vi] FORM AND BECOMING 299 



is revealed very near us and, in a certain measure, in us. 

 It is of psychological and not of mathematical nor logical 

 essence. It lives with us. Like us, but in certain aspects 

 infinitely more concentrated and more gathered up in 

 itself, it endures. 



But do we ever think true duration? Here again 

 a direct taking possession is necessary. It is no use 

 trying to approach duration: we must install ourselves 

 within it straight away. This is what the intellect gener- 

 ally refuses to do, accustomed as it is to think the moving 

 by means of the unmovable. 



The function of the intellect is to preside over actions. 

 Now, in action, it is the result that interests us; the means 

 matter little provided the end is attained. Thence it 

 comes that we are altogether bent on the end to be realized, 

 generally trusting ourselves to it in order that the idea may 

 become an act; and thence it comes also that only the goal 

 where our activity will rest is pictured explicitly to our 

 mind: the movements constituting the action itself either 

 elude our consciousness or reach it only confusedly. Let 

 us consider a very simple act, like that of lifting the arm. 

 Where should we be if we had to imagine beforehand 

 all the elementary contractions and tensions this act 

 involves, or even to perceive them, one by one, as they 

 are accomplished? But the mind is carried immediately 

 to the end, that is to say, to the schematic and simplified 

 vision of the act supposed accomplished. Then, if no 

 antagonistic idea neutralizes the effect of the first idea, 

 the appropriate movements come of themselves to fill out 

 the plan, drawn in some way by the void of its gaps. The 

 intellect, then, only represents to the activity ends to 

 attain, that is to say, points of rest. And, from one end 

 attained to another end attained, from one rest to another 

 rest, our activity is carried by a series of leaps, during 



