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TIME
AND FREE WILL
An Essay on the Immediate Data
of Consciousness
BY
HENRI BERGSON
MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE
PROFESSOR AT THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE
Authorized Translation _by_
F. L. POGSON, M.A.
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & COMPANY, LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 44 AND 45 RATHBONE PLACE
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913
Καὶ εἴ τις δὲ τὴν φύσίν ἔροιτο τίνος ἔνεκα ποίεῐ
εἰ τοῡ ἐρωτῶντος ἐθέλοι ἐπαΐειν καὶ λέγειν, εἴποι
ἄν "ἐχρῆν μὲν μὴ ἐρωτἂν, ἀλλὰ συνιέναι καὶ αὐτὸν
σιωπῇ, ὤσπερ ἐγὼ σιωπώ καὶ οὐκ εἴθισμαι λέγειν."
PLOTINUS.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
Henri Louis Bergson was born in Paris, October 18, 1859. He entered the
École normale in 1878, and was admitted agrégé de philosophie in 1881
and docteur ès lettres in 1889. After holding professorships in various
provincial and Parisian lycées, he became maître de conférences at the
École normale supérieure in 1897, and since 1900 has been professor at
the Collège de France. In 1901 he became a member of the Institute on
his election to the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.
A full list of Professor Bergson's works is given in the appended
bibliography. In making the following translation of his _Essai sur les
données immédiates de la conscience_ I have had the great advantage of
his co-operation at every stage, and the aid which he has given has
been most generous and untiring. The book itself was worked out and
written during the years 1883 to 1887 and was originally published in
1889. The foot-notes in the French edition contain a certain number
of references to French translations of English works. In the present
translation I am responsible for citing these references from the
original English. This will account for the fact that editions are
sometimes referred to which have appeared subsequently to 1889. I have
also added fairly extensive marginal summaries and a full index.
In France the _Essai_ is already in its seventh edition. Indeed,
one of the most striking facts about Professor Bergson's works is
the extent to which they have appealed not only to the professional
philosophers, but also to the ordinary cultivated public. The method
which he pursues is not the conceptual and abstract method which has
been the dominant tradition in philosophy. For him reality is not to
be reached by any elaborate construction of thought: it is given in
immediate experience as a flux, a continuous process of becoming, to
be grasped by intuition, by sympathetic insight. Concepts break up
the continuous flow of reality into parts external to one another,
they further the interests of language and social life and are useful
primarily for practical purposes. But they give us nothing of the life
and movement of reality; rather, by substituting for this an artificial
reconstruction, a patchwork of dead fragments, they lead to the
difficulties which have always beset the intellectualist philosophy,
and which on its premises are insoluble. Instead of attempting a
solution in the intellectualist sense, Professor Bergson calls upon
his readers to put these broken fragments of reality behind them, to
immerse themselves in the living stream of things and to find their
difficulties swept away in its resistless flow.
In the present volume Professor Bergson first deals with the intensity
of conscious states. He shows that quantitative differences are
applicable only to magnitudes, that is, in the last resort, to space,
and that intensity in itself is purely qualitative. Passing then from
the consideration of separate conscious states to their multiplicity,
he finds that there are two forms of multiplicity: quantitative
or discrete multiplicity involves the intuition of space, but the
multiplicity of conscious states is wholly qualitative. This unfolding
multiplicity constitutes duration, which is a succession without
distinction, an interpenetration of elements so heterogeneous that
former states can never recur. The idea of a homogeneous and measurable
time is shown to be an artificial concept, formed by the intrusion of
the idea of space into the realm of pure duration. Indeed, the whole of
Professor Bergson's philosophy centres round his conception of _real
concrete duration_ and the specific _feeling_ of duration which our
consciousness has when it does away with convention and habit and gets
back to its natural attitude. At the root of most errors in philosophy
he finds a confusion between this _concrete duration_ and the _abstract
time_ which mathematics, physics, and even language and common sense,
substitute for it. Applying these results to the problem of free
will, he shows that the difficulties arise from taking up one's
stand _after_ the act has been performed, and applying the conceptual
method to it. From the point of view of the living, developing self
these difficulties are shown to be illusory, and freedom, though not
definable in abstract or conceptual terms, is declared to be one of the
clearest facts established by observation.
It is no doubt misleading to attempt to sum up a system of philosophy
in a sentence, but perhaps some part of the spirit of Professor
Bergson's philosophy may be gathered from the motto which, with his
permission, I have prefixed to this translation:--"If a man were to
inquire of Nature the reason of her creative activity, and if she
were willing to give ear and answer, she would say--'Ask me not, but
understand in silence, even as I am silent and am not wont to speak.'"
F. L. POGSON.
OXFORD,
_June,_ 1910.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. WORKS BY BERGSON.
(a) _Books._
Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit, (Thesis), Paris, 1889. Essai sur les
données immédiates de la conscience, Paris, 1889, 1910⁷.
Matière et Mémoire, Essai sur la relation du corps avec l'esprit,
Paris, 1896, 1910⁶.
Le Rire, Essai sur la signification du comique, Paris, 1900,
1910⁶. (First published in the _Revue de Paris,_ 1900, Vol.
I., pp. 512-545 and 759-791.)
L'Évolution créatrice, Paris, 1907, 1910⁶.
(b) _Articles._
La Spécialité. (Address at the distribution of prizes at the lycée of
Angers, Aug. 1882.)
De la simulation inconsciente dans l'état d'hypnotisme. _Revue
philosophique,_ Vol. 22, 1886, pp. 525-531. Le bon sens et les études
classiques. (Address at the distribution of prizes at the "Concours
général des lycées et collèges," 1895.)
Mémoire et reconnaissance. (_Revue philos._ Mar., Apr. 1896, pp.
225-248 and 380-399. Republished in _Matière et Mémoire._)
Perception et matière. (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ May 1896, pp.
257-277. Republished in _Matière et Mémoire._)
Note sur les origines psychologiques de notre croyance à la loi
de causalité. (Lecture at the Philosophical Congress in Paris,
1900, published in the _Bibliothèque du Congrès International de
Philosophie;_ cf. _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale,_ Sept. 1900, pp.
655 ff.)
Le Rêve. (Lecture at the _Institut psychologique international_:
published in the _Bulletin de l'Institut psych. intern._ May 1901; cf.
_Revue scientifique,_ 4e S., Vol. 15, June 8, 1901, pp. 705-713, and
_Revue de Philosophie,_ June 1901, pp. 486-488.)
Le Parallélisme psycho-physique et la métaphysique positive. _Bulletin
de la Société française de Philosophie,_ June 1901.
L'Effort intellectuel. _Revue philosophique,_ Jan. 1902. Introduction à
la métaphysique. _Revue de Mét. et de Mor._ Jan. 1903.
Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique. (Lecture at the Philosophical
Congress in Geneva, 1904, published in the _Revue de Mét. et de Mor._
Nov. 1904, pp. 895-908; see also pp. 1027-1036.)
L'Idée de néant, _Rev. philos._ Nov. 1906, pp. 449-466. (Part of Chap.
4 of _L'Évolution créatrice._)
Notice sur la vie et les œuvres de M. Félix Ravaisson-Mollien. (Lecture
before the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques: published in
the _Proceedings_ of the Academy, Vol. 25, pp. 1 ff. Paris, 1907.)
Le Souvenir du présent et la fausse reconnaissance. _Rev. philos._ Dec.
1908, pp. 561-593.
(c) _Miscellaneous._
_Lucrèce:_ Extraits ... avec une étude sur la poésie, la philosophie,
la physique, le texte et la langue de Lucrèce. Paris, 1884.
Principes de métaphysique et de psychologie d'après M. Paul Janet.
_Revue philos.,_ Vol. 44, Nov. 1897, pp. 525-551.
Collaboration au _Vocabulaire philosophique, Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de
Phil._ July 1902, Aug. 1907, Aug. 1908, Aug. 1909.
Remarques sur la place et le caractère de la Philosophie dans
l'Enseignement secondaire, _Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de Phil._ Feb.
1903, pp. 44 ff.
Remarques sur la notion de la liberté morale, _Bulletin de la Soc. fr.
de Phil._ Apr. 1903, pp. 101-103.
Remarques à propos de la philosophie sociale de Cournot, _Bulletin de
la Soc. fr. de Phil._ Aug. 1903, p. 229.
Préface de la _Psychologie rationnelle_ de M. Lubac, Paris, Alcan, 1904.
Sur sa relation à W. James, _Revue philosophique,_ Vol. 60, 1905, p.
229 f.
Sur sa théorie de la perception, _Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de Philos._
Mar. 1905, pp. 94 ff.
Rapport sur le concours pour le prix Bordin, 1905, ayant pour sujet
Maine de Biran. (_Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences morales et
politiques,_ Vol. 25, pp. 809 ff., Paris, 1907.)
Rapport sur le concours pour le prix Le Dissez de Penanrun, 1907.
(_Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences morales et politiques,_ Vol. 26,
pp. 771 ff. Paris, 1909.)
Sur _l'Êvolution créatrice, Revue du Mois,_ Sept. 1907, p. 351.
A propos de l'évolution de l'intelligence géométrique, _Revue de Mét.
et de Mor._ Jan. 1908, pp. 28-33.
Sur l'influence de sa philosophie sur les élèves des lycées,
_Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de Philos.,_ Jan. 1908, p. 21; cf. _L'Année
psychologique,_ 1908, pp. 229-231.
Réponse à une enquête sur la question religieuse (_La Question
religieuse_ par Frédéric Charpin, Paris, 1908).
Remarques sur l'organisation des Congrès de Philosophie. _Bulletin de
la Soc. fr. de Phil._ Jan. 1909, p. 11 f.
Préface à un volume de la collection _Les grands philosophes,_ (_G.
Tarde,_ par ses fils). Paris. Michaud, 1909.
Remarques à propos d'une thèse soutenue par M. Dwelshauvers
"L'inconscient dans la vie mentale." _Bulletin de la Soc. fr. de
Phil.,_ Feb. 1910.
A propos d'un article de Mr. W. B. Pitkin intitule "James and Bergson."
_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Vol. VII,
No. 14, July 7, 1910, pp. 385-388.
II. SELECT LIST OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES DEALING IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITH
BERGSON AND HIS PHILOSOPHY.
(Arranged alphabetically under each language.)
_S. Alexander, Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Mind,_ Oct. 1897, pp. 572-3).
_B. H. Bode, L'Évolution créatrice_, (_Philosophical Review_, 1908, pp.
84-89).
_W. Boyd, L'Évolution créatrice_, (_Review of Theology and Philosophy,_
Oct. 1907, pp. 249-251).
_H. Wildon Carr,_ Bergson's Theory of Knowledge, (_Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society,_ London, 1909. New Series, Vol. IX, pp. 41-60).
_H. Wildon Carr,_ Bergson's Theory of Instinct, (_Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society,_ London, 1910, N.S., Vol. X).
_H. Wildon Carr,_ The Philosophy of Bergson, (_Hibbert Journal,_ July
1910, pp. 873-883).
_W. J. Ferrar, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Commonwealth,_ Dec. 1909, pp.
364-367).
_H. N. Gardiner, Mémoire et reconnaissance,_ (_Psychological Review,_
1896, pp. 578-580).
_T. E. Hulme,_ The New Philosophy, (_New Age,_ July 1, 29, 1909).
_William James,_ A Pluralistic Universe, London, 1909, pp. 225-273.
_William James,_ The Philosophy of Bergson, (_Hibbert Journal,_ April
1909, pp. 562-577. Reprinted in _A Pluralistic Universe;_ see above).
_William James,_ Bradley or Bergson? (_Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Vol. VII, No. 2, Jan. 20, 1910, pp.
29-33).
_H. M. Kallen,_ James, Bergson and Mr. Pitkin, (_Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ June 23, 1910, pp. 353-357).
_A. Lalande,_ Philosophy in France, 1907, (_Philosophical Review,_ May,
1908).
_J. A. Leighton,_ On Continuity and Discreteness, (_Journal of
Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Apr. 28, 1910, pp.
231-238).
_T. Loveday, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Mind,_ July 1908, pp. 402-8).
_A. O. Lovejoy,_ The Metaphysician of the Life-Force, (_Nation,_ New
York, Sept. 30, 1909).
_A. Mitchell, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Vol. V, No. 22, Oct. 22, 1908, pp.
603-612).
_W. Scott Palmer,_ Presence and Omnipresence, (_Contemporary Review,_
June 1908, pp. 734-742).
_W. Scott Palmer,_ Thought and Instinct, (_Nation,_ June 5, 1909).
_W. Scott Palmer,_ Life and the Brain, (_Contemporary Review,_ Oct.,
1909, pp. 474-484).
_W. B. Pitkin,_ James and Bergson; or, Who is against Intellect?
(_Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods,_ Apr. 28,
1910, pp. 225-231).
_G. R. T. Ross,_ A New Theory of Laughter, (_Nation,_ Nov. 28, 1908).
_G. R. T. Ross,_ The Philosophy of Vitalism, (_Nation,_ Mar. 13, 1909)
_J. Royce,_ The Reality of the Temporal, (_Int. Journal of Ethics,_ Apr.
1910, pp. 257-271).
_G. M. Sauvage,_ The New Philosophy in France, (_Catholic University
Bulletin,_ Washington, Apr. 1906, Mar. 1908).
_Norman Smith,_ Subjectivism and Realism in Modern Philosophy,
(_Philosophical Review,_ Apr. 1908, pp. 138-148).
_G. F. Stout,_ Free Will and Determinism, (_Speaker,_ London, May 10,
1890).
_J. H. Tufts,_ Humor, (_Psychological Review,_ 1901, pp. 98-99).
_G. Tyrrell,_ Creative Evolution, (_Hibbert Journal,_ Jan. 1908, pp.
435-442).
_T. Whittaker, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,_
(_Mind,_ Apr. 1890, pp. 292-3).
_G. Aimel,_ Individualisme et philosophie bergsonienne, (_Revue de
Philos.,_ June 1908).
_Balthasar,_ Le problème de Dieu d'après la philosophie nouvelle,
(_Revue néo-scolastique,_ Nov. 1907).
_G. Batault,_ La philosophie de M. Bergson, (_Mercure de France,_ Mar.
16, 1908, pp. 193-211).
_G. Belot,_ Une théorie nouvelle de la liberté, (_Revue philosophique,_
Vol. XXX, 1890, pp. 360-392).
_G. Belot,_ Un nouveau spiritualisme, _Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Rev.
philos._ Vol. XLIV, 1897, pp. 183-199).
_Jean Blum,_ La philosophie de M. Bergson et la poésie symboliste,
(_Mercure de France,_ Sept. 15, 1906).
