its end, that is to
say, to homogeneous space, results in making us count, measure, follow
in their respective variations terms that are functions one of another.
To effect this prolongation of the movement, our intellect has only to
let itself go, for it runs naturally to space and mathematics,
intellectuality and materiality being of the same nature and having been
produced in the same way.

If the mathematical order were a positive thing, if there were, immanent
in matter, laws comparable to those of our codes, the success of our
science would have in it something of the miraculous. What chances
should we have indeed of finding the standard of nature and of isolating
exactly, in order to determine their reciprocal relations, the very
variables which nature has chosen? But the success of a science of
mathematical form would be no less incomprehensible, if matter did not
already possess everything necessary to adapt itself to our formulae.
One hypothesis only, therefore, remains plausible, namely, that the
mathematical order is nothing positive, that it is the form toward which
a certain _interruption_ tends of itself, and that materiality consists
precisely in an interruption of this kind. We shall understand then why
our science is contingent, relative to the variables it has chosen,
relative to the order in which it has successively put the problems, and
why nevertheless it succeeds. It might have been, as a whole, altogether
different, and yet have succeeded. This is so, just because there is no
definite system of mathematical laws, at the base of nature, and because
mathematics in general represents simply the side to which matter
inclines. Put one of those little cork dolls with leaden feet in any
posture, lay it on its back, turn it up on its head, throw it into the
air: it will always stand itself up again, automatically. So likewise
with matter: we can take it by any end and handle it in any way, it will
always fall back into some one of our mathematical formulae, because it
is weighted with geometry.

* * * * *

But the philosopher will perhaps refuse to found a theory of knowledge
on such considerations. They will be repugnant to him, because the
mathematical order, being order, will appear to him to contain something
positive. It is in vain that we assert that this order produces itself
automatically by the interruption of the inverse order, that it is this
very interrupti