An Introduction to Metaphysics — Henri Bergson

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An Introduction to Metaphysics

It • • *

Henri Bergson

Member of the Institute and Professor of the College de

France

Translated by T. E. Hulme

Aothorized Edition, Revised by the Author, with

Additional Material

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London Zbc imfcfietbocftcr press

• •

COPTRIGHT, 191a BY

O. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

third Printing

Ube Itnldfterlwcftec fl)re00» Hew fiocft

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

THIS celebrated essay was first pub- liahed in the Revue de Mctaphysique et de Morale, in January, 1903. It ap- peared then after Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory and before Creative Evolution; and while containing ideas set forth in the first two of these works, it announces some of those which were after- wards developed in the last.

Though this book can in no sense be regarded as an epitome of the others, it yet forms the best introduction to them. M. Edouard Le Roy in his lately published book on M. Bergson's philosophy speaks of " this marvelously suggestive study which constitutes the best preface to the books themselves."

It has, however, more importance than a

simple introduction would have, for in it

M. Bergson explains, at greater length and

vin greater detail than in the other boobs,

291591

Preface

exactly what he means to convey by the word intuition. The intuitive method ia treated independently and not, as elsewhere in his writings, incidentally, in its appli- cations to particular problems. Por this reason every writer who has attempted to give a complete exposition of M. Bergson's philosophy has been obliged to quote this essay at length; and it is indispensable therefore to the full understanding of its author's position. Translations into Ger- man, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish, and Russian have lately appeared, but the Trench original is at present out of print.

This translation has had the great ad- vantage of being revised in proof by the author. I have to thank him for many alternative renderings, and also for a few slight alterations in the text, which he thought would make his meaning clearer. T. E. nULME. ,

St. John's College, Cambkidge.

An Introduction to Metaphysics

I have to thank him for many alternative renderings, and also for a few slight alterations in the text, which he thought would make his meaning clearer. T. E. nULME. ,

St. John's College, Cambkidge.

An Introduction to Metaphysics

A COMPARISON of the definitions of *^ metaphysics and the various concep- tions of the absolute leads to the discovery that philosophers, in spite of their apparent divergencies, agree in distinguishing two profoundly diflferent ways of knowing a thing. The first implies that we move round the object; the second that we enter into it. The first depends on the point of view at which we are placed and on the symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither depends on a point of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of knowledge may be said to stop at the relative; the second, in those cases

where it is possible, to attain the absolute.

An Introduction to

Consider, for example, the movement of an object in space. My perception of the motion will vary with the point of view, moving or stationary, from which I observe it. My expression of it will vary with the systems of axes, or the points of reference, to which I relate it; that is, with the sym- bols by which I translate it. For this donble reason I call such motion relative: in the one case, as in the other, I am placed outside the object itself. But when I speak of an absolute movement, I am attributing to the moving object an interior and, so to speak, states of mind; I also imply that I am in sympathy with those states, and that I insert myself in them by an effort of imagination. Then, according as the ob- ject is moving or stationary, according as it adopts one movement or another, what I experience will vary. And what I ex- perience will depend neither on the point of view I may take up in regard to the object, since I am inside the obj Io image can replace the intuition of dura- tion, Tjut many diverse images, borrowed from very different orders of things, may, by the convergence of their action, direct, consciousness to the precise point where there is a certain intuition to be seized. By choosing images as dissimilar as pos- sible, we shall prevent any one of them from usurping the place of the intuition it is intended to call up, since it would then be driven away at once by its rivals. By providing that, in spite of their differences f of aspect, they all require from the mindi the same kind of attention, and in somei sort the same degree of tension, we shall gradually accustom consciousness to a par-

Metaphysics

By providing that, in spite of their differences f of aspect, they all require from the mindi the same kind of attention, and in somei sort the same degree of tension, we shall gradually accustom consciousness to a par-

Metaphysics

Hcnlar and clearly-defined disposition — that precisely which it must adopt in order to appear to itself as it really is, without any veil. But, then, consciouenefis must at least consent to make the effort. For it will have been shown nothing ; it will simply have been placed in the attitude it must take up in order to make the de- sired effort, and so come by itself to the intuition. Concepts on the contrary — especially if they are simple — have the disadvantage of being in reality symbols substituted for the object they symbolize, and demand no effort on our part. Ex- amined closely, each of them, it would be ^Eteen, retains only that part of the object ^Khich is common to it and to others, and ^"fecpresBes, still more than the image does, a comparison between the object and others' w hich resemble it. But as the comparison ^8 made manifest a resemblance, as the lemblance is a property of the object, and (I a pi-operty has every appearance of being Lparf of the object which possesses it, we

