ery original rut.
Just so, in a curve, the same direction is _never_ followed, and the
conception of it as a myriad-sided polygon falsifies it by
supposing it to do so for however short a time. Peirce speaks of an
'infinitesimal' tendency to diversification. The mathematical notion
of an infinitesimal contains, in truth, the whole paradox of the same
and yet the nascent other, of an identity that won't _keep_ except so
far as it keeps _failing_, that won't _transfer_, any more than the
serial relations in question transfer, when you apply them to reality
instead of applying them to concepts alone.

A friend of mine has an idea, which illustrates on such a magnified
scale the impossibility of tracing the same line through reality, that
I will mention it here. He thinks that nothing more is needed to make
history 'scientific' than to get the content of any two epochs (say
the end of the thirteenth and the end of the nineteenth century)
accurately defined, then accurately to define the direction of the
change that led from the one epoch into the other, and finally to
prolong the line of that direction into the future. So prolonging the
line, he thinks, we ought to be able to define the actual state
of things at any future date we please. We all feel the essential
unreality of such a conception of 'history' as this; but if such a
synechistic pluralism as Peirce, Bergson, and I believe in, be what
really exists, every phenomenon of development, even the simplest,
would prove equally rebellious to our science should the latter
pretend to give us literally accurate instead of approximate, or
statistically generalized, pictures of the development of reality.

I can give no further account of Mr. Peirce's ideas in this note, but
I earnestly advise all students of Bergson to compare them with those
of the french philosopher.

INDEX

INDEX TO THE LECTURES

Absolute, the, 49, 108-109, 114 ff., 173, 175, 190 ff., 203, 271, 292 ff.,
311; not the same as God, 111, 134; its rationality, 114 f.; its
irrationality, 117-129; difficulty of conceiving it, 195.

Absolutism, 34, 38, 40, 54, 72 f, 79, 122, 310. See Monism.

Achilles and tortoise, 228, 255.

All-form, the, 34, 324.

Analogy, 8, 151 f.

Angels, 164.

Antinomies, 231, 239.

ARISTIDES, 304.

BAILEY, S., 5.

BERGSON, H., Lecture VI, _passim_. His characteristics, 226 f, 266.

'Between,' 70.

Block-universe, 310, 328.