374 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



two philosophies brings them back to the conclusions 

 of the ancient philosophy. 



To sum up, the resemblances of this new metaphysic 

 to that of the ancients arise from the fact that both 

 suppose ready-made the former above the sensible, 

 the latter within the sensible a science one and com 

 plete, with which any reality that the sensible may 

 contain is believed to coincide. For both^ reality as 

 well as truth are integrally given in eternity. Both 

 are opposed to the idea of a reality that creates itself 

 gradually, that is, at bottom, to an absolute duration. 



Now, it might easily be shown that the conclusions of 

 this metaphysic, springing from science, have rebounded 

 upon science itself, as it were, by ricochet. They 

 penetrate the whole of our so-called empiricism. 

 Physics and chemistry study only inert matter ; bio 

 logy, when it treats the living being physically and 

 chemically, considers only the inert side of the living : 

 hence the mechanistic explanations, in spite of their 

 development, include only a small part of the real. To 

 suppose a priori that the whole of the real is resolvable 

 into elements of this kind, or at least that mechanism 

 can give a complete translation of what happens in 

 the world, is to pronounce for a certain metaphysic, 

 the very metaphysic of which Spinoza and Leibniz 

 have laid down the principles and drawn the conse 

 quences. Certainly, the psycho-physiologist who affirms 

 the exact equivalence of the cerebral and the psychical 

 state, who imagines the possibility, for some super 

 human intellect, of reading in the brain what is going 

 on in consciousness, believes himself very far from the 

 metaphysicians of the seventeenth century, and very 

 near to experience. Yet experience pure and simple 



