in.] PHYSICAL LAWS 219 



if the movement which constitutes materiality were not 

 the same movement which, prolonged by us to its end, 

 that is to say, to homogeneous space, results in making 

 us count, measure, follow in their respective variations terms 

 that are functions one of another. To effect this prolong- 

 ation of the movement, our intellect has only to let itself 

 go, for it runs naturally to space and mathematics, in- 

 tellectuality and materiality being of the same nature and 

 having been produced in the same way. 



If the mathematical order were a positive thing, if 

 there were, immanent in matter, laws comparable to 

 those of our codes, the success of our science would have 

 in it something of the miraculous. What chances should 

 we have indeed of finding the standard of nature and of 

 isolating exactly, in order to determine their reciprocal 

 relations, the very variables which nature has chosen? 

 But the success of a science of mathematical form would 

 be no less incomprehensible, if matter did not already 

 possess everything necessary to adapt itself to our formulae. 

 One hypothesis only, therefore, remains plausible, namely, 

 that the mathematical order is nothing positive, that it 

 is the form toward which a certain interruption tends of 

 itself, and that materiality consists precisely in an inter- 

 ruption of this kind. We shall understand then why our 

 science is contingent, relative to the variables it has chosen, 

 relative to the order in which it has successively put the 

 problems, and why nevertheless it succeeds. It might 

 have been, as a whole, altogether different, and yet have 

 succeeded. This is so, just because there is no definite 

 system of mathematical laws, at the base of nature, and 

 because mathematics in general represents simply the side to 

 which matter inclines. Put one of those little cork dolls 

 with leaden feet in any posture, lay it on its back, turn 

 it up on its head, throw it into the air: it will always 



