370 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



not yet irremediable between the two terms. It has 

 become so, and thence a metaphysic that aims at an 

 abstract unity must resign itself either to comprehend 

 in its synthesis only one half of the real, or to take 

 advantage of the absolute heterogeneity of the two 

 halves in order to consider one as a translation of the 

 other. Different phrases will express different things 

 if they belong to the same language, that is to say, if 

 there is a certain relationship of sound between them. 

 But if they belong to two different languages, they 

 might, just because of their radical diversity of sound, 

 express the same thing. So of quality and quantity, of 

 soul and body. It is for having cut all connection 

 between the two terms that philosophers have been led 

 to establish between them a rigorous parallelism, of 

 which the ancients had not dreamed, to regard them as 

 translations and not as inversions of each other ; in 

 short, to posit a fundamental identity as a substratum 

 to their duality. The synthesis to which they rose 

 thus became capable of embracing everything. A 

 divine mechanism made the phenomena of thought to 

 correspond to those of extension, each to each, qualities 

 to quantities, souls to bodies. 



It is this parallelism that we find both in Leibniz 

 and in Spinoza in different forms, it is true, because 

 of the unequal importance which they attach to exten 

 sion. With Spinoza, the two terms Thought and Exten 

 sion are placed, in principle at least, in the same rank. 

 They are, therefore, two translations of one and the 

 same original, or, as Spinoza says, two attributes of one 

 and the same substance, which we must call God. And 

 these two translations, as also an infinity of others into 

 languages which we know not, are called up and even 

 forced into existence by the original, just as the essence 



