,i THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 163 



being, at bottom, only the refusal of our mind, before 

 any actually given system of decomposition, to regard 

 it as the only possible one. Of the discontinuous alone 

 does the intellect form a clear idea. 



On the other hand, the objects we act on are cer 

 tainly mobile objects, but the important thing for us to 

 know is whither the mobile object is going and where 

 it is at any moment of its passage. In other words, our 

 interest is directed, before all, to its actual or future 

 positions, and not to the progress by which it passes 

 from one position to another, progress which is the 

 movement itself. In our actions, which are systematized 

 movements, what we fix our mind on is the end or 

 meaning of the movement, its design as a whole in 

 a word, the immobile plan of its execution. That 

 which really moves in action interests us only so far as 

 the whole can be advanced, retarded, or stopped by 

 any incident that may happen on the way. From 

 mobility itself our intellect turns aside, because it has 

 nothing to gain in dealing with it. If the intellect were 

 meant for pure theorizing, it would take its place 

 within movement, for movement is reality itself, and 

 immobility is always only apparent or relative. But 

 the intellect is meant for something altogether different. 

 Unless it does violence to itself, it takes the opposite 

 course ; it always starts from immobility, as if this 

 were the ultimate reality : when it tries to form an 

 idea of movement, it does so by constructing movement 

 out of immobilities put together. This operation, 

 whose illegitimacy and danger in the field of specula 

 tion we shall show later on (it leads to dead-locks, 

 and creates artificially insoluble philosophical problems), 

 is easily justified when we refer it to its proper goal. 

 Intelligence, in its natural state, aims at a practically 



