ere must be movement
somewhere. The movement does indeed exist here; it is in the apparatus.
It is because the film of the cinematograph unrolls, bringing in turn
the different photographs of the scene to continue each other, that each
actor of the scene recovers his mobility; he strings all his successive
attitudes on the invisible movement of the film. The process then
consists in extracting from all the movements peculiar to all the
figures an impersonal movement abstract and simple, _movement in
general_, so to speak: we put this into the apparatus, and we
reconstitute the individuality of each particular movement by combining
this nameless movement with the personal attitudes. Such is the
contrivance of the cinematograph. And such is also that of our
knowledge. Instead of attaching ourselves to the inner becoming of
things, we place ourselves outside them in order to recompose their
becoming artificially. We take snapshots, as it were, of the passing
reality, and, as these are characteristic of the reality, we have only
to string them on a becoming, abstract, uniform and invisible, situated
at the back of the apparatus of knowledge, in order to imitate what
there is that is characteristic in this becoming itself. Perception,
intellection, language so proceed in general. Whether we would think
becoming, or express it, or even perceive it, we hardly do anything else
than set going a kind of cinematograph inside us. We may therefore sum
up what we have been saying in the conclusion that the _mechanism of our
ordinary knowledge is of a cinematographical kind_.

Of the altogether practical character of this operation there is no
possible doubt. Each of our acts aims at a certain insertion of our will
into the reality. There is, between our body and other bodies, an
arrangement like that of the pieces of glass that compose a
kaleidoscopic picture. Our activity goes from an arrangement to a
rearrangement, each time no doubt giving the kaleidoscope a new shake,
but not interesting itself in the shake, and seeing only the new
picture. Our knowledge of the operation of nature must be exactly
symmetrical, therefore, with the interest we take in our own operation.
In this sense we may say, if we are not abusing this kind of
illustration, that _the cinematographical character of our knowledge of
things is due to the kaleidoscopic character of our adaptation to them_.

The cinematographical method is therefore the only practica