I may or may not have
succeeded in my attempt, but such, at any rate, is the precise end I had
in view. Paris, 28th March 1912. Method. Material and Authorities. Investigation of Common-sense. Value of Science. Practical Life and Reality. Concepts and Symbolism. II. Teaching. The Ego. Space and Number. Parallelism. Qualitative Continuity. Memory. Meaning of Reality. Triumph of Man. The Vital Impulse. Objections Refuted. Mathematics and Philosophy. The Inert and the Living. II. Immediacy. III. Theory of Perception. Pure and Ordinary Perception. Relation of Perception to
Matter. IV. Critique of Language. Dynamic Schemes. Dangers of Language. Scientific
Thought and the Task of Intuition. Discussion of Change. The Scientific View of Time. VI. Quantity
and Quality. Secondary Value of Matter. VII. Conclusion. Method. It is a reply to our
expectation, an answer to some dim hope. The solidity of the construction will not be
evidenced in these pages, nor its austere and subtle beauty. These will be our guides which we shall carefully follow, step by step. "We are forced to express ourselves in words, and we think, most often,
in space. II. The last point, particularly, is vital. For
the problem is complex, and the goal distant. ("Matiere et Memoire", page 201.) Here is an actual situation. This is our first and inevitable doubt, which requires solution. Do we think in void, and
with nothing? First edition.) Again, every science has begun by practical arts. Analysis, when applied to our operations of knowledge,
shows us that our understanding parcels out, arrests, and quantifies,
whereas reality, as it appears to immediate intuition, is a moving
series, a flux of blended qualities. It is for that they are made, not for philosophical
speculation. Philosophy understood in this manner--and we shall see more and
more clearly as we go on that there is no other legitimate method of
understanding it--demands from us an almost violent act of reform and
conversion. ("Matter and Memory", page 203.) Philosophy consists in reliving the immediate over again, and in
interpreting our rational science and everyday perception by its light. That, at least, is the first stage. Not that, in saying so, we mean to condemn science; but we must
recognise its just limits. All great philosophers have had glimpses of it, and employed it in
moments of discovery. One remark, however, has still to be made. Philosophy, according to
Mr Bergson's conception, implies and demands time; it does not aim at
completion all at once, for the mental reform in question is of the kind
which requires gradual fulfilment. I do not, of course, wish to abuse systems of philosophy. III. This is, then, the point which
requires instant explanation. So that, to come on the trail of the immediate, there must be
effort and work. We readily believe that when we cast our eyes upon surrounding objects,
we enter into them unresistingly and apprehend them all at once in their
intrinsic nature. That is why accurate observation is so difficult; we see or we do not
see, we notice such and such an aspect, we read this or that, according
to our state of consciousness at the time, according to the direction of
the investigation on which we are engaged. This art has its processes, its conventions, and its tools. That is why the child has to learn to perceive. "Perception," says Mr Bergson on this subject, "becomes in the end only
an opportunity of recollection." ("Matter and Memory", page 59.) All concrete perception, it is true, is directed less upon the
present than the past. Thus are explained "errors of the senses," which are in reality errors
of interpretation. Thus too, and in the same manner, we have the
explanation of dreams. This is what causes mistakes in reading, and the
well-known difficulty in seeing printing errors. Place the
words in a dark room in front of a person who, of course, does not
know what has been written. He has restored what was missing, or corrected what was at fault. But you can go further, and vary the experiment. ("Laughter", page 154.) ("Creative Evolution", page 12.) They are only centres of co-ordination for our
actions. ("Matter and Memory", page
220.) Not yet. All is in passage, in process of becoming. ("Matter and Memory", page 233.) For our language has been formed in
view of practical life, not of pure knowledge. IV. They
dismember it, divide it up piece by piece, and mount it in various
frames. They lay hold of it only by ends and corners, by resemblances
and differences. You are but condemning yourself to
symbolism, for one "thing" can only be in another symbolically. The subject occupies this point, the object that; how are we
to span the distance? Consider your daily judgments in matters of art, profession, or sport. We regard them as elaborated once for all. They admit linkage; they can be attached externally,
but they leave the aggregate as they went into it. It delights in rest, and endeavours to bring to rest all that moves. And
so it tends, out of progresses and transitions, to make things. To see
distinctly, it appears to need a dead halt. ("Matter and
Memory", page 209.) Such a proceeding is made for the
practical world, and is out of place in the speculative. When we filter
it, we retain only its deposit, the result of the becoming drifted down
to us. Do the dams, canals, and buoys make the current of the river? Concepts are the deposited sediment of intuition: intuition produces the
