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 drinking is not
like the action of fighting: they are different _extensive_ movements.
And these three kinds of movement themselves--qualitative, evolutionary,
extensive--differ profoundly. The trick of our perception, like that of
our intelligence, like that of our language, consists in extracting from
these profoundly different becomings the single representation of
becoming _in general_, undefined becoming, a mere abstraction which by
itself says nothing and of which, indeed, it is very rarely that we
think. To this idea, always the same, and always obscure or unconscious,
we then join, in each particular case, one or several clear images that
represent _states_ and which serve to distinguish all becomings from
each other. It is this composition of a specified and definite state
with change general and undefined that we substitute for the specific
change. An infinite multiplicity of becomings variously colored, so to
speak, passes before our eyes: we manage so that we see only differences
of color, that is to say, differences of state, beneath which there is
supposed to flow, hidden from our view, a becoming always and everywhere
the same, invariably colorless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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