1 8 An Introduction to

easily persuade ourselves that by setting concept beside concept we are reconstruct- ing the whole of the object with its parts, thus obtaining, so to speak, its intellectual equivalenti'-'ni this way we believe that we ^ can form a faithful representation of dura- j tion by setting in line the concepts of \ unity, multiplicity, continuity, finite or in- \\ finite divisibility, etc. There precisely is \ the illusion. There also is the danger. Just in so far as abstract ideas can render service to analysis, that is, to the scientific study of the object in its relations to other objects, so far are they incapable of replac- . ing intuition, that is, the metaphysical in- vestigation of what is essential and unique in the object. For on the one hand these concepts, laid side by side, never actually give us more than an artificial reconstruc- tion of the object, of which they can only ' symbolize certain general, and, in a way, .

impersonal aspects; it is therefore useless

! to believe that with them we can seize a

reality of which they present to us the

Metaphysics 19

impersonal aspects; it is therefore useless

! to believe that with them we can seize a

reality of which they present to us the

Metaphysics 19

shadow alone. And, on the other hand, besides the illusion there is also a very serious danger. For the concept general- izes at the same time as it abstracts. The concept can only symbolize a particular property by making it common to an in- finity of things. It thei'cfore always more or less deforms the property by the exten- sion it gives to it. Replaced in the meta- physical object to which it belongs, a property coincides with the object, or at least moulds itself on it, and adopts the same outline. Extracted from the metaphysical object, and presented in a concept, it grows indefinitely larger, and goes beyond the object itself, since henceforth it has to con- tain it, along with a number of other objects. Thus the different concepts that we form of the properties of a thing inscribe round it so many circles, each much too large and none of them fitting it exactly. And yet, in the thing itself the properties coincided with the thing, and coincided consequently with one another. So that if we are bent

^•'

An Introduction fo

on reconstructing the object with concepts, some artifice must be sought whereby this coincidence of the object and its properties can be brought about. For example, we may choose one of the concepts and try, starting from it, to get round to the others. But we shall then soon discover that ac- cording as we start from one concept or another, the meeting and combination of the concepts will take place in an altogether different way. According as we start, for example, from unity or from multiplicity, we shall have to conceive differently the multiple unity of duration. Everything will depend on the weight we attribute to this or that concept, and this weight will always be arbitrary, since the concept ex- tracted from the object has no weight, being only the shadow of a body. In this way, as many different systems will spring up as there are external points of view from which the reality can be examined, or larger circles in which it can he enclosed. Himple concepts have, then, not only the incon-

Metaphysics 21

In this way, as many different systems will spring up as there are external points of view from which the reality can be examined, or larger circles in which it can he enclosed. Himple concepts have, then, not only the incon-

Metaphysics 21

venience of dividing the concrete unity of the object into so many symbolical expres- sions; they also divide philosophy into dis- tinct schools, each of which takes its seat, chooses its counters, and carries on with the others a game that will never end. Either metaB hJaica. is only this play of ideas, or else, if it is a serious occupation of the mind, if it is a science and not simply an exercise, it must transcend concepts in order to reach intuition. Certainly, con^/ cepts are necessary to it, for all the other sciences work as a rule with concepts, and metaphysics cannot dispense with the other sciences. But it is only truly itself when it goes beyond the concept, or at least when it frees itself from rigid and ready-made concepts in order to create a kind very dif- ferent from those which we habitually use; I mean supple, mobile, and almost fluid representations, always ready to mould themselves on the fleeting forms of intui- tion. We shall return later to this import- ant point. .Let it suffice us for the moment

22 An Introcjuction to

/ to have shown that otr duration can be presented to us directly in an intuition,

j that it can be suggested to us indirectly

by images, but that it can never — ^if we

confine the word concept to its proper

meaning — be enclosed in a conceptual

f representation.

