e positions
attributed to the moving object, _more_ in a becoming than in the forms
passed through in turn, _more_ in the evolution of form than the forms
assumed one after another. Philosophy can therefore derive terms of the
second kind from those of the first, but not the first from the second:
from the first terms speculation must take its start. But the intellect
reverses the order of the two groups; and, on this point, ancient
philosophy proceeds as the intellect does. It installs itself in the
immutable, it posits only Ideas. Yet becoming exists: it is a fact. How,
then, having posited immutability alone, shall we make change come forth
from it? Not by the addition of anything, for, by the hypothesis, there
exists nothing positive outside Ideas. It must therefore be by a
diminution. So at the base of ancient philosophy lies necessarily this
postulate: that there is more in the motionless than in the moving, and
that we pass from immutability to becoming by way of diminution or
attenuation.

It is therefore something negative, or zero at most, that must be added
to Ideas to obtain change. In that consists the Platonic "non-being,"
the Aristotelian "matter"--a metaphysical zero which, joined to the
Idea, like the arithmetical zero to unity, multiplies it in space and
time. By it the motionless and simple Idea is refracted into a movement
spread out indefinitely. In right, there ought to be nothing but
immutable Ideas, immutably fitted to each other. In fact, matter comes
to add to them its void, and thereby lets loose the universal becoming.
It is an elusive nothing, that creeps between the Ideas and creates
endless agitation, eternal disquiet, like a suspicion insinuated between
two loving hearts. Degrade the immutable Ideas: you obtain, by that
alone, the perpetual flux of things. The Ideas or Forms are the whole of
intelligible reality, that is to say, of truth, in that they represent,
all together, the theoretical equilibrium of Being. As to sensible
reality, it is a perpetual oscillation from one side to the other of
this point of equilibrium.

Hence, throughout the whole philosophy of Ideas there is a certain
conception of duration, as also of the relation of time to eternity. He
who installs himself in becoming sees in duration the very life of
things, the fundamental reality. The Forms, which the mind isolates and
stores up in concepts, are then only snapshots of the changing reality.
They are moments gat