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Now we know that the inner coherence of a physical body is due to its point-relationship, that is to the gravitational force bound up with it. Indeed, cohesion increases as we pass from the gaseous, through the liquid, to the solid state of matter. Whilst a body's cohesion is due to gravity, its spatial extendedness is, as we have seen, due to levity.
For Bergson "spatial" means "logical," and since so much misunderstanding seems to have been caused by his using the word "space" in this peculiar sense we shall perhaps do better in what follows to use the word "logical" instead.
In the previous lecture I sketched how the principle was applied to obtain the time-series. I now proceed to consider how the spatial entities are obtained by the same method. The systematic procedure is identical in principle in both cases, and I have called the general type of procedure the 'method of extensive abstraction.
There was nothing for it, if science was to proceed, but to clear the ground and replant with spruce in rows: to postulate a single uniform nature, of which there should be a single science. Now neither probatology nor cynology could hope to be universal the world is not all sheep nor all dog: it would have to be hylology; for the world is, in its spatial aspect, all material.
On the contrary, certain capacities of an individual are not brought out except under the stimulus of associating with others. That a child must work alone and not engage in group activities in order to be free and let his individuality develop, is a notion which measures individuality by spatial distance and makes a physical thing of it.
This can be so only if the average spatial density of the matter in universal space, concentrated in the stars, vanishes, i.e. if the ratio of the total mass of the stars to the magnitude of the space through which they are scattered approximates indefinitely to the value zero when the spaces taken into consideration are constantly greater and greater. The universe is spatially finite.
A more curious fact is the transposition of sonorous sensations or images of sound, and like them without form or figure, into visual and motor images: "The ruffles of sound that the fifer cuts out; the flute goes up to alto like a frail capital on a column." This thoroughly plastic imagination remains identical with itself while reducing everything spontaneously, unconsciously, to spatial terms.
It evolved the Intellect to cope with Matter. This is why Reason is at home, not in life and freedom, but in solid Matter, in mechanical and spatial distinctions. There is thus an eternal conflict in progress between Spirit and Matter. The latter is always tending to automatism, to the sacrifice of the Spirit with its creative power.
The goal of the world-development is deliverance from the misery of existence, the peace of non-existence, the return from the will and representation, become spatial and temporal, to the original, harmonious equilibrium of the two functions, which has been disturbed by the origin of the world or to the antemundane identity of the absolute.
Through Kepler's third law a certain relation is expressed between the spatial dimensions of the different planetary spheres and the time needed by the relevant planet to circle once round the circumference of its own sphere.
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