Let us try for an instant to consider our duration as a multiplicity. It will then be necessary to add that the terms of this multiplicity, instead of being distinct, as they are in any other multiplicity, encroach on one another; and that while we can no doubt, by an eflfort of imagination, solidify duration once it has elapsed, divide it into juxtaposed portions and count all these portions, yet this operation is accomplished on the frozen memory of the duration, on the stationary trace which the mobility of duration leaves behind it, and not on the duration itself. We must admit, therefore, that if there is a multiplicity here, it bears no resemblance to any other multiplicity we know. Shall we say, then, that dura-

Metaphysics 23

We must admit, therefore, that if there is a multiplicity here, it bears no resemblance to any other multiplicity we know. Shall we say, then, that dura-

Metaphysics 23

tion has unity? Doubtless, a continuity of elements which prolong themselves into one another participates in unity as much as in multiplicity; but this moving, changing, colored, living unity has hardly anything in common with the abstract, motionless, and empty unity which the concept of pure unity circumscribes. Shall we conclude from this that duration must be defined as unity and multiplicity at the same time? But singularly enough, however much I manipulate the two concepts, portion them out, combine them diflferently, prac- tise on them the most subtle operations of mental chemistry, I never obtain any- thing which resembles the simple in- tuition that I have of duration; while, on the contrary, when I replace myself in ' duration by an effort of intuition, I im- mediately perc^ve how it is unity, multi- plicity, and many other things besides^' These diflFerent concepts, then, were only so many standpoints* from which we could consider duration. Neither separated nor

An Introduction to

reunited have they made us penetrate inl it.

We do penetrate into it, however, and that can only be by an effort of intuition. In this sense, an inner, absolute knowledge of the duration of the self by the self is possible. But if metaphysics here demands and can obtain an intuition, science has none the less need of an analysis. Now it is a confusion between the function of analysis and that of intuition which gives birth to the discussions between the schools and the conflicts between systems.

Psychology, in fact, proceeds like all the other sciences by analysis. It resolves the self, which has been given to it at first in a simple intuition, into sensations, feelings, ideas, etc., which it studies separately. It substitutes, then, for the self a series of elements which form the facts of psy- chology. But are these elements really parts? That is the whole question, is because it has l)een evaded tl

int^H

Metaphysics 25

problem of human personality has so often been stated in insoluble terms.

It is incontestable that every psychical \ state, simply because it belongs to a per- / son, reflects the whole of a personality. Every feeling, however simple it may be, contains virtually within it the whole past and present of the being experiencing it, and, consequently, can only be separated and constituted into a " state " by an effort of abstraction or of analysis. But it is no ^ ., less incontestable that without this effort / of abstraction or analysis there would be j no possible development of the science of ' psychology. What, then, exactly, is the operation by which a psychologis t detaches a mental state in order to erect it into a

v..

But it is no ^ ., less incontestable that without this effort / of abstraction or analysis there would be j no possible development of the science of ' psychology. What, then, exactly, is the operation by which a psychologis t detaches a mental state in order to erect it into a

v..

more or less independent entity? He be- gins by neglecting that special coloring of the personality which cannot be ex- pressed in known and common terms. Then he endeavors to isolate, in the person already thus simplified, some aspect which lends itself to an interesting inquiry. If

An Introduction to

he is considering inclination, for exampi he will neglect the inexpressible shade which colors it, and which makes the in- clination mine and not jours; he will fix his attention on the movement by which our personality leans towards a certain object : he will isolate this attitude, and it is this special aspect of the personality, this snapshot of the mobility of the inner life, this " diagram " of concrete inclination, that he will erect into an independent fact. There is in this something very like what an artist passing through Paris does when he makes, for example, a sketch of a tower of Notre Dame. The tower is in- separably united to the building, which is itself no less inseparably united to the ground, to its surroundings, to the whole of Paris, and so on. It is first necessary to detach it from all these ; only one aspect of the whole is noted, that formed by the tower of Notre Dame. Moreover, the spe- cial form of this tower is doe to the group- ing of the stones of which it is composed ;

ipl^H tade '

Metaphysics 27

but the artist does not concern himself with these stones, he notes only the silhouette of the tower. For the real and internal organi- zation of the thing he substitutes, then, an external and schematic representation. So that, on the whole, his sketch corresponds to an observation of the object from a cer- tain point of view and to the choice of a certain means of representation. But ex- actly the same thing holds true of the operation by which the psychologist ex- tracts a single mental state from the whole I)ersonality. This isolated psychical state is hardly anything but a sketch, the com- mencement of an artificial reconstruction; it is the whole considered under a certain elementary aspect in which we are specially interested and which we have carefully noted. It is not a part, but an element. It has not been obtained by a natural dismemberment, but by analysis.

