in.] INTELLECT AND MATERIALITY 207 



nitely by the solution that will be given to the problems 

 that will follow: thus, science as a whole is relative to 

 the particular order in which the problems happen to have 

 been put. It is in this meaning, and to this degree, that 

 science must be regarded as conventional. But it is a 

 conventionality of fact so to speak, and not of right. 

 In principle, positive science bears on reality itself, pro- 

 vided it does not overstep the limits of its own domain, 

 which is inert matter. 



Scientific knowledge, thus regarded, rises to a higher 

 plane. In return, the theory of knowledge becomes 

 an infinitely difficult enterprise, and which passes the 

 powers of the intellect alone. It is not enough to deter- 

 mine, by careful analysis, the categories of thought; 

 we must engender them. As regards space, we must, 

 by an effort of mind sui generis, follow the progression 

 or rather the regression of the extra-spatial degrading 

 itself into spatiality. When we make ourselves self- 

 conscious in the highest possible degree and then let our- 

 selves fall back little by little, we get the feeling of ex- 

 tension: we have an extension of the self into recollections 

 that are fixed and external to one another, in place of the 

 tension it possessed as an indivisible active will. But 

 this is only a beginning. Our consciousness, sketching 

 the movement, shows us its direction and reveals to us 

 the possibility of continuing it to the end; but conscious- 

 ness itself does not go so far. Now, on the other hand, 

 if we consider matter, which seems to us at first coincident 

 with space, we find that the more our attention is fixed 

 on it, the more the parts which we said were laid side by 

 side enter into each other, each of them undergoing the 

 action of the whole, which is consequently somehow present 

 in it. Thus, although matter stretches itself out in the 

 direction of space, it does not completely attain it; whence 