concepts, not the concepts intuition. Strictly speaking, the intuition of immediacy is inexpressible. It is an old objection. But we can go further and put it better. Philosophy then differs from art in two essential points: first of all,
it rests upon, envelops, and supposes science; secondly, it implies a
test of verification in its strict meaning. That is true, and I do not go back upon it. This is what we have still to find. II. Teaching. This reality is ourselves. It is typical of
all reality, and our study may fitly begin here. I. Such was, even yesterday, the authenticated way of regarding the
problem. ("Essay on the Immediate Data
of Consciousness", Conclusion.) I do not say
that there is no place to give them, even in the internal world. Taking it at its best, its worth today
could only be one of intelligibleness. And intelligible it is not. Into one and the same frame many pictures may go, but not all
pictures. Frame the sketch, there is a
margin for the image. Frame the image again, there remains a margin, and
a still larger margin, for the thought. Let us
neglect the intervening multiples, and look only at the extreme poles of
the series. For we have to live, I mean live our common daily life, with our body,
with our customary mechanism rather than with our true depths. ("Essay on the
Immediate Data," page 102.) Space and number lay hold of it. Quite different appears the true inner reality, and quite different
are its profound characteristics. (Loc. cit., page 6.) A thought, a feeling, an act, may reveal a complete soul. My ideas,
my sensations, are like me. Distinctions fail
us. I dissolve in the joy of becoming. I no longer know
whether I see scents, breathe sounds, or smell colours. I am, in my complete
self, each of my attitudes, each of my changes. The
phenomena distinguished in it by analysis are not composing units, but
phases. ("Creative Evolution", page 3.) Common-sense
cannot think in terms of movement. ("Essay
on the Immediate Data", page 74.) Quite different appears real duration, the duration which is lived. It is pure heterogeneity. ("Creative
Evolution", pages 5-6.) This is what makes our duration irreversible,
and its novelty perpetual, for each of the states through which it
passes envelops the recollection of all past states. ("Creative Evolution", page 8.) Liberty is rare;
many live and die and have never known it. Liberty is a thing which
contains an infinite number of degrees and shades; it is measured by
our capacity for the inner life. Liberty is a thing which goes on in us
unceasingly: our liberty is potential rather than actual. And lastly, it
is a thing of duration, not of space and number, not the work of moments
or decrees. The answer is that the universality of the mechanism is at bottom only
a hypothesis which is still awaiting demonstration. II. Is it really one of the
distinctive marks of life? Nature, in many
respects, seems to take no interest in individuals. ("Creative Evolution", page 29.) ("Creative Evolution", page 28.) We may, already, then, draw one conclusion: Reality, at bottom, is
becoming. ("Creative Evolution", page
10.) These two currents
meet each other, and grapple. "But it is caught in the snare. Automatism lays hold of it, and life, inevitably forgetting the end
which it had determined, which was only to be a means in view of a
superior end, is entirely used up in an effort to preserve itself by
itself. But our brain, our society, and our language are only the varied outer
signs of one and the same internal superiority. All
living beings are connected, and all yield to the same formidable
thrust. ("Creative Evolution", pages 293-294.) Some of its leading theses, moreover, are
noted here. Is it really a fact, or is it only
a more or less conjectural and plausible theory? And besides, we can go further. ("Creative
Evolution", pages 24-25.) "That is how we measure the distance from an inaccessible point, by
regarding it time after time from the points to which we have access." ("Report of the French Philosophical Society", meeting, 2nd May 1901.) But what we have to do is to appreciate its object. And we all do the same by instinctive inclination. If we wish thoroughly to grasp the reality of things, we must think
otherwise. ("Creative Evolution", chapter
i.) But in both cases they fail. ("Creative Evolution", pages 111-112.) ("Creative Evolution", page 283.) In a word, the supreme law of genesis and fall, the double play
of which constitutes the universe, comprises a psychological formula. III. ("Creative Evolution", page 107.) First of
all, there is one ridiculous objection which I quote only to record. At certain moments,
all the same, the veil becomes almost transparent. Intelligence is a product of
evolution: we see it slowly and uninterruptedly constructed along a line
which rises through the vertebrates to man. In a word,
"our logic is primarily the logic of solids." Philosophy
once again then must leave it behind, for the duty of philosophy is to
consider everything in its relation to life. It has not even the right to do so. Instinct, with us who have evolved along the grooves of intelligence,
has remained too weak to be sufficient for us. This is what is meant by return
to the primitive, and the immediate, to reality and life. But universal evolution, though creative, is not for all that quixotic
