An Introduction to
a mere symbol, in any case a motionless
view of the moving reality.
A^But the error consists in believing that
we can reconstruct the real with these dia-
grams. As we have already said and may
as well repeat here — from intuition one can
pass to^naljsis, but not from analyaia to
intuition.
Out of variability we can make as many
variations, qualities and modifications as we
please, since these are so many static views,
taken by analysis, of the mobility given to
intuition. But these modifications, put end
/ to end, will produce nothing which re-
\ sembles variability, since they are not parts
of it, but elements, which is quite a different
thing.
Consider, for example, the variability
which is nearest to homogeneity, that of
movement in space. Along the whole of
this movement we can imagine possible stop-
pages ; these are what we call the positions
of the moving body, or the points by which
But with these positions, even
Metaphysics 49
with an infinite number of them, we shall
never make movement. They are not parts
of the movement, they are so many snap-
shots of it; they are, one might say, only
supposed stopping-places. The moving boc^^'^^ C * * ^
is never really in any of the points : the X
most we can say is that it passes through/
them. But passage, which is movement, has
nothing in common with stoppage, which
is immobility. A movement cannot be
superposed on an immobility, or it would
then coincide with it, which would be a
contradiction. The points are not in the
movement, as parts, nor even beneath it,
as positions occupied by the moving body.
They are simply projected by us under the
movement, as so many places where a mov-
ing body, which by hypothesis does not
stop, would be if it were to stop. They are
not, therefore, properly speaking, positions, .
but " suppositions," aspects, or points of
view of the mind. But how could we con-
struct a thing with points of view?
Nevertheless, this is what we try to do j
50 An Introduction to
whenever we reason about movement, and also about time, for which movement serves
[ as a means of representation. As a result
of an illusion deeply rooted in our mind,
and because we cannot prevent ourselves
J from considering analysis as the equivalent
N^of intuition, we begin by distinguishing
along the whole extent of the movement, a
certain number of possible stoppages or
points, which we make, whether they like
it or no, parts of the movement. Faced
with our impotence to reconstruct the move-
ment with these points, we insert other
points, believing that we can in this way
get nearer to the essential mobility in the
movement. Then, as this mobility still es-
capes us, we substitute for a fixed and
finite number of points an " indefinitely in-
creasing" number — thus vainly trying to
counterfeit, by the movement of a thought
that goes on indefinitely adding points to
points, the real and undivided motion of
the moving body. Finally, we say that
movement is composed of points, but that
Metaphysics 51
it comprises, in addition, the obscure and
mysterious passage from one position to
the next. As if the obscurity was not due
entirely to the fact that we have supposed
immobility to be clearer than mobility and
rest anterior to movement! As if the
mystery did not follow entirely from our
attempting to pass from stoppages to
movement by way of addition, which is im-
possible, when it is so easy to pass, by
simple diminution, from movement to the
slackening of movement, and so to im-
mobility ! It is m ovement that wemust a.
custom ourselves to look upon as simplest /
and clearest, immobility being only the ex- /
treme limit of the slowing down of move- /
ment, a limit reached only, perhaps, in / ;
thought and never realized in nature. What
we have done is to seek for the meaning of
the poem in the form of the letters of which
it is composed; we have believed that by
considering an increasing number of letters
we would grasp at last the ever-escaping
meaning, and in desperation, seeing that it
An Introduction to
was useless to seek for a part of the sense
in each of the letters, we have supposed
that it was between each letter and the
next that this long-sought fragment of
the mysterious sense was lodged ! But the
/ letters, it must be pointed out once again,
are not parts of the thing, but elements of
the symbol. Again, the positions of the
moving body are not parts of the move-
ment; they are points of the space which
is supposed to underlie the movement.
This empty and immobile space which is
merely conceived, never perceived, has the
value of a symbol only. How could you
ever manufacture_j!eality_bjmanipuiating
symbols?
But the symbol in this case responds to
the most inveterate habits of our thought,
We place ourselves as a rule in immobility,
in which we find a point of support for
practical purpo.ses, and with this immo-
bility we try to reconstruct motion. We only
obtain in this way a clumsy imitation, a
counterfeit of real movement, but this imita-
Bpoi
Metaphysics 53
tion is much more useful in life than the
intuition of the thing itself would be. Now
our mind haa an irresistible tendency to
consider that idea clearest which is most
often useful to it. That is why immobility
seems to it clearer than mobility, and rest
anterior to movement.
The difficulties to which the problem of
movement has given rise from the earliest
antiquity have originated in this way. They
result always from the fact that we insist
on passing from space to movement, from
the trajectory to the flight, from immobile
isitions to mobility, and on passing from
One to the other by way of addition. But
it is movement which is anterior to im-
mobility, and the relation between positions
and a displacement is not that of parts to
a whole, but that of the diversity of pos-
sible points of view to the real indivisibility
of the object.
