A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson Part 10

That duration thus conceived is really the basis of ourselves Mr Bergson proves by a thousand examples, and by a marvellous employment of the introspective method which he has helped to make so popular. We cannot quote these admirable a.n.a.lyses here. A single one will serve as model, specially selected as referring to one of the most ordinary moments of our life, to show plainly that the perception of real duration always accompanies us in secret.

"At the moment when I write these lines a clock near me is striking the hour; but my distracted ear is only aware of it after several strokes have already sounded; that is, I have not counted them. And yet an effort of introspective attention enables me to total the four strokes already struck and add them to those which I hear. If I then withdraw into myself and carefully question myself about what has just happened, I become aware that the first four sounds had struck my ear and even moved my consciousness, but that the sensations produced by each of them, instead of following in juxtaposition, had blended into one another in such a way as to endow the whole with a peculiar aspect and make of it a kind of musical phrase. In order to estimate in retrospect the number of strokes which have sounded, I attempted to reconst.i.tute this phrase in thought: my imagination struck one, then two, then three, and so long as it had not reached the exact number four, my sensibility, on being questioned, replied that the total effect differed in quality.

It had therefore noted the succession of the four strokes in a way of its own, but quite otherwise than by addition, and without bringing in the image of a juxtaposition of distinct terms. In fact, the number of strokes struck was perceived as quality, not as quant.i.ty: duration is thus presented to immediate consciousness, and preserves this form so long as it does not give place to a symbolical representation drawn from s.p.a.ce." ("Essay on the Immediate Data", pages 95-96.)

And now are we to believe that return to the feeling of real duration consists in letting ourselves go, and allowing ourselves an idle relaxation in dream or dissolution in sensation, "as a shepherd dozing watches the water flow"? Or are we even to believe, as has been maintained, that the intuition of duration reduces "to the spasm of delight of the mollusc basking in the sun"? This is a complete mistake!

We should fall back into the misconceptions which I was pointing out in connection with immediacy in general; we should be forgetting that there are several rhythms of duration, as there are several kinds of consciousness; and finally, we should be misunderstanding the character of a creative invention perpetually renewed, which is that of our inner life.

For it is in duration that we are free, not in spatialised time, as all determinist conceptions suppose in contradiction.

I shall not go back to the proofs of this thesis; they were condensed some way back after the third chapter of the "Essay on the Immediate Data". But I will borrow from Mr Bergson himself a few complementary explanations, in order, as far as possible, to forestall any misunderstanding. "The word liberty," he says, "has for me a sense intermediate between those which we a.s.sign as a rule to the two terms liberty and free-will. On one hand, I believe that liberty consists in being entirely oneself, in acting in conformity with oneself; it is then, to a certain degree, the 'moral liberty' of philosophers, the independence of the person with regard to everything other than itself. But that is not quite this liberty, since the independence I am describing has not always a moral character. Further, it does not consist in depending on oneself as an effect depends on the cause which of necessity determines it. In this, I should come back to the sense of 'free-will.' And yet I do not accept this sense completely either, since free-will, in the usual meaning of the term, implies the equal possibility of two contraries, and on my theory we cannot formulate, or even conceive in this case the thesis of the equal possibility of the two contraries, without falling into grave error about the nature of time. I might say then, that the object of my thesis, on this particular point, has been precisely to find a position intermediate between 'moral liberty' and 'free-will.' Liberty, such as I understand it, is situated between these two terms, but not at equal distances from both. If I were obliged to blend it with one of the two, I should select 'free-will.'"

("Report of the French Philosophical Society", philosophical vocabulary, article "Liberty".)

After all, when we place ourselves in the perspective of h.o.m.ogeneous time; that is to say, when we subst.i.tute for the real and profound ego its image refracted through s.p.a.ce, the act necessarily appears either as the resultant of a mechanical composition of elements, or as an incomprehensible creation ex nihilo.

