We must afterwards by genuine integration attain moving continuity. That is exactly the task represented by the return to intuition, with its proper instrument, the dynamic scheme. From this tangential point of view we try to grasp the genesis of the curve as envelope, or rather, and better still, the birth of successive tangents as instantaneous directions. Speaking non-metaphorically, we cling to genetic methods of conceptualisation and proceed from the generating principle to its conceptual derivatives.
But our thought finds it very difficult to sustain such an effort long. It is partial to rectilineal deduction, actual becoming horrifies it. It desires immediately to find "things" sharply determined and very clear. That is why immediately a tangent is constructed, it follows its movement in a straight line to infinity. Thus are produced limit-concepts, the ultimate terms, the atoms of language. As a rule they go in pairs, in antithetic couples, every analysis being dichotomy, since the discernment of one path of abstraction determines in contrast, as a complementary remainder, the opposite path of direction. Hence, according to the selection effected among concepts, and the relative weight which is attributed to them, we get the antinomies between which a philosophy of analysis must for ever remain oscillating and torn in sunder. Hence comes the parcelling up of metaphysics into systems, and its appearance of regulated play "between antagonistic schools which get up on the stage together, each to win applause in turn." (H. Bergson, "Report of the French Philosophical Society", meeting, 2nd May 1901.)
The method followed to find a genuine solution must be inverse; not dialectic combination of pre-existing concepts, but, setting out from a direct and really lived intuition, a descent to ever new concepts along dynamic schemes which remain open. From the same intuition spring many concepts: "As the wind which rushes into the crossroads divides into diverging currents of air, which are all only one and the same gust." ("Creative Evolution", page 55.)
The antinomies are resolved genetically, whilst in the plane of language they remain irreducible. With a heterogeneity of shades, when we mix the tints and neutralise them by one another, we easily create homogeneity; but take the result of this work, that is to say, the average final colour, and it will be impossible to reconstitute the wealth of the original.
Do you desire a precise example of the work we must accomplish? Take that of change; (Cf. two lectures delivered by Mr Bergson at Oxford on "The Perception of Change", 26th and 27th May 1911.) no other is more significant or clearer. It shows us two necessary movements in the reform of our habits of imagination or conception.
Let us try first of all to familiarise ourselves with the images which show us the fixity deriving from becoming.
Two colliding waves, two rollers meeting, typify rest by extinction and interference. With the movement of a stone, and the fluidity of running water, we form the instantaneous position of a ricochet. The very movement of the stone, seen in the successive positions of the tangent to the trajectory, is stationary to our view.
What is dynamic stability, except non-variation arising from variation itself? Equilibrium is produced from speed. A man running solidifies the moving ground. In short, two moving bodies regulated by each other become fixed in relation to each other.
After this, let us try to perceive change in itself, and then represent it to ourselves according to its specific and original nature.
The common conception needs reform on two principal points: