ii.] THE FUNCTION OF THE INTELLECT 155 



to another, progress which is the movement itself. In 

 our actions, which are systematized movements, what we 

 fix our mind on is the end or meaning of the movement, 

 its design as a whole — in a word, the immobile plan of its 

 execution. That which really moves in action interests 

 us only so far as the whole can be advanced, retarded, or 

 stopped by any incident that may happen on the way. 

 From mobility itself our intellect turns aside, because it 

 has nothing to gain in dealing with it. If the intellect were 

 meant for pure theorizing, it would take its place within 

 movement, for movement is reality itself, and immobility 

 is always only apparent or relative. But the intellect 

 is meant for something altogether different. Unless it 

 does violence to itself, it takes the opposite course; it 

 always starts from immobility, as if this were the ultimate 

 reality: when it tries to form an idea of movement, it 

 does so by constructing movement out of immobilities 

 put together. This operation, whose illegitimacy and danger 

 in the field of speculation we shall show later on (it leads 

 to dead-locks, and creates artificially insoluble philosophical 

 problems), is easily justified when we refer it to its proper 

 goal. Intelligence, in its natural state, aims at a practically 

 useful end. When it substitutes for movement immobilities 

 put together, it does not pretend to reconstitute the move- 

 ment such as it actually is; it merely replaces it with a 

 practical equivalent. It is the philosophers who are mis- 

 taken when they import into the domain of speculation 

 a method of thinking which is made for action. But of 

 this more anon. Suffice it now to say that to the stable 

 and unchangeable our intellect is attached by virtue of 

 its natural disposition. Of immobility alone does the in- 

 tellect farm a clear idea. 



Now, fabricating consists in carving out the form of 

 an object in matter. What is the most important is 



