336 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



that their present positions might be noted, and that a 

 superhuman intellect might, by submitting these data to 

 mathematical operations, determine the positions of the 

 elements at any other moment of time. This conviction 

 is at the bottom of the questions we put to ourselves on 

 the subject of nature, and of the methods we employ to 

 solve them. That is why every law in static form seems 

 to us as a provisional instalment or as a particular view 

 of a dynamic law which alone would give us whole and 

 definitive knowledge. 



Let us conclude, then, that our science is not only dis- 

 tinguished from ancient science in this, that it seeks laws, 

 nor even in this, that its laws set forth relations between 

 magnitudes: we must add that the magnitude to which 

 we wish to be able to relate all others is time, and that 

 modern science must be defined pre-eminently by its aspiration 

 to take time as an independent variable. But with what 

 time has it to do? 



We have said before, and we cannot repeat too often, 

 that the science of matter proceeds like ordinary know- 

 ledge. It perfects this knowledge, increases its precision 

 and its scope, but it works in the same direction and puts 

 the same mechanism into play. If, therefore, ordinary 

 knowledge, by reason of the cinematographical mechanism 

 to which it is subjected, forbears to follow becoming in so 

 far as becoming is moving, the science of matter renounces 

 it equally. No doubt, it distinguishes as great a number 

 of moments as we wish in the interval of time it considers. 

 However small the intervals may be at which it stops, it 

 authorizes us to divide them again if necessary. In con- 

 trast with ancient science, which stopped at certain so- 

 called essential moments, it is occupied indifferently with 

 any moment whatever. But it always considers moments, 

 always virtual stopping-places, always, in short, immobili- 