_C. Bougie,_ Syndicalistes et Bergsoniens, (_Revue du Mois,_ Apr. 1909,
pp. 403-416).
_G. Cantecor,_ La philosophie nouvelle et la vie de l'esprit, (_Rev.
philos._ Mar. 1903, pp. 252-277).
_P. Cérésole,_ Le parallélisme psycho-physiologique et l'argument de M.
Bergson, (_Archives de Psychologie,_ Vol. V, Oct. 1905, pp. 112-120).
_A. Chaumeix,_ La philosophie de M. Bergson, (_Journal des Débats,_
May 24, 1908. Reprinted in _Pragmatisme et Modernisme,_ Paris, Alcan,
1909).
_A. Chaumeix,_ Les critiques du rationalisme, (_Revue Hebdomadaire,_
Paris, Jan. 1, 1910, pp. 1-33).
_A. Chide,_ Le mobilisme moderne, Paris, Alcan, 1908. (See also _Revue
philos.,_ Apr. 1908, Dec. 1909).
_C. Coignet,_ Kant et Bergson, (_Revue Chrétienne,_ July 1904).
_C. Coignet,_ La vie d'après M. Bergson, (_Bericht über den III
Kongress für Philosophie,_ Heidelberg, 1909, pp. 358-364).
_L. Constant,_ Cours de M. Bergson sur l'histoire de l'idée de temps,
(_Revue de Philos._ Jan. 1904, pp. 105-111. Summary of lectures).
_P. L. Couchoud,_ La métaphysique nouvelle, à propos de _Matière et
Mémoire_ de M. Bergson, (_Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale,_ Mar.
1902, pp. 225-243).
_L. Couturat,_ La théorie du temps de Bergson, (_Rev. de Mét. et de
Mor._ 1896, pp. 646-669).
_Léon Cristiani,_ Le problème de Dieu et le pragmatisme, Paris, Bloud
et Cie., 1908.
_F. Le Dantec, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Revue du Mois,_ Aug. 1907.
Reprinted in _Science et Conscience,_ Paris, Flammarion, 1908).
_L. Dauriac, Le Rire,_ (_Revue philos._ Dec. 1900, pp. 665-670).
_V. Delbos, Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ May 1897,
pp. 353-389).
_G. L. Duprat,_ La spatialité des faits psychiques, (_Rev. philos.,_
May 1907, pp. 492-501).
_G. Dwelshauvers,_ Raison et Intuition, Étude sur la philosophie de M.
Bergson, (_La Belgique artistique et littéraire,_ Nov. Dec. 1905, Apr.
1906).
_G. Dwelshauvers,_ M. Bergson et la méthode intuitive, (_Revue du
Mois,_ Sept. 1907, pp. 336-350).
_G. Dwelshauvers,_ De l'intuition dans l'acte de l'esprit, (_Rev. de
Mét. et de Mor._ Jan. 1908, pp. 55-65).
_A. Farges,_ Le problème de la contingence d'après M. Bergson, (_Revue
pratique d'apologétique,_ Apr. 15, 1909).
_A. Farges,_ L'erreur fondamentale de la philosophie nouvelle, (_Revue
thomiste,_ May-June, 1909).
_A. Farges,_ Théorie fondamentale de l'acte, avec la critique de la
philosophie nouvelle de M. Bergson, Paris, Berche et Tralin, 1909.
_Alfred Fouillée,_ Le mouvement idéaliste et la réaction contre la
science positive, Paris, Alcan, 1896, pp. 198-206.
_Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange,_ Le sens commun, la philosophie de l'être et
les formules dogmatiques, Paris, Beauchesne, 1909.
_Jules de Gaultier,_ Le réalisme du continu, (_Revue philos.,_ Jan.
1910, pp. 39-64).
_René Gillouin,_ Henri Bergson, Paris, 1910. (A volume in the series
_Les grands philosophes_).
_A. Hollard, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Foi et Vie,_ Sept. 16, 1907, pp.
545-550).
_B. Jacob,_ La philosophie d'hier et celle d'aujourd'hui, (_Rev. de
Mét. et de Mor._ Mar. 1898, pp. 170-201).
_G. Lechalas,_ Le nombre et le temps dans leurs rapports avec l'espace,
(_Ann. de Phil, chrét._ N.S. Vol. 22, 1890, pp. 516-540).
_G. Lechalas, Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Ann. de Phil, chrét._ N.S. Vol.
36, 1897, pp. 149-164 and 314-334)
_A. Joussain,_ Romantisme et Religion, Paris, Alcan, 1910.
_Legendre,_ M. Bergson et son _Évolution créatrice_, (_Bulletin de la
Semaine,_ May 6, 1908).
_Lenoble, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Revue du Clergé français,_ Jan.,
1908).
_E. Le Roy,_ Science et Philosophie, (A Series of articles in the _Rev.
de Mét. et de Mor._ 1899 and 1900).
_L. Lévy-Bruhl, L'Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,_
(_Rev. philos.,_ Vol. 29, 1890, pp. 519-538).
_G. H. Luquet,_ Idées générales de psychologie, Paris, 1906.
_J. Lux,_ Nos philosophes, M. Henri Bergson, (_Revue Bleue,_ Dec. 1,
1906).
_X. Moisant,_ La notion de multiplicité dans la philosophie de M.
Bergson, (_Revue de Philos.,_ June, 1902).
_X. Moisant,_ Dieu dans la philosophie de M. Bergson, (_Revue de
Philos.,_ May, 1905).
_G. Mondain,_ Remarques sur la théorie matérialiste, (_Foi et Vie,_
June 15, 1908, pp. 369-373).
_D. Parodi, Le Rire,_ par H. Bergson, (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ Mar.
1901, pp. 224-236).
_T. M. Pègues L'Évolution créatrice_ (_Revue thomiste,_ May-June 1908,
pp. 137-163).
_C. Piat,_ De l'insuffisance des philosophies de l'intuition, Paris,
1908.
_Maurice Pradines,_ Principes de toute philosophie de l'action, Paris,
1910.
_G. Rageot, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Rev. philos.,_ July 1907).
Reprinted and enlarged in _Les savants et la philosophie,_ Paris,
Alcan, 1907.
_F. Rauh,_ La conscience du devenir, (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ Nov.
1897, pp. 659-681, and Jan. 1898, pp. 38-60).
_F. Rauh,_ Sur la position du problème du libre arbitre, (_Rev. de Mét.
et de Mor._ Nov. 1904, pp. 977-1006).
_P. P. Raymond,_ La philosophie de l'intuition et la philosophie du
concept, (_Études franciscaines,_ June 1909).
_E. Seillière,_ L'Allemagne et la philosophie bergsonienne,
(_L'Opinion,_ July 3, 1909).
_G. Sorel, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Le Mouvement socialiste,_ Oct.
Dec. 1907, Jan. Mar. Apr. 1908).
_T. Steeg,_ Henri Bergson: Notice biographique avec portrait, (_Revue
universelle,_ Jan. 1902, pp. 15-16).
_J. de Tonquébec,_ La notion de la vérité dans la philosophie nouvelle,
Paris, 1908.
_J. de Tonquébec,_ Comment interpréter l'ordre du monde à propos du
dernier ouvrage de M. Bergson, Paris, Beauchesne, 1908.
_H. Trouche, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Revue de Philos._ Nov. 1908).
_H. Villassère, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Bulletin critique,_ Sept.
1908, pp. 392-411.)
_Tancrède de Visan,_ La philosophie de M. Bergson et le lyrisme
contemporain, (_Vers et Prose,_ Vol. XXI, 1910, pp. 125-140).
_L. Weber, L'Évolution créatrice,_ (_Rev. de Mét. et de Mor._ Sept.
1907, pp. 620-670).
_V. Wilbois,_ L'esprit positif, (A series of articles in the _Rev. de
Mét. et de Mor._1900 and 1901).
_I. Benrubi,_ Henri Bergson, (_Die Zukunft,_ June 4, 1910).
_K. Bornhausen,_ Die Philosophie Henri Bergsons und ihre Bedeutung
für den Religionsbegriff, (_Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche,_
Tübingen, Jahrg. XX, Heft I 1910, pp. 39-77.)
_O. Braun, Materie und Gedächtnis,_ (_Archiv für die gesamte
Psychologie,_ Vol. 15, 1909, Heft 4, pp. 13-15).
_Hans Driesch,_ H. Bergson, der biologische Philosoph., (_Zeitschrift
für den Ausbau der Entwickelungslehre,_ Jahrg. II, Heft 1/2, Stuttgart,
1908).
_V. Eschbach,_ Henri Bergson, (_Kölnische Volkszeitung,_ Jan. 20, 1910).
_Giessler, Le Rêve,_ (_Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der
Sinnesorgane,_ Vol. 29, 1902, p. 231).
_J. Goldstein,_ Henri Bergson und der Zeitlosigkeitsidealismus,
(_Frankfurter Zeitung,_ May 2, 1909).
_J. Goldstein,_ Henri Bergson und die Sozialwissenschaft, (_Archiv für
Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik,_ Bd. XXXI, Heft 1, July 1910, pp.
1-22).
_A. Gurewitsch,_ Die französische Metaphysik der Gegenwart (_Archiv für
system. Philos._ Bd. IX, Heft 4, Nov. 1903, pp. 462-490).
_Heymans, Le Rire,_ (_Zeitsch. f. Psychol, u. Physiol. d.
Sinnesorgane,_ Vol. 25, 1901, pp. 155-6).
_K. Joël,_ Neues Denken, (_Neue Rundschau,_ Apr. 1910, pp. 549-558).
_H. von Keyserling,_ Bergson, (_Allgemeine Zeitung,_ München, Nov. 28,
1908).
_R. Kroner,_ Henri Bergson, (_Logos,_ Bd. I, Heft 1, Tübingen, 1910).
_A. Lasson,_ H. Bergson, (_Deutsche Literaturzeitung_, May 28, 1910).
_R. Müller-Freienfels, Materie und Gedächtnis,_ (_Zeitsch. f. Psychol.
u. Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane,_ May 1910, Vol. 56, Heft 1/2, pp. 126-129).
_Α. Pilzecker, Mémoire et reconnaissance,_ (_Zeitsch. f. Psychol., u.
Physiol, d. Sinnesorgane,_ Vol. 13, 1897, pp. 229-232).
_Hans Prager,_ Henri Bergsons metaphysische Grundanschauung, (_Archiv
für system. Philos._ 1910, Bd. XVI, Heft 3, pp. 310-320).
_G. Seliber,_ Der Pragmatismus und seine Gegner, (_Archiv für system.
Philos._ 1909, pp. 287-298).
_A. Steenbergen,_ Henri Bergsons Intuitive Philosophie, Jena, 1909.
_W. Windelband,_ Preface to _Materie und Gedächtnis,_ Jena, 1908, pp.
I-XV.
_Th. Ziehen, Matière et Mémoire,_ (_Zeitschrift für Philosophie und
philos. Kritik, Dec._ 1898, pp. 295-299).
_Roberto Ardigò,_ Una pretesa pregiudiziale contro il positivismo,
(_Rivista di Filosofia e Scienze affini,_ Jan.-Feb., Mar.-Apr. 1908.
Reprinted in Collected Works, Vol. 10).
_A. Crespi,_ La metafisica di H. Bergson, (_Coenobium,_ July-Aug. 1908).
_L. Ferri, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience,_
(_Rivista Italiana di Filosofia,_ Mar.-Apr. 1890, pp. 248-9).
_A. Levi,_ Sulle ultime forme dell' indeterminismo francese, Firenze,
Civelli, 1903.
_A. Levi,_ L'Indeterminismo nella filosofia francese contemporanea,
Firenze, Seeber, 1905.
_F. Masci,_ L'idealismo indeterminista, Napoli, 1899.
_E. Morselli,_ Un nuovo idealismo, (H. Bergson), Udine, Tosolini, 1900.
_I. Petrone,_ Sui limiti del determinismo scientifico, Modena, 1900;
Roma, 1903.
_G. Prezzolini,_ Del linguaggio come causa di errore, (H. Bergson),
Firenze, Spinelli, 1904.
_G. Prezzolini,_ La filosofia di H. Bergson, (in _La Teoria
Sindacalista,_ Napoli, Perrella, 1909, pp. 283-335).
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6; Sept. 20, 1901, pp. 531-554)·
_G. Tarozzi,_ Della necessità nel fatto naturale ed umano, Torino,
Loescher, 1896-97.
_B. Varisco,_ La filosofia della contingenza, (_Rivista filosofica,_
Vol. VIII, 1905, pp. 1-37).
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149-180).
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Bucarest, 1908, Vol. II, pp. 161-192 and 259-278).
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AUTHOR'S PREFACE
We necessarily express ourselves by means of words and we usually
think in terms of space. That is to say, language requires us to
establish between our ideas the same sharp and precise distinctions,
the same discontinuity, as between material objects. This assimilation
of thought to things is useful in practical life and necessary in
most of the sciences. But it may be asked whether the insurmountable
difficulties presented by certain philosophical problems do not arise
from our placing side by side in space phenomena which do not occupy
space, and whether, by merely getting rid of the clumsy symbols round
which we are fighting, we might not bring the fight to an end. When
an illegitimate translation of the unextended into the extended, of
quality into quantity, has introduced contradiction into the very heart
of the question, contradiction must, of course, recur in the answer.
The problem which I have chosen is one which is common to metaphysics
and psychology, the problem of free will. What I attempt to prove
is that all discussion between the determinists and their opponents
implies a previous confusion of duration with extensity, of succession
with simultaneity, of quality with quantity: this confusion once
dispelled, we may perhaps witness the disappearance of the objections
raised against free will, of the definitions given of it, and, in a
certain sense, of the problem of free will itself. To prove this is the
object of the third part of the present volume: the first two chapters,
which treat of the conceptions of intensity and duration, have been
written as an introduction to the third.
H. BERGSON.
_February,_ 1888.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE INTENSITY OF PSYCHIC STATES
Quantitative differences applicable to magnitudes but not to
intensities, 1-4; Attempt to estimate intensities by objective
causes or atomic movements, 4-7; Different kinds of intensities, 7;
Deep-seated psychic states: desire, 8, hope, 9, joy and sorrow, 10;
Aesthetic feelings, 11-18: grace, 12, beauty, 14-18, music, poetry,
art, 15-18; Moral feelings, pity, 19; Conscious states involving
physical symptoms, 20: muscular effort, 21-26, attention and muscular
tension, 27-28; Violent emotions, 29-31: rage, 29, fear, 30;
Affective sensations, 32-39: pleasure and pain, 33-39, disgust, 36;
Representative sensations, 39-60: and external causes, 42, sensation
of sound, 43, intensity, pitch and muscular effort, 45-6, sensations
of heat and cold, 46-7, sensations of pressure and weight, 47-50,
sensation of light, 50-60, photometric experiments, 52-60, Delbœuf's
experiments, 56-60; Psychophysics, 60-72: Weber and Fechner, 61-65,
Delbœuf, 67-70, the mistake of regarding sensations as magnitudes,
70-72; Intensity in (1) representative, (2) affective states, intensity
and multiplicity, 72-74.
