nd arrival point. On the other hand, from the
point of view of quality, we have something which is being used up,
lowered, degraded, exhausted: energy expended, movement dissipated,
constructions breaking up, weights falling, levels becoming equalised,
and differences effaced. The travel of the material world appears then
as a loss, a movement of fall and descent.

In addition, there is only a tendency to conservation, a tendency which
is never realised except imperfectly; while, on the contrary, we notice
that the failure of the vital impulse is most infallibly interpreted by
the appearance of mechanism. Reality falling asleep or breaking up
is the figure under which we finally observe matter: matter then is
secondary.

Finally, according to Mr Bergson, matter is defined as a kind of
descent; this descent as the interruption of an ascent; this ascent
itself as growth; and thus a principle of creation is at the base of
things.

Such a view seems obscure and disturbing to the mathematical
understanding. It cannot accustom itself to the idea of a becoming which
is more than a simple change of distribution, and more than a simple
expression of latent wealth. When confronted with such an idea, it
always harks back to its eternal question: How has something come out
of nothing? The question is false; for the idea of nothing is only
a pseudo-idea. Nothing is unthinkable, since to think nothing is
necessarily to think or not to think something; and according to Mr
Bergson's formula, (Cf. the discussion on existence and non-existence in
chapter iv. of "Creative Evolution", pages 298-322.) "the representation
of void is always a full representation." When I say: "There is
nothing," it is not that I perceive a "nothing." I never perceive
except what is. But I have not perceived what I was seeking, what I was
expecting, and I express my deception in the language of my desire. Or
else I am speaking a language of construction, implying that I do not
yet possess what I intend to make.

Let us abruptly forget these idols of practical action and language.
The becoming of evolution will then appear to us in its true light, as
phases of gradual maturation, rounded at intervals by crises of creative
discovery. Continuity and discontinuity will thus admit possibility of
reconciliation, the one as an aspect of ascent towards the future, the
other as an aspect of retrospection after the event. And we shall
see that the same key will in