MATTER AND MEMORY
We have seen that, according to the theory of change which is
fundamental for Bergson’s philosophy, the changing fact which we know
directly is described as a process of becoming which does not contain
parts nor admit of repetitions. On the other hand this changing fact
certainly does lend itself to analysis and classification and
explanation and, at first sight at any rate, it is natural to suppose
that whatever can be classified and explained must consist of
qualities, that is distinct parts which can be repeated on different
occasions. The problem for Bergson, if he is to establish his theory of
change, is to show that the fact that a changing process can be
analysed and classified does not necessarily imply that such a process
must consist of distinct qualities which can be repeated. Bergson’s
theory of the relation of matter to memory suggests a possible solution
of this problem as to how it is possible to analyse and so apply
general laws to and explain duration: it becomes necessary, therefore,
to give some account of this theory.
Like all other descriptions and explanations, such an account must, of
course, be expressed in terms of abstractions, and so is liable to be
misunderstood unless the false implications of these abstractions are
allowed for and discounted.
According to Bergson the only actual reality is the changing fact
itself, everything else is abstraction: this reality however is not
confined to the fragment called “our present experience” which is in
the full focus of consciousness and is all that we usually suppose
ourselves to know directly; it includes besides everything that we are
in a sense aware of but do not pay attention to, together with our
whole past: for Bergson, in fact, reality coincides with the field of
virtual knowledge, anything short of this whole field is an abstraction
and so falsified. Even to say “we know this fact” is unsatisfactory as
implying ourselves and the fact as distinct things united by an
external relation of knowing: to say “the fact is different from the
abstraction by which it is explained” similarly implies logically
distinct terms in an external relation of difference, and so on. If
Bergson is right in claiming that the actual fact is non-logical then
obviously all attempts to describe it, since they must be expressed in
terms of abstractions, will teem with false implications which must be
discounted if the description is to convey the meaning intended.
Bergson’s claim is that if we allow ourselves to attend to the changing
fact with which we are actually acquainted we are driven to a theory of
reality different from the theory of things and relations accepted by
common sense. The two abstractions by means of which he attempts to
express this new theory are matter and memory. In the actual fact
Bergson would hold that both these notions are combined by synthesis in
such a way as no longer to be distinct, or rather, for this implies
that they started distinct and then became merged, it would perhaps be
better to say that these two notions are abstractions from two
tendencies which are present in the actual fact. In the actual fact
they combine and, as it were, counteract one another and the result is
something different from either taken alone, but when we abstract them
we release them from each other’s modifying influence and the result is
an exaggeration of one or other tendency which does not really
represent anything which actually occurs but can be used, in
combination with the contrary exaggeration, to explain the actual fact
which may be described as being like what would result from a
combination of these two abstractions.
We will take matter first.
Matter, for Bergson, is an exaggeration of the tendency in reality,
(that is in the actual changing fact directly known) towards logical
distinctness, what he calls “spatiality.” His use of the word “matter”
in this sense is again, perhaps, like his use of the word “space,”
rather misleading. Actual reality, according to him, is never purely
material, the only purely material things are abstractions, and these
are not real at all but simply fictions. Bergson really means the same
thing by “matter” as by “space” and that is simply mutual distinctness
of parts and externality of relations, in a word logical complexity.
Matter, according to this definition of the word, has no duration and
so cannot last through any period of time or change: it simply _is_ in
the present, it does not endure but is perpetually destroyed and
recreated.
The complementary exaggeration which, taken together with matter,
completes Berg-son’s explanation of reality, is memory. Just as matter
is absolute logical complexity memory is absolute creative synthesis.
Together they constitute the hybrid notion of creative duration whose
“parts” interpenetrate which, according to Bergson, comes nearest to
giving a satisfactory description of the actual fact directly known
which is, for him, the whole reality.
The best way to accustom one’s mind to these two complementary
exaggerations, matter and memory, and to see in more detail the use
that Bergson makes of them in explaining the actual facts, will be to
examine his theory of sensible perception, since it is just in the act
of sensible perception that memory comes in contact with matter.
