ty, extension and duration. By
increasing degradations we will obtain attributes more and more special.
Here the philosopher's fancy will have free scope, for it is by an
arbitrary decree, or at least a debatable one, that a particular aspect
of the sensible world will be equated with a particular diminution of
being. We shall not necessarily end, as Aristotle did, in a world
consisting of concentric spheres turning on themselves. But we shall be
led to an analogous cosmology--I mean, to a construction whose pieces,
though all different, will have none the less the same relations between
them. And this cosmology will be ruled by the same principle. The
physical will be defined by the logical. Beneath the changing phenomena
will appear to us, by transparence, a closed system of concepts
subordinated to and coordinated with each other. Science, understood as
the system of concepts, will be more real than the sensible reality. It
will be prior to human knowledge, which is only able to spell it letter
by letter; prior also to things, which awkwardly try to imitate it. It
would only have to be diverted an instant from itself in order to step
out of its eternity and thereby coincide with all this knowledge and all
these things. Its immutability is therefore, indeed, the cause of the
universal becoming.

Such was the point of view of ancient philosophy in regard to change
and duration. That modern philosophy has repeatedly, but especially in
its beginnings, had the wish to depart from it, seems to us
unquestionable. But an irresistible attraction brings the intellect back
to its natural movement, and the metaphysic of the moderns to the
general conclusions of the Greek metaphysic. We must try to make this
point clear, in order to show by what invisible threads our mechanistic
philosophy remains bound to the ancient philosophy of Ideas, and how
also it responds to the requirements, above all practical, of our
understanding.

* * * * *

Modern, like ancient, science proceeds according to the
cinematographical method. It cannot do otherwise; all science is subject
to this law. For it is of the essence of science to handle _signs_,
which it substitutes for the objects themselves. These signs undoubtedly
differ from those of language by their greater precision and their
higher efficacy; they are none the less tied down to the general
condition of the sign, which is to denote a fixed aspect of the r