of 

 gold and the small change change so small that pay 

 ment goes on for ever without the debt being paid 

 off. The debt could be paid at once with the piece 

 of gold. It is this that Plato expresses in his mag 

 nificent language when he says that God, unable to 

 make the world eternal, gave it Time, &quot;a moving 

 image of eternity.&quot; l 



Hence also arises a certain conception of extension, 

 which is at the base of the philosophy of Ideas, although 

 it has not been so explicitly brought out. Let us 

 imagine a mind placed alongside becoming, and adopt 

 ing its movement. Each successive state, each quality, 

 each form, in short, will be seen by it as a mere cut 

 made by thought in the universal becoming. It will be 



1 Plato, Timaeus, 37 D. 