The unsophisticated view is that in sensible perception we become
acquainted with things which exist whether we perceive them or not, and
these things, taken all together, are commonly called the material
world. According to Bergson’s theory also sensible perception is direct
acquaintance with matter. The unsophisticated view holds further,
however, that this material world with which sensible perception
acquaints us is the common sense world of solid tables, green grass,
anger and other such states and things and qualities, but we have
already seen that this common sense world is really itself only one
among the various attempts which science and common sense are
continually making to explain the facts in terms of abstractions. The
worlds of electrons, vibrations, forces, and so on, constructed by
physics, are other attempts to do the same thing and the common sense
world of “real” things and qualities has no more claim to actual
existence than have any of these scientific hypotheses. Berg-son’s
matter is not identified with any one of these constructions, it is
that in the facts which they are all attempts to explain in terms of
abstractions, the element in the facts upon which abstractions are
based and which makes facts classifiable and so explicable.
The words by which we describe and explain the material element in the
facts in terms of series of distinct stages or events in external
relations would leave out change if their implications were followed
out consistently, but it is only a few “intellectuals” who have ever
been able to bring themselves to follow out this implication to the
bitter end and accept the conclusion, however absurd. Since it is
obvious that the facts do change the usual way of getting round the
difficulty is to say that some of these stages are “past” and some
“present,” and then, not clearly realizing that the explanations we
construct are not really facts at all, to take it for granted that a
transition between past and present, though there is no room for it in
the logical form of the explanation, yet somehow manages actually to
take place. Bergson agrees that change does actually take place but not
as a transition between abstractions such as “past” and “present.” We
think that “past” and “present” must be real facts because we do not
realize clearly how these notions have been arrived at. Once we have
grasped the idea that these notions, and indeed all clear concepts, are
only abstractions, we see that it is not necessary to suppose that
these abstractions really change at all. Between the abstractions “the
past” and “the present” there is no transition, and it is the same with
events and things and qualities: all these, being nothing but
convenient fictions, stand outside the stream of actual fact which is
what really changes and endures.
Matter, then, is the name which Bergson gives to that element in the
fact upon which the purely logical form appropriate to abstractions is
based. The actual facts are not purely logical but neither are they
completely interpenetrated since they lend themselves to
classification: they tend to logical form on the one hand and to
complete inter-penetration on the other without going the whole way in
either direction. What Bergson does in the description of the facts
which he offers is to isolate each of these tendencies making them into
two separate distinct abstractions, one called matter and the other
mind. Isolated, what in the actual fact was blended becomes
incompatible. Matter and mind, the clear cut abstractions, are mutually
contradictory and it becomes at once a pseudo-problem to see how they
ever could combine to constitute the actual fact.
The matter which Bergson talks about, being what would be left of the
facts if memory were abstracted, has no past: it simply is in the
present moment. If there is any memory which can retain previous
moments then this memory may compare these previous moments with the
present moment and call them the past of matter, but in itself, apart
from memory, (and so isolated in a way in which this tendency in the
actual fact never could be isolated) matter has no past.
Noticing how very different the actual facts which we know directly are
from any of the material worlds by which we explain them, each of which
lays claim to being “the reality with which sensible perception
acquaints us,” some philosophers have put forward the view that in
sensible perception we become acquainted, not with matter itself, but
with signs which stand for a material world which exists altogether
outside perception. This view Bergson rejects. He says that in sensible
perception we are not acquainted with mere signs but, in so far as
there is any matter at all, what we know in sensible perception is that
matter itself. The facts which we know directly are matter itself and
would be nothing but matter if they were instantaneous. For Bergson,
however, an instantaneous fact is out of the question: every fact
contains more than the mere matter presented at the moment of
perception. Facts are distinguished from matter by lasting through a
period of duration, this is what makes the difference between the
actual fact and any of the material worlds in terms of which we
describe them: matter, is, as we have said, only an abstraction of one
element or tendency in the changing fact which is the sole reality:
memory is the complementary abstraction. Apart from the actual fact
neither matter nor memory have independent existence. This is where
Berg-son disagrees with the philosophers who regard the facts as signs
of an independent material world, or as phenomena which misrepresent
some “thing” in “itself” which is what _really_ exists but which is not
known directly but only inferred from the phenomena. For Bergson it is
the fact directly known that _really_ exists, and matter and memory,
solid tables, green grass, electrons, forces, the absolute, and all the
other abstract ideas by which we explain it are misrepresentations of
it, not it of them.
