tainly be first, as alone making an intelligible continuity out of
discontinuous perception and restoring total unity to each temporary
part by a synthetic dialectic. But all this really has meaning
only after analysis has taken place. The demand for rational unity
constitutes in the bosom of atomism something like a murmur of deep
underlying continuity: it expresses in the very language of atomism,
atomism's basic irreality. There is no question of misunderstanding
reason, but only of putting it in its proper place. In a perspective
of complete intuition nothing would require to be unified. Reason would
then be reabsorbed in perception. That is to say, its present task is
to measure and correct in us the limits, gaps, and weaknesses of the
perceptive faculty. In this respect not a man of us thinks of denying
it its task. But we try with Mr Bergson to reduce this task to its true
worth and genuine importance. For we are decidedly tired of hearing
"Reason" invoked in solemn and moving tones, as if to write the
venerable name with the largest of capital R's were a magic solution of
all problems.

Mind, in fact, sets out from unity rather than arrives at it; and the
order which it appears to discover subsequently in an experience which
at first is manifold and incoherent is only a refraction of the original
unity through the prism of a spontaneous analysis. Mr Bergson admirably
points out ("Creative Evolution", pages 240-244 and 252-257.) that there
are two types of order, geometric and vital, the one a static hierarchy
of relations, the other a musical continuity of moments. These two types
are opposed, as space to duration and matter to mind; but the negation
of one coincides with the position of the other. It is therefore
impossible to abolish both at once. The idea of disorder does not
correspond to any genuine reality. It is essentially relative, and
arises only when we do not meet the type of order which we were
expecting; and then it expresses our deception in the language of our
expectation, the absence of the expected order being equivalent, from
the practical point of view, to the absence of all order. Regarded in
itself, this notion is only a verbal entity, unduly taking form as the
common basis of two antithetic types. How therefore do we come to speak
of a "perceptible diversity" which mind has to regulate and unify?
This is only true at most of the disjointed experience employed
by common-sense. Reason, accep