iv.l MODERN SCIENCE 343 



of events; in return, it retains of the moving reality only 

 eventual immobilities, that is to say, views taken of it by 

 our mind. It symbolizes the real and transposes it into 

 the human rather than expresses it. The other knowledge, 

 if it is possible, is practically useless, it will not extend 

 our empire over nature, it will even go against certain 

 natural aspirations of the intellect; but, if it succeeds, it is 

 reality itself that it will hold in a firm and final embrace. 

 Not only may we thus complete the intellect and its know- 

 ledge of matter by accustoming it to install itself within 

 the moving, but by developing also another faculty, com- 

 plementary to the intellect, we may open a perspective on 

 the other half of the real. For, as soon as we are con- 

 fronted with true duration, we see that it means creation, 

 and that if that which is being unmade endures, it can only 

 be because it is inseparably bound to what is making itself. 

 Thus will appear the necessity of a continual growth of the 

 universe, I should say of a life of the real. And thus will 

 be seen in a new light the life which we find on the surface 

 of our planet, a life directed the same way as that of the 

 universe, and inverse of materiality. To intellect, in short, 

 there will be added intuition. 



The more we reflect on it, the more we shall find that this 

 conception of metaphysics is that which modern science 

 suggests. 



For the ancients, indeed, time is theoretically negligible, 

 because the duration of a thing only manifests the degra- 

 dation' of its essence: it is with this motionless essence 

 that science has to deal. Change being only the effort of a 

 form toward its own realization, the realization is all that 

 it concerns us to know. No doubt the realization is never 

 complete: it is this that ancient philosophy expresses by 

 saying that we do not perceive form without matter. But 

 if we consider the changing object at a certain essential 



