332 CREATIVE EVOLUTION Iohap. 



comparable to that of puberty, by the apparent release of a 

 new form. — For a Kepler or a Galileo, on the contrary, 

 time is not divided objectively in one way or another by 

 the matter that fills it. It has no natural articulations. 

 We can, we ought to, divide it as we please. All moments 

 count. None of them has the right to set itself up as a 

 moment that represents or dominates the others. And, 

 consequently, we know a change only when we are able 

 to determine what it is about at any one of its moments. 



The difference is profound. In fact, in a certain aspect 

 it is radical. But, from the point of view from which we 

 are regarding it, it is a difference of degree rather than of 

 kind. The human mind has passed from the first kind of 

 knowledge to the second through gradual perfecting, simply 

 by seeking a higher precision. There is the same relation 

 between these two sciences as between the noting of the 

 phases of a movement by the eye and the much more 

 complete recording of these phases by instantaneous pho- 

 tography. It is the same cinematographical mechanism in 

 both cases, but it reaches a precision in the second that it 

 cannot have in the first. Of the gallop of a horse our eye 

 perceives chiefly a characteristic, essential or rather sche- 

 matic attitude, a form that appears to radiate over a whole 

 period and so fill up a time of gallop. It is this attitude 

 that sculpture has fixed on the frieze of the Parthenon. 

 But instantaneous photography isolates any moment; it 

 puts them all in the same rank, and thus the gallop of a 

 horse spreads out for it into as many successive attitudes 

 as it wishes, instead of massing itself into a single attitude, 

 which is supposed to flash out in a privileged moment and 

 to illuminate a whole period. 



From this original difference flow all the others. A 

 science that considers, one after the other, undivided periods 

 of duration, sees nothing but phases succeeding phases, 



