but suppose that the order is everywhere of the same kind, and simply admits of degrees which go from the geometrical to the vital: if a determinate order still appears to me to be contingent, and can no longer be so by relation to an order of another kind,

i shall necessarily believe that the order is contingent by relation to an absence of itself, that is to say by the relation to a state of things "in which there is no order at all."

and this state of things i shall believe that i am thinking of, because it is implied, it seems, in the very contingency of order, which is an unquestionable fact.


henri bergson,
the two kinds of order.