"We have supposed that there is a third course to pursue; that is, to place ourselves back in pure duration...Then we seemed to see action arise from its antecedents by an evolution sui generis, in such a way that we discover in this action the antecedents which explain it, while at the same time it adds something absolutely new to them, being an advance upon them as the fruit upon the flower. Liberty is in no way reduced thereby, as has been said, to obvious spontaneity. At most this would be the case in the animal world, where the psychological life is princ.i.p.ally that of the affections. But in the case of man, a thinking being, the free act can be called a synthesis of feelings and ideas, and the evolution which leads to it a reasonable evolution." ("Matter and Memory", page 205.)

Finally, in a most important letter, ("Report of the French Philosophical Society", meeting, 26th February 1903.) Mr Bergson becomes a little more precise still. We must certainly not confuse the affirmation of liberty with the negation of physical determinism; "for there is more in this affirmation than in this negation." All the same, liberty supposes a certain contingence. It is "psychological causality itself," which must not be represented after the model of physical causality.

In opposition to the latter, it implies that between two moments of a conscious being there is not an equivalence admitting of deduction, that in the transition from one to the other there is a genuine creation.

Without doubt the free act is not without explanatory reasons.

"But these reasons have determined us only at the moment when they have become determining; that is, at the moment when the act was virtually accomplished, and the creation of which I speak is entirely contained in the progress by which these reasons have become determining." It is true that all this implies a certain independence of mental life in relation to the mechanism of matter; and that is why Mr Bergson was obliged to set himself the problem of the relations between body and mind.

We know that the solution of this problem is the princ.i.p.al object of "Matter and Memory". The thesis of psycho-physiological parallelism is there peremptorily refuted.

The method which Mr Bergson has followed to do so will be found set out by himself in a communication to the French Philosophical Society, which it is important to study as introduction. ("Report" of meeting, 2nd May 1901.) The paralogism included in the very enunciation of the parallelist thesis is explained in a memoire presented to the Geneva International Philosophical Congress in 1904. ("Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale", November 1904.) But the actual proof is made by the a.n.a.lysis of the memoire which fills chapters ii. and iii. of the work cited above. (An extremely suggestive resume of these theses will be found in the second lecture on "The Perception of Change".) It is there established, by the most positive arguments, (Instead of brutally connecting the two extremes of matter and mind, one regarded in its highest action, the other in its most rudimentary mechanism, thus dooming to certain failure any attempt to explain their actual union, Mr Bergson studies their living contact at the point of intersection marked by the phenomena of perception and memory: he compares the higher point of matter--the brain--and the lower point of mind--certain recollections--and it is between these two neighbouring points that he notes a difference, by a method no longer dialectic but experimental.) that all our past is self-preserved in us, that this preservation only makes one with the musical character of duration, with the indivisible nature of change, but that one part only is conscious of it, the part concerned with action, to which present conceptions supply a body of actuality.

What we call our present must be conceived neither as a mathematical point nor as a segment with precise limits: it is the moment of our history brought out by our attention to life, and nothing, in strict justice, would prevent it from extending to the whole of this history. It is not recollection then, but forgetfulness which demands explanation.

According to a dictum of Ravaisson, of which Mr Bergson makes use, the explanation must be sought in the body: "it is materiality which causes forgetfulness in us."

There are, in fact, several planes of memory, from "pure recollection"

not yet interpreted in distinct images down to the same recollection actualised in embryo sensations and movements begun; and we descend from the one to the other, from the life of simple "dream" to the life of practical "drama," along "dynamic schemes." The last of these planes is the body; a simple instrument of action, a bundle of motive habits, a group of mechanisms which mind has set up to act. How does it operate in the work of memory? The task of the brain is every moment to thrust back into unconsciousness all that part of our past which is not at the time useful. Minute study of facts shows that the brain is employed in choosing from the past, in diminis.h.i.+ng, simplifying, and extracting from it all that can contribute to present experience; but it is not concerned to preserve it. In short, the brain can only explain absences, not presences. That is why the a.n.a.lysis of memory ill.u.s.trates the reality of mind, and its independence relative to matter. Thus is determined the relation of soul to body, the penetrating point which it inserts and drives into the plane of action. "Mind borrows from matter perceptions from which it derives its nourishment, and gives them back to it in the form of movement, on which it has impressed its liberty."