Now beneath all the sketches he has made at Paris the visitor will probably, by way of memento, write the word " Paris." And

^n Introduction to

It is not a part, but an element. It has not been obtained by a natural dismemberment, but by analysis.

Now beneath all the sketches he has made at Paris the visitor will probably, by way of memento, write the word " Paris." And

^n Introduction to

as he has really seen Paris, he will be able, with the help of the original intnitiou he had of the whole, to place his sketches therein, and so join them up together. But there is no way of performing the inverse operation; it is impossible, even with an infinite number of accurate sketches, and even with the word "Paris" which indi- cates that they must be combined together, to get back to an intuition that one has never bad, and to give oneself an impi-ession of what Paris is like if one has never seen it. This is because we are not dealing here with real parts, but with mere notes of the total impression. To take a still more striking example, where the notation is more completely Rymbolic, suppose that I am shown, mixed together at random, the letters which make up a poem I am ignorant of. If the letters were parts of the poem, I could attempt to reconstitute the poem with them by trying the different possible arrangements, as a child dofs with the pieces of a Chinese puzzle. But I

Metaphysics 29

should never for a moment think of attempt- ing such a thing in this ease, because the letters are not component partSy but only partial expressions, which is quite a dif- ferent thing. That is why, if I know the poem, I at once put each of the letters in its proper place and join them up without difficulty by a continuous connection, whilst the inverse operation is impossible. Even when I believe I am actually attempt- ing this inverse operation, even when I put the letters end to end, I begin by thinking of some plausible meaning. I thereby give myself an intuition, and from this intuition I attempt to redescend to the elementary symbols which would reconstitute its ex- pression. The very idea of reconstituting a thing by operations practised on symbolic elements alone implies such an absurdity that it would never occur to any one if they recollected that they were not dealing with fragments of the thing, but only, as / it were, with fragments of its symbol. Such is, however, the undertaking of the

An Introduction to

Such is, however, the undertaking of the

An Introduction to

philosophcre who Iry to reconstruct souality with psychical states, whether they confine themselves to those states alone, or whether they add a kind of thread for the purpose of joining the states together. Both empiricists and rationalists are victims of I the same fallacy. Both of them mistake partial notations for real parts, thus con- fusing the point of view of analysis and of intuition, of science and of metaphysics. The empiricists say quite rightly that psychologi hiIo8ophical difficulty will arise tnm\ this prtH*eiluix^, since by a tacit agree- nuMit wo shall al>8tain from philosophizing. Uut to carry this modus opeivndi into phlU>8ophy» to pass here also fn>m concepts to tht> things to us»e in order to obtain a tU»lnhvn?»tetl knowledge of an object (that th{» Uto^ ^v dess^ire to grasp as it is in itself) « uuiuner of knowing inspired by a determin- iiti^ iniii'neHSil^ eomsisting by deJinirion in an

Metaphysics 43

externally-taken view of the object, is to go against the end that we have chosen, to condemn philosophy to an eternal skirmish- ing between the schools and to install con- tradiction in the very heart of the object and of the method. Either there is no philosophy possible, and all knowledge of things is a practical knowledge aimed at the profit to be drawn from them, or else philosophy consists in placing oneself with- in the object itself by an effort of intuition.

But in order to understand the nature of this intuition, in order to fix with precision where intuition ends and where analysis I begins, it is necessary to return to what was said earlier about the flux of duration.

It will be noticed that an essential char- acteristic of the concepts and diagrams to which analysis leads is that, while being considered, they remain stationary. I iso- late from the totality of interior life that psychical entity which I call a simple sensa- tion. So long as I study it, I suppose that it remains constant. If I noticed any

An Introduction to

change in it, I should say that it was not a single sensation but several successive sensations, and I should then transfer to each of these successive sensations the im- mufabiiity that I first attributed to the total sensation. In any case I can, by pushing the analysis far enough, always manage to arrive at elements which I agree to consider immutable. There, and there only, shall I find the solid basis of opera- tions which science needs for its own proper development.

In any case I can, by pushing the analysis far enough, always manage to arrive at elements which I agree to consider immutable. There, and there only, shall I find the solid basis of opera- tions which science needs for its own proper development.

U~ But, then, I cannot escape the objec- tion that there is no state of mind, how- ever simple, which does not change every moment, since there is no consciousness without memory, and no continuation of a state without the addition, to the present feeling, of the memory of past moments. It is this which constitutes duration. Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it ; a distinct form the ceaselessly growth

Metaphysics 45

image of the past, or, more probably, show- ing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag be- hind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity. Probably if I am thus accused of taking the mental state out of duration by the mere fact that I analyze it, I shall reply, " Is not each of these elementary psychical states, to which my analysis leads, itself a state which occupies time? My analysis," I shall say, "does indeed resolve the inner life into states, each of which is homogeneous with itself; only, since the homogeneity extends over a definite number of minutes or of seconds, the elementary psychical state does not cease to endure, although it does not change." ^

"^ But, in saying that, I fail to see that the definite number of minutes and of seconds, which I am attributing here to the elemen- tary psychical state, has simply the value of a sign intended to remind me that the psy-

46 An Introduction

;eneous, is^^^

chical state, supposed homogein reality a state which changes and endures. The state, taken in itself, is a periietual becoming. I have extracted from this be- coming a certain average of quality, which I have supposed invariable; I have in this way constituted a stable and consequently schematic state. I have, on the other hand, extracted from it Becoming in general, i. e., a becoming which is not the becoming of any particular thing, and this is what I have called the time the state occupies. Were I to look at it closely, I should see that this abstract time is as immobile for me as the state which I localize in it, that it could flow only by a continual change of quality, and that if it is without quality, merely the theatre of the change, it thus becomes an immobile medium. I should see that the construction of this homogeneous time is simply designed to facilitate the comparison between the different concrete durations, to permit us to count simulta- neities, and to measure one flux of duration

Metaphysics 47

I should see that the construction of this homogeneous time is simply designed to facilitate the comparison between the different concrete durations, to permit us to count simulta- neities, and to measure one flux of duration

Metaphysics 47

in relation to another. . . And lastly I should understand that, in attaching the sign of a definite number of minutes and of seconds to the representation of an elementary psy- chical state, I am merely reminding myself and others that the state has been detached from an ego which endures, and merely marking out the place where it must again be set in movement in order to bring it back from the abstract schematic thing it has become to the concrete state it was at first. But I ignore all that, because it has nothing to do with analysis.

This means that analysis operates always on the immobile, whilst intuition places it- self in mobility, or, what comes to the same thing, in duration. There lies the very dis- tinct line of demarcation between intuition and analysis. The real, the experienced, and the concrete are recognized by the fact that they are variability itself, the element by the fact that it is invariable. And the 1 element is invariable by definition, being a ^ diagram, a simplified reconstruction, often

An Introduction to

a mere symbol, in any case a motionless view of the moving reality. A^But the error consists in believing that we can reconstruct the real with these dia- grams. As we have already said and may as well repeat here — from intuition one can pass to^naljsis, but not from analyaia to intuition.

Out of variability we can make as many variations, qualities and modifications as we please, since these are so many static views, taken by analysis, of the mobility given to intuition. But these modifications, put end / to end, will produce nothing which re- \ sembles variability, since they are not parts of it, but elements, which is quite a different thing.

Consider, for example, the variability which is nearest to homogeneity, that of movement in space. Along the whole of this movement we can imagine possible stop- pages ; these are what we call the positions of the moving body, or the points by which But with these positions, even

Metaphysics 49

with an infinite number of them, we shall never make movement. They are not parts of the movement, they are so many snap- shots of it; they are, one might say, only supposed stopping-places. The moving boc^^'^^ C * * ^ is never really in any of the points : the X most we can say is that it passes through/ them. But passage, which is movement, has nothing in common with stoppage, which is immobility. A movement cannot be superposed on an immobility, or it would then coincide with it, which would be a contradiction. The points are not in the movement, as parts, nor even beneath it, as positions occupied by the moving body. They are simply projected by us under the movement, as so many places where a mov- ing body, which by hypothesis does not stop, would be if it were to stop. They are not, therefore, properly speaking, positions, . but " suppositions," aspects, or points of view of the mind. But how could we con- struct a thing with points of view?

Nevertheless, this is what we try to do j

50 An Introduction to

whenever we reason about movement, and also about time, for which movement serves

[ as a means of representation. As a result

of an illusion deeply rooted in our mind,

and because we cannot prevent ourselves

J from considering analysis as the equivalent

N^of intuition, we begin by distinguishing along the whole extent of the movement, a certain number of possible stoppages or points, which we make, whether they like it or no, parts of the movement. Faced with our impotence to reconstruct the move- ment with these points, we insert other points, believing that we can in this way get nearer to the essential mobility in the movement. Then, as this mobility still es- capes us, we substitute for a fixed and finite number of points an " indefinitely in- creasing" number — thus vainly trying to counterfeit, by the movement of a thought that goes on indefinitely adding points to points, the real and undivided motion of the moving body. Finally, we say that movement is composed of points, but that

Metaphysics 51

Finally, we say that movement is composed of points, but that

Metaphysics 51

it comprises, in addition, the obscure and mysterious passage from one position to the next. As if the obscurity was not due entirely to the fact that we have supposed immobility to be clearer than mobility and rest anterior to movement! As if the mystery did not follow entirely from our attempting to pass from stoppages to movement by way of addition, which is im- possible, when it is so easy to pass, by simple diminution, from movement to the slackening of movement, and so to im- mobility ! It is m ovement that wemust a. custom ourselves to look upon as simplest / and clearest, immobility being only the ex- / treme limit of the slowing down of move- / ment, a limit reached only, perhaps, in / ; thought and never realized in nature. What we have done is to seek for the meaning of the poem in the form of the letters of which it is composed; we have believed that by considering an increasing number of letters we would grasp at last the ever-escaping meaning, and in desperation, seeing that it

An Introduction to

was useless to seek for a part of the sense in each of the letters, we have supposed that it was between each letter and the next that this long-sought fragment of the mysterious sense was lodged ! But the / letters, it must be pointed out once again, are not parts of the thing, but elements of the symbol. Again, the positions of the moving body are not parts of the move- ment; they are points of the space which is supposed to underlie the movement. This empty and immobile space which is merely conceived, never perceived, has the value of a symbol only. How could you ever manufacture_j!eality_bjmanipuiating symbols?

But the symbol in this case responds to the most inveterate habits of our thought, We place ourselves as a rule in immobility, in which we find a point of support for practical purpo.ses, and with this immo- bility we try to reconstruct motion. We only obtain in this way a clumsy imitation, a counterfeit of real movement, but this imita-

Bpoi

Metaphysics 53

tion is much more useful in life than the intuition of the thing itself would be. Now our mind haa an irresistible tendency to consider that idea clearest which is most often useful to it. That is why immobility seems to it clearer than mobility, and rest anterior to movement.

The difficulties to which the problem of movement has given rise from the earliest antiquity have originated in this way. They result always from the fact that we insist on passing from space to movement, from the trajectory to the flight, from immobile

isitions to mobility, and on passing from One to the other by way of addition. But it is movement which is anterior to im- mobility, and the relation between positions and a displacement is not that of parts to a whole, but that of the diversity of pos- sible points of view to the real indivisibility of the object.

But it is movement which is anterior to im- mobility, and the relation between positions and a displacement is not that of parts to a whole, but that of the diversity of pos- sible points of view to the real indivisibility of the object.

Many other problems are born of the same illusion. What stationary points are to the movement of a moving body, concepts

\n Introduction to

■ I / of different qualities are to the qualitative I A^^ change of an object. The various concepts into which a change can be analyzed are therefore so many stable views of the in- stability of the real. And to think of an object — in the usual meaning of the word " think " — is to take one or more of these immobile views of its mobility. It consists, in short, in asking from time to time where the object is, in order that we may know what to do with it. Nothing could be more legitimate, moreover, than this method of procedure, so long as we are concerned only with a practical knowledge of reality. Knowledge, in so far as it is directed to practical matters, has only to enumerate the principal possible attitudes of the thing towards us, as well as our best possible attitude towards it. Therein lies the oi ^ nary function of ready-made concepts, thi iBtations with which we mark out the path of becoming. But to seek to penetrate with them into the inmost nature of things, is to apply to the mobility of the real a

ible ^i irdt|M

)ath^n

Metaphysics 55

method created in order to give stationary points of observation on it. It is to forget that, if metaphysic is possible, it can only be a laborious, and even painful, effort to remount the natural slope of the work of thought, in order fo place oneself directly, by a kind of intellectual expansion, within the thing studied : in short, a passage from reality to concepts and no longer from con- { cepts to reality. Is it astonishing that, like children trying to catch smoke by closing their hands, philosophers so often see the object they would grasp fly before them? It is in this way that many of the quarrels between the schools are perpetuated, each of them reproaching the others with having allowed the real to slip away. ^^^

But if metaphysics is to proceed by in- \ ition, if intuition has the mobility of duration as its object, and if duration is of a psychical naturo^ shall we not be con- fining the philosopher to the exclusive contemplation of himself? Will not phi- losophy come to consist in watching oneself

An Introduction to

Will not phi- losophy come to consist in watching oneself

An Introduction to

merely live, " ae a sleepy shepherd watches the water flow"?^ To talk in this way would be to return to the error which, since the beginning of this study, we have not ceased to point out. It would be to mis- conceive the singular nature of duration, and at the same time the essentially active, I might almost say violent, character of metaphysical intuition. It wonld be fail- ing to see that the method we speak of alone permits us to go beyond idealism, as well as realism, to affirm the existence of objects inferior and superior (though in a certain sense interior) to us, to make them co-exist together without difficulty, and to dissipate gradually the obscurities that analysis accumulates round these great problems. Without entering here upon the study of these different points, let us con- fine ourselves to showing how the intuition we speak of is not a single act, but an in- definite series of acts, all doubtless of the

> " Comme un patre assoupi regarde I'eau coaI« —BoUa, Alfred de Musset. (Tranelator's note.) '

Metaphysics 57

same kind, but each of a very particular species, and how this diversity of acts corresponds to all the degrees of being.

If I seek to analyse duration — that is resolve it into ready-made concepts — I ara 1 compelled, by the very nature of the con- cepts and of analysis, to take two opposing views of duration- tn general, with which I then attempt to reconstruct it. This com- bination, which will have, moreover, some- thing miraculous about it — since one does not understand hiiw two contraries would ever meet each other — can present neither a diversity of degrees nor a variety of forms ; like ail miracles, it is or it is not. I shall have to say, for example, that there is on '\~ the one hand a multiplicity of successive / states of consciousness, and on the other a unity which binds them together. Duration will be the " synthesis " of this unity and this multiplicity, a mysterious operation which takes place in darkness, and in re- gard to which, I repeat, one does not see [ bow it would admit of shades or of degrees.

58 An Introduction to

Duration will be the " synthesis " of this unity and this multiplicity, a mysterious operation which takes place in darkness, and in re- gard to which, I repeat, one does not see [ bow it would admit of shades or of degrees.

58 An Introduction to

In this hypothesis there is, and can only be, one single duration, that in which our own consciousness habitually works. To express it more clearly — ^if we consider duration under the simple aspect of a move- ment accomplishing itself in space, and we seek to reduce to concepts movement con- sidered as representative of time, we shall have, on the one hand, as great a number of points on the trajectory as we may de- sire, and, on the other hand, an abstract unity which holds them together as a thread holds together the pearls of a necklace. Be- tween this abstract multiplicity and this abstract unity, the combination, when once it has been posited as possible, is something unique, which will no more admit of shades than does the addition of given numbers in arithmetic. But if, instead of professing to analyze duration (i. e.^ at bottom, to make a synthesis of it with concepts), we at once place ourselves in it by an effort of intu- ition, we have the feeling of a certain very determinate tension, in which the determina-

Metaphysics 59

tion itself appears as a choice between an ^ infinity of possible durations. Hencefor- ward we can picture to ourselves as many durations as we wish, all very different from each other, although each of them, on being reduced to concepts — that is, observed externally from two opposing points of view — ^always comes in the end to the same in- definable combination of the many and the one.

Let us express the same idea with more precision. If I consider duration as a multiplicity of moments bound to each other by a unity which goes through them like a thread, then, however short the chosen duration may be, these moments are un- limited in number. I can suppose them as close together as I please ; there will always be between these mathematical points other mathematical points, and so on to infinity. Looked at from the point of view of multi- plicity, then, duration disintegrates into a powder of moments, none of which endures, each being an instantaneity. If, on the

inti

tion 1

other hand, I consider the nnity binds the moments together, this endare either, since by hypothesis ev ; in short, to adopt the mobile continuity of the outlines of ihinga It is trw? that it is «mtine«l to the outline^ being oulv the science of magnitudes. It if true k1»o that it has only been able to tow its manvU^s applications by tbe mtioa of certain symboK and that if

\M BOt

that it is «mtine«l to the outline^ being oulv the science of magnitudes. It if true k1»o that it has only been able to tow its manvU^s applications by tbe mtioa of certain symboK and that if

\M BOt

the intuition of which we have just spoken lies at the origin of invention, it is the symbol alone which is concerned in the application. But metaphysics, which aims at no application, can and usually must abstain from converting intuition into sym- , bo Is. Liberated from the obligation of working for practically useful results, it ill indefinitely enlarge the domain of its .Testigations. What it may lose in com- parison with science in, utility and exacti- tude, it will regain in range-and exteiisiot]. hough mathematicR is only the science of ignitudes, though mathematical processes applicable only to quantities, it must be forgotten that quantity is always quality in a nascent state; it is, we might ,. say, the limiting case of quality. It is' natural, then, that metaphysics should adopt the generative idea of our mathe- matics in order to extend it to all qualities; that is, to reality in general. It will not, by doing this, in any way be moving to- wards universal mathematics, that chimera

An Introduction to

a^7t^^^|

of modern philosophy. On the contrary, 1 farther it goes, the more untranslatable into eymbola will be the objects it en- counters. But it will at least have begun ty getting into contact with the continuity and mobility of the real, just where this contact can be most marvelously utilized. It will have contemplated itself in a mirror which reflects an image of itself, much shrunken, no doubt, but for that reason very luminous. It will have seen with greater clearness what the mathematical processes borrow from concrete reality, and it will continue in the direction of concrete reality, and not in that of mathematical processes. Having then discounted before- hand what is too modest, and at the same time too ambitious, in the following

. fonnula, we may say that the object of metaphysics is to perform qualitative dif-

^- ferentiatioHS and integrations.

VIII. The reason why this object has been lost sight of, and why science its has been mistaken in the origin of the |

Metaphysics 73

cesses it employs, is that intuition, once attained, must find a mode of expression and of application which conforms to the habits of our thought, and one which fur- nishes us, in the shape of well-defined con- cepts, with the solid points of support which we so greatly need. In that lies the con- dition of what we call exactitude and pre- cision, and also the condition of the unlimited extension of a general method to particular cases. Now this extension and this work of logical improvement can be continued for centuries, whilst the act ghich creates the method lasts but for a moment. T hat is why we so often take the logical equipment of science for science it- self,^ forgetting the metaphysical intuition

Now this extension and this work of logical improvement can be continued for centuries, whilst the act ghich creates the method lasts but for a moment. T hat is why we so often take the logical equipment of science for science it- self,^ forgetting the metaphysical intuition

from which all the rest has sprung.

From the overlooking of this intuition proceeds all that has been said by phi- losophers and by men of science themselves

1 On this point as on several other questions treated in the present essay, see the interesting articles by MM. Le Roy, Vincent, and Wilbois, which have appeared in the Revtie de Mitaphysique et de Morale.

w — 1^

^^P about the " relativity " of scientific kuoi^^^^l '^-. edee. What is relative is the sumboUn '

about the " relativity " of scientific knoi edge. What is relative is the symbolic knowledge by pre-existing concepts, which proceeds from the fixed to the moving, and not the intuitive knowledge which instaUs itself in that which is moving and adopts^ the very life of things. This intuition aA tains the absolute. L Science and metaphysics therefore come together in intuition, A truly intuitive philosophy would realize the much-desired union of science and metaphysics. While it would make of metaphysics a positive Bcience— that is, a progressive and indel nitely perfectil)le one — it would at the time lead the positive sciences, properly so- called, to become conscious of their true scope, often far greater than they imagine. It would put more science into meti physics, and more metaphysics into 8cien« It would result in restoring the continuity between the intuitions which the various sciences have obtained here and there in the course of their history, and whicl

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Metaphysics

[they have obtained only by strokes of [eniuB. -^^

IX. That there are not two difEerent " ways of knowing things fundamentally, that the various sciences have their root in metaphysics, is what the ancient p hi loBO-_ '>l phers generally thought. Their error did not lie there. It consisted in their being

I always dominated by the belief, so natural to the human mind, that a variation can \ only be the expresaion and development of I what is invariable. Whence it followed that action was an enfeebled contemplation, duration a deceptive and shifting image of immobile eternity, the 8oul a fall from the Idea. The whole of the philosophy which begins with Plato and culminates in Ploti- nuB is the development of a principle which - I may be formulated thus : " There is more I in the immutable than in the moving, and ■ we pass from the stable to the unstable by \ a mere diminution." Now it is the contrary I which is true.

Modern science dates from the day when

An Introduction to

Modern science dates from the day when

An Introduction to

/