_pp._1-74
CHAPTER II
THE MULTIPLICITY OF CONSCIOUS STATES
THE IDEA OF DURATION
Number and its units, 75-77, number and accompanying intuition of
space, 78-85; Two kinds of multiplicity, of material objects and
conscious states, 85-87, impenetrability of matter, 88-89, homogeneous
time and pure duration, 90-91; Space and its contents, 92, empirical
theories of space, 93-94, intuition of empty homogeneous medium
peculiar to man, 95-97, time as homogeneous medium reducible to
space, 98-99; Duration, succession and space, 100-104, pure duration,
105-106; Is duration measurable? 107-110; Is motion measurable?
111-112; Paradox of the Eleatics, 113-115; Duration and simultaneity,
115-116; Velocity and simultaneity, 117-119; Space alone homogeneous,
duration and succession belong to conscious mind, 120-121; Two kinds
of multiplicity, qualitative and quantitative, 121-123, superficial
psychic states invested with discontinuity of their external causes,
124-126, these eliminated, real duration is felt as a quality, 127-128;
The two aspects of the self, on the surface well-defined conscious
states, deeper down states which interpenetrate and form organic whole,
129-139, solidifying influence of language on sensation, 129-132,
analysis distorts the feelings, 132-134, deeper conscious states
forming a part of ourselves, 134-136; Problems soluble only by recourse
to the concrete and living self, 137-139.
_pp._ 75-139
CHAPTER III
THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSCIOUS STATES
FREE WILL
Dynamism and mechanism, 140-142; Two kinds of determinism, 142;
Physical determinism, 143-155: and molecular theory of matter, 143, and
conservation of energy, 144, if conservation universal, physiological
and nervous phenomena necessitated, but perhaps not conscious states,
145-148, but is principle of conversation universal? 149, it may
not apply to living beings and conscious states, 150-154, idea of
its universality depends on confusion between concrete duration and
abstract time, 154-155; Psychological determinism, 155-163: implies
associationist conception of mind, 155-158, this involves defective
conception of self, 159-163; The free act: freedom as expressing the
fundamental self, 165-170; Real duration and contingency, 172-182:
could our act have been different? 172-175, geometrical representation
of process of coming to a decision, 175-178, the fallacies to which
it leads determinists and libertarians, 179-183; Real duration and
prediction, 183-198: conditions of Paul's prediction of Peter's action
(1) being Peter (2) knowing already his final act, 184-189, the
three fallacies involved, 190-192, astronomical prediction depends
on hypothetical acceleration of movements, 193-195, duration cannot
be thus accelerated, 196-198; Real duration and causality, 199-221:
the law "same antecedents, same consequents," 199-201, causality as
regular succession, 202-203, causality as prefiguring: two kinds (1)
prefiguring as mathematical pre-existence; implies non-duration, but
we _endure_ and therefore may be free, 204-210, (2) prefiguring as
having idea of future act to be realized by effort; does not involve
determinism, 211-214, determinism results from confusing these two
senses, 215-218; Freedom real but indefinable, 219-221.
_pp._140-221
CONCLUSION
States of self perceived through forms borrowed from external world,
223; Intensity as quality, 225; Duration as qualitative multiplicity,
226; No duration in the external world, 227; Extensity and duration
must be separated, 229; Only the fundamental self free, 231; Kant's
mistaken idea of time as homogeneous, 232, hence he put the self which
is free outside both space and time, 233; Duration is heterogeneous,
relation of psychic state to act is unique, and act is free, 235-240.
_pp._ 222-240
INDEX
CHAPTER I
THE INTENSITY OF PSYCHIC STATES
[Sidenote: Can there be quantitative differences in conscious states?]
It is usually admitted that states of consciousness, sensations,
feelings, passions, efforts, are capable of growth and diminution; we
are even told that a sensation can be said to be twice, thrice, four
times as intense as another sensation of the same kind. This latter
thesis, which is maintained by psychophysicists, we shall examine
later; but even the opponents of psychophysics do not see any harm
in speaking of one sensation as being more intense than another, of
one effort as being greater than another, and in thus setting up
differences of quantity between purely internal states. Common sense,
moreover, has not the slightest hesitation in giving its verdict on
this point; people say they are more or less warm, or more or less sad,
and this distinction of more and less, even when it is carried over
to the region of subjective facts and unextended objects, surprises
nobody. But this involves a very obscure point and a much more
important problem than is usually supposed.
When we assert that one number is greater than another number or one
body greater than another body, we know very well what we mean.
[Sidenote: Such differences applicable to magnitudes but not to
intensities.]
For in both cases we allude to unequal spaces, as shall be shown in
detail a little further on, and we call that space the greater which
contains the other. But how can a more intense sensation contain one of
less intensity? Shall we say that the first implies the second, that
we reach the sensation of higher intensity only on condition of having
first passed through the less intense stages of the same sensation, and
that in a certain sense we are concerned, here also, with the relation
of container to contained? This conception of intensive magnitude
seems, indeed, to be that of common sense, but we cannot advance it
as a philosophical explanation without becoming involved in a vicious
circle. For it is beyond doubt that, in the natural series of numbers,
the later number exceeds the earlier, but the very possibility of
arranging the numbers in ascending order arises from their having
to each other relations of container and contained, so that we feel
ourselves able to explain precisely in what sense one is greater than
the other. The question, then, is how we succeed in forming a series of
this kind with intensities, which cannot be superposed on each other,
and by what sign we recognize that the members of this series increase,
for example, instead of diminishing: but this always comes back to the
inquiry, why an intensity can be assimilated to a magnitude.
[Sidenote: Alleged distinction between two kinds of quantity: extensive
and intensive magnitude.]
It is only to evade the difficulty to distinguish, as is usually done,
between two species of quantity, the first extensive and measurable,
the second intensive and not admitting of measure, but of which it can
nevertheless be said that it is greater or less than another intensity.
For it is recognized thereby that there is something common to these
two forms of magnitude, since they are both termed magnitudes and
declared to be equally capable of increase and diminution. But, from
the point of view of magnitude, what can there be in common between
the extensive and the intensive, the extended and the unextended? If,
in the first case, we call that which contains the other the greater
quantity, why go on speaking of quantity and magnitude when there
is no longer a container or a contained? If a quantity can increase
and diminish, if we perceive in it, so to speak, the _less_ inside
the _more,_ is not such a quantity on this very account divisible,
and thereby extended? Is it not then a contradiction to speak of an
inextensive quantity? But yet common sense agrees with the philosophers
in setting up a pure intensity as a magnitude, just as if it were
something extended. And not only do we use the same word, but whether
we think of a greater intensity or a greater extensity, we experience
in both cases an analogous impression; the terms "greater" and "less"
call up in both cases the same idea. If we now ask ourselves in what
does this idea consist, our consciousness still offers us the image
of a container and a contained. We picture to ourselves, for example,
a greater intensity of effort as a greater length of thread rolled
up, or as a spring which, in unwinding, will occupy a greater space.
In the idea of intensity, and even in the word which expresses it,
we shall find the image of a present contraction and consequently a
future expansion, the image of something virtually extended, and, if
we may say so, of a compressed space. We are thus led to believe that
we translate the intensive into the extensive, and that we compare
two intensities, or at least express the comparison, by the confused
intuition of a relation between two extensities. But it is just the
nature of this operation which it is difficult to determine.
[Sidenote: Attempt to distinguish intensities by objective causes. But
we judge of intensity without knowing magnitude or nature of the cause.]
The solution which occurs immediately to the mind, once it has entered
upon this path, consists in defining the intensity of a sensation,
or of any state whatever of the ego, by the number and magnitude of
the objective, and therefore measurable, causes which have given rise
to it. Doubtless, a more intense sensation of light is the one which
has been obtained, or is obtainable, by means of a larger number of
luminous sources, provided they be at the same distance and identical
with one another. But, in the immense majority of cases, we decide
about the intensity of the effect without even knowing the nature of
the cause, much less its magnitude: indeed, it is the very intensity
of the effect which often leads us to venture an hypothesis as to the
number and nature of the causes, and thus to revise the judgment of
our senses, which at first represented them as insignificant. And it
is no use arguing that we are then comparing the actual state of the
ego with some previous state in which the cause was perceived in its
entirety at the same time as its effect was experienced. No doubt this
is our procedure in a fairly large number of cases; but we cannot
then explain the differences of intensity which we recognize between
deep-seated psychic phenomena, the cause of which is within us and
not outside. On the other hand, we are never so bold in judging the
intensity of a psychic state as when the subjective aspect of the
phenomenon is the only one to strike us, or when the external cause to
which we refer it does not easily admit of measurement. Thus it seems
evident that we experience a more intense pain at the pulling out of a
tooth than of a hair; the artist knows without the possibility of doubt
that the picture of a master affords him more intense pleasure than
the signboard of a shop; and there is not the slightest need ever to
have heard of forces of cohesion to assert that we expend less effort
in bending a steel blade than a bar of iron. Thus the comparison of
two intensities is usually made without the least appreciation of the
number of causes, their mode of action or their extent.
[Sidenote: Attempt to distinguish intensities by atomic movements.
But it is the sensation which is given in consciousness, and not the
movement.]
There is still room, it is true, for an hypothesis of the same nature,
but more subtle. We know that mechanical, and especially kinetic,
theories aim at explaining the visible and sensible properties of
bodies by _well_ defined movements of their ultimate parts, and many of
us foresee the time when the intensive differences of qualities, that
is to say, of our sensations, will be reduced to extensive differences
between the changes taking place behind them. May it not be maintained
that, without knowing these theories, we have a vague surmise of them,
that behind the more intense sound we guess the presence of ampler
vibrations which are propagated in the disturbed medium, and that it
is with a reference to this mathematical relation, precise in itself
though confusedly perceived, that we assert the higher intensity of a
particular sound? Without even going so far, could it not be laid down
that every state of consciousness corresponds to a certain disturbance
of the molecules and atoms of the cerebral substance, and that the
intensity of a sensation measures the amplitude, the complication or
the extent of these molecular movements? This last hypothesis is at
least as probable as the other, but it no more solves the problem.
For, quite possibly, the intensity of a sensation bears witness to a
more or less considerable work accomplished in our organism; but it
is the sensation which is given to us in consciousness, and not this
mechanical work. Indeed, it is by the intensity of the sensation that
we judge of the greater or less amount of work accomplished: intensity
then remains, at least apparently, a property of sensation. And still
the same question recurs: why do we say of a higher intensity that it
is greater? Why do we think of a greater quantity or a greater space?
[Sidenote: Different kinds of intensities. (1) deep-seated psychic
statese (2)muscular effort. Intensity is more easily definable in the
former case.]
Perhaps the difficulty of the problem lies chiefly in the fact that
we call by the same name, and picture to ourselves in the same way,
intensities which are very different in nature, e.g. the intensity of a
feeling and that of a sensation or an effort.
The effort is accompanied by a muscular sensation, and the sensations
themselves are connected with certain physical conditions which
probably count for something in the estimate of their intensity: we
have here to do with phenomena which take place on the surface of
consciousness, and which are always connected, as we shall see further
on, with the perception of a movement or of an external object. But
certain states of the soul seem to us, rightly or wrongly, to be
self-sufficient, such as deep joy or sorrow, a reflective passion or an
aesthetic emotion. Pure intensity ought to be more easily definable in
these simple cases, where no extensive element seems to be involved. We
shall see, in fact, that it is reducible here to a certain quality or
shade which spreads over a more or less considerable mass of psychic
states, or, if the expression be preferred, to the larger or smaller
number of simple states which make up the fundamental emotion.
[Sidenote: Take, for example, the progress of a desire.]
For example, an obscure desire gradually becomes a deep passion. Now,
you will see that thee feeble intensity of this desire consisted at
first in its appearing to be isolated and, as it were, foreign to the
remainder of your inner life. But little by little it permeates a
larger number of psychic elements, tingeing them, so to speak, with
its own colour: and lo! your outlook on the whole of your surroundings
seems now to have changed radically. How do you become aware of a deep
passion, once it has taken hold of you, if not by perceiving that
the same objects no longer impress you in the same manner? All your
sensations and all your ideas seem to brighten up: it is like childhood
back again. We experience something of the kind in certain dreams, in
which we do not imagine anything out of the ordinary, and yet through
which there resounds an indescribable note of originality. The fact is
that, the further we penetrate into the depths of consciousness, the
less right we have to treat psychic phenomena as things which are set
side by side. When it is said that an object occupies a large space
in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand
by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand
perceptions or memories, and that in this sense it pervades them,
although it does not itself come into view. But this wholly dynamic
way of looking at things is repugnant to the reflective consciousness,
because the latter delights in clean cut distinctions, which are
easily expressed in words, and in things with well-defined outlines,
like those which are perceived in space. It will assume then that,
everything else remaining identical, such and such a desire has gone up
a scale of magnitudes, as though it were permissible still to speak of
magnitude where there is neither multiplicity nor space! But just as
consciousness (as will be shown later on) concentrates on a given point
of the organism the increasing number of muscular contractions which
take place on the surface of the body, thus converting them into one
single feeling of effort, of growing intensity, so it will hypostatize
under the form of a growing desire the gradual alterations which take
place in the confused heap of co-existing psychic states. But that is a
change of quality rather than of magnitude.
What makes hope such an intense pleasure is the fact that the future,
which we dispose of to our liking, appears to us at the same time under
a multitude of forms, equally attractive and equally possible. Even
if the most coveted of these becomes realized, it will be necessary to
give up the others, and we shall have lost a great deal. The idea of
the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more
fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in
hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.
[Sidenote: The emotions of joy and sorrow. Their successive stages
correspond to qualitative changes in the whole of our psychic states.]
Let us try to discover the nature of an increasing intensity of joy or
sorrow in the exceptional cases where no physical symptom intervenes.
Neither inner joy nor passion is an isolated inner state which at
first occupies a corner of the soul and gradually spreads. At its
lowest level it is very like a turning of our states of consciousness
towards the future. Then, as if their weight were diminished by this
attraction, our ideas and sensations succeed one another with greater
rapidity; our movements no longer cost us the same effort. Finally,
in cases of extreme joy, our perceptions and memories become tinged
with an indefinable quality, as with a kind of heat or light, so
novel that now and then, as we stare at our own self, we wonder how
it can really exist. Thus there are several characteristic forms of
purely inward joy, all of which are successive stages corresponding to
qualitative alterations in the whole of our psychic states. But the
number of states which are concerned with each of these alterations
is more or less considerable, and, without explicitly counting them,
we know very well whether, for example, our joy pervades all the
impressions which we receive in the course of the day or whether any
escape from its influence. We thus set up points of division in the
interval which separates two successive forms of joy, and this gradual
transition from one to the other makes them appear in their turn as
different intensities of one and the same feeling, which is thus
supposed to change in magnitude. It could be easily shown that the
different degrees of sorrow also correspond to qualitative changes.