("Matter and Memory", page 279.)

This, then, is how the cycle of research closes, by returning to the initial problem, the problem of perception. In the two opposing systems by which attempts have been made to solve it, Mr Bergson discovers a common postulate, resulting in a common impotence. From the idealistic point of view we do not succeed in explaining how a world is expressed externally, nor from the realistic point of view how an ego is expressed internally. And this double failure comes again from the underlying hypothesis, according to which the duality of the subject and object is conceived as primitive, radical, and static. Our duty is diametrically opposed. We have to consider this duality as gradually elaborated, and the problem concerning it must be first stated, and then solved as a function of time rather than of s.p.a.ce. Our representation begins by being impersonal, and it is only later that it adopts our body as centre. We emerge gradually from universal reality, and our realising roots are always sunk in it. But this reality in itself is already consciousness, and the first moment of perception always puts us back into the initial state previous to the separation of the subject and object. It is by the work of life, and by action, that this separation is effected, created, accentuated, and fixed. And the common mistake of realism and idealism is to believe it effected in advance, whereas it is relatively second to perception.

Hence comes the absolute value of immediate intuition. For from what source could an irreducible relativity be produced in it? It would be absurd to make it depend on the const.i.tution of our brain, since our brain itself, so far as it is a group of images, is only a part of the universe, presenting the same characteristics as the whole; and in so far as it is a group of mechanisms become habits, is only a result of the initial action of life, of original perceptive discernment. And, on the other hand, no less absurd would be the fear that the subject can ever be excluded or eliminated from its own knowledge, since, in reality, the subject, like the object, is in perception, not perception in the subject--at least not primitively. So that it is by a trick of speech that the theses of fundamental relativity take root: they vanish when we return to immediacy; that is to say, when we present problems as they ought to be presented, in terms which do not suppose any conceptual a.n.a.lysis yet accomplished.

VI. The Problem of Evolution: Life and Matter.

After the problem of consciousness Mr Bergson was bound to approach that of evolution, for psychological liberty is only truly conceivable if it begins in some measure with the first pulsation of corporal life.

"Either sensation has no raison d'etre or it is a beginning of liberty"; that is what the "Essay on the Immediate Data" (Page 25.) already told us.

It was easy then to foresee the necessity of a general theoretical frame in which our duration might take a position which would render it more intelligible by removing its appearance of singular exception.

Thus in 1901, I wrote ("Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale", May 1901) with regard to the new philosophy considered as a philosophy of becoming: "It has been prepared by contemporary evolution, which is investigates and perfects, sifting it from its ore of materialism, and turning it into genuine metaphysics. Is not this the philosophy suited to the century of history? Perhaps it indicates that a period has arrived in which mathematics, losing its role as the regulating science, is about to give place to biology." This is the programme carried out, in what an original manner we are well aware, by the doctrine of Creative Evolution.

When we examine ancient knowledge, one characteristic of it is at once visible. It studies little but certain privileged moments of changing reality, certain stable forms, certain states of equilibrium.

Ancient geometry, for example, is almost always limited to the static consideration of figures already traced. Modern science is quite different. Has not the greatest progress which it has realised in the mathematical order really been the invention of infinitesimal a.n.a.lysis; that is to say, an effort to subst.i.tute the process for the resultant, to follow the moving generation of phenomena and magnitudes in its continuity, to place oneself along becoming at any moment whatsoever, or rather, by degrees at all successive moments? This fundamental tendency, coupled with the development of biological research, was bound to incline it towards a doctrine of evolution; and hence the success of Spencer.

But time, which is everywhere in modern science the chief variable, is only a time-length, indefinitely and arbitrarily divisible. There is no genuine duration, nothing really tending to evolution in Spencer's evolution: no more than there is in the periodic working of a turbine or in the stationary tremble of a diapason. Is not this what is emphasised by the perpetual employment of mechanical images and vulgar engineering metaphors, the least fault of which is to suppose a h.o.m.ogeneous time, and a motionless theatre of change which is at bottom only s.p.a.ce? "In such a doctrine we still talk of time, we p.r.o.nounce the word, but we hardly think of the thing; for time is here robbed of all effect."