Even Bergson, however, does not get away from the distinction between
appearance and reality. The fact is for him the reality, the
abstraction the appearance. But then the fact which is the reality is
not the fact which we ordinarily suppose ourselves to know, the little
fragment which constitutes “our experience at the present moment.” This
is itself an abstraction from the vastly wider fact of our virtual
knowledge, and it is this wider field of knowledge which is the
reality. Abstraction involves falsification and so the little fragment
of fact to which our attention is usually confined is not, as it
stands, reality: it is appearance. We should only know reality as it is
if we could replace this fragment in its proper context in the whole
field of virtual knowledge (or reality) where it belongs. What we
should then know would not be appearance but reality itself. It is at
this knowledge, according to Bergson, that philosophy aims. Philosophy
is a reversal of our ordinary intellectual habits: ordinarily thought
progresses from abstraction to abstraction steadily getting further
from concrete facts: according to Bergson the task of philosophy should
be to put abstractions back again into their context so as to obtain
the fullest possible knowledge of actual fact.
In order to describe and explain this fact, however, we have to make
use of abstractions. Bergson describes the fact known directly by
sensible perception as a contraction of a period of the duration of
matter in which the “past” states of matter are preserved along with
the “present” and form a single whole with it. It is memory which makes
this difference between matter and the actual facts by preserving
“past” matter and combining it with “the present.” A single perceived
fact, however, does not contain memories as distinct from present
material: the distinction between “past” and “present” does not hold
inside facts whose duration forms a creative whole and not a logical
series. Of course it is incorrect to describe facts as “containing past
and present matter,” but, as we have often pointed out, misleading
though their logical implications are, we are obliged to replace facts
by abstractions when we want to describe them.
An example may perhaps convey what is meant by saying that a fact is a
contraction of a period of the duration of matter. Consider red,
bearing in mind that, when we are speaking of the fact actually
perceived when we see red we must discount the logical implications of
our words. Science says that red, the material, is composed of
immensely rapid vibrations of ether: red, the fact, we know as a simple
colour. Bergson accepts the scientific abstractions in terms of which
to describe matter, making the reservation that, if we are to talk of
matter as composed of vibrations, we must not say that these vibrations
last through a period of time or change by themselves, apart from any
memory which retains and so preserves the “past” vibrations. If matter
is to be thought of at all as existing apart from any memory it must be
thought of as consisting of a single vibration in a perpetual present
with no past. We might alter the description and say that this present
moment of matter should be thought of as being perpetually destroyed
and recreated.
Now according to Bergson the red which we know directly _is_ a period
of the vibrations of matter contracted by memory so as to produce an
actual perceived fact. As matter red does not change, it is absolutely
discrete and complex, in a word, logical: as fact it is non-logical and
forms a creative process of duration. The difference between matter and
the actual fact is made by the mental act which holds matter as it were
in tension through a period of duration, when a fact is produced, but
which would have had to be absent if there had been no fact but simply
present matter. Bergson calls this act memory: memory, he says, turns
matter into fact by preserving its past along with its present. Without
memory there would be no duration and so no change and no time. Matter,
apart from memory would have no duration and it is just in this that it
is distinguished from actual fact.
It is, however, of course, only by making abstractions that we can say
what things would be like if something were taken away which actually
is not taken away. Matter never really does exist without memory nor
memory without its content, matter: the actual fact can only be
described as a combination of the two elements, but this description
must not lead us into supposing that the abstractions, matter and
memory, actually have independent existence apart from the fact which
they explain. Only the actual fact exists and it is not really made up
of two elements, matter and memory, but only described in terms of
these two abstractions.
Bergson’s account of perception differs from the account ordinarily
given in that perception is not described as a relation which is
supposed to hold between a subject and an object: for Bergson there is
no “I,” distinct from what is perceived, standing to it in a relation
of perception. For an object, to be perceived consists, not in being
related to a perceiver, but in being combined in a new way with other
objects. If an object is combined by synthesis with other objects then
it is perceived and so becomes a fact. But there is no mind over and
above the objects which perceives them by being related to them, or
even by performing an act of synthesis upon them. To speak of “our”
perceiving objects is a mere fiction: when objects are combined by
synthesis they become perceptions, facts, and this is the same as
saying that they are minds. For Bergson a mind _is_ nothing but a
synthesis of objects. This explains what he means by saying that in
direct knowledge the perceiver is the object perceived.
Actually he thinks such notions as the perceiver and the object and the
relation which unites them, or again matter and the act of synthesis
which turns matter into fact, are nothing but abstractions: the only
thing there really is is simply the fact itself. These abstractions,
however, do somehow apply to the actual facts, and this brings us back
to our problem as to how it is that the actual fact, which is in
creative duration, lends itself to classification: how it is that
general laws in terms of abstractions which can be repeated over and
over again, can apply to the actual fact which does not contain
repetitions?
