320 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



accomplished. It is by this, and by this only, that 

 the complex act is distinguished and defined. We 

 should be very much embarrassed if we had to 

 imagine the movements inherent in the actions of 

 eating, drinking, fighting, etc. It is enough for us 

 to know, in a general and indefinite way, that all these 

 acts are movements. Once that side of the matter 

 has been settled, we simply seek to represent the 

 general plan of each of these complex movements, 

 that is to say the motionless design that underlies them. 

 Here again knowledge bears on a state rather than on 

 a change. It is therefore the same with this third 

 case as with the others. Whether the movement be 

 qualitative or evolutionary or extensive, the mind 

 manages to take stable views of the instability. And 

 thence the mind derives, as we have just shown, three 

 kinds of representations : (i) qualities, (2) forms or 

 essences, (3) acts. 



To these three ways of seeing correspond three 

 categories of words : adjectives, substantives and verbs, 

 which are the primordial elements of language. Adjec 

 tives and substantives therefore symbolize states. But 

 the verb itself, if we keep to the clear part of the idea 

 it calls up, hardly expresses anything else. 



Now, if we try to characterize more precisely our 

 natural attitude towards Becoming, this is what we 

 find. Becoming is infinitely varied. That which goes 

 from yellow to green is not like that which goes from 

 green to blue: they are different qualitative movements. 

 That which goes from flower to fruit is not like that 

 which goes from larva to nymph and from nymph to 

 perfect insect : they are different evolutionary movements. 

 The action of eating or of drinking is not like the 



