iv FORM AND BECOMING 319 



Inertia of our perception, we say that the body has 

 changed its form. But in reality the body is changing -&quot; 

 form at every moment ; or rather, there is no form, 

 since form_is immobile and the reality is movement. 

 What is real is the continual change of form : form 

 is only a snapshot mew of a transition. Therefore, 

 here again, our perception manages to solidify into 

 discontinuous images the fluid continuity of the real. 

 When the successive images do not differ from each 

 other too much, we consider them all as the waxing and 

 waning of a single mean image, or as the deformation 

 of this image in different directions. And to this 

 mean we really allude when we speak of the essence of 

 a thing, or of the thing itself. 



Finally things, once constituted, show on the 

 surface, by their changes of situation, the profound 

 changes that are being accomplished within the Whole. 

 We say then that they act on one another. This action 

 appears to us, no doubt, in the form of movement. 

 But from the mobility of the movement we turn away 

 as much as we can ; what interests us is, as we said 

 above, the unmovable plan of the movement rather 

 than the movement itself. Is it a simple movement ? 

 We ask ourselves where it is going. It is by its 

 direction, that is to say, by the position of its provisional 

 end, that we represent it at every moment. Is it a 

 complex movement ? We would know above all 

 what is going on, what the movement is doing in 

 other words, the result obtained or the presiding 

 intention. Examine closely what is in your mind 

 when you speak of an action in course of accom 

 plishment. The idea of change is there, I am willing 

 to grant, but it is hidden in the penumbra. In the 

 full light is the motionless plan of the act supposed 



