326 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



arrow leaves the point A to fall down at the point B, 

 its movement AB is as simple, as indecomposable, in 

 so far as it is movement, as the tension of the bow that 

 shoots it. As the shrapnel, bursting before it falls to 

 the ground, covers the explosive zone with an indivisible 

 danger, so the arrow which goes from A to B displays 

 with a single stroke, although over a certain extent of 

 duration, its indivisible mobility. Suppose an elastic 

 stretched from A to B, could you divide its extension ? 

 The course of the arrow is this very extension ; it is 

 equally simple and equally undivided. It is a single 

 and unique bound. You fix a point C in the interval 

 passed, and say that at a certain moment the arrow 

 was in C. If it had been there, it would have been 

 stopped there, and you would no longer have had a 

 flight from A to B, but two flights, one from A to C 

 and the other from C to B, with an interval of rest. 

 A single movement is entirely, by the hypothesis, a 

 movement between two stops ; if there are intermediate 

 stops, it is no longer a single movement. At bottom, 

 the illusion arises from this, that the movement, once 

 effected^ has laid along its course a motionless trajectory 

 on which we can count as many immobilities as we will. 

 From this we conclude that the movement, whilst being 

 effected^ lays at each instant beneath it a position with 

 which it coincides. We do not see that the trajectory 

 is created in one stroke, although a certain time is 

 required for it ; and that though we can divide at will 

 the trajectory once created, we cannot divide its 

 creation, which is an act in progress and not a thing. 

 To suppose that the moving body is at a point of its 

 course is to cut the course in two by a snip of the 

 scissors at this point, and to substitute two trajectories 

 for the single trajectory which we were first considering. 