Facts lend themselves to explanation when they are perceived as
familiar. In this perceived familiarity, which is the basis of all
abstraction, and so of all description and explanation, past as well as
present is involved, the present owing its familiarity to our memory of
past facts. The obvious explanation of perceived familiarity, would be,
of course, to say that it results from our perceiving similar qualities
shared by past and present facts, or relations of similarity holding
between them. But Bergson must find some other explanation than this
since he denies that there can be repetition in actual facts directly
known.
Whenever there is actual fact there is memory, and memory creates
duration which excludes repetition. Perceived familiarity depends upon
memory but memory, according to Bergson, does not work by preserving a
series of repetitions for future reference. If we say that memory
connects “the past” with “the present” we must add that it destroys
their logical distinctness. But of course this is putting it very
badly: there is really no “logical distinctness” in the actual fact for
memory to “destroy”: our language suggests that first there was matter,
forming a logical series of distinct qualities recurring over and over,
and then memory occurred and telescoped the series, squeezing “earlier”
and “later” moments into one another to make a creative duration. Such
a view is suggested by our strong bias towards regarding abstractions
as having independent existence apart from the real fact from which
they have been abstracted: if we can overcome this bias the description
will do well enough.
According to Bergson, as we have just seen, every actual fact must
contain some memory otherwise it would not be a fact but simply matter,
since it is an act of memory that turns matter into perceived fact. Our
ordinary more or less familiar facts, however, contain much more than
this bare minimum. The facts of everyday life are perceived as familiar
and classified from a vast number of points of view. When you look at a
cherry you recognise its colour, shape, etc., you know it is edible,
what it would taste like, whether it is ripe, and much more besides,
all at a glance. All this knowledge depends on memory, memory gives
meaning to what we might call bare sensation (which is the same thing
as Bergson’s present matter) as opposed to the full familiar fact
actually experienced. Now the meaning is ordinarily contained in the
actual fact along with the bare sensation not as a multiplicity of
memories distinct from the bare sensation, but, as we put it, at a
glance. This peculiar flavour of a familiar fact can be analysed out as
consisting of memories of this or that past experience, if we choose to
treat it in that way, just as a fact can be analysed into qualities.
According to Bergson this analysis of the meaning of a familiar fact
into memories would have the same drawbacks as the analysis of a
present fact into qualities: it would leave out much of the meaning and
distort the rest. Bergson holds that wherever there is duration the
past must be preserved since it is just the preservation of the past,
the creation of fact by a synthesis of what, out of synthesis, would be
past and present, which constitutes duration. The essential point about
mental life is just the performing of this act of synthesis which makes
duration: wherever there is mental life there is duration and so
wherever there is mental life the past is preserved. “Above
everything,” Bergson says, “consciousness signifies memory. At this
moment as I discuss with you I pronounce the word “discussion.” It is
clear that my consciousness grasps this word altogether; if not it
would not see it as a unique word and would not make sense of it. And
yet when I pronounce the last syllable of the word the two first ones
have already been pronounced; relatively to this one, which must then
be called present, they are past. But this last syllable “sion” was not
pronounced instantaneously; the time, however short, during which I was
saying it, can be split up into parts and these parts are past,
relatively to the last of them, and this last one would be present if
it were not that it too can be further split up: so that, do what you
will, you cannot draw any line of demarcation between past and present,
and so between memory and consciousness. Indeed when I pronounce the
word “discussion” I have before my mind, not only the beginning, the
middle and the end of the word, but also the preceding words, also the
whole of the sentence which I have already spoken; if it were not so I
should have lost the thread of my speech. Now if the punctuation of the
speech had been different my sentence might have begun earlier; it
might, for instance, have contained the previous sentence and my
“present” would have been still further extended into the past. Let us
push this reasoning to its conclusion: let us suppose that my speech
has lasted for years, since the first awakening of my consciousness,
that it has consisted of a single sentence, and that my consciousness
has been sufficiently detached from the future, sufficiently
disinterested to occupy itself exclusively in taking in the meaning of
the sentence: in that case I should not look for any explanation of the
total conservation of this sentence any more than I look for one of the
survival of the first two syllables of the word “discussion” when I
pronounce the last one. Well, I think that our whole inner life is like
a single sentence, begun from the first awakening of consciousness, a
sentence scattered with commas, but nowhere broken by a full stop. And
so I think that our whole past is there, subconscious—I mean present to
us in such a way that our consciousness, to become aware of it, need
not go outside itself nor add anything foreign: to perceive clearly all
that it contains, or rather all that it is, it has only to put aside an
obstacle, to lift a veil.”[5]
[5] _L’Energie Spirituelle_—“L’Ame et le Corps,” pages 59 and 60.
If this theory of memory be correct, the occurrence of any present bare
sensation itself suffices to recall, in some sense, the whole past. But
this is no use for practical purposes, just as the whole of the fact
given in present perception is useless for practical purposes until it
has been analysed into qualities. According to Bergson we treat the
material supplied by memory in much the same way as that supplied by
perception. The whole field of the past which the present calls up is
much wider than what we actually remember clearly: what we actually
remember is arrived at by ignoring all the past except such scraps as
appear to form useful precedents for behaviour in the present situation
in which we find ourselves. Perhaps this explains why sometimes, at the
point of death, when useful behaviour is no longer possible, this
selection breaks down and the whole of the past floods back into
memory. The brain, according to Bergson, is the organ whose function it
is to perform this necessary work of selection out of the whole field
of virtual memory of practically useful fragments, and so long as the
brain is in order, only these are allowed to come through into
consciousness as clear memories. The passage just quoted goes on to
speak of “the part played by the brain in memory.” “The brain does not
serve to preserve the past but primarily to obscure it, and then to let
just so much as is practically useful slip through.”
But the setting of the whole past, though it is ignored for
convenience, still makes itself felt in the peculiar qualitative
flavour which belongs to every present fact by reason of its past. Even
in the case of familiar facts this flavour is no mere repetition but is
perpetually modified as the familiarity increases, and it is just in
this progressively changing flavour that their familiarity consists.
An inspection of what we know directly, then, does not bear out the
common sense theory that perceived familiarity, upon which abstraction
and all description and explanation are based, consists in the
perception of similar qualities shared by present matter and the matter
retained by memory. A familiar fact appears to be, not a repetition,
but a _new_ fact. This new fact may be described as containing present
and past bare sensations, but it must be added that these bare
sensations do not remain distinct things but are synthesised by the act
of perception into a fresh whole which is not the sum of the bare
sensations which it may be described as containing. Such a perceived
whole will be familiar, and so lend itself to abstraction and
explanation, in so far as the present bare sensation which it contains,
taken as mere matter (that is apart from the act of perception which
turns it from mere matter into actual fact), would have been a
repetition of some of the past bare sensations which go to form its
meaning and combine with it to create the fact actually known. For bare
sensation now may be a repetition of past bare sensation though the
full fact will always be something fresh, its flavour changing as it
grows more and more familiar by taking up into itself more and more
bare sensation which, taken in abstraction, apart from the act of
synthesis which turns it into actual fact, would be repetitions. To
take the example which we have already used of perceiving first a rose
and then a strawberry ice cream: let us suppose that the rose was the
very first occasion on which you saw pink. The perceived fact on that
occasion would, like all perceived facts, be a combination of / past
and present bare sensations. It would I not be familiar because the
elements of present bare sensation would not be repetitions of the
elements of past bare sensation (always assuming, as we must for
purposes of explanation, that past and present bare sensations ever
could be isolated from the actual fact and still both exist, which,
however, is not possible). But when you saw the strawberry ice cream
the past perceived rose would be among the memories added to this bare
sensation which constitute its meaning and, by forming a synthesis with
it, turn it from mere matter into fact. The pink would now be perceived
as familiar because the pink of the rose (which as bare sensation is
similar to the bare sensation of strawberry-ice-cream-pink) would be
included, along with the present bare sensation of pink, in the whole
fact of the perception of strawberry ice cream.
Perceived fact, then, combines meaning and present bare sensation to
form a whole with a qualitative flavour which is itself always unique,
but which lends itself to abstraction in so far as the bare sensations,
past and present, which go to produce it, would, as matter in
isolation, be repetitions.
This qualitative flavour, however, is, of course, not a quality in the
logical sense which implies distinctness and externality of relations.
Facts have logical qualities only if they are taken in abstraction
isolated from their context. This is not how fact actually occurs.
Every fact occurs in the course of the duration of some mental life
which itself changes as a process of duration and not as a logical
series. The mental life of an individual is, as it were, a
comprehensive fact which embraces all the facts directly known to that
individual in a single process of creative duration. Facts are to the
mental life of an individual what bare sensation is to the actual fact
directly known in perception: facts are, as it were, the matter of
mental life. Imagine a fact directly known, such as we have described
in discussing sensible perception, lasting on and on, perpetually
taking up new bare sensations and complicating them with meaning which
consists of all the past which it already contains so as to make out of
this combination of past and present fresh fact, that will give you
some idea of the way in which Bergson thinks that mental life is
created out of matter by memory. Only this description is still
unsatisfactory because it is obliged to speak of what is created either
in the plural or in the singular and so fails to convey either the
differentiation contained in mental life or else its unbroken
continuity as all one fact progressively modified by absorbing more and
more matter.
If Bergson’s account of the way in which memory works is true there is
a sense in which the whole past of every individual is preserved in
memory and all unites with any present bare sensation to constitute the
fact directly known to him at any given moment. If the continuity of
duration is really unbroken there is no possibility of any of the past
being lost.
This is why Bergson maintains that the whole of our past is contained
in our virtual knowledge: what he means by our virtual knowledge is
simply everything which enters into the process of duration which
constitutes our whole mental life. Besides our whole past this virtual
knowledge must also contain much more of present bare sensation than we
are usually aware of.
We said that, for Bergson, actual fact directly known was the only
reality; this actual fact, however, does not mean merely what is
present to the perception of a given individual at any given moment,
but the whole of our virtual knowledge. The field of virtual knowledge
would cover much the same region as the subconscious, which plays such
an important part in modern psychology. The limits of this field are
impossible to determine. Once you give up limiting direct knowledge to
the fact actually present in perception at any given moment it is
difficult to draw the line anywhere. And yet to draw the line at the
present moment is impossible for “the present moment” is clearly an
abstract fiction. For practical purposes “the present” is what is known
as “the specious present,” which covers a certain ill-defined period of
duration from which the instantaneous “present moment” is recognised to
be a mere abstraction. According to Bergson, however, just as “the
present moment” is only an abstraction from a wider specious present so
this specious present itself is an abstraction from a continuous
process of duration from which other abstractions, days, weeks, years,
can be made, but which is actually unbroken and forms a single
continuous changing whole. And just as facts are only abstractions from
the whole mental life of an individual so individuals must be regarded
as abstractions from some more comprehensive mental whole and thus our
virtual knowledge seems not merely to extend over the whole of what is
embraced by our individual acts of perception and preserved by our
individual memories but overflows even these limits and must be
regarded as co-extensive with the duration of the whole of reality.
It may be open to question how much of this virtual knowledge of both
past and present we ever could know directly in any sense comparable to
the way in which we know the fact actually presented at some given
moment, however perfectly we might succeed in ridding ourselves with
our intellectual pre-occupation with explaining instead of knowing;
but, if reality forms an unbroken whole in duration, we cannot in
advance set any limits, short of the whole of reality, to the field of
virtual knowledge. And it does really seem as if our pre-occupation
with discovering repetitions in the interests of explanation had
something to do with the limited extent of the direct knowledge which
we ordinarily enjoy, so that, if we could overcome this bias, we might
know more than we do now, though how much more it is not possible, in
advance, to predict. For in the whole field of virtual knowledge, which
appears to be continuous with the little scrap of fact which is all
that we usually attend to, present bare sensation and such bare
sensations as resemble it, form very insignificant elements: for
purposes of abstraction and explanation, however, it is only these
insignificant elements that are of any use. So long, therefore, as we
are preoccupied with abstraction, we must bend all our energies towards
isolating these fragments from the context which extends out and out
over the whole field of virtual knowledge, rivetting our attention on
them and, as far as possible, ignoring all the rest. If Bergson’s
theory of virtual knowledge is correct, then, it does seem as if
normally our efforts were directed towards shutting out most of our
knowledge rather than towards enjoying it, towards forgetting the
greater part of what memory contains rather than towards remembering
it.
If we really could reverse this effort and concentrate upon knowing the
whole field of past and present as fully as possible, instead of
classifying it, which involves selecting part of the field and ignoring
the rest, it is theoretically conceivable that we might succeed in
knowing directly the whole of the process of duration which constitutes
the individual mental life of each one of us. And it is not even
certain that our knowledge must necessarily be confined within the
limits of what we have called our individual mental life. Particular
facts, as we have seen, are not really distinct parts of a single
individual mental life: the notion of separateness applies only to
abstractions and it is only because we are much more pre-occupied with
abstractions than with actual facts that we come to suppose that facts
can ever really be separate from one another. When we shake off our
common sense assumptions and examine the actual facts which we know
directly we find that they form a process and not a logical series of
distinct facts one after the other. Now on analogy it seems possible
that what we call individual mental lives are, to the wider process
which contains and constitutes the whole of reality, as particular
facts are to the whole process which constitutes each individual mental
life. The whole of reality may contain individual lives as these
contain particular facts, not as separate distinct units in logical
relations, but as a process in which the line of demarcation between
“the parts” (if we must speak of “parts”) is not clear cut. If this
analogy holds then it is impossible in advance to set any limits to the
field of direct knowledge which it may be in our power to secure by
reversing our usual mental attitude and devoting our energies simply to
knowing, instead of to classifying and explaining.
But without going beyond the limits of our individual experience, and
even without coming to know directly the whole field of past and
present fact which that experience contains, it is still a considerable
gain to our direct knowledge if we realize what false assumptions our
preoccupation with classification leads us to make even about the very
limited facts to which our direct knowledge is ordinarily confined. We
then realize that, besides being considerably less than what we
probably have it in our power to know, these few facts that we do know
are themselves by no means what we commonly suppose them to be.
The two fundamental errors into which common sense leads us about the
facts are the assumptions that they have the logical form, that is
contain mutually exclusive parts in external relations, and that these
parts can be repeated over and over again. These two false assumptions
are summed up in the common sense view that the fact which we know
directly actually consists of events, things, states, qualities.
Bergson tells us that when once we have realized that this is not the
case we have begun to be philosophers.
Having stripped the veil of common sense assumptions from what we know
directly our task will then be to hold this direct knowledge before us
so as to know as much as possible. The act by which we know directly is
the very same act by which we perceive and remember; these are all
simply acts of synthesis, efforts to turn matter into creative
duration. What we have to do is, as it were, to make a big act of
perception to embrace as wild a field as possible of past and present
as a single fact directly known. This act of synthesis Bergson calls
“intuition.”
Intuition may be described as turning past and present into fact
directly known by transforming it from mere matter into a creative
process of duration: but, of course, actually, there is not, first
matter, then an act of intuition which synthesises it, and finally a
fact in duration, there is simply the duration, and the matter and the
act of intuition are only abstractions by which we describe and explain
it.
The effort of intuition is the reversal of the intellectual effort to
abstract and explain which is our usual way of treating facts, and
these two ways of attending are incompatible and cannot both be carried
on together. Intuition, (or, to give it a more familiar name, direct
knowledge,) reveals fact: intellectual attention analyses and
classifies this fact in order to explain it in general terms, that is
to explain it by substituting abstractions for the actual fact.
Obviously we cannot perform acts of analysis without some fact to serve
as material: analysis uses the facts supplied by direct knowledge as
its material. Bergson maintains that in so doing it limits and distorts
these facts and he says that if we are looking for speculative
knowledge we must go back to direct knowledge, or, as he calls it,
intuition.
But bare acquaintance is in-communicable, moreover it requires a great
effort to maintain it. In order to communicate it and retain the power
of getting the facts back again after we have relaxed our grip on them
we are obliged, once we have obtained the fullest direct knowledge of
which we are capable, to apply the intellectual method to the fact thus
revealed and attempt to describe it in general terms.
Now the directly known forms a creative duration whose special
characteristics are that it is non-logical, (i.e., is not made up of
distinct mutually exclusive terms united by external relations) and
does not contain parts which can be repeated over and over, while on
the other hand the terms which we have to substitute for it if we want
to describe it only stand for repetitions and have the logical form. It
looks, therefore, as if our descriptions could not, as they stand, be
very successful in conveying to others the fact known to us directly,
or in recalling it to ourselves.
In order that the description substituted by our intellectual activity
for the facts which we want to describe may convey these facts it is
necessary to perform an act of synthesis on the description analogous
to the act of perception which originally created the fact itself out
of mere matter. The words used in a description should be to the hearer
what mere matter is to the perceiver: in order that matter may be
perceived an act of synthesis must be performed by which the matter is
turned into fact in duration: similarly in order to gather what a
description of a fact means the hearer must take the general terms
which are employed not as being distinct and mutually exclusive but as
modifying one another and interpenetrating in the way in which the
“parts” of a process of creative duration interpenetrate. In the same
way by understanding the terms employed synthetically and not
intellectually we can use a description to recall any fact which we
have once known directly. Thus our knowledge advances by alternate acts
of direct acquaintance and analysis.
Philosophy must start from a fresh effort of acquaintance creating, if
possible, a fact wider and fuller than the facts which we are content
to know for the purposes of everyday life. But analysis is essential if
the fact thus directly known is to be conveyed to others and recalled.
