330 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 



meaning of the expression, or we shall find that, when 

 we posit the subject &quot;child,&quot; the attribute &quot;man&quot; 

 does not yet apply to it, and that, when we express 

 the attribute &quot; man,&quot; it applies no more to the subject 

 &quot; child.&quot; The reality, which is the transition from 

 childhood to manhood, has slipped between our fingers. 

 We have only the imaginary stops &quot; child &quot; and &quot; man,&quot; 

 and we are very near to saying that one of these stops 

 is the other, just as the arrow of Zeno is, according 

 to that philosopher, at all the points of the course. 

 The truth is that if language here were moulded on 

 reality, we should not say &quot; The child becomes the 

 man,&quot; but &quot;There is becoming from the child to the 

 man.&quot; In the first proposition, &quot; becomes &quot; is a verb 

 of indeterminate meaning, intended to mask the 

 absurdity into which we fall when we attribute the 

 state &quot;man&quot; to the subject &quot;child.&quot; It behaves in 

 much the same way as the movement, always the same, 

 of the cinematographical film, a movement hidden in the 

 apparatus and whose function it is to superpose the 

 successive pictures on one another in order to imitate 

 the movement of the real object. In the second pro 

 position, &quot; becoming &quot; is a subject. It comes to the 

 front. It is the reality itself ; childhood and manhood 

 are then only possible stops, mere views of the mind ; 

 we now have to do with the objective movement itself, 

 and no longer with its cinematographical imitation. 

 But the first manner of expression is alone conformable 

 to our habits of language. We must, in order to 

 adopt the second, escape from the cinematographical 

 mechanism of thought. 



We must make complete abstraction of this mechan 

 ism, if we wish to get rid at one stroke of the theoretical 

 absurdities that the question of movement raises. All 