("Creative Evolution", page 42.)

Whence comes a latent materialism, ready to grasp the chance of self-expression. Whence the automatic return to the dream of universal arithmetic, which Laplace, Du Bois-Reymond, and Huxley have expressed with such precision. (Ibid., page 41.)

In order to escape such consequences we must, with Mr Bergson, reintroduce real duration, that is to say, creative duration into evolution, we must conceive life according to the mode exhibited with regard to change in general. And it is science itself which calls us to this task. What does science actually tell us when we let it speak instead of prescribing to it answers which conform to our preferences? Vitality, at every point of its becoming, is a tangent to physico-chemical mechanism. But physico-chemistry does not reveal its secret any more than the straight line produces the curve.

Consider the development of an embryo. It summarises the history of species; ontogenesis, we are told, reproduces phylogenesis. And what do we observe then?

Now that a long sequence of centuries is contracted for us into a short period, and that our view is thus capable of a synthesis which before was too difficult, we see appearing the rhythmic organisation, the musical character, which the slowness of the transitions at first prevented us from seeing. In each state of the embryo there is something besides an instantaneous structure, something besides a conservative play of actions and reactions; there is a tendency, a direction, an effort, a creative activity. The stage traversed is less interesting than the traversing itself; this again is an act of generating impulse, rather than an effect of mechanical inertia. So must the case be, by a.n.a.logy, with general evolution. We have there, as it were, a vision of biological duration in miniature; expansion and relaxation of its tension bring its h.o.m.ogeneity to notice, but at the same time, properly speaking, evolution disappears.

And further, Mr Bergson establishes by direct and positive arguments that life is genuine creation. A similar conclusion is presented as the envelope of his whole doctrine.

It is imposed first of all by immediate evidence, for we cannot deny that the history of life is revealed to us under the aspect of a progress and an ascent. And this impulse implies initiative and choice, const.i.tuting an effort which we are not authorised by the facts to p.r.o.nounce fatalistic: "A simple glance at the fossil species shows us that life could have done without evolution, or could have evolved only within very restricted limits, had it chosen the far easier path open to it of becoming cramped in its primitive forms; certain Foraminifera have not varied since the silurian period; the Lingulae, looking unmoved upon the innumerable revolutions which have upheaved our planet, are today what they were in the most distant times of the palaeozoic era."

("Creative Evolution", page 111.) Moreover, if, in us, life is indisputably creation and liberty, how would it not, to some extent, be so in universal nature? "Whatever be the inmost essence of what is and what is being made, we are of it: ("Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale", November 1911.) a conclusion by a.n.a.logy is therefore legitimate. But above all, this conclusion is verified by its apt.i.tude for solving problems of detail, and for taking account of observed facts, and in this respect I regret that I can only refer the reader to the whole body of admirable discussions and a.n.a.lyses drawn up by Mr Bergson with regard to "the plant and the animal," or "the development of animal life.""

("Creative Evolution", chapter ii.)

As regards matter, two main laws stand out from the whole of our science, relative to its nature and its phenomena: a law of conservation and a law of degradation. On the one hand, we have mechanism, repet.i.tion, inertia, constants, and invariants: the play of the material world, from the point of view of quant.i.ty, offers us the aspect of an immense transformation without gain or loss, a h.o.m.ogeneous transformation tending to maintain in itself an exact equivalence between the departure and arrival point. On the other hand, from the point of view of quality, we have something which is being used up, lowered, degraded, exhausted: energy expended, movement dissipated, constructions breaking up, weights falling, levels becoming equalised, and differences effaced. The travel of the material world appears then as a loss, a movement of fall and descent.

In addition, there is only a tendency to conservation, a tendency which is never realised except imperfectly; while, on the contrary, we notice that the failure of the vital impulse is most infallibly interpreted by the appearance of mechanism. Reality falling asleep or breaking up is the figure under which we finally observe matter: matter then is secondary.