Sorrow begins by being nothing more than a facing towards the past, an
impoverishment of our sensations and ideas, as if each of them were now
contained entirely in the little which it gives out, as if the future
were in some way stopped up. And it ends with an impression of crushing
failure, the effect of which is that we aspire to nothingness, while
every new misfortune, by making us understand better the uselessness of
the struggle, causes us a bitter pleasure.
[Sidenote: The aesthetic feelings. Their increasing intensities are
really different feelings.]
The aesthetic feelings offer us a still more striking example of this
progressive stepping in of new elements, which can be detected in the
fundamental emotion and which seem to increase its magnitude, although
in reality they do nothing more than alter its nature. Let us consider
the simplest of them, the feeling of grace. At first it is only the
perception of a certain ease, a certain facility in the outward
movements. And as those movements are easy which prepare the way for
others, we are led to find a superior ease in the movements which can
be foreseen, in the present attitudes in which future attitudes are
pointed out and, as it were, prefigured. If jerky movements are wanting
in grace, the reason is that each of them is self-sufficient and does
not announce those which are to follow. If curves are more graceful
than broken lines, the reason is that, while a curved line changes its
direction at every moment, every new direction is indicated in the
preceding one. Thus the perception of ease in motion passes over into
the pleasure of mastering the flow of time and of holding the future
in the present. A third element comes in when the graceful movements
submit to a rhythm and are accompanied by music. For the rhythm and
measure, by allowing us to foresee to a still greater extent the
movements of the dancer, make us believe that we now control them. As
we guess almost the exact attitude which the dancer is going to take,
he seems to obey us when he really takes it: the regularity of the
rhythm establishes a kind of communication between him and us, and the
periodic returns of the measure are like so many invisible threads by
means of which we set in motion this imaginary puppet. Indeed, if it
stops for an instant, our hand in its impatience cannot refrain from
making a movement, as though to push it, as though to replace it in
the midst of this movement, the rhythm of which has taken complete
possession of our thought and will. Thus a kind of physical sympathy
enters into the feeling of grace. Now, in analysing the charm of this
sympathy, you will find that it pleases you through its affinity
with moral sympathy, the idea of which it subtly suggests. This last
element, in which the others are merged after having in a measure
ushered it in, explains the irresistible attractiveness of grace.
We could hardly make out why it affords us such pleasure if it were
nothing but a saving of effort, as Spencer maintains.[1] But the truth
is that in anything which we call very graceful we imagine ourselves
able to detect, besides the lightness which is a sign of mobility,
some suggestion of a possible movement towards ourselves, of a virtual
and even nascent sympathy. It is this mobile sympathy, always ready
to offer itself, which is just the essence of higher grace. Thus the
increasing intensities of aesthetic feeling are here resolved into as
many different feelings, each one of which, already heralded by its
predecessor, becomes perceptible in it and then completely eclipses
it. It is this qualitative progress which we interpret as a change of
magnitude, because we like simple thoughts and because our language is
ill-suited to render the subtleties of psychological analysis.
[Sidenote: The feeling of beauty: art puts to sleep our active and
resistant powers and makes us responsive to suggestion.]
To understand how the feeling of the beautiful itself admits of
degrees, we should have to submit it to a minute analysis. Perhaps
the difficulty which we experience in defining: it is largely owing to
the fact that we look upon the beauties of nature as anterior to those
of art: the processes of art are thus supposed to be nothing more than
means by which the artist expresses the beautiful, and the essence of
the beautiful remains unexplained. But we might ask ourselves whether
nature is beautiful otherwise than through meeting by chance certain
processes of our art, and whether, in a certain sense, art is not prior
to nature. Without even going so far, it seems more in conformity
with the rules of a sound method to study the beautiful first in the
works in which it has been produced by a conscious effort, and then
to pass on by imperceptible steps from art to nature, which may be
looked upon as an artist in its own way. By placing ourselves at this
point of view, we shall perceive that the object of art is to put to
sleep the active or rather resistant powers of our personality, and
thus to bring us into a state of perfect responsiveness, in which
we realize the idea that is suggested to us and sympathize with the
feeling that is expressed. In the processes of art we shall find, in a
weakened form, a refined and in some measure spiritualized version of
the processes commonly used to induce the state of hypnosis. Thus, in
music, the rhythm and measure suspend the normal flow of our sensations
and ideas by causing our attention to swing to and fro between fixed
points, and they take hold of us with such force that even the faintest
imitation of a groan will suffice to fill us with the utmost sadness.
If musical sounds affect us more powerfully than the sounds of nature,
the reason is that nature confines itself to _expressing_ feelings,
whereas music _suggests_ them to us. Whence indeed comes the charm of
poetry? The poet is he with whom feelings develop into images, and the
images themselves into words which translate them while obeying the
laws of rhythm. In seeing these images pass before our eyes we in our
turn experience the feeling which was, so to speak, their emotional
equivalent: but we should never realize these images so strongly
without the regular movements of the rhythm by which our soul is lulled
into self-forgetfulness, and, as in a dream, thinks and sees with the
poet. The plastic arts obtain an effect of the same kind by the fixity
which they suddenly impose upon life, and which a physical contagion
carries over to the attention of the spectator. While the works of
ancient sculpture express faint emotions which play upon them like a
passing breath, the pale immobility of the stone causes the feeling
expressed or the movement just begun to appear as if they were fixed
for ever, absorbing our thought and our will in their own eternity. We
find in architecture, in the very midst of this startling immobility,
certain effects analogous to those of rhythm. The symmetry of form,
the indefinite repetition of the same architectural motive, causes
our faculty of perception to oscillate between the same and the same
again, and gets rid of those customary incessant changes which in
ordinary life bring us back without ceasing to the consciousness of
our personality: even the faint suggestion of an idea will then be
enough to make the idea fill the whole of our mind. Thus art aims at
impressing feelings on us rather than expressing them; it suggests
them to us, and willingly dispenses with the imitation of nature when
it finds some more efficacious means. Nature, like art, proceeds by
suggestion, but does not command the resources of rhythm. It supplies
the deficiency by the long comradeship, based on influences received
in common by nature and by ourselves, of which the effect is that the
slightest indication by nature of a feeling arouses sympathy in our
minds, just as a mere gesture on the part of the hypnotist is enough to
force the intended suggestion upon a subject accustomed to his control.
And this sympathy is shown in particular when nature displays to us
beings of _normal_ proportions, so that our attention is distributed
equally over all the parts of the figure without being fixed on any one
of them: our perceptive faculty then finds itself lulled and soothed by
this harmony, and nothing hinders any longer the free play of sympathy,
which is ever ready to come forward as soon as the obstacle in its path
is removed.
[Sidenote: Stages in the aesthetic emotion.]
It follows from this analysis that the feeling of the beautiful is
no specific feeling, but that every feeling experienced by us will
assume an aesthetic character, provided that it has been _suggested,_
and not _caused._ It will now be understood why the aesthetic emotion
seems to us to admit of degrees of intensity, and also of degrees of
elevation. Sometimes the feeling which is suggested scarcely makes a
break in the compact texture of psychic phenomena of which our history
consists; sometimes it draws our attention from them, but not so that
they become lost to sight; sometimes, finally, it puts itself in their
place, engrosses us and completely monopolizes our soul. There are
thus distinct phases in the progress of an aesthetic feeling, as in
the state of hypnosis; and these phases correspond less to variations
of degree than to differences of state or of nature. But the merit
of a work of art is not measured so much by the power with which the
suggested feeling takes hold of us as by the richness of this feeling
itself: in other words, besides degrees of intensity we instinctively
distinguish degrees of depth or elevation. If this last concept be
analysed, it will be seen that the feelings and thoughts which the
artist suggests to us express and sum up a more or less considerable
part of his history. If the art which gives only sensations is an
inferior art, the reason is that analysis often fails to discover in
a sensation anything beyond the sensation itself. But the greater
number of emotions are instinct with a thousand sensations, feelings
or ideas which pervade them: each one is then a state unique of its
kind and indefinable, and it seems that we should have to re-live the
life of the subject who experiences it if we wished to grasp it in
its original complexity. Yet the artist aims at giving us a share in
this emotion, so rich, so personal, so novel, and at enabling us to
experience what he cannot make us understand. This he will bring about
by choosing, among the outward signs of his emotions, those which our
body is likely to imitate mechanically, though slightly, as soon as it
perceives them, so as to transport us all at once into the indefinable
psychological state which called them forth. Thus will be broken down
the barrier interposed by time and space between his consciousness and
ours: and the richer in ideas and the more pregnant with sensations
and emotions is the feeling within whose limits the artist has brought
us, the deeper and the higher shall we find the beauty thus expressed.
The successive intensities of the aesthetic feeling thus correspond
to changes of state occurring in us, and the degrees of depth to the
larger or smaller number of elementary psychic phenomena which we dimly
discern in the fundamental emotion.
[Sidenote: The moral feelings. Pity. Its increasing intensity is a
qualitative progress.]
The moral feelings might be studied in the same way. Let us take pity
as an example. It consists in the first place in putting oneself
mentally in the place of others, in suffering their pain. But if it
were nothing more, as some have maintained, it would inspire us with
the idea of avoiding the wretched rather than helping them, for pain
is naturally abhorrent to us. This feeling of horror may indeed be at
the root of pity; but a new element soon comes in, the need of helping
our fellow-men and of alleviating their suffering. Shall we say with La
Rochefoucauld that this so-called sympathy is a calculation, "a shrewd
insurance against evils to come"? Perhaps a dread of some future evil
to ourselves does hold a place in our compassion for other people's
evil. These however are but lower forms of pity. True pity consists not
so much in fearing suffering as in desiring it. The desire is a faint
one and we should hardly wish to see it realized; yet we form it in
spite of ourselves, as if Nature were committing some great injustice
and it were necessary to get rid of all suspicion of complicity
with her. The essence of pity is thus a need for self-abasement, an
aspiration downwards. This painful aspiration nevertheless has a
charm about it, because it raises us in our own estimation and makes
us feel superior to those sensuous goods from which our thought is
temporarily detached. The increasing intensity of pity thus consists in
a qualitative progress, in a transition from repugnance to fear, from
fear to sympathy, and from sympathy itself to humility.
[Sidenote: Conscious states connected with external causes or involving
psychical symptoms.]
We do not propose to carry this analysis any further. The psychic
states whose intensity we have just defined are deep-seated states
which do not seem to have any close relation to their external cause
or to involve the perception of muscular contraction. But such states
are rare. There is hardly any passion or desire, any joy or sorrow,
which is not accompanied by physical symptoms; and, where these
symptoms occur, they probably count for something in the estimate
of intensities. As for the sensations properly so called, they are
manifestly connected with their external cause, and though the
intensity of the sensation cannot be defined by the magnitude of its
cause, there undoubtedly exists some relation between these two terms.
In some of its manifestations consciousness even appears to spread
outwards, as if intensity were being developed into extensity, e.g. in
the case of muscular effort. Let us face this last phenomenon at once:
we shall thus be transported at a bound to the opposite extremity of
the series of psychic phenomena.
[Sidenote: Muscular effort seems at first sight to be quantitative.]
If there is a phenomenon which seems to be presented immediately to
consciousness under the form of quantity or at least of magnitude, it
is undoubtedly muscular effort. We picture to our minds a psychic force
imprisoned in the soul like the winds in the cave of Aeolus, and only
waiting for an opportunity to burst forth: our will is supposed to
watch over this force and from time to time to open a passage for it,
regulating the outflow by the effect which it is desired to produce. If
we consider the matter carefully, we shall see that this somewhat crude
conception of effort plays a large part in our belief in intensive
magnitudes. Muscular force, whose sphere of action is space and which
manifests itself in phenomena admitting of measure, seems to us to
have existed previous to its manifestations, but in smaller volume,
and, so to speak, in a compressed state: hence we do not hesitate to
reduce this volume more and more, and finally we believe that we can
understand how a purely psychic state, which does not occupy space,
can nevertheless possess magnitude. Science, too, tends to strengthen
the illusion of common sense with regard to this point. Bain, for
example, declares that "the sensibility accompanying muscular movement
coincides with the _outgoing_ stream of nervous energy:"[2] it is thus
just the emission of nervous force which consciousness perceives.
Wundt also speaks of a sensation, central in its origin, accompanying
the voluntary innervation of the muscles, and quotes the example
of the paralytic "who has a very distinct sensation of the force
which he employs in the effort to raise his leg, although it remains
motionless."[3] Most of the authorities adhere to this opinion,
which would be the unanimous view of positive science were it not
that several years ago Professor William James drew the attention of
physiologists to certain phenomena which had been but little remarked,
although they were very remarkable.
[Sidenote: The feeling of effort. We are conscious not of an
expenditure of force but of the resulting muscular movement.]
When a paralytic strives to raise his useless limb, he certainly does
not execute this movement, but, with or without his will, he executes
another. Some movement is carried out somewhere: otherwise there is
no sensation of effort.[4] Vulpian had already called attention to
the fact that if a man affected with hemiplegia is told to clench his
paralysed fist, he unconsciously carries out this action with the
fist which is not affected. Ferrier described a still more curious
phenomenon.[5] Stretch out your arm while slightly bending your
forefinger, as if you were going to press the trigger of a pistol;
without moving the finger, without contracting any muscle of the hand,
without producing any apparent movement, you will yet be able to feel
that you are expending energy. On a closer examination, however,
you will perceive that this sensation of effort coincides with the
fixation of the muscles of your chest, that you keep your glottis
closed and actively contract your respiratory muscles. As soon as
respiration resumes its normal course the consciousness of effort
vanishes, unless you really move your finger. These facts already
seemed to show that we are conscious, not of an expenditure of force,
but of the movement of the muscles which results from it. The new
feature in Professor James's investigation is that he has verified
the hypothesis in the case of examples which seemed to contradict it
absolutely. Thus when the external rectus muscle of the right eye is
paralysed, the patient tries in vain to turn his eye towards the right;
yet objects seem to him to recede towards the right, and since the act
of volition has produced no effect, it follows, said Helmholtz,[6]
that he is conscious of the effort of volition. But, replies Professor
James, no account has been taken of what goes on in the other eye. This
remains covered during the experiments; nevertheless it moves and there
is not much trouble in proving that it does. It is the movement of the
left eye, perceived by consciousness, which produces the sensation of
effort together with the impression that the objects perceived by the
right eye are moving. These and similar observations lead Professor
James to assert that the feeling of effort is centripetal and not
centrifugal. We are not conscious of a force which we are supposed to
launch upon our organism: our feeling of muscular energy at work "is
a complex afferent sensation, which comes from contracted muscles,
stretched ligaments, compressed joints, an immobilized chest, a closed
glottis, a knit brow, clenched jaws," in a word, from all the points of
the periphery where the effort causes an alteration.
