9 6 CREATIVE EVOLUTION CHAP. 



with its marvellous complexity of structure, may be 

 only the simple act of vision, divided for us into a 

 mosaic of cells, whose order seems marvellous to us 

 because we have conceived the whole as an assemblage. 

 If I raise my hand from A to B, this movement 

 appears to me under two aspects at once. Felt from 

 within, it is a simple, indivisible act. Perceived from 

 without, it is the course of a certain curve, AB. In 

 this curve I can distinguish as many positions as I 

 please, and the line itself might be defined as a certain 

 mutual coordination of these positions. But the posi 

 tions, infinite in number, and the order in which they 

 are connected, have sprung automatically from the 

 indivisible act by which my hand has gone from A to 

 B. Mechanism, here, would consist in seeing only the 

 positions. Finalism would take their order into account. 

 But both mechanism and finalism would leave on one 

 side the movement, which is reality itself. In one 

 sense, the movement is more than the positions and 

 than their order ; for it is sufficient to make it in its 

 indivisible simplicity to secure that the infinity of the 

 successive positions as also their order be given at once 

 with something else which is neither order nor 

 position but which is essential, the mobility. But, 

 in another sense, the movement is less than the series 

 of positions and their connecting order ; for, to arrange 

 points in a certain order, it is necessary first to conceive 

 the order and then to realize it with points, there must 

 be the work of assemblage and there must be intelligence, 

 whereas the simple movement of the hand contains 

 nothing of either. It is not intelligent, in the human 

 sense of the word, and it is not an assemblage, for it is 

 not made up of elements. Just so with the relation of 

 the eye to vision. There is in vision more than the 