or anarchist. It forms a sequence. ("Creative Evolution", page
114.) But it may faint,
halt, or travel down the hill. Nay, more;
memory makes a persistent reality of evil, as of good. However, after all this pride came the turn of humility, and humility of
the very lowest. That is, in brief formula, the
verdict of the present generation. Experience has shown where the dream of universal mathematics leads us. Others result from it. Notwithstanding, it is not
a return to the old dreams of dialectic construction. And what is that, really, but realism? (Ibid.) What, then, is the original intuition of Mr Bergson's philosophy, the
creative intuition whence it comes forth? II. Immediacy. A system
is not to be resumed in a phrase, for every proposition isolated is
a proposition falsified. There, it is true, the
analogy ceases. For,
as a matter of fact, every object has a philosophy and all matter can
be regarded philosophically. In short, philosophy is chiefly a way of
perceiving and thinking, an attitude and a proceeding: the peculiar and
specific in it is more an intuition than a content, a spirit rather than
a domain. What, then, is the characteristic function of philosophy, at least its
initial function, that which marks its opening? In other terms, what they study is not so much such
and such a particular "thing" as the relation of mind to each of the
realities to be studied. Philosophy thus appears as a new "order"
of knowledge, co-extensive with what is knowable, as a kind of knowledge
of the second degree, in which it is less a question of learning than
of understanding, in which we aim at progressing in depth rather than in
extent; not effort to extend the quantity of knowledge, but reflection
on the quality of this knowledge. Philosophy,
on the contrary, desires to be thought about thought, thought retracing
its life and work, knowledge labouring to know itself, fact which
aspires to fact about itself, mental effort to become free, to become
entirely transparent and luminous in its own eyes, and, if need be, to
effect self-reform by dissipating its natural illusions. It can only then be a question of purifying it, not in any way
of replacing it. That, however, is not its primary basis. Primum vivere, deinde
philosophari, says the proverb. In certain respects, "speculation is a
luxury, whilst action is a necessity." ("Creative Evolution", page 47.) ("Laughter", page 154.) Nothing of the
kind, despite appearances and despite intentions. (Cf. Its revealing virtue is derived from this moving contact with fact, and
this living effort of sympathy. This is what we must tend to transpose
from the practical to the speculative order. What, then, will be for us the beginning of philosophy? ("Report of the French Philosophical
Society", philosophical vocabulary, article "Immediate".) (Cf. "Matter and Memory", Foreword to the
7th edition.) The answer is easy. This word has two senses:
at one time it designates a last term in a series of approximations,
and at another a certain internal character of convergence, a certain
quality of progression. Now, it is the second sense only which suits the case before us. Immediacy contains no matter statically defined, and no thing. III. Theory of Perception. This word means
first of all simple apprehension of immediacy, grasp of primitive fact. When we use it in this sense, we will agree to say pure perception. Thus, and only thus, is crude materiality to be disengaged from known
facts." Our senses supplement one another. Vol. i. of the "Library of the International
Philosophical Congress", 1900.) Cf. "Matter and Memory",
chapter ii.) Even there, however, a utilitarian division
continues. Our senses are instruments of abstraction, each of them
discerning a possible path of action. In short, the scale of sensations, with its
numerical aspect, is nothing but the spectrum of our practical activity. ("Matter and Memory", page 203.) IV. Critique of Language. There is one means only of doing that; viz. Thus language is necessary; for we must always speak,
were it only to utter the impotence of words. We readily
say, analysis and synthesis. But, in
greater depth, thought is dynamic continuity and duration. That is
to say, it is movement. In short, it is the very act
of creative thought which the dynamic scheme interprets, the act not yet
fixed in "results." How, finally, is any discovery made? What, then, should be the
attitude of the mind? But this is not the case at
all; the effort would be too great, and what happens, on the contrary,
is this. ("Essay on the Immediate Data", pages 85-86; "Matter and Memory",
pages 211-213, "Creative Evolution", pages 333-337.) In the trajectory we can count endless positions; that is to
say, possible halts. Scientific thought, again, preserves the same habits and the same
preferences. It seeks only what repeats, what can be counted. There
is contact at one point, but at one point only. 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. ("Creative Evolution", page 55.) Equilibrium is produced from speed. In short, two moving bodies regulated by each other
become fixed in relation to each other. Duration and Liberty. and iii. All the aspects, all the phenomena of mental life
come up for successive review. Here and there, although it always bears the same name, it is no longer
