222 CREATIVE EVOLUTION iohap. 



these two forms upon this formless matter. His question 

 would be absurd, and the absurdity would lie in this, that 

 he was hypostasizing as the substratum of prose and poetry 

 the simultaneous negation of both, forgetting that the 

 negation of the one consists in the affirmation of the other. 



Now, suppose that there are two species of order, and 

 that these two orders are two contraries within one and 

 the same genus. Suppose also that the idea of disorder 

 arises in our mind whenever, seeking one of the two kinds 

 of order, we find the other. The idea of disorder would 

 then have a clear meaning in the current practice of life: 

 it would objectify, for the convenience of language, the 

 disappointment of a mind that finds before it an order 

 different from what it wants, an order with which it is not 

 concerned at the moment, and which, in this sense, does 

 not exist for it. But the idea would not admit a theoreti- 

 cal use. So if we claim, notwithstanding, to introduce 

 it into philosophy, we shall inevitably lose sight of its 

 true meaning. It denotes the absence of a certain order, 

 but to the profit of another (with which we are not con- 

 cerned); only, as it applies to each of the two in turn, 

 and as it even goes and comes continually between the 

 two, we take it on the way, or rather on the wing, like a 

 shuttlecock between two battledores, and treat it as if it 

 represented, not the absence of the one or other order as 

 the case may be, but the absence of both together — a thing 

 that is neither perceived nor conceived, a simple verbal 

 entity. So there arises the problem how order is imposed 

 on disorder, form on matter. In analyzing the idea of 

 disorder thus subtilized, we shall see that it represents 

 nothing at all, and at the same time the problems that have 

 been raised around it will vanish. 



It is true that we must begin by distinguishing, and 

 even by opposing one to the other, two kinds of order 



