e material world? It is extended:
it presents to us objects external to other objects, and, in these
objects, parts external to parts. No doubt, it is useful to us, in view
of our ulterior manipulation, to regard each object as divisible into
parts arbitrarily cut up, each part being again divisible as we like,
and so on _ad infinitum_. But it is above all necessary, for our present
manipulation, to regard the real object in hand, or the real elements
into which we have resolved it, as _provisionally final_, and to treat
them as so many _units_. To this possibility of decomposing matter as
much as we please, and in any way we please, we allude when we speak of
the _continuity_ of material extension; but this continuity, as we see
it, is nothing else but our ability, an ability that matter allows to us
to choose the mode of discontinuity we shall find in it. It is always,
in fact, the mode of discontinuity once chosen that appears to us as the
actually real one and that which fixes our attention, just because it
rules our action. Thus discontinuity is thought for itself; it is
thinkable in itself; we form an idea of it by a positive act of our
mind; while the intellectual representation of continuity is negative,
being, at bottom, only the refusal of our mind, before any actually
given system of decomposition, to regard it as the only possible one.
_Of the discontinuous alone does the intellect form a clear idea._

On the other hand, the objects we act on are certainly mobile objects,
but the important thing for us to know is _whither_ the mobile object is
going and _where_ it is at any moment of its passage. In other words,
our interest is directed, before all, to its actual or future positions,
and not to the _progress_ by which it passes from one position to
another, progress which is the movement itself. In our actions, which
are systematized movements, what we fix our mind on is the end or
meaning of the movement, its design as a whole--in a word, the immobile
plan of its execution. That which really moves in action interests us
only so far as the whole can be advanced, retarded, or stopped by any
incident that may happen on the way. From mobility itself our intellect
turns aside, because it has nothing to gain in dealing with it. If the
intellect were meant for pure theorizing, it would take its place within
movement, for movement is reality itself, and immobility is always only
apparent or relative. But the intelle