rr.l PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 317 



metaphysical zero which, joined to the Idea, like the arith- 

 metical zero to unity, multiplies it in space and time. By 

 it the motionless and simple Idea is refracted into a move- 

 ment spread out indefinitely. In right, there ought to be 

 nothing but immutable Ideas, immutably fitted to each 

 other. In fact, matter comes to add to them its void, and 

 thereby lets loose the universal becoming. It is an elusive 

 nothing, that creeps between the Ideas and creates endless 

 agitation, eternal disquiet, like a suspicion insinuated be- 

 tween two loving hearts. Degrade the immutable Ideas: 

 you obtain, by that alone, the perpetual flux of things. 

 The Ideas or Forms are the whole of intelligible reality, that 

 is to say, of truth, in that they represent, all together, the 

 theoretical equilibrium of Being. As to sensible reality, 

 it is a perpetual oscillation from one side to the other of 

 this point of equilibrium. 



Hence, throughout the whole philosophy of Ideas there 

 is a certain conception of duration, as also of the relation 

 of time to eternity. He who installs himself in becoming 

 sees in duration the very life of things, the fundamental 

 reality. The Forms, which the mind isolates and stores 

 up in concepts, are then only snapshots of the changing 

 reality. They are moments gathered along the course 

 of time; and, just because we have cut the thread that 

 binds them to time, they no longer endure. They tend to 

 withdraw into their own definition, that is to say, into the 

 artificial reconstruction and symbolical expression which 

 is their intellectual equivalent. They enter into eternity, 

 if you will; but what is eternal in them is just what is un- 

 real. On the contrary, if we treat becoming by the cine- 

 matographical method, the Forms are no longer snapshots 

 taken of the change, they are its constitutive elements, they 

 represent all that is positive in Becoming. Eternity no 

 longer hovers over time, as an abstraction; it underlies 



