of matter,
molded on the mobile articulations of matter, implicitly given, in fact,
with the space that underlies matter? As long as it turns upon space or
spatialized time, it has only to let itself go. It is _duration_ that
puts spokes in its wheels.

* * * * *

Deduction, then, does not work unless there be spatial intuition behind
it. But we may say the same of induction. It is not necessary indeed to
think geometrically, nor even to think at all, in order to expect from
the same conditions a repetition of the same fact. The consciousness of
the animal already does this work, and indeed, independently of all
consciousness, the living body itself is so constructed that it can
extract from the successive situations in which it finds itself the
similarities which interest it, and so respond to the stimuli by
appropriate reactions. But it is a far cry from a mechanical expectation
and reaction of the body, to induction properly so called, which is an
intellectual operation. Induction rests on the belief that there are
causes and effects, and that the same effects follow the same causes.
Now, if we examine this double belief, this is what we find. It implies,
in the first place, that reality is decomposable into groups, which can
be practically regarded as isolated and independent. If I boil water in
a kettle on a stove, the operation and the objects that support it are,
in reality, bound up with a multitude of other objects and a multitude
of other operations; in the end, I should find that our entire solar
system is concerned in what is being done at this particular point of
space. But, in a certain measure, and for the special end I am pursuing,
I may admit that things happen as if the group _water-kettle-stove_ were
an independent microcosm. That is my first affirmation. Now, when I say
that this microcosm will always behave in the same way, that the heat
will necessarily, at the end of a certain time, cause the boiling of the
water, I admit that it is sufficient that a certain number of elements
of the system be given in order that the system should be complete; it
completes itself automatically, I am not free to complete it in thought
as I please. The stove, the kettle and the water being given, with a
certain interval of duration, it seems to me that the boiling, which
experience showed me yesterday to be the only thing wanting to complete
the system, will complete it to-morrow, no