304 CREATIVE EVOLUTION ichap. 



stantives therefore symbolize states. But the verb it- 

 self, if we keep to the clear part of the idea it calls up, 

 hardly expresses anything else. 



Now, if we try to characterize more precisely our natural 

 attitude towards Becoming, this is what we find. Be- 

 coming is infinitely varied. That which goes from yellow 

 to green is not like that which goes from green to blue: 

 they are different qualitative movements. That which 

 goes from flower to fruit is not like that which goes from 

 larva to nymph and from nymph to perfect insect: they 

 are different evolutionary movements. The action of eat- 

 ing or of drinking is not like the action of fighting: they are 

 different extensive movements. And these three kinds 

 of movement themselves — qualitative, evolutionary, ex- 

 tensive — differ profoundly. The trick of our perception, 

 like that of our intelligence, like that of our language, 

 consists in extracting from these profoundly different 

 becomings the single representation of becoming in general, 

 undefined becoming, a mere abstraction which by itself 

 says nothing and of which, indeed, it is very rarely that we 

 think. To this idea, always the same, and always obscure 

 or unconscious, we then join, in each particular case, one or 

 several clear images that represent states and which serve 

 to distinguish all becomings from each other. It is this 

 composition of a specified and definite state with change 

 general and undefined that we substitute for the specific 

 change. An infinite multiplicity of becomings variously 

 colored, so to speak, passes before our eyes: we manage so 

 that we see only differences of color, that is to say, differ- 

 ences of state, beneath which there is supposed to flow, 

 hidden from our view, a becoming always and every- 

 where the same, invariably colorless. 



Suppose we wish to portray on a screen a living picture, 