Many other problems are born of the
same illusion. What stationary points are
to the movement of a moving body, concepts
\n Introduction to
■ I / of different qualities are to the qualitative
I A^^ change of an object. The various concepts
into which a change can be analyzed are
therefore so many stable views of the in-
stability of the real. And to think of an
object — in the usual meaning of the word
" think " — is to take one or more of these
immobile views of its mobility. It consists,
in short, in asking from time to time where
the object is, in order that we may know
what to do with it. Nothing could be more
legitimate, moreover, than this method of
procedure, so long as we are concerned only
with a practical knowledge of reality.
Knowledge, in so far as it is directed to
practical matters, has only to enumerate
the principal possible attitudes of the thing
towards us, as well as our best possible
attitude towards it. Therein lies the oi
^ nary function of ready-made concepts, thi
iBtations with which we mark out the path
of becoming. But to seek to penetrate with
them into the inmost nature of things, is
to apply to the mobility of the real a
ible ^i irdt|M
)ath^n
Metaphysics 55
method created in order to give stationary
points of observation on it. It is to forget
that, if metaphysic is possible, it can only
be a laborious, and even painful, effort to
remount the natural slope of the work of
thought, in order fo place oneself directly,
by a kind of intellectual expansion, within
the thing studied : in short, a passage from
reality to concepts and no longer from con- {
cepts to reality. Is it astonishing that, like
children trying to catch smoke by closing
their hands, philosophers so often see the
object they would grasp fly before them?
It is in this way that many of the quarrels
between the schools are perpetuated, each
of them reproaching the others with having
allowed the real to slip away. ^^^
But if metaphysics is to proceed by in- \
ition, if intuition has the mobility of
duration as its object, and if duration is
of a psychical naturo^ shall we not be con-
fining the philosopher to the exclusive
contemplation of himself? Will not phi-
losophy come to consist in watching oneself
An Introduction to
merely live, " ae a sleepy shepherd watches
the water flow"?^ To talk in this way
would be to return to the error which, since
the beginning of this study, we have not
ceased to point out. It would be to mis-
conceive the singular nature of duration,
and at the same time the essentially active,
I might almost say violent, character of
metaphysical intuition. It wonld be fail-
ing to see that the method we speak of
alone permits us to go beyond idealism,
as well as realism, to affirm the existence
of objects inferior and superior (though in
a certain sense interior) to us, to make
them co-exist together without difficulty,
and to dissipate gradually the obscurities
that analysis accumulates round these great
problems. Without entering here upon the
study of these different points, let us con-
fine ourselves to showing how the intuition
we speak of is not a single act, but an in-
definite series of acts, all doubtless of the
> " Comme un patre assoupi regarde I'eau coaI« —BoUa, Alfred de Musset. (Tranelator's note.) '
Metaphysics 57
same kind, but each of a very particular
species, and how this diversity of acts
corresponds to all the degrees of being.
If I seek to analyse duration — that is
resolve it into ready-made concepts — I ara 1
compelled, by the very nature of the con-
cepts and of analysis, to take two opposing
views of duration- tn general, with which
I then attempt to reconstruct it. This com-
bination, which will have, moreover, some-
thing miraculous about it — since one does
not understand hiiw two contraries would
ever meet each other — can present neither
a diversity of degrees nor a variety of forms ;
like ail miracles, it is or it is not. I shall
have to say, for example, that there is on '\~
the one hand a multiplicity of successive /
states of consciousness, and on the other a
unity which binds them together. Duration
will be the " synthesis " of this unity and
this multiplicity, a mysterious operation
which takes place in darkness, and in re-
gard to which, I repeat, one does not see
[ bow it would admit of shades or of degrees.
58 An Introduction to
In this hypothesis there is, and can only
be, one single duration, that in which our
own consciousness habitually works. To
express it more clearly — ^if we consider
duration under the simple aspect of a move-
ment accomplishing itself in space, and we
seek to reduce to concepts movement con-
sidered as representative of time, we shall
have, on the one hand, as great a number
of points on the trajectory as we may de-
sire, and, on the other hand, an abstract
unity which holds them together as a thread
holds together the pearls of a necklace. Be-
tween this abstract multiplicity and this
abstract unity, the combination, when once
it has been posited as possible, is something
unique, which will no more admit of shades
than does the addition of given numbers in
arithmetic. But if, instead of professing to
analyze duration (i. e.^ at bottom, to make
a synthesis of it with concepts), we at once
place ourselves in it by an effort of intu-
ition, we have the feeling of a certain very
determinate tension, in which the determina-
Metaphysics 59
tion itself appears as a choice between an ^
infinity of possible durations. Hencefor-
ward we can picture to ourselves as many
durations as we wish, all very different
from each other, although each of them, on
being reduced to concepts — that is, observed
externally from two opposing points of view
— ^always comes in the end to the same in-
definable combination of the many and the
one.
Let us express the same idea with more
precision. If I consider duration as a
multiplicity of moments bound to each
other by a unity which goes through them
like a thread, then, however short the chosen
duration may be, these moments are un-
limited in number. I can suppose them as
close together as I please ; there will always
be between these mathematical points other
mathematical points, and so on to infinity.
Looked at from the point of view of multi-
plicity, then, duration disintegrates into a
powder of moments, none of which endures,
each being an instantaneity. If, on the