CHAPTER IV 



THE CINEMATOGRAPHICAL MECHANISM OF THOUGHT AND 

 THE MECHANISTIC ILLUSION — A GLANCE AT THE 

 HISTORY OP SYSTEMS' — REAL BECOMING AND FALSE 

 EVOLUTIONISM. 



It remains for us to examine in themselves two theoretical 

 illusions which we have frequently met with before, but 

 whose consequences rather than principle have hitherto 

 concerned us. Such is the object of the present chapter. 

 It will afford us the opportunity of removing certain 

 objections, of clearing up certain misunderstandings, 

 and, above all, of defining more precisely, by contrasting 

 it with others, a philosophy which sees in duration the very 

 stuff of reality. 



Matter or mind, reality has appeared to us as a per- 

 petual becoming. It makes itself or it unmakes itself, 

 but it is never something made. Such is the intuition 

 that we have of mind when we draw aside the veil which is 

 interposed between our consciousness and ourselves. 

 This, also, is what our intellect and senses themselves 

 would show us of matter, if they could obtain a direct 

 and disinterested idea of it. But, preoccupied before 

 everything with the necessities of action, the intellect, 



1 The part of this chapter which treats of the history of systems, par- 

 ticularly of the Greek philosophy, is only the very succinct resume of 

 views that we developed at length, from 1900 to 1904, in our lectures 

 at the College de France, especially in a course on the History of the 

 Idea of Time (1902-1903). We then compared the mechanism of con- 

 ceptual thought to that of the cinematograph. We believe the com- 

 parison will be useful here. 



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