the philosophy of Ideas, a particular
conception of causality, which it is important to bring into full
light, because it is that which each of us will reach when, in order to
ascend to the origin of things, he follows to the end the natural
movement of the intellect. True, the ancient philosophers never
formulated it explicitly. They confined themselves to drawing the
consequences of it, and, in general, they have marked but points of view
of it rather than presented it itself. Sometimes, indeed, they speak of
an _attraction_, sometimes of an _impulsion_ exercised by the prime
mover on the whole of the world. Both views are found in Aristotle, who
shows us in the movement of the universe an aspiration of things toward
the divine perfection, and consequently an ascent toward God, while he
describes it elsewhere as the effect of a contact of God with the first
sphere and as descending, consequently, from God to things. The
Alexandrians, we think, do no more than follow this double indication
when they speak of _procession_ and _conversion_. Everything is derived
from the first principle, and everything aspires to return to it. But
these two conceptions of the divine causality can only be identified
together if we bring them, both the one and the other, back to a third,
which we hold to be fundamental, and which alone will enable us to
understand, not only why, in what sense, things move in space and time,
but also why there is space and time, why there is movement, why there
are things.

This conception, which more and more shows through the reasonings of the
Greek philosophers as we go from Plato to Plotinus, we may formulate
thus: _The affirmation of a reality implies the simultaneous affirmation
of all the degrees of reality intermediate between it and nothing._ The
principle is evident in the case of number: we cannot affirm the number
10 without thereby affirming the existence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, ...,
etc.--in short, of the whole interval between 10 and zero. But here our
mind passes naturally from the sphere of quantity to that of quality.
It seems to us that, a certain perfection being given, the whole
continuity of degradations is given also between this perfection, on the
one hand, and the nought, on the other hand, that we think we conceive.
Let us then posit the God of Aristotle, thought of thought--that is,
thought _making a circle_, transforming itself from subject to object
and from object to subject by