an explanation. If order did not appear to us as a conquest over
something, or as an addition to something (which something is thought to
be the "absence of order"), ancient realism would not have spoken of a
"matter" to which the Idea superadded itself, nor would modern idealism
have supposed a "sensuous manifold" that the understanding organizes
into nature. Now, it is unquestionable that all order is contingent, and
conceived as such. But contingent in relation to what?

The reply, to our thinking, is not doubtful. An order is contingent, and
seems so, in relation to the inverse order, as verse is contingent in
relation to prose and prose in relation to verse. But, just as all
speech which is not prose is verse and necessarily conceived as verse,
just as all speech which is not verse is prose and necessarily conceived
as prose, so any state of things that is not one of the two orders is
the other and is necessarily conceived as the other. But it may happen
that we do not realize what we are actually thinking of, and perceive
the idea really present to our mind only through a mist of affective
states. Any one can be convinced of this by considering the use we make
of the idea of disorder in daily life. When I enter a room and pronounce
it to be "in disorder," what do I mean? The position of each object is
explained by the automatic movements of the person who has slept in the
room, or by the efficient causes, whatever they may be, that have caused
each article of furniture, clothing, etc., to be where it is: the order,
in the second sense of the word, is perfect. But it is order of the
first kind that I am expecting, the order that a methodical person
consciously puts into his life, the willed order and not the automatic:
so I call the absence of this order "disorder." At bottom, all there is
that is real, perceived and even conceived, in this absence of one of
the two kinds of order, is the presence of the other. But the second is
indifferent to me, _I am interested only in the first_, and I express
the presence of the second as a function of the first, instead of
expressing it, so to speak, as a function of itself, by saying it is
_disorder_. Inversely, when we affirm that we are imagining a chaos,
that is to say a state of things in which the physical world no longer
obeys laws, what are we thinking of? We imagine facts that appear and
disappear _capriciously_. First we think of the physical universe as we
know it,