Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/268

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
246
MATTER AND MEMORY
CHAP. IV

I.—Every movement, inasmuch as it is a passage from rest to rest, is absolutely indivisible.

This is not an hypothesis, but a fact, generally masked by an hypothesis.

Here, for example, is my hand, placed at the point A. I carry it to the point B, passing at one stroke through the interval between them. There are two things in this movement: an image which I see, and an act of which my muscular sense makes my consciousness aware. My consciousness gives me the inward feeling of a single fact, for in A was rest, in B there is again rest, and between A and B is placed an indivisible or at least an undivided act, the passage from rest toMovement is indivisible; it is only the trajectory of a moving body that is divisible. rest, which is movement itself. But my sight perceives the movement in the form of a line AB which is traversed, and this line, like all space, may be indefinitely divided. It seems then, at first sight, that I may at will take this movement to be multiple or indivisible, according as I consider it in space or in time, as an image which takes shape outside of me or as an act which I am myself accomplishing.

Yet, when I put aside all preconceived ideas, I soon perceive that I have no such choice, that even my sight takes in the movement from A to B as an indivisible whole, and that if it divides anything, it is the line supposed to have been traversed, and not the movement traversing it. It is indeed