90 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



presenting an infinity of shades, would be necessary to 

 obtain the exact equivalent of the figure that the artist 

 has conceived as a simple thing, which he has wished to 

 transport as a whole to the canvas, and which is the more 

 complete the more it strikes us as the projection of an 

 indivisible intuition. Now, suppose our eyes so made 

 that they cannot help seeing in the work of the master 

 a mosaic effect. Or suppose our intellect so made that it 

 cannot explain the appearance of the figure on the canvas 

 except as a work of mosaic. We should then be able to 

 speak simply of a collection of little squares, and we should 

 be under the mechanistic hypothesis. We might add 

 that, beside the materiality of the collection, there must 

 be a plan on which the artist worked ; and then we should 

 be expressing ourselves as finalists. But in neither case 

 should we have got at the real process, for there are no 

 squares brought together. It is the picture, i.e. the simple 

 act, projected on the canvas, which, by the mere fact of 

 entering into our perception, is decomposed before our 

 eyes into thousands and thousands of little squares which 

 present, as recomposed, a wonderful arrangement. So 

 the eye, with its marvelous complexity of structure, may be 

 only the simple act of vision, divided for us into a mosaic 

 of cells, whose order seems marvelous to us because we 

 have conceived the whole as an assemblage. 



If I raise my hand from A to B, this movement appears 

 to me under two aspects at once. Felt from within, it is a 

 simple, indivisible act. Perceived from without, it is the 

 course of a certain curve, AB. In this curve I can dis- 

 tinguish as many positions as I please, and the line it- 

 self might be defined as a certain mutual coordination of 

 these positions. But the positions, infinite in number, 

 and the order in which they are connected, have sprung 

 automatically from the indivisible act by which my hand 



