And yet it is not complete liberty nor absolute indetermination, since any
kind of idea, taken at hazard, would not present the articulation desired.

"In short, none of the simple concepts furnished us by philosophy could
express the relation we seek, but this relation appears with tolerable
clearness to result from experiment."

The same analysis of facts tells us how the planes of consciousness, of
which I spoke just now, are arranged, the law by which they are
distributed, and the meaning which attaches to their disposition. Let us
neglect the intervening multiples, and look only at the extreme poles of
the series.

We are inclined to imagine too abrupt a severance between gesture and
dream, between action and thought, between body and mind. There are not
two plane surfaces, without thickness or transition, placed one above the
other on different levels; it is by an imperceptible degradation of
increasing depth, and decreasing materiality, that we pass from one term to
the other.

And the characteristics are continually changing in the course of the
transition. Thus our initial problem confronts us again, more acutely than
ever: are the forms of number and space equally suitable on all planes of
consciousness?

Let us consider the most external of these planes of life, and one which is
in contact with the outer world, the one which receives directly the
impressions of external reality. We live as a rule on the surface of
ourselves, in the numerical and spatial dispersion of language and gesture.
Our deeper ego is covered as it were with a tough crust, hardened in