336 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



found that form is essentially extended, inseparable as 

 it is from the extensity of the becoming which has 

 materialized it in the course of its flow. Every form 

 thus occupies space, as it occupies time. But the philo 

 sophy of Ideas follows the inverse direction. It starts 

 from the Form; it sees in the Form the very essence of 

 reality. It does not take Form as a snapshot of becom 

 ing ; it posits Forms in the eternal ; of this motionless 

 eternity, then, duration and becoming are supposed to be 

 only the degradation. Form thus posited, independent 

 of time, is then no longer what is found in a percep 

 tion ; it is a concept. And, as a reality of the conceptual 

 order occupies no more of extension than it does of dura 

 tion, the Forms must be stationed outside space as well 

 as above time. Space and time have therefore necessarily, 

 in ancient philosophy, the same origin and the same 

 value. The same diminution of being is expressed both 

 by extension in space and detension in time. Both of 

 these are but the distance between what is and what 

 ought to be. From the standpoint of ancient philo 

 sophy, space and time can be nothing but the field 

 that an incomplete reality, or rather a reality that 

 has gone astray from itself, needs in order to run 

 in quest of itself. Only it must be admitted that 

 the field is created as the hunting progresses, and 

 that the hunting in some way deposits the field 

 beneath it. Move an imaginary pendulum, a mere 

 mathematical point, from its position of equilibrium : 

 a perpetual oscillation is started, along which points are 

 placed next to points, and moments succeed moments. 

 The space and time which thus arise have no more 

 &quot; positivity &quot; than the movement itself. They repre 

 sent the remoteness of the position artificially given to 

 the pendulum from its normal position, what it lacks 



