338 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



1C 



This amounts to saying that physics is but logi 

 spoiled. In this proposition the whole philosophy 

 of Ideas is summarized. And in it also is the 

 hidden principle of the philosophy that is innate in our 

 understanding. If immutability is more than be 

 coming, form is more than change, and it is by a 

 veritable fall that the logical system of Ideas, rationally 

 subordinated and coordinated among themselves, is 

 scattered into a physical series of objects and events 

 accidentally placed one after another. The generative 

 idea of a poem is developed in thousands of imaginations 

 which are materialized in phrases that spread themselves 

 out in words. And the more we descend from the 

 motionless idea, wound on itself, to the words that 

 unwind it, the more room is left for contingency 

 and choice. Other metaphors, expressed by other 

 words, might have arisen ; an image is called up 

 by an image, a word by a word. All these words 

 run now one aiter another, seeking in vain, by them 

 selves, to give back the simplicity of the generative 

 idea. Our cur only hears the \vords ; it therefore 

 perceives only accidents. But our mind, by successive 

 bounds, leaps from the words to the images, from the 

 images to the original idea, and so gets back, from the 

 perception of words accidents called up by accidents 

 to the conception of the Idea that posits its own 

 being. So the philosopher proceeds, confronted with 

 the universe. Experience makes to pass before his 

 eyes phenomena which run, they also, one behind 

 another in an accidental order determined by circum 

 stances of time and place. This physical order a 

 degeneration of the logical order is nothing else but 

 the fall of the logical into space and time. But the 

 philosopher, ascending again from the percept to the 



