300 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



which our consciousness is turned away as much as possible 

 from the movement going on, to regard only the anticipated 

 image of the movement accomplished. 



Now, in order that it may represent as unmovable 

 the result of the act which is being accomplished, the 

 intellect must perceive, as also unmovable, the surround- 

 ings in which this result is being framed. Our activity 

 is fitted into the material world. If matter appeared 

 to us as a perpetual flowing, we should assign no termina- 

 tion to any of our actions. We should feel each of them 

 dissolve as fast as it was accomplished, and we should 

 not anticipate an ever-fleeting future. In order that our 

 activity may leap from an act to an act, it is necessary 

 that matter should pass from a state to a state, for it is only 

 into a state of the material world that action can fit a 

 result, so as to be accomplished. But is it thus that matter 

 presents itself? 



A priori we may presume that our perception manages 

 to apprehend matter with this bias. Sensory organs 

 and motor organs are in fact coordinated with each other. 

 Now, the first symbolize our faculty of perceiving, as the 

 second our faculty of acting. The organism thus evidences, 

 in a visible and tangible form, the perfect accord of per- 

 ception and action. So if our activity always aims at a 

 result into which it is momentarily fitted, our perception 

 must retain of the material world, at every moment, only 

 a state in which it is provisionally placed. This is the most 

 natural hypothesis. And it is easy to see that experience 

 confirms it. 



From our first glance at the world, before we even 

 make our bodies in it, we distinguish qualities. Color 

 succeeds to color, sound to sound, resistance to resist- 

 ance, etc. Each of these qualities, taken separately, is a 

 state that seems to persist as such, immovable until an- 