Finally, according to Mr Bergson, matter is defined as a kind of descent; this descent as the interruption of an ascent; this ascent itself as growth; and thus a principle of creation is at the base of things.

Such a view seems obscure and disturbing to the mathematical understanding. It cannot accustom itself to the idea of a becoming which is more than a simple change of distribution, and more than a simple expression of latent wealth. When confronted with such an idea, it always harks back to its eternal question: How has something come out of nothing? The question is false; for the idea of nothing is only a pseudo-idea. Nothing is unthinkable, since to think nothing is necessarily to think or not to think something; and according to Mr Bergson's formula, (Cf. the discussion on existence and non-existence in chapter iv. of "Creative Evolution", pages 298-322.) "the representation of void is always a full representation." When I say: "There is nothing," it is not that I perceive a "nothing." I never perceive except what is. But I have not perceived what I was seeking, what I was expecting, and I express my deception in the language of my desire. Or else I am speaking a language of construction, implying that I do not yet possess what I intend to make.

Let us abruptly forget these idols of practical action and language.

The becoming of evolution will then appear to us in its true light, as phases of gradual maturation, rounded at intervals by crises of creative discovery. Continuity and discontinuity will thus admit possibility of reconciliation, the one as an aspect of ascent towards the future, the other as an aspect of retrospection after the event. And we shall see that the same key will in addition disclose to us the theory of knowledge.

VII. The Problem of Knowledge: a.n.a.lysis and Intuition.

We know what importance has been attached since Kant to the problem of reason: it would seem sometimes that all future philosophy is a return to it; that it is no longer called to speak of anything else. Besides, what we understand by reason, in the broad sense, is, in the human mind, the power of light, the essential operation of which is defined as an act of directing synthesis, unifying the experience and rendering it by that very fact intelligible. Every movement of thought shows this power in exercise. To bring it everywhere to the front would be the proper task of philosophy; at least it is in this manner that we understand it today. But from what point of view and by what method do we ordinarily construct this theory of knowledge?

The spontaneous works of mind, perception, science, art, and morality are the departure-point of the inquiry and its initial matter. We do not ask ourselves whether but how they are possible, what they imply, and what they suppose; a regressive a.n.a.lysis attempts by critical reflection to discern in them their principles and requisites. The task, in short, is to reascend from production to producing activity, which we regard as sufficiently revealed by its natural products.

Philosophy, in consequence, is no longer anything but the science of problems already solved, the science which is confined to saying why knowledge is knowledge and action action, of such and such a kind, and such and such a quality. And in consequence also reason can no longer appear anything but an original datum postulated as a simple fact, as a complete system come down ready-made from heaven, at bottom a kind of non-temporal essence, definable without respect to duration, evolution, or history, of which all genesis and all progress are absurd. In vain do we persist in maintaining that it is originally an act; we always come round to the fact that the method followed compels us to consider this act only when once accomplished, and when once expressed in results. The inevitable consequence is that we imprison ourselves hopelessly in the affirmation of Kantian relativism.

Such a system can only be true as a partial and temporary truth: at the most, it is a moment of truth. "If we read the "Critique of Pure Reason"

closely, we become aware that Kant has made the critique, not of reason in general, but of a reason fas.h.i.+oned to the habits and demands of Cartesian mechanism or Newtonian physics." (H. Bergson, "Report of French Philosophical Society", meeting, 2nd May 1901.) Moreover, he plainly studies only adult reason, its present state, a plane of thought, a sectional view of becoming. For Kant, men progress perhaps in reason, but reason itself has no duration: it is the fixed spot, the atmosphere of dead eternity in which every mental action is displayed.

But this could not be the final and complete truth. Is it not a fact that human intelligence has been slowly const.i.tuted in the course of biological evolution? To know it, we have not so much to separate it statically from its works, as to replace it in its history.

Let us begin with life, since, in any case, whether we will or no, it is always in life and by life that we are.