iv.) FORM AND BECOMING 303 



that they act on one another. This action appears to 

 us, no doubt, in the form of movement. But from the 

 mobility of the movement we turn away as much as we 

 can; what interests us is, as we said above, the immovable 

 plan of the movement rather than the movement itself. 

 Is it a simple movement? We ask ourselves where it is 

 going. It is by its direction, that is to say, by the position 

 of its provisional end, that we represent it at every moment. 

 Is it a complex movement? We would know above all 

 what is going on, what the movement is doing — in other 

 words, the result obtained or the presiding intention. 

 Examine closely what is in your mind when you speak 

 of an action in course of accomplishment. The idea of 

 change is there, I am willing to grant, but it is hidden in 

 the penumbra. In the full light is the motionless plan 

 of the act supposed accomplished. It is by this, and by 

 this only, that the complex act is distinguished and defined. 

 We should be very much embarrassed if we had to imagine 

 the movements inherent in the actions of eating, drinking, 

 fighting, etc. It is enough for us to know, in a general 

 and indefinite way, that all these acts are movements. 

 Once that side of the matter has been settled, we simply 

 seek to represent the general plan of each of these complex 

 movements, that is to say the motionless design that under- 

 lies them. Here again knowledge bears on a state rather 

 than on a change. It is therefore the same with this third 

 case as with the others. Whether the movement be 

 qualitative or evolutionary or extensive, the mind manages 

 to take stable views of the instability. And thence the 

 mind derives, as we have just shown, three kinds of repre- 

 sentations: (1) qualities, (2) forms of essences, (3) acts. 



To these three ways of seeing correspond three categories 

 of words: adjectives, substantives, and verbs, which are the 

 primordial elements of language. Adjectives and sub- 



