310 CREATIVE EVOLUTION ichap. 



and to substitute two trajectories for the single trajectory 

 which we were first considering. It is to distinguish 

 two successive acts where, by the hypothesis, there is 

 only one. In short, it is to attribute to the course itself 

 of the arrow everything that can be said of the interval 

 that the arrow has traversed, that is to say, to admit 

 a priori the absurdity that movement coincides with 

 immobility. 



We shall not dwell here on the three other arguments 

 of Zeno. We have examined them elsewhere. It is 

 enough to point out that they all consist in applying the 

 movement to the line traversed, and supposing that what 

 is true of the line is true of the movement. The line, for 

 example, may be divided into as many parts as we wish, 

 of any length that we wish, and it is always the same line. 

 From this we conclude that we have the right to suppose 

 the movement articulated as we wish, and that it is always 

 the same movement. We thus obtain a series of absurdi- 

 ties that all express the same fundamental absurdity. But 

 the possibility of applying the movement to the line tra- 

 versed exists only for an observer who, keeping outside 

 the movement and seeing at every instant the possibility 

 of a stop, tries to reconstruct the real movement with these 

 possible immobilities. The absurdity vanishes as soon 

 as we adopt by thought the continuity of the real move- 

 ment, a continuity of which every one of us is conscious 

 whenever he lifts an arm or advances a step. We feel 

 then indeed that the line passed over between two stops is 

 described with a single indivisible stroke, and that we seek 

 in vain to practice on the movement, which traces the line, 

 divisions corresponding, each to each, with the divisions 

 arbitrarily chosen of the line once it has been traced. The 

 line traversed by the moving body lends itself to any kind 

 of division, because it has no internal organization. But 



