x THE VITAL IMPETUS 95 



complexity to the views we take in turning around it, 

 to the symbols by which our senses or intellect repre 

 sent it to us, or, more generally, to elements of a 

 different order^ with which we try to imitate it arti 

 ficially, but with which it remains incommensurable, 

 being of a different nature. An artist of genius has 

 painted a figure on his canvas. We can imitate his 

 picture with many-coloured squares of mosaic. And 

 we shall reproduce the curves and shades of the model 

 so much the better as our squares are smaller, more 

 numerous and more varied in tone. But an infinity of 

 elements infinitely small, presenting an infinity of shades, 

 would be necessary to obtain the exact equivalent of the 

 figure that the artist has conceived as a simple thing, 

 which he has wished to transport as a whole to the 

 canvas, and which is the more complete the more it 

 strikes us as the projection of an indivisible intuition. 

 Now, suppose our eyes so made that they cannot help 

 seeing in the work of the master a mosaic effect. Or 

 suppose our intellect so made that it cannot explain the 

 appearance of the figure on the canvas except as a work 

 of mosaic. We should then be able to speak simply 

 of a collection of little squares, and we should be 

 under the mechanistic hypothesis. We might add 

 that, beside the materiality of the collection, there must 

 be a plan on which the artist worked ; and then we 

 should be expressing ourselves as finalists. But in 

 neither case should we have got at the real process, 

 for there are no squares brought together. It is the 

 picture, i.e. the simple act, projected on the canvas, 

 which, by the mere fact of entering into our per 

 ception, is decomposed before our eyes into thousands 

 and thousands of little squares which present, as 

 ^composed, a wonderful arrangement. So the eye, 



