346 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



and zero, is revealed as a certain sum of units, and 

 with its own affirmation affirms all the lower numbers. 

 That is the natural postulate. It is that also that we 

 perceive as the base of the Greek philosophy. In order 

 then to explain the specific characters of each of these 

 degrees of intermediate reality, nothing more is necessary 

 than to measure the distance that separates it from the 

 integral reality. Each lower degree consists in a diminu 

 tion of the higher, and the sensible newness that we 

 perceive in it is resolved, from the point of view of 

 the intelligible ^ into a new quantity of negation which 

 is superadded to it. The smallest possible quantity of 

 negation, that which is found already in the highest 

 forms of sensible reality, and consequently a fortiori in 

 the lower forms, is that which is expressed by the most 

 general attributes of sensible reality, extension and 

 duration. By increasing degradations we will obtain attri 

 butes more and more special. Here the philosopher s 

 fancy will have free scope, for it is by an arbitrary decree, 

 or at least a debatable one, that a particular aspect of the 

 sensible world will be equated with a particular diminu 

 tion of being. We shall not necessarily end, as Aristotle 

 did, in a world consisting of concentric spheres turning 

 on themselves. But we shall be led to an analogous 



O 



cosmology I mean, to a construction whose pieces, 

 though all different, will have none the less the same 

 relations between them. And this cosmology will 

 be ruled by the same principle. The physical will 

 be defined by the logical. Beneath the changing 

 phenomena will appear to us, by transparence, a closed 

 system of concepts subordinated to and coordinated with 

 each other. Science, understood as the system of con 

 cepts, will be more real than the sensible reality. It will 

 be prior to human knowledge, which is only able to spell 