the same thing. ("Essay on the Immediate Data", pages 125-126.) ("Creative Evolution", page 10.) Or rather imagine a symphony having feeling of itself,
and creating itself; that is how we should conceive duration. ("Essay on the Immediate Data", pages 95-96.) In this, I should come back to the sense of
'free-will.' Liberty, such as I understand it, is situated
between these two terms, but not at equal distances from both. ("Report of the French Philosophical Society", philosophical vocabulary,
article "Liberty".) Liberty is in no way
reduced thereby, as has been said, to obvious spontaneity. At most this
would be the case in the animal world, where the psychological life is
principally that of the affections. ("Matter and
Memory", page 205.) All the same,
liberty supposes a certain contingence. ("Report" of meeting, 2nd
May 1901.) and iii. of the work cited
above. In short, the brain can only explain absences,
not presences. That is why the analysis of memory illustrates the
reality of mind, and its independence relative to matter. ("Matter and Memory", page 279.) VI. ("Creative Evolution", page 42.) (Ibid., page 41.) Vitality, at every point of its becoming, is a tangent to
physico-chemical mechanism. So must the case be, by
analogy, with general evolution. ("Creative Evolution", page 111.) ("Creative Evolution", chapter ii.) When I say: "There is
nothing," it is not that I perceive a "nothing." Continuity and discontinuity will thus admit possibility of
reconciliation, the one as an aspect of ascent towards the future, the
other as an aspect of retrospection after the event. VII. Philosophy, in consequence, is no longer anything but the science of
problems already solved, the science which is confined to saying why
knowledge is knowledge and action action, of such and such a kind, and
such and such a quality. Such a system can only be true as a partial and temporary truth: at the
most, it is a moment of truth. To know it, we have not so much to separate it
statically from its works, as to replace it in its history. In other terms, life is at bottom of the
psychological nature of a tendency. ("Creative Evolution", page 108.) It is arranged for action. Intelligence, then, makes
us acquainted, if not with all reality, at least with some of it,
namely that part by which reality is a possible object of mechanical or
synthetic action. That is why, "provided we only
consider the general form of physics, we can say that it touches the
absolute." ("Creative Evolution", page 216.) In other terms, language and mechanism are regulated by each other. For, when confronted with life, intelligence fails. ("Creative Evolution",
Preface.) ("Creative Evolution", Preface.) By no means. These two types
are opposed, as space to duration and matter to mind; but the negation
of one coincides with the position of the other. Conclusion. God would really be nothing, since he would do nothing. This is what we are permitted to attempt. But each result is only "temporarily final." But life may fail, halt, or travel downwards. ("Creative Evolution", page 139.) Now, with man, thought, reflection, and clear consciousness
appear. Absolute, the. Adaptation, value of. Analysis, conceptual, contrasted with intuition. Appearances. Art, and philosophy. Atomism. Automatism. Automaton, of daily life. Being, as becoming. Brain, work of. Causality, psychological. Change. Common-sense. Consciousness. Conservation, law of. Constants, search for, represented. Continuity, qualitative. Criticism, of language. Deduction, impotence of. Degradation, law of. Determinism, physical. Discontinuity, apparent. Disorder. Du Bois-Reymond. Duration, real, perpetually new, and thought, and time, pure. Dynamic connection, schemes. Ego, encrustations of the. Embryology, evidence of. Evil, a reality. Existence, as change. Experience. Fact. Freedom. Free-will. Genesis, law of. Good, a reality, a path. Habit, as obstacle. Heredity. Heterogeneity. Homogeneity, absence of. Huxley. Images. Immediacy. Immediate, the. Inert, the. Instinct, is sympathy, contrasted with intelligence. Intellectualism, distrusted. Intelligence, product of evolution, and instinct, broad meaning of. Intuitional effort, content. Kant, his point of departure, conclusions of, escape from. Knowledge, absolute, utilitarian nature of, new theory of. Language, dangers of. Laplace. Law, concept of. Liberty, personal importance of. Life, tendencies of, is finality, is progress, further discussed. Materialism. Mechanism, psychological, failure of. Memory, problem of, perception complicated by, importance of, racial,
planes of, memory of solids. Metaphor, justification of. Method, philosophical. Mill, Stuart. Motor-schemes, mechanisms. Mysticism. Non-morality. Nothingness. Number. Ontogenesis. Palaeontology, evidence of. Parallelism. Paralogism. Philosophy, duty of, function of. Phylogenesis. Planes, of consciousness. Progress, and reality. Quality, and inner world. Quantity, and quality. Rationalism. Ravaisson. Realism. Reason. Relation, between mind and matter. Religion, its place in philosophy. Renan. Romanticism. Schemes, dynamic. Science, prisoner of symbolism, cult of, impotence of. Sense, good, and common-sense. Space. Spencer, criticism of, success and weakness of. Symbolism. Sympathy. Taine. Thought, methods of common. Torpor. Transformism, errors of. Utility, as goal of perception. Variation. Zeno of Elea. Zone, of feeling.