it.] PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 321 



ception of the Idea that posits its own being. So the 

 philosopher proceeds, confronted with the universe. Ex- 

 perience makes to pass before his eyes phenomena which 

 run, they also, one behind another in an accidental order 

 determined by circumstances of time and place. This 

 physical order — a degeneration of the logical order — is 

 nothing else but the fall of the logical into space and time. 

 But the philosopher, ascending again from the percept to 

 the concept, sees condensed into the logical all the positive 

 reality that the physical possesses. His intellect, doing 

 away with the materiality that lessens being, grasps being 

 itself in the immutable system of Ideas. Thus Science 

 is obtained, which appears to us, complete and ready-made, 

 as soon as we put back our intellect into its true place, 

 correcting the deviation that separated it from the in- 

 telligible. Science is not, then, a human construction. 

 It is prior to our intellect, independent of it, veritably the 

 generator of Things. 



And indeed, if we hold the Forms to be simply snapshots 

 taken by the mind of the continuity of becoming, they must 

 be relative to the mind that thinks them, they can have no 

 independent existence. At most we might say that each 

 of these Ideas is an ideal. But it is in the opposite hypothe- 

 sis that we are placing ourselves. Ideas must then exist by 

 themselves. Ancient philosophy could not escape this 

 conclusion. Plato formulated it, and in vain did Aristotle 

 strive to avoid it. Since movement arises from the de- 

 gradation of the immutable, there could be no movement, 

 consequently no sensible world, if there were not, some- 

 where, immutability realized. So, having begun by refus- 

 ing to Ideas an independent existence, and finding himself 

 nevertheless unable to deprive them of it, Aristotle pressed 

 them into each other, rolled them up into a ball, and set 

 above the physical world a Form that was thus found to be 