[Sidenote: Intensity of feeling of effort proportional to extent of our
body affected.]
It is not for us to take a side in the dispute. After all, the question
with which we have to deal is not whether the feeling of effort comes
from the centre or the periphery, but in what does our perception of
its intensity exactly consist? Now, it is sufficient to observe oneself
attentively to reach a conclusion on this point which Professor James
has not formulated, but which seems to us quite in accord with the
spirit of his teaching. We maintain that the more a given effort seems
to us to increase, the greater is the number of muscles which contract
in sympathy with it, and that the apparent consciousness of a greater
intensity of effort at a given point of the organism is reducible,
in reality, to the perception of a larger surface of the body being
affected.
[Sidenote: Our consciousness of an increase of muscular effort consists
in the perception of (1) a greater number of peripheral sensations (2)
a qualitative change in some of them.]
Try, for example, to clench the fist with increasing force. You will
have the impression of a sensation of effort entirely localized in
your hand and running up a scale of magnitudes. In reality, what you
experience in your hand remains the same, but the sensation which was
at first localized there has affected your arm and ascended to the
shoulder; finally, the other arm stiffens, both legs do the same, the
respiration is checked; it is the whole body which is at work. But
you fail to notice distinctly all these concomitant movements unless
you are warned of them: till then you thought you were dealing with
a single state of consciousness which changed in magnitude. When you
press your lips more and more tightly against one another, you believe
that you are experiencing in your lips one and the same sensation which
is continually increasing in strength: here again further reflection
will show you that this sensation remains identical, but that certain
muscles of the face and the head and then of all the rest of the body
have taken part in the operation. You felt this gradual encroachment,
this increase of the surface affected, which is in truth a change of
quantity; but, as your attention was concentrated on your closed lips,
you localized the increase there and you made the psychic force there
expended into a magnitude, although it possessed no extensity. Examine
carefully somebody who is lifting heavier and heavier weights: the
muscular contraction gradually spreads over his whole body. As for the
special sensation which he experiences in the arm which is at work,
it remains constant for a very long time and hardly changes except
in quality, the weight becoming at a certain moment fatigue, and the
fatigue pain. Yet the subject will imagine that he is conscious of a
continual increase in the psychic force flowing into his arm. He will
not recognize his mistake unless he is warned of it, so inclined is
he to measure a given psychic state by the conscious movements which
accompany it! From these facts and from many others of the same kind we
believe we can deduce the following conclusion: our consciousness of an
increase of muscular effort is reducible to the twofold perception of
a greater number of peripheral sensations, and of a qualitative change
occurring in some of them.
[Sidenote: The same definition of intensity applies to superficial
efforts, deep-seated feelings and states intermediate between the two.]
We are thus led to define the intensity of a superficial effort in
the same way as that of a cases there is a qualitative progress and
an increasing complexity, indistinctly perceived. But consciousness,
accustomed to think in terms of space and to translate its thoughts
into words, will denote the feeling by a single word and will localize
the effort at the exact point where it yields a useful result: it will
then become aware of an effort which is always of the same nature and
increases at the spot assigned to it, and a feeling which, retaining
the same name, grows without changing its nature. Now, the same
illusion of consciousness is likely to be met with again in the case
of the states which are intermediate between superficial efforts and
deep-seated feelings. A large number of psychic states are accompanied,
in fact, by muscular contractions and peripheral sensations. Sometimes
these superficial elements are co-ordinated by a purely speculative
idea, sometimes by an idea of a practical order. In the first case
there is intellectual effort or attention; in the second we have
the emotions which may be called violent or acute: anger, terror,
and certain varieties of joy, sorrow, passion and desire. Let us
show briefly that the same definition of intensity applies to these
intermediate states.
[Sidenote: The intermediate states. Attention and its relation to
muscular contraction.]
Attention is not a purely physiological phenomenon, but we cannot
deny that it is accompanied by movements. These movements are neither
the cause nor the result of the phenomenon; they are part of it, they
express it in terms of space, as Ribot has so remarkably proved.[7]
Fechner had already reduced the effort of attention in a sense-organ
to the muscular feeling "produced by putting in motion, by a sort of
reflex action, the muscles which are correlated with the different
sense organs." He had noticed the very distinct sensation of tension
and contraction of the scalp, the pressure from without inwards over
the whole skull, which we experience when we make a great effort to
recall something. Ribot has studied more closely the movements which
are characteristic of voluntary attention. "Attention contracts the
frontal muscle: this muscle ... draws the eyebrow towards itself,
raises it and causes transverse wrinkles on the forehead.... In
extreme cases the mouth is opened wide. With children and with many
adults eager attention gives rise to a protrusion of the lips, a kind
of pout." Certainly, a purely psychic factor will always enter into
voluntary attention, even if it be nothing more than the exclusion by
the will of all ideas foreign to the one with which the subject wishes
to occupy himself. But, once this exclusion is made, we believe that
we are still conscious of a growing tension of soul, of an immaterial
effort which increases. Analyse this impression and you will find
nothing but the feeling of a muscular contraction which spreads over
a wider surface or changes its nature, so that the tension becomes
pressure, fatigue and pain.
[Sidenote: The intensity of violent emotions as muscular tension.]
Now, we do not see any essential difference between the effort of
attention and what may be The intensity called the effort of psychic
tension: acute desire, uncontrolled anger, passionate love, violent
hatred. Each of these states may be reduced, we believe, to a system
of muscular contractions co-ordinated by an idea; but in the case
of attention, it is the more or less reflective idea of knowing; in
the case of emotion, the unreflective idea of acting. The intensity
of these violent emotions is thus likely to be nothing but the
muscular tension which accompanies them. Darwin has given a remarkable
description of the physiological symptoms of rage. "The action of the
heart is much accelerated.... The face reddens or may turn deadly
pale. The respiration is laboured, the chest heaves, and the dilated
nostrils quiver. The whole body often trembles. The voice is affected.
The teeth are clenched or ground together and the muscular system is
commonly stimulated to violent, almost frantic action. The gestures ...
represent more or less plainly the act of striking or fighting with
an enemy."[8] We shall not go so far as to maintain, with Professor
James,[9] that the emotion of rage is reducible to the sum of these
organic sensations: there will always be an irreducible psychic element
in anger, if this be only the idea of striking or fighting, of which
Darwin speaks, and which gives a common direction to so many diverse
movements. But, though this idea determines the direction of the
emotional state and the accompanying movements, the growing intensity
of the state itself is, we believe, nothing but the deeper and deeper
disturbance of the organism, a disturbance which consciousness has no
difficulty in measuring by the number and extent of the bodily surfaces
concerned. It will be useless to assert that there is a restrained
rage which is all the more intense. The reason is that, where emotion
has free play, consciousness does not dwell on the details of the
accompanying movements, but it does dwell upon them and is concentrated
upon them when its object is to conceal them. Eliminate, in short,
all trace of organic disturbance, all tendency towards muscular
contraction, and all that will be left of anger will be the idea, or,
if you still insist on making it an emotion, you will be unable to
assign it any intensity.
[Sidenote: Intensity and reflex movements. No essential difference
between intensity of deep-seated feelings and that of violent emotions.]
"Fear, when strong," says Herbert Spencer, "expresses itself in cries,
in efforts to escape, in palpitations, in tremblings."[10] We go
further, and maintain that these movements form part of the terror
itself: by their means the terror becomes an emotion capable of passing
through different degrees of intensity. Suppress them entirely, and
the more or less intense state of terror will be succeeded by an idea
of terror, the wholly intellectual representation of a danger which it
concerns us to avoid. There are also high degrees of joy and sorrow,
of desire, aversion and even shame, the height of which will be found
to be nothing but the reflex movements begun by the organism and
perceived by consciousness. "When lovers meet," says Darwin, "we know
that their hearts beat quickly, their breathing is hurried and their
faces flushed."[11] Aversion is marked by movements of repugnance
which we repeat without noticing when we think of the object of our
dislike. We blush and involuntarily clench the fingers when we feel
shame, even if it be retrospective. The acuteness of these emotions is
estimated by the number and nature of the peripheral sensations which
accompany them. Little by little, and in proportion as the emotional
state loses its violence and gains in depth, the peripheral sensations
will give place to inner states; it will be no longer our outward
movements but our ideas, our memories, our states of consciousness of
every description, which will turn in larger or smaller numbers in a
definite direction. There is, then, no essential difference from the
point of view of intensity between the deep-seated feelings, of which
we spoke at the beginning, and the acute or violent emotions which we
have just passed in review. To say that love, hatred, desire, increase
in violence is to assert that they are projected outwards, that they
radiate to the surface, that peripheral sensations are substituted for
inner states: but superficial or deep-seated, violent or reflective,
the intensity of these feelings always consists in the multiplicity of
simple states which consciousness dimly discerns in them.
[Sidenote: Magnitude of sensations. Affective and representative
sensations.]
We have hitherto confined ourselves to feelings and efforts, complex
states the intensity of which does not absolutely depend on an external
cause. But sensations seem to us simple states: in what will their
magnitude consist? The intensity of sensations varies with the
external cause of which they are said to be the conscious equivalent:
how shall we explain the presence of quantity in an effect which is
inextensive, and in this case indivisible? To answer this question,
we must first distinguish between the so-called affective and the
representative sensations. There is no doubt that we pass gradually
from the one to the other and that some affective element enters into
the majority of our simple representations. But nothing prevents us
from isolating this element and inquiring separately, in what does the
intensity of an affective sensation, a pleasure or a pain, consist?
[Sidenote: Affective sensations and organic disturbance.]
Perhaps the difficulty of the latter problem is principally due to the
fact that we are unwilling to see in the affective state anything but
the conscious expression of an organic disturbance, the inward echo of
an outward cause. We notice that a more intense sensation generally
corresponds to a greater nervous disturbance; but inasmuch as these
disturbances are unconscious as movements, since they come before
consciousness in the guise of a sensation which has no resemblance at
all to motion, we do not see how they could transmit to the sensation
anything of their own magnitude. For there is nothing in common,
we repeat, between superposable magnitudes such as, for example,
vibration-amplitudes, and sensations which do not occupy space. If
the more intense sensation seems to us to contain the less intense,
if it assumes for us, like the physical impression itself, the form
of a magnitude, the reason probably is that it retains something of
the physical impression to which it corresponds. And it will retain
nothing of it if it is merely the conscious translation of a movement
of molecules; for, just because this movement is translated into the
sensation of pleasure or pain, it remains unconscious as molecular
movement.
[Sidenote: Pleasure and pain as signs of the future reaction rather
than psychic translations of the past stimulus.]
But it might be asked whether pleasure and pain, instead of expressing
only what has just occurred, or what is actually occurring, in the
organism, as is usually believed, could not also point out what is
going to, or what is tending to take place. It seems indeed somewhat
improbable that nature, so profoundly utilitarian, should have here
assigned to consciousness the merely scientific task of informing
us about the past or the present, which no longer depend upon us.
It must be noticed in addition that we rise by imperceptible stages
from automatic to free movements, and that the latter differ from the
former principally in introducing an affective sensation between the
external action which occasions them and the volitional reaction which
ensues. Indeed, all our actions might have been automatic, and we can
surmise that there are many organized beings in whose case an external
stimulus causes a definite reaction without calling up consciousness as
an intermediate agent. If pleasure and pain make their appearance in
certain privileged beings, it is probably to call forth a resistance to
the automatic reaction which would have taken place: either sensation
has nothing to do, or it is nascent freedom. But how would it enable us
to resist the reaction which is in preparation if it did not acquaint
us with the nature of the latter by some definite sign? And what can
this sign be except the sketching, and, as it were, the prefiguring
of the future automatic movements in the very midst of the sensation
which is being experienced? The affective state must then correspond
not merely to the physical disturbances, movements or phenomena which
have taken place, but also, and especially, to those which are in
preparation, those which are getting ready to be.
[Sidenote: Intensity of affective sensations would then be our
consciousness of the involuntary movements tending to follow the
stimulus.]
It is certainly not obvious at first sight how this hypothesis
simplifies the problem. For we are trying to find what there can be
in common, from the point of view of magnitude, between a physical
phenomenon and a state of consciousness, and we seem to have
merely turned the difficulty round by making the present state of
consciousness a sign of the future reaction, rather than a psychic
translation of the past stimulus. But the difference between the two
hypotheses is considerable. For the molecular disturbances which were
mentioned just now are necessarily unconscious, since no trace of the
movements themselves can be actually perceived in the sensation which
translates them. But the automatic movements which tend to follow
the stimulus as its natural outcome are likely to be conscious as
movements: or else the sensation itself, whose function is to invite us
to choose between this automatic reaction and other possible movements,
would be of no avail. The intensity of affective sensations might thus
be nothing more than our consciousness of the involuntary movements
which are being begun and outlined, so to speak, within these states,
and which would have gone on in their own way if nature had made us
automata instead of conscious beings.
[Sidenote: Intensity of a pain estimated by extent of organism
affected.]
If such be the case, we shall not compare a pain of increasing
intensity to a note which grows louder and louder, but rather to a
symphony, in which an increasing number of instruments make themselves
heard. Within the characteristic sensation, which gives the tone
to all the others, consciousness distinguishes a larger or smaller
number of sensations arising at different points of the periphery,
muscular contractions, organic movements of every kind: the choir
of these elementary psychic states voices the new demands of the
organism, when confronted by a new situation. In other words, we
estimate the intensity of a pain by the larger or smaller part of the
organism which takes interest in it. Richet[12] has observed that the
slighter the pain, the more precisely is it referred to a particular
spot; if it becomes more intense, it is referred to the whole of the
member affected. And he concludes by saying that "the pain spreads in
proportion as it is more intense."[13] We should rather reverse the
sentence, and define the intensity of the pain by the very number and
extent of the parts of the body which sympathize with it and react, and
whose reactions are perceived by consciousness. To convince ourselves
of this, it will be enough to read the remarkable description of
disgust given by the same author: "If the stimulus is slight there
may be neither nausea nor vomiting.... If the stimulus is stronger,
instead of being confined to the pneumo-gastric nerve, it spreads and
affects almost the whole organic system. The face turns pale, the
smooth muscles of the skin contract, the skin is covered with a cold
perspiration, the heart stops beating: in a word there is a general
organic disturbance following the stimulation of the medulla oblongata,
and this disturbance is the supreme expression of disgust."[14] But is
it nothing more than its expression? In what will the general sensation
of disgust consist, if not in the sum of these elementary sensations?