By analysis the philosopher fixes this wider field in order that he may
communicate and recall it. Starting later from the description of some
fact obtained by a previous effort of acquaintance, or from several
facts obtained at different times, and also from the facts described by
others, and using all these descriptions as material, it may be
possible, by a fresh effort, to perform acts of acquaintance, (or
synthesis) embracing ever wider and wider fields of knowledge. This,
according to Bergson, is the way in which philosophical knowledge
should be built up, facts, obtained by acts of acquaintance, being
translated into descriptions only that these descriptions may again be
further synthesised so directing our attention to more and more
comprehensive facts.
Inevitably, of course, these facts themselves, being less than all the
stream of creative duration to which they belong, will be abstractions,
if taken apart from that whole stream, and so distorted. This flaw in
what we know even by direct acquaintance can never be wholly remedied
short of our succeeding in becoming acquainted with the whole of
duration. It is something, however, to be aware of the flaw, even if we
cannot wholly remedy it, and the wider the acquaintance the less is the
imperfection in the fact known.
The first step, in any case, towards obtaining the wider acquaintance
at which philosophy aims consists in making the effort necessary to rid
ourselves of the practical preoccupation which gives us our bias
towards explaining everything long before we have allowed ourselves
time to pay proper attention to it, in order that we may at least get
back to such actual facts as we do already know directly. When this has
been accomplished (and our intellectual habits are so deeply ingrained
that the task is by no means easy) we can then go on to other
philosophers’ descriptions of the facts with which their own efforts to
widen their direct knowledge have acquainted them and, by synthesising
the general terms which they have been obliged to employ, we also may
come to know these more comprehensive facts. Unless it is understood
synthetically, however, a philosopher’s description of the facts with
which he has acquainted himself will be altogether unsatisfactory and
misleading. It is in this way that Bergson’s own analysis of the fact
which we all know directly into matter and the act of memory by which
matter is turned into a creative process should be understood. The
matter and the act of memory are both abstractions from the actual
fact: he does not mean that over and above the fact there is either any
matter or any force or activity called memory nor are these things
supposed to be in the actual fact: they are simply abstract terms in
which the fact is described.
Bergson tries elsewhere to put the same point by saying that there are
two tendencies in reality, one towards space (that is logical form) and
the other towards duration, and that the actual fact which we know
directly “tends” now towards “space” and now towards duration. The two
faculties intellect and intuition are likewise fictions which are not
really supposed to exist, distinct from the fact to which they are
applied, but are simply abstract notions invented for the sake of
description.
Whatever the description by which a philosopher attempts to convey what
he has discovered we shall only understand it if we remember that the
terms in which the fact is described are not actually parts of the fact
itself and can only convey the meaning intended if they are grasped by
synthesis and not intellectually understood.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE DEVONSHIRE PRESS, TORQUAY
International Library of Psychology Philosophy and Scientific Method
GENERAL EDITOR - - - - C. K. OGDEN, M. A.
(_Magdalene College, Cambridge_).
_VOLUMES ALREADY ARRANGED:_
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
_by_ Q. E. MOORE, Litt. D.
CONFLICT AND DREAM
_by_ W. H. R. RIVERS, F. R. S.
THE MEASUREMENT OF EMOTION
_by_ W. WHATELY SMITH _Introduction by William Brown_.
THE ANALYSIS OF MATTER
_by_ BERTRAND RUSSELL, F. R. S.
MATHEMATICS FOR PHILOSOPHERS
_by_ G. H. HARDY, F. R. S.
PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
_by_ C. G. JONG, M. D., LL. D.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REASONING
_by_ EUGENIO RIGNANO
THE ELEMENTS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
_by_ WILLIAM BROWN, M. D., D. Sc.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
_by_ E. VON HARTMANN
THE FOUNDATIONS OF MUSICAL AESTHETICS
_by_ W. POLE, F. R. S. _Edited by Edward J. Dent_.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC
_by_ EDWARD J. DENT
SOME CONCEPTS OF SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT
_by_ C. D. BROAD, Litt. D.
PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC
_by_ L. WITTGENSTEIN _Introduction by Bertrand Russell_.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF ' AS IF
_by_ H. VAIHINGER
THE LAWS OF FEELING
_by_ F. PAULHAN
THE HISTORY OF MATERIALISM
_by_ F. A. LANGE
COLOUR-HARMONY
_by_ JAMES WOOD and C. K. OGDEN
THE STATISTICAL METHOD IN ECONOMICS AND POLITICS
_by_ P. SARGANT FLORENCE
THE PRINCIPLES OF CRITICISM
_by_ I. A. RICHARDS