It is an axiom in the philosophy of Bergson that all change or
movement is indivisible. He asserts this expressly in Matter and
Memory,[Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 246 ff. (Fr. p. 207 ff).] and
again in the second lecture on The Perception of Change he deals with
the indivisibility of movement somewhat fully, submitting it to a
careful analysis, from which the following quotation is an extract--"My
hand is at the point A. I move it to the point B, traversing the
interval AB. I say that this movement from A to B is a simple
thing--each of us has the sensation of this, direct and immediate.
Doubtless, while we carry our hand over from A to B, we say to ourselves
that we could stop it at an intermediate point, but then that would no
longer be the same movement. There would then be two movements, with an
interval of rest. Neither from within, by the muscular sense, nor from
without, by sight, should we have the same perception. If we leave our
movement from A to B such as it is, we feel it undivided, and we must
declare it indivisible. It is true that when I look at my hand, going
from A to B, traversing the interval AB, I say to myself 'the interval
AB can be divided into as many parts as I wish, therefore the movement
from A to B can be divided into as many parts as I like, since this
movement covers this interval,' or, again, 'At each moment of its
passing, the moving object passes over a certain point, therefore we
can distinguish in the movement as many stopping-places as we
wish--therefore the movement is infinitely divisible.' But let us
reflect on this for a minute. How can the movement possibly coincide
with the space which it traverses? How can the moving coincide with the
motionless? How can the object which moves be said to 'be' at any point
in its path? It passes over, or, in other words, it could 'be' there. It
would 'be' there if it stopped there, but, if it stopped there, it is no
longer the same movement with which we are dealing. It is always at one
bound that a trajectory is traversed when, on its course, there is no
stoppage. The bound may last a few seconds, or it may last for weeks,
months, or years, but it is unique and cannot be decomposed. Only, when
once the passage has been made, as the path is in space, and space is
infinitely divisible, we picture to ourselves the movement itself as
infinitely divisible. We like to imagine it thus, because, in a movement
it is not the change of position which interests us, it is the positions
themselves which the moving object has left, which it will take up,
which it might assume if it were to stop in its course. We have need
of immobility, and the more we succeed in presenting to ourselves the
movement as coinciding with the space which it traverses, the better we
think we understand it. Really, there is no true immobility, if we
imply by that, an absence of movement." [Footnote: Translated from La
Perception du Changement, pp. 19-20.] This immobility of which we have
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