And what can we understand here by increasing intensity, if it is
not the constantly increasing number of sensations which join in
with the sensations already experienced? Darwin has drawn a striking
picture of the reactions following a pain which becomes more and more
acute. "Great pain urges all animals ... to make the most violent and
diversified efforts to escape from the cause of suffering.... With men
the mouth may be closely compressed, or more commonly the lips are
retracted with the teeth clenched or ground together.... The eyes stare
wildly ... or the brows are heavily contracted. Perspiration bathes
the body.... The circulation and respiration are much affected."[15]
Now, is it not by this very contraction of the muscles affected that
we measure the intensity of a pain? Analyse your idea of any suffering
which you call extreme: do you not mean that it is unbearable, that is
to say, that it urges the organism to a thousand different actions in
order to escape from it? I can picture to myself a nerve transmitting a
pain which is independent of all automatic reaction; and I can equally
understand that stronger or weaker stimulations influence this nerve
differently. But I do not see how these differences of sensation would
be interpreted by our consciousness as differences of quantity unless
we connected them with the reactions which usually accompany them, and
which are more or less extended and more or less important. Without
these subsequent reactions, the intensity of the pain would be a
quality, and not a magnitude.
[Sidenote: Pleasures compared by bodily inclination.]
We have hardly any other means of comparing several pleasures with
one another. What do we mean by a greater pleasure except a pleasure
that is preferred? And what can our preference be, except a certain
disposition of our organs, the effect of which is that, when two
pleasures are offered simultaneously to our mind, our body inclines
towards one of them? Analyse this inclination itself and you will find
a great many little movements which begin and become perceptible in the
organs concerned, and even in the rest of the body, as if the organism
were coming forth to meet the pleasure as soon as it is pictured. When
we define inclination as a movement, we are not using a metaphor.
When confronted by several pleasures pictured by our mind, our body
turns towards one of them spontaneously, as though by a reflex action.
It rests with us to check it, but the attraction of the pleasure is
nothing but this movement that is begun, and the very keenness of the
pleasure, while we enjoy it, is merely the inertia of the organism,
which is immersed in it and rejects every other sensation. Without this
_vis inertiae_ of which we become conscious by the very resistance
which we offer to anything that might distract us, pleasure would be
a state, but no longer a magnitude. In the moral as in the physical
world, attraction serves to define movement rather than to produce it.
[Sidenote: The intensity of representative sensations. Many also
affective and intensity is measured by reaction called forth. In others
a new element enters.]
We have studied the affective sensations separately, but we must
now notice that many representative sensations possess an affective
character, and thus call forth a reaction on our part which we take
into account in estimating their intensity. A considerable increase
of light is represented for us by a characteristic sensation which
is not yet pain, but which is analogous to dazzling. In proportion
as the amplitude of sound-vibrations increases, our head and then
our body seem to us to vibrate or to receive a shock. Certain
representative sensations, those of taste, smell and temperature, have
a fixed character of pleasantness or unpleasantness. Between flavours
which are more or less bitter you will hardly distinguish anything
but differences of quality; they are like different shades of one
and the same colour. But these differences of quality are at once
interpreted as differences of quantity, because of their affective
character and the more or less pronounced movements of reaction,
pleasure or repugnance, which they suggest to us. Besides, even when
the sensation remains purely representative, its external cause cannot
exceed a certain degree of strength or weakness without inciting us
to movements which enable us to measure it. Sometimes indeed we have
to make an effort to perceive this sensation, as if it were trying
to escape notice; sometimes on the other hand it obsesses us, forces
itself upon us and engrosses us to such an extent that we make every
effort to escape from it and to remain ourselves. In the former case
the sensation is said to be of slight intensity, and in the latter
case very intense. Thus, in order to perceive a distant sound, to
distinguish what we call a faint smell or a dim light, we strain all
our faculties, we "pay attention." And it is just because the smell
and the light thus require to be reinforced by our efforts that they
seem to us feeble. And, inversely, we recognize a sensation of extreme
intensity by the irresistible reflex movements to which it incites
us, or by the powerlessness with which it affects us. When a cannon
is fired off close to our ears or a dazzling light suddenly flares
up, we lose for an instant the consciousness of our personality; this
state may even last some time in the case of a very nervous subject.
It must be added that, even within the range of the so-called medium
intensities, when we are dealing on even terms with a representative
sensation, we often estimate its importance by comparing it with
another which it drives away, or by taking account of the persistence
with which it returns. Thus the ticking of a watch seems louder at
night because it easily monopolizes a consciousness almost empty of
sensations and ideas. Foreigners talking to one another in a language
which we do not understand seem to us to speak very loudly, because
their words no longer call up any ideas in our mind, and thus break
in upon a kind of intellectual silence and monopolize our attention
like the ticking of a watch at night. With these so-called medium
sensations, however, we approach a series of psychic states, the
intensity of which is likely to possess a new meaning. For, in most
cases, the organism hardly reacts at all, at least in a way that can
be perceived; and yet we still make a magnitude out of the pitch of a
sound, the intensity of a light, the saturation of a colour. Doubtless,
a closer observation of what takes place in the whole of the organism
when we hear such and such a note or perceive such and such a colour
has more than one surprise in store for us. Has not C. Féré shown that
every sensation is accompanied by an increase in muscular force which
can be measured by the dynamometer?[16] But of an increase of this
kind there is hardly any consciousness at all, and if we reflect on
the precision with which we distinguish sounds and colours, nay, even
weights and temperatures, we shall easily guess that some new element
must come into play in our estimate of them.
[Sidenote: The purely representative sensations are measured by
external causes.]
Now, the nature of this element is easy to determine. For, in
proportion as a sensation loses its affective character and becomes
representative, the reactions which it called forth on our part
tend to disappear, but at the same time we perceive the external
object which is its cause, or if we do not now perceive it, we have
perceived it, and we think of it. Now, this cause is extensive and
therefore measurable: a constant experience, which began with the first
glimmerings of consciousness and which continues throughout the whole
of our life, shows us a definite shade of sensation corresponding to a
definite amount of stimulation. We thus associate the idea of a certain
quantity of cause with a certain quality of effect; and finally, as
happens in the case of every acquired perception, we transfer the idea
into the sensation, the quantity of the cause into the quality of the
effect. At this very moment the intensity, which was nothing but a
certain shade or quality of the sensation, becomes a magnitude. We
shall easily understand this process if, for example, we hold a pin in
our right hand and prick our left hand more and more deeply. At first
we shall feel as it were a tickling, then a touch which is succeeded by
a prick, then a pain localized at a point, and finally the spreading
of this pain over the surrounding zone. And the more we reflect on
it, the more clearly shall we see that we are here dealing with so
many qualitatively distinct sensations, so many varieties of a single
species. But yet we spoke at first of one and the same sensation which
spread further and further, of one prick which increased in intensity.
The reason is that, without noticing it, we localized in the sensation
of the left hand, which is pricked, the progressive effort of the right
hand, which pricks. We thus introduced the cause into the effect, and
unconsciously interpreted quality as quantity, intensity as magnitude.
Now, it is easy to see that the intensity of every representative
sensation ought to be understood in the same way.
[Sidenote: The sensations of sound. Intensity measured by effort
necessary to produce a similar sound.]
The sensations of sound display well marked degrees of intensity.
We have already spoken of the necessity of taking into account the
affective character of these sensations, the shock received by the
whole of the organism. We have shown that a very intense sound is one
which engrosses our attention, which supplants all the others. But
take away the shock, the well-marked vibration, which you sometimes
feel in your head or even throughout your body: take away the clash
which takes place between sounds heard simultaneously: what will be
left except an indefinable quality of the sound which is heard? But
this quality is immediately interpreted as quantity because you have
obtained it yourself a thousand times, e.g. by striking some object
and thus expending a definite quantity of effort. You know, too, how
far you would have to raise your voice to produce a similar sound,
and the idea of this effort immediately comes into your mind when you
transform the intensity of the sound into a magnitude. Wundt[17] has
drawn attention to the quite special connexions of vocal and auditory
nervous filaments which are met with in the human brain. And has it not
been said that to hear is to speak to oneself? Some neuropaths cannot
be present at a conversation without moving their lips; this is only an
exaggeration of what takes place in the case of every one of us. How
will the expressive or rather suggestive power of music be explained,
if not by admitting that we repeat to ourselves the sounds heard, so
as to carry ourselves back into the psychic state out of which they
emerged, an original state, which nothing will express, but which
something may suggest, viz., the very motion and attitude which the
sound imparts to our body?
[Sidenote: Intensity and pitch. The part played by muscular effort.]
Thus, when we speak of the intensity of a sound of medium force as a
magnitude, we allude principally to the greater or less effort which we
should have ourselves to expend in order to summon, by our own effort,
the same auditory sensation.
Now, besides the intensity, we distinguish another characteristic
property of the sound, its pitch. Are the differences in pitch, such
as our ear perceives, quantitative differences? I grant that a sharper
sound calls up the picture of a higher position in space. But does it
follow from this that the notes of the scale, as auditory sensations,
differ otherwise than in quality? Forget what you have learnt from
physics, examine carefully your idea of a higher or lower note, and see
whether you do not think simply of the greater or less effort which
the tensor muscle of your vocal chords has to make in order to produce
the note? As the effort by which your voice passes from one note to
another is discontinuous, you picture to yourself these successive
notes as points in space, to be reached by a series of sudden jumps,
in each of which you cross an empty separating interval: this is why
you establish intervals between the notes of the scale. Now, why is
the line along which we dispose them vertical rather than horizontal,
and why do we say that the sound ascends in some cases and descends in
others? It must be remembered that the high notes seem to us to produce
some sort of resonance in the head and the deep notes in the thorax:
this perception, whether real or illusory, has undoubtedly had some
effect in making us reckon the intervals vertically. But we must also
notice that the greater the tension of the vocal chords in the chest
voice, the greater is the surface of the body affected, if the singer
is inexperienced; this is just the reason why the effort is felt by
him as more intense. And as he breathes out the air upwards, he will
attribute the same direction to the sound produced by the current of
air; hence the sympathy of a larger part of the body with the vocal
muscles will be represented by a movement upwards. We shall thus say
that the note is higher because the body makes an effort as though to
reach an object which is more elevated in space. In this way it became
customary to assign a certain height to each note of the scale, and as
soon as the physicist was able to define it by the number of vibrations
in a given time to which it corresponds, we no longer hesitated to
declare that our ear perceived differences of quantity directly. But
the sound would remain a pure quality if we did not bring in the
muscular effort which produces it or the vibrations which explain it.
[Sidenote: The sensations of heat and cold. These soon become affective
and are measured by reactions called forth.]
The experiments of Blix, Goldscheider and Donaldson[18] have shown
that the points on the surface of the body which feel cold are not the
same as those which feel heat. Physiology is thus disposed to set up a
distinction of nature, and not merely of degree, between the sensations
of heat and cold. But psychological observation goes further, for
close attention can easily discover specific differences between the
different sensations of heat, as also between the sensations of
cold. A more intense heat is really another kind of heat. We call it
more intense because we have experienced this same change a thousand
times when we approached nearer and nearer a source of heat, or when a
growing surface of our body was affected by it. Besides, the sensations
of heat and cold very quickly become affective and incite us to more or
less marked reactions by which we measure their external cause: hence,
we are inclined to set up similar quantitative differences among the
sensations which correspond to lower intensities of the cause. But I
shall not insist any further; every one must question himself carefully
on this point, after making a clean sweep of everything which his
past experience has taught him about the cause of his sensations and
coming face to face with the sensations themselves. The result of this
examination is likely to be as follows: it will be perceived that the
magnitude of a representative sensation depends on the cause having
been put into the effect, while the intensity of the affective element
depends on the more or less important reactions which prolong the
external stimulations and find their way into the sensation itself.
[Sidenote: The sensation of pressure and weight measured by extent of
organism affected.]
The same thing will be experienced in the case of pressure and even
weight. When you say that a pressure on your hand becomes stronger,
see whether you do not mean that there first was a contact, then a
pressure, afterwards a pain, and that this pain itself, after having
gone through a series of qualitative changes, has spread further and
further over the surrounding region. Look again and see whether you do
not bring in the more and more intense, i.e. more and more extended,
effort of resistance which you oppose to the external pressure. When
the psychophysicist lifts a heavier weight, he experiences, he says,
an increase of sensation. Examine whether this increase of sensation
ought not rather to be called a sensation of increase. The whole
question is centred in this, for in the first case the sensation would
be a quantity like its external cause, whilst in the second it would
be a quality which had become representative of the magnitude of
its cause. The distinction between the heavy and the light may seem
to be as old-fashioned and as childish as that between the hot and
the cold. But the very childishness of this distinction makes it a
psychological reality. And not only do the heavy and the light impress
our consciousness as generically different, but the various degrees
of lightness and heaviness are so many species of these two genera.
It must be added that the difference of quality is here translated
spontaneously into a difference of quantity, because of the more or
less extended effort which our body makes in order to lift a given
weight. Of this you will soon become aware if you are asked to lift a
basket which, you are told, is full of scrap-iron, whilst in fact there
is nothing in it. You will think you are losing your balance when you
catch hold of it, as though distant muscles had interested themselves
beforehand in the operation and experienced a sudden disappointment.
It is chiefly by the number and nature of these sympathetic efforts,
which take place at different points of the organism, that you measure
the sensation of weight at a given point; and this sensation would
be nothing more than a quality if you did not thus introduce into
it the idea of a magnitude. What strengthens the illusion on this
point is that we have become accustomed to believe in the immediate
perception of a homogeneous movement in a homogeneous space. When I
lift a light weight with my arm, all the rest of my body remaining
motionless, I experience a series of muscular sensations each of which
has its "local sign," its peculiar shade: it is this series which
my consciousness interprets as a continuous movement in space. If I
afterwards lift a heavier weight to the same height with the same
speed, I pass through a new series of muscular sensations, each of
which differs from the corresponding term of the preceding series. Of
this I could easily convince myself by examining them closely. But
as I interpret this new series also as a continuous movement, and as
this movement has the same direction, the same duration and the same
velocity as the preceding, my consciousness feels itself bound to
localize the difference between the second series of sensations and
the first elsewhere than in the movement itself. It thus materializes
this difference at the extremity of the arm which moves; it persuades
itself that the sensation of movement has been identical in both cases,
while the sensation of weight differed in magnitude. But movement and
weight are but distinctions of the reflective consciousness: what is
present to consciousness immediately is the sensation of, so to speak,
a heavy movement, and this sensation itself can be resolved by analysis
into a series of muscular sensations, each of which represents by its
shade its place of origin and by its colour the magnitude of the weight
lifted.
