318 CREATIVE EVOLUTION iohap. 



time, as a reality. Such is exactly, on this point, the atti- 

 tude of the philosophy of Forms or Ideas. It establishes 

 between eternity and time the same relation as between 

 a piece of gold and the small change — change so small that 

 payment goes on for ever without the debt being paid off. 

 The debt could be paid at once with the piece of gold. It 

 is this that Plato expresses in his magnificent language 

 when he says that God, unable to make the world eternal, 

 gave it Time, "a moving image of eternity." 1 



Hence also arises a certain conception of extension, 

 which is at the base of the philosophy of Ideas, although 

 it has not been so explicitly brought out. Let us imagine 

 a mind placed alongside becoming, and adopting its move- 

 ment. Each successive state, each quality, each form, in 

 short, will be seen by it as a mere cut made by thought in 

 the universal' becoming. It will be found that form is 

 essentially extended, inseparable as it is from the extensity 

 of the becoming which has materialized it in the course of 

 its flow. Every form thus occupies space, as it occupies 

 time. But the philosophy of Ideas follows the inverse 

 direction. It starts from the Form; it sees in the Form the 

 very essence of reality. It does not take Form as a snap- 

 shot of becoming; it posits Forms in the eternal; of this 

 motionless eternity, then, duration and becoming are sup- 

 posed to be only the degradation. Form thus posited, in- 

 dependent of time, is then no longer what is found in a 

 perception; it is a concept. And, as a reality of the con- 

 ceptual order occupies no more of extension than it does of 

 duration, the Forms must be stationed outside space as 

 well as above time. Space and time have therefore neces- 

 sarily, in ancient philosophy, the same origin and the same 

 value. The same diminution of being is expressed both 

 by extension in space and detention in time. Both of these 

 1 Plato, Timaeus, 37 d. 



