ment we turn away as much as we can; what interests us is, as
we said above, the unmovable plan of the movement rather than the
movement itself. Is it a simple movement? We ask ourselves _where_ it is
going. It is by its direction, that is to say, by the position of its
provisional end, that we represent it at every moment. Is it a complex
movement? We would know above all _what_ is going on, _what_ the
movement is doing--in other words, the _result_ obtained or the
presiding _intention_. Examine closely what is in your mind when you
speak of an action in course of accomplishment. The idea of change is
there, I am willing to grant, but it is hidden in the penumbra. In the
full light is the motionless plan of the act supposed accomplished. It
is by this, and by this only, that the complex act is distinguished and
defined. We should be very much embarrassed if we had to imagine the
movements inherent in the actions of eating, drinking, fighting, etc. It
is enough for us to know, in a general and indefinite way, that all
these acts are movements. Once that side of the matter has been settled,
we simply seek to represent the _general plan_ of each of these complex
movements, that is to say the _motionless design_ that underlies them.
Here again knowledge bears on a state rather than on a change. It is
therefore the same with this third case as with the others. Whether the
movement be qualitative or evolutionary or extensive, the mind manages
to take stable views of the instability. And thence the mind derives, as
we have just shown, three kinds of representations: (1) qualities, (2)
forms of essences, (3) acts.

To these three ways of seeing correspond three categories of words:
_adjectives_, _substantives_, and _verbs_, which are the primordial
elements of language. Adjectives and substantives therefore symbolize
_states_. But the verb itself, if we keep to the clear part of the idea
it calls up, hardly expresses anything else.

* * * * *

Now, if we try to characterize more precisely our natural attitude
towards Becoming, this is what we find. Becoming is infinitely varied.
That which goes from yellow to green is not like that which goes from
green to blue: they are different _qualitative_ movements. That which
goes from flower to fruit is not like that which goes from larva to
nymph and from nymph to perfect insect: they are different
_evolutionary_ movements. The action of eating or of d