308 CREATIVE EVOLUTION [chap. 



to the point of giddiness, it may end by giving itself the 

 illusion of mobility, its operation has not advanced it a 

 step, since it remains as far as ever from its goal. In order 

 to advance with the moving reality, you must replace 

 yourself within it. Install yourself within change, and you 

 will grasp at once both change itself and the successive 

 states in which it might at any instant be immobilized. 

 But with these successive states, perceived from without 

 as real and no longer as potential immobilities, you will 

 never reconstitute movement. Call them qualities, forms, 

 positions, or intentions, as the case may be, multiply the 

 number of them as you will, let the interval between 

 two consecutive states be infinitely small: before the 

 intervening movement you will always experience the 

 disappointment of the child who tries by clapping his 

 hands together to crush the smoke. The movement 

 slips through the interval, because every attempt to re- 

 constitute change out of states implies the absurd propo- 

 sition, that movement is made of immobilities. 



Philosophy perceived this as soon as it opened its eyes. 

 The arguments of Zeno of Elea, although formulated with 

 a very different intention, have no other meaning. 



Take the flying arrow. At every moment, says Zeno, 

 it is motionless, for it cannot have time to move, that 

 is, to occupy at least two successive positions, unless at 

 least two moments are allowed it. At a given moment, 

 therefore, it is at rest at a given point. Motionless in 

 each point of its course, it is' motionless during all the time 

 that it is moving. 



Yes, if we suppose that the arrow can ever be in a point 

 of its course. Yes again, if the arrow, which is moving, 

 ever coincides with a position, which is motionless. But 

 the arrow never is in any point of its course. The most 

 we can say is that it might be there, in this sense, that it 



