FORM AND BECOMING 321 



action of fighting : they are different extensive move 

 ments. And these three kinds of movement them 

 selves qualitative, evolutionary, extensive differ 

 profoundly. The trick of our perception, like that of 

 our intelligence, like that of our language, consists in 

 extracting from these profoundly different becomings 

 the single representation of becoming in general, un 

 defined becoming, a mere abstraction which by itself 

 says nothing and of which, indeed, it is very rarely 

 that we think. To this idea, always the same, and 

 always obscure or unconscious, we then join, in each 

 particular case, one or several clear images that repre 

 sent states and which serve to distinguish all becomings 

 from each other. It is this composition of a specified 

 and definite state with change general and unde 

 fined that we substitute for the specific change. An 

 infinite multiplicity of becomings variously coloured, 

 so to speak, passes before our eyes : we manage so that 

 we see only differences of colour, that is to say, differ 

 ences of state, beneath which there is supposed to flow, 

 hidden from our view, a becoming always and every 

 where the same, invariably colourless. 



Suppose we wish to portray on a screen a living 

 picture, such as the marching past of a regiment. 

 There is one way in which it might first occur to us 

 to do it. That would be to cut out jointed figures 

 representing the soldiers, to give to each of them the 

 movement of marching, a movement varying from 

 individual to individual although common to the 



o 



human species, and to throw the whole on the screen. 

 We should need to spend on this little game an 

 enormous amount of work, and even then we should 

 obtain but a very poor result : how could it, at its best, 

 reproduce the suppleness and variety of life ? Now, 



Y 