[Sidenote: The sensation of light. Qualitative changes of colour
interpreted as quantitative changes in intensity of luminous source.]
Shall we call the intensity of light a quantity, or shall we treat
it as a quality? It has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed what a
large number of different factors co-operate in daily life in giving
us information about the nature of the luminous source. We know from
long experience that, when we have a difficulty in distinguishing the
outlines and details of objects, the light is at a distance or on
the point of going out. Experience has taught us that the affective
sensation or nascent dazzling that we experience in certain cases must
be attributed to a higher intensity of the cause. Any increase or
diminution in the number of luminous sources alters the way in which
the sharp lines of bodies stand out and also the shadows which they
project. Still more important are the changes of hue which coloured
surfaces, and even the pure colours of the spectrum, undergo under
the influence of a brighter or dimmer light. As the luminous source
is brought nearer, violet takes a bluish tinge, green tends to become
a whitish yellow, and red a brilliant yellow. Inversely, when the
light is moved away, ultramarine passes into violet and yellow into
green; finally, red, green and violet tend to become a whitish yellow.
Physicists have remarked these changes of hue for some time;[19] but
what is still more remarkable is that the majority of men do not
perceive them, unless they pay attention to them or are warned of
them. Having made up our mind, once for all, to interpret changes
of quality as changes of quantity, we begin by asserting that every
object has its own peculiar colour, definite and invariable. And when
the hue of objects tends to become yellow or blue, instead of saying
that we see their colour change under the influence of an increase or
diminution of light, we assert that the colour remains the same but
that our sensation of luminous intensity increases or diminishes. We
thus substitute once more, for the qualitative impression received
by our consciousness, the quantitative interpretation given by our
understanding. Helmholtz has described a case of interpretation of
the same kind, but still more complicated: "If we form white with
two colours of the spectrum, and if we increase or diminish the
intensities of the two coloured lights in the same ratio, so that the
proportions of the combination remain the same, the resultant colour
remains the same although the relative intensity of the sensations
undergoes a marked change.... This depends on the fact that the light
of the sun, which we consider as the normal white light during the
day, itself undergoes similar modifications of shade when the luminous
intensity varies."[20]
[Sidenote: Does experiment prove that we can measure directly our
sensations of light?]
But yet, if we often judge of variations in the luminous source by
the relative changes of hue of the objects which surround us, this is
no longer the case in simple instances where a single object, e.g.
a white surface, passes successively through different degrees of
luminosity. We are bound to insist particularly on this last point.
For the physicist speaks of degrees of luminous intensity as of real
quantities: and, in fact, he measures them by the photometer. The
psychophysicist goes still further: he maintains that our eye itself
estimates the intensities of light. Experiments have been attempted,
at first by Delbœuf,[21] and afterwards by Lehmann and Neiglick,[22]
with the view of constructing a psychophysical formula from the direct
measurement of our luminous sensations. Of these experiments we shall
not dispute the result, nor shall we deny the value of photometric
processes; but we must see how we have to interpret them.
[Sidenote: Photometric experiments. We perceive different shades and
afterwards interpret them as decreasing intensities of white light.]
Look closely at a sheet of paper lighted e.g. by four candles, and put
out in succession one, two, Photometric three of them. You say that
the surface remains white and that its brightness diminishes. But you
are aware that one candle has just been put out; or, if you do not
know it, you have often observed a similar change in the appearance of
a white surface when the illumination was diminished. Put aside what
you remember of your past experiences and what you are accustomed to
say of the present ones; you will find that what you really perceive
is not a diminished illumination of the white surface, it is a _layer
of shadow_ passing over this surface at the moment the candle is
extinguished. This shadow is a reality to your consciousness, like
the light itself. If you call the first surface in all its brilliancy
white, you will have to give another name to what you now see, for it
is a different thing: it is, if we may say so, a new shade of white.
We have grown accustomed, through the combined influence of our past
experience and of physical theories, to regard black as the absence,
or at least as the minimum, of luminous sensation, and the successive
shades of grey as decreasing intensities of white light. But, in
point of fact, black has just as much reality for our consciousness
as white, and the decreasing intensities of white light illuminating
a given surface would appear to an unprejudiced consciousness as so
many different shades, not unlike the various colours of the spectrum.
This is the reason why the change in the sensation is not continuous,
as it is in the external cause, and why the light can increase or
decrease for a certain period without producing any apparent change
in the illumination of our white surface: the illumination will not
appear to change until the increase or decrease of the external light
is sufficient to produce a new quality. The variations in brightness
of a given colour--the affective sensations of which we have spoken
above being left aside--would thus be nothing but qualitative changes,
were it not our custom to transfer the cause to the effect and to
replace our immediate impressions by what we learn from experience
and science. The same thing might be said of degrees of saturation.
Indeed, if the different intensities of a colour correspond to so many
different shades existing between this colour and black, the degrees
of saturation are like shades intermediate between this same colour
and pure white. Every colour, we might say, can be regarded under two
aspects, from the point of view of black and from the point of view of
white. And black is then to intensity what white is to saturation.
[Sidenote: In photometric experiments the physicist compares, not
sensations, but physical effects.]
The meaning of the photometric experiments will now be understood. A
candle placed at a certain distance from a sheet of paper illuminates
it in a certain way: you double the distance and find that four candles
are required to produce the same effects, sensation. From this you
conclude that if you had doubled the distance without increasing the
intensity of the luminous source, the resultant illumination would
have been only one-fourth as bright. But it is quite obvious that you
are here dealing with the physical and not the psychological effect.
For it cannot be said that you have compared two sensations with one
another: you have made use of a single sensation in order to compare
two different luminous sources with each other, the second four
times as strong as the first but twice as far off. In a word, the
physicist never brings in sensations which are twice or three times
as great as others, but only identical sensations, destined to serve
as intermediaries between two physical quantities which can then be
equated with one another. The sensation of light here plays the part
of the auxiliary unknown quantity which the mathematician introduces
into his calculations, and which is not intended to appear in the final
result.
[Sidenote: The psychophysicist claims to compare and measure
sensations. Delbœuf's experiments.]
But the object of the psychophysicist is entirely different: it is the
sensation of light itself which he studies, and claims to measure.
Sometimes he will proceed to integrate infinitely small differences,
after the method of Fechner; sometimes he will compare one sensation
directly with another. The latter method, due to Plateau and Delbœuf,
differs far less than has hitherto been believed from Fechner's: but,
as it bears more especially on the luminous sensations, we shall deal
with it first. Delbœuf places an observer in front of three concentric
rings which vary in brightness. By an ingenious arrangement he can
cause each of these rings to pass through all the shades intermediate
between white and black. Let us suppose that two hues of grey are
simultaneously produced on two of the rings and kept unchanged; let
us call them A and B. Delbœuf alters the brightness, C, of the third
ring, and asks the observer to tell him whether, at a certain moment,
the grey, B, appears to him equally distant from the other two. A
moment comes, in fact, when the observer states that the contrast A B
is equal to the contrast B C, so that, according to Delbœuf, a scale of
luminous intensities could be constructed on which we might pass from
each sensation to the following one by equal sensible contrasts: our
sensations would thus be measured by one another. I shall not follow
Delbœuf into the conclusions which he has drawn from these remarkable
experiments: the essential question, the only question, as it seems
to me, is whether a contrast A B, formed of the elements A and B, is
really equal to a contrast B C, which is differently composed. As
soon as it is proved that two sensations can be equal without being
identical, psychophysics will be established. But it is this equality
which seems to me open to question: it is easy to explain, in fact,
how a sensation of luminous intensity can be said to be at an equal
distance from two others.
[Sidenote: In what cases differences of colour might be interpreted as
differences of magnitude.]
Let us assume for a moment that from our birth onwards the growing
intensity of a luminous source had always called up in our
consciousness, one after the other, the different colours of the
spectrum. There is no doubt that these colours would then appear to us
as so many notes of a gamut, as higher or lower degrees in a scale,
in a word, as magnitudes. Moreover it would be easy for us to assign
each of them its place in the series. For although the extensive
cause varies continuously, the changes in the sensation of colour
are discontinuous, passing from one shade to another shade. However
numerous, then, may be the shades intermediate between the two colours,
A and B, it will always be possible to count them in thought, at least
roughly, and ascertain whether this number is almost equal to that
of the shades which separate B from another colour C. In the latter
case it will be said that B is equally distant from A and C, that the
contrast is the same on one side as on the other. But this will always
be merely a convenient interpretation: for although the number of
intermediate shades may be equal on both sides, although we may pass
from one to the other by sudden leaps, we do not know whether these
leaps are magnitudes, still less whether they are _equal_ magnitudes:
above all it would be necessary to show that the intermediaries which
have helped us throughout our measurement could be found again inside
the object which we have measured. If not, it is only by a metaphor
that a sensation can be said to be an equal distance from two others.
[Sidenote: This is just the case with differences of intensity in
sensations of light. Delbœuf's underlying postulate.]
Now, if the views which we have before enumerated with regard to
luminous intensities are accepted, it will be recognized that the
different hues of grey which Delbœuf displays to us are strictly
analogous, for our consciousness, to colours, and that if we declare
that a grey tint is equidistant from two other grey tints, it is in
the same sense in which it might be said that orange, for example, is
at an equal distance from green and red. But there is this difference,
that in all our past experience the succession of grey tints has
been produced in connexion with a progressive increase or decrease
in illumination. Hence we do for the differences of brightness what
we do not think of doing for the differences of colour: we promote
the changes of quality into variations of magnitude. Indeed, there
is no difficulty here about the measuring, because the successive
shades of grey produced by a continuous decrease of illumination
are discontinuous, as being qualities, and because we can count
approximately the principal intermediate shades which separate any
two kinds of grey. The contrast A B will thus be declared equal to
the contrast B C when our imagination, aided by our memory, inserts
between A and B the same number of intermediate shades as between B
and C. It is needless to say that this will necessarily be a very
rough estimate. We may anticipate that it will vary considerably with
different persons. Above all it is to be expected that the person
will show more hesitation and that the estimates of different persons
will differ more widely in proportion as the difference in brightness
between the rings A and B is increased, for a more and more laborious
effort will be required to estimate the number of intermediate hues.
This is exactly what happens, as we shall easily perceive by glancing
at the two tables drawn up by Delbœuf.[23] In proportion as he
increases the difference in brightness between the exterior ring and
the middle ring, the difference between the numbers on which one and
the same observer or different observers successively fix increases
almost continuously from 3 degrees to 94, from 5 to 73, from 10 to 25,
from 7 to 40. But let us leave these divergences on one side: let us
assume that the observers are always consistent and always agree with
one another; will it then be established that the contrasts A B and B
C are equal? It would first be necessary to prove that two successive
elementary contrasts are equal quantities, whilst, in fact, we only
know that they are successive. It would then be necessary to prove that
inside a given tint of grey we perceive the less intense shades which
our imagination has run through in order to estimate the objective
intensity of the source of light. In a word, Delbœuf's psychophysics
assumes a theoretical postulate of the greatest importance, which
is disguised under the cloak of an experimental result, and which
we should formulate as follows: "When the objective quantity of
light is continuously increased, the differences between the hues of
grey successively obtained, each of which represents the smallest
perceptible increase of physical stimulation, are quantities equal to
one another. And besides, any one of the sensations obtained can be
equated with the sum of the differences which separate from one another
all previous sensations, going from zero upwards." Now, this is just
the postulate of Fechner's psychophysics, which we are going to examine.
[Sidenote: Fechner's psychophysics. Weber's Law.]
Fechner took as his starting-point a law discovered by Weber, according
to which, given a certain stimulus which calls forth a certain
sensation, the amount by which the stimulus must be increased for
consciousness to become aware of any change bears a fixed relation
to the original stimulus. Thus, if we denote by Ε the stimulus which
corresponds to the sensation S, and by ΔΕ the amount by which the
original stimulus must be increased in order that a sensation of
difference may be produced, we shall have ΔΕ/E = const. This formula
has been much modified by the disciples of Fechner, and we prefer to
take no part in the discussion; it is for experiment to decide between
the relation established by Weber and its substitutes. Nor shall we
raise any difficulty about granting the probable existence of a law of
this nature. It is here really a question not of measuring a sensation
but only of determining the exact moment at which an increase of
stimulus produces a change in it. Now, if a definite amount of stimulus
produces a definite shade of sensation, it is obvious that the minimum
amount of stimulus required to produce a change in this shade is also
definite; and since it is not constant, it must be a function of the
original stimulus. But how are we to pass from a relation between the
stimulus and its minimum increase to an equation which connects the
**"amount of sensation" with the corresponding stimulus? The whole of
psychophysics is involved in this transition, which is therefore worthy
of our closest consideration.
[Sidenote: The underlying assumptions and the process by which
Fechner's Law is reached.]
We shall distinguish several different artifices in the process of
transition from Weber's experiments, or from any other series of
similar observations, to a psychophysical law like Fechner's. It is
first of all agreed to consider our consciousness of an increase of
stimulus as an increase of the sensation S: this is therefore called
S. It is then asserted that all the sensations ΔS, which correspond
to the smallest perceptible increase of stimulus, are equal to one
another. They are therefore treated as quantities, and while, on the
one hand, these quantities are supposed to be always equal, and, on
the other, experiment has given a certain relation ΔΕ = ∫(E) between
the stimulus Ε and its minimum increase, the constancy of ΔS is
expressed by writing ΔS = C ΔE/∫(E), C being a constant quantity.
Finally it is agreed to replace the very small differences ΔS and ΔΕ
by the infinitely small differences _d_S and _d_E, whence an equation
which is, this time, a differential one: _d_S = C _d_E/∫(E). We shall
now simply have to integrate on both sides to obtain the desired
relation[24]: S=C ∬_d_E/∫(E). And the transition will thus be made from
a proved law, which only concerned the _occurrence_ of a sensation, to
an unprovable law which gives its _measure._
Without entering upon any thorough discussion of this ingenious
operation, let us show in a few words how Fechner has grasped the real
difficulty of the problem, how he has tried to overcome it, and where,
as it seems to us, the flaw in his reasoning lies.
[Sidenote: Can two sensations be equal without being identical?]
Fechner realized that measurement could not be introduced into
psychology without first defining what is meant by the equality and
addition of two simple states, e.g. two sensations. But, unless they
are identical, we do not at first see how two sensations can be equal.
