220 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



stand itself up again, automatically. So likewise with 

 matter: we can take it by any end and handle it in any 

 way, it will always fall back into some one of our mathe- 

 matical formulae, because it is weighted with geometry. 



But the philosopher will perhaps refuse to found a 

 theory of knowledge on such considerations. They will 

 be repugnant to him, because the mathematical order, 

 being order, will appear to him to contain something 

 positive. It is in vain that we assert that this order 

 produces itself automatically by the interruption of the 

 inverse order, that it is this very interruption. The idea 

 persists, none the less, that there might be no order at all, 

 and that the mathematical order of things, being a con- 

 quest over disorder, possesses a positive reality. In 

 examining this point, we shall see what a prominent 

 part the idea of disorder plays in problems relative to 

 the theory of knowledge. It does not. appear explicitly, 

 and that is why it escapes our attention. It is, however, 

 with the criticism of this idea that a theory of knowledge 

 ought to begin, for if the great problem is to know why and 

 how reality submits itself to an order, it is because the 

 absence of every kind of order appears possible or con- 

 ceivable. It is this absence of order that realists and 

 idealists alike believe they are thinking of — the realist 

 when he speaks of the regularity that "objective" laws 

 actually impose on a virtual disorder of nature, the idealist 

 when he supposes a "sensuous manifold" which is co- 

 ordinated (and consequently itself without order) under 

 the organizing influence of our understanding. The idea 

 of disorder, in the sense of absence of order, is then what 

 must be analyzed first. Philosophy borrows it from daily 

 life. And it is unquestionable that, when ordinarily we speak 

 of disorder, we are thinking of something. But of what? 