Undoubtedly in the physical world equality is not synonymous with
identity. But the reason is that every phenomenon, every object, is
there presented under two aspects, the one qualitative and the other
extensive: nothing prevents us from putting the first one aside,
and then there remains nothing but terms which can be directly or
indirectly superposed on one another and consequently seen to be
identical. Now, this qualitative element, which we begin by eliminating
from external objects in order to measure them, is the very thing which
psychophysics retains and claims to measure. And it is no use trying to
measure this quality Q by some physical quantity Q' which lies beneath
it: for it would be necessary to have previously shown that Q is a
function of Q', and this would not be possible unless the quality Q had
first been measured with some fraction of itself. Thus nothing prevents
us from measuring the sensation of heat by the degree of temperature;
but this is only a convention, and the whole point of psychophysics
lies in rejecting this convention and seeking how the sensation of
heat varies when you change the temperature. In a word, it seems,
on the one hand, that two different sensations cannot be said to be
equal unless some identical residuum remains after the elimination of
their qualitative difference; but, on the other hand, this qualitative
difference being all that we perceive, it does not appear what could
remain once it was eliminated.
[Sidenote: Fechner's method of _minimum_ differences.]
The novel feature in Fechner's treatment is that he did not consider
this difficulty insurmountable. Taking advantage of the fact that
sensation varies by sudden jumps while the stimulus increases
continuously, he did not hesitate to call these differences of
sensation by the same name: they are all, he says, _minimum_
differences, since each corresponds to the smallest perceptible
increase in the external stimulus. Therefore you can set aside the
specific shade or quality of these successive differences; a common
residuum will remain in virtue of which they will be seen to be in a
manner identical: they all have the common character of being _minima._
Such will be the definition of equality which we were seeking. Now,
the definition of addition will follow naturally. For if we treat
as a quantity the difference perceived by consciousness between two
sensations which succeed one another in the course of a continuous
increase of stimulus, if we call the first sensation S, and the
second S + ΔS, we shall have to consider every sensation S as a sum,
obtained by the addition of the minimum differences through which
we pass before reaching it. The only remaining step will then be to
utilize this twofold definition in order to establish, first of all,
a relation between the differences ΔS and ΔΕ, and then, through the
substitution of the differentials, between the two variables. True, the
mathematicians may here lodge a protest against the substitution of
differential for difference; the psychologists may ask, too, whether
the quantity ΔS, instead of being constant, does not vary as the
sensation S itself;[25] finally, taking the psychophysical law for
granted, we may all debate about its real meaning. But, by the mere
fact that ΔS is regarded as a quantity and S as a sum, the fundamental
postulate of the whole process is accepted.
[Sidenote: Break-down of the assumption that the sensation is a sum,
and the minimum differences quantities.]
Now it is just this postulate which seems to us open to question, even
if it can be understood. Assume that I experience a sensation S, and
that, increasing the stimulus continuously, I perceive this increase
after a certain time. I am now notified of the increase of the cause:
but why should I call this notification an arithmetical difference? No
doubt the notification consists in the fact that the original state S
has changed: it has become S'; but the transition from S to S' could
only be called an arithmetical difference if I were conscious, so to
speak, of an interval between S and S', and if my sensation were felt
to rise from S to S' by the addition of something. By giving this
transition a name, by calling it ΔS,** you make it first a reality and
then a quantity. Now, not only are you unable to explain in what sense
this transition is a quantity, but reflection will show you that it is
not even a reality; the only realities are the states S and S' through
which I pass. No doubt, if S and S' were numbers, I could assert the
reality of the difference S'--S even though S and S' alone were given;
the reason is that the number S'--S, which is a certain sum of units,
will then represent just the successive moments of the addition by
which we pass from S to S'. But if S and S' are simple states, in what
will the _interval_ which separates them consist? And what, then, can
the transition from the first state to the second be, if not a mere act
of your thought, which, arbitrarily and for the sake of the argument,
assimilates a succession of two states to a differentiation of two
magnitudes?
[Sidenote: We can speak of "arithmetical difference" only in a
conventional sense.]
Either you keep to what consciousness presents to you or you have
recourse to a conventional mode of representation. In the first case
you will find a difference between S and S' like that between the
shades sense. Of rainbow, and not at all an interval of magnitude.
In the second case you may introduce the symbol ΔS if you like,
but it is only in a conventional sense that you will speak here of
an arithmetical difference, and in a conventional sense, also, that
you will assimilate a sensation to a sum. The most acute of Fechner's
critics, Jules Tannery, has made the latter point perfectly clear. "It
will be said, for example, that a sensation of 50 degrees is expressed
by the number of differential sensations which would succeed one
another from the point where sensation is absent up to the sensation
of 50 degrees.... I do not see that this is anything but a definition,
which is as legitimate as it is arbitrary."[26]
[Sidenote: Delbœuf's results seem more plausible but, in the end, all
psychophysics revolves in a vicious circle.]
We do not believe, in spite of all that has been said, that the method
of mean gradations has set psychophysics on a new path. The novel
feature in Delbœuf's investigation was that he chose a particular case,
in which consciousness seemed to decide in Fechner's favour, and in
which common sense itself played the part of the psychophysicist. He
inquired whether certain sensations did not appear to us immediately as
equal although different, and whether it would not be possible to draw
up, by their help, a table of sensations which were double, triple or
quadruple those which preceded them. The mistake which Fechner made,
as we have just seen, was that he believed in an interval between two
successive sensations S and S', when there is simply a _passing_ from
one to the other and not a _difference_ in the arithmetical sense of
the word. But if the two terms between which the passing takes place
could be given simultaneously, there would then be a contrast besides
the transition; and although the contrast is not yet an arithmetical
difference, it resembles it in a certain respect; for the two terms
which are compared stand here side by side as in a case of subtraction
of two numbers. Suppose now that these sensations belong to the same
_genus_ and that in our past experience we have constantly been present
at their march past, so to speak, while the physical stimulus increased
continuously: it is extremely probable that we shall thrust the cause
into the effect, and that the idea of contrast will thus melt into that
of arithmetical difference. As we shall have noticed, moreover, that
the sensation changed abruptly while the stimulus rose continuously,
we shall no doubt estimate the distance between two given sensations
by a rough guess at the number of these sudden jumps, or at least of
the intermediate sensations which usually serve us as landmarks. To
sum up, the contrast will appear to us as a difference, the stimulus
as a quantity, the sudden jump as an element of equality: combining
these three factors, we shall reach the idea of equal quantitative
differences. Now, these conditions are nowhere so well realized as
when surfaces of the same colour, more or less illuminated, are
simultaneously presented to us. Not only is there here a contrast
between similar sensations, but these sensations correspond to a cause
whose influence has always been felt by us to be closely connected with
its distance; and, as this distance can vary continuously, we cannot
have escaped noticing in our past experience a vast number of shades
of sensation which succeeded one another along with the continuous
increase in the cause. We are therefore able to say that the contrast
between one shade of grey and another, for example, seems to us almost
equal to the contrast between the latter and a third one; and if we
define two equal sensations by saying that they are sensations which
a more or less confused process of reasoning interprets as such, we
shall in fact reach a law like that proposed by Delbœuf. But it must
not be forgotten that consciousness has here passed through the same
intermediate steps as the psychophysicist, and that its judgment
is worth here just what psychophysics is worth; it is a symbolical
interpretation of quality as quantity, a more or less rough estimate
of the number of sensations which can come in between two given
sensations. The difference is thus not as great as is believed between
the method of least noticeable differences and that of mean gradations,
between the psychophysics of Fechner and that of Delbœuf. The first
led to a conventional measurement of sensation; the second appeals
to common sense in the particular cases where common sense adopts a
similar convention. In a word, all psychophysics is condemned by its
origin to revolve in a vicious circle, for the theoretical postulate on
which it rests condemns it to experimental verification, and it cannot
be experimentally verified unless its postulate is first granted. The
fact is that there is no point of contact between the unextended and
the extended, between quality and quantity. We can interpret the one by
the other, set up the one as the equivalent of the other; but sooner or
later, at the beginning or at the end, we shall have to recognize the
conventional character of this assimilation.
[Sidenote: Psychophysics merely pushes to its extreme consequences the
fundamental but natural mistake of regarding sensations as magnitudes.]
In truth, psychophysics merely formulates with precision and pushes
to its extreme consequences a conception familiar to common sense. As
speech dominates over thought, as external objects, which are common
to us all, are more important to us than the subjective states through
which each of us passes, we have everything to gain by objectifying
these states, by introducing into them, to the largest possible extent,
the representation of their external cause. And the more our knowledge
increases, the more we perceive the extensive behind the intensive,
quantity behind quality, the more also we tend to thrust the former
into the latter, and to treat our sensations as magnitudes. Physics,
whose particular function it is to calculate the external cause of our
internal states, takes the least possible interest in these states
themselves: constantly and deliberately it confuses them with their
cause. It thus encourages and even exaggerates the mistake which common
sense makes on the point. The moment was inevitably bound to come at
which science, familiarized with this confusion between quality and
quantity, between sensation and stimulus, should seek to measure the
one as it measures the other: such was the object of psychophysics. In
this bold attempt Fechner was encouraged by his adversaries themselves,
by the philosophers who speak of intensive magnitudes while declaring
that psychic states cannot be submitted to measurement. For if we
grant that one sensation can be stronger than another, and that this
inequality is inherent in the sensations themselves, independently
of all association of ideas, of all more or less conscious
consideration of number and space, it is natural to ask by how much
the first sensation exceeds the second, and to set up a quantitative
relation between their intensities. Nor is it any use to reply, as
the opponents of psychophysics sometimes do, that all measurement
implies superposition, and that there is no occasion to seek for a
numerical relation between intensities, which are not superposable
objects. For it will then be necessary to explain why one sensation
is said to be more intense than another, and how the conceptions
of greater and smaller can be applied to things which, it has just
been acknowledged, do not admit among themselves of the relations of
container to contained. If, in order to cut short any question of this
kind, we distinguish two kinds of quantity, the one intensive, which
admits only of a "more or less," the other extensive, which lends
itself to measurement, we are not far from siding with Fechner and
the psychophysicists. For, as soon as a thing is acknowledged to be
capable of increase and decrease, it seems natural to ask by how much
it decreases or by how much it increases. And, because a measurement
of this kind does not appear to be possible directly, it does not
follow that science cannot successfully accomplish it by some indirect
process, either by an integration of infinitely small elements, as
Fechner proposes, or by any other roundabout way. Either, then,
sensation is pure quality, or, if it is a magnitude, we ought to try to
measure it.
[Sidenote: Thus intensity judged (1) in representative states by an
estimate of the magnitude of the cause (2) in affective states by
multiplicity of psychic phenomena involved.]
To sum up what precedes, we have found the notion of intensity to
present itself under a double aspect, according as we study the states
of consciousness which represent an external cause, or those which
are self-sufficient. In the former case the perception of intensity
consists in a certain estimate of the magnitude of the cause means of
a certain quality in the effect: it is, as the Scottish philosophers
would have said, an acquired perception. In the second case, we give
the name of intensity to the larger or smaller number of simple psychic
phenomena which we conjecture to be involved in the fundamental state:
it is no longer an _acquired_ perception, but a _confused_ perception.
In fact, these two meanings of the word usually intermingle, because
the simpler phenomena involved in an emotion or an effort are generally
representative, and because the majority of representative states,
being at the same time affective, themselves include a multiplicity of
elementary psychic phenomena. The idea of intensity is thus situated
at the junction of two streams, one of which brings us the idea of
extensive magnitude from without, while the other brings us from
within, in fact from the very depths of consciousness, the image of an
inner multiplicity. Now, the point is to determine in what the latter
image consists, whether it is the same as that of number, or whether
it is quite different from it. In the following chapter we shall no
longer consider states of consciousness in isolation from one another,
but in their concrete multiplicity, in so far as they unfold themselves
in pure duration. And, in the same way as we have asked what would be
the intensity of a representative sensation if we did not introduce
into it the idea of its cause, we shall now have to inquire what the
multiplicity of our inner states becomes, what form duration assumes,
when the space in which it unfolds is eliminated. This second question
is even more important than the first. For, if the confusion of quality
with quantity were confined to each of the phenomena of consciousness
taken separately, it would give rise to obscurities, as we have just
seen, rather than to problems. But by invading the series of our
psychic states, by introducing space into our perception of duration,
it corrupts at its very source our feeling of outer and inner change,
of movement, and of freedom. Hence the paradoxes of the Eleatics, hence
the problem of free will. We shall insist rather on the second point;
but instead of seeking to solve the question, we shall show the mistake
of those who ask it.
[1] _Essays,_ (Library Edition, 1891), Vol. ii, p. 381.
[2] _The Senses and the Intellect,_4th ed., (1894), p. 79.
[3] _Grundzüge der Physiologischen Psychologie,_2nd ed. (1880), Vol. i,
p. 375.
[4] W. James, _Le sentiment de l'effort (Critique philosophique,_ 1880,
Vol. ii,) cf. _Principles of Psychology,_ (1891), Vol. ii, chap, xxvi.
[5] _Functions of the Brain,_ 2nd ed. (1886), p. 386.
[6] _Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik,_ 1st ed. (1867), pp. 600-601.
[7] _Le mécanisme de l'attention._ Alcan, 1888.
[8] _The Expression of the Emotions,_ 1st ed., (1872), p. 74.
[9] "What is an Emotion?_" Mind,_1884, p. 189.
[10] _Principles of Psychology,_ 3rd. ed., (1890), Vol. i, p. 482.
[11] _The Expression of the Emotions,_ 1st ed., p. 78.
[12] _L'homme et l'intelligence,_ p. 36.
[13] Ibid. p. 37.
[14] Ibid. p. 43.
[15] _The Expression of the Emotions,_ 1st ed., pp. 72, 69, 70.
[16] C. Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement,_ Paris, 1887.
[17] _Grundzüge der Physiologischen Psychologie,_ 2nd ed., (1880), Vol.
ii, p. 437.
[18] "On the Temperature Sense," _Mind,_ 1885.
[19] Rood, _Modern Chromatics,_(1879), pp. 181-187.
[20] _Handbuch der Physiologischen Optik,_ 1st ed. (1867), pp. 318-319.
[21] _Éléments de psychophysique._ Paris, 1883.
[22] See the account given of these experiments in the _Revue
philosophique,_ 1887, Vol. i, p. 71, and Vol. ii, p. 180.
[23] _Éléments de psychophysique,_ pp. 61, 69.
[24] In the particular case where we admit without restriction Weber's
Law ΔE/E=_const.,_ integration gives S=C log. E/Q. Q being a constant.
This is Fechner's "logarithmic law."
[25] Latterly it has been assumed that ΔS is proportional to S.
[26] _Revue scientifique,_ March 13 and April 24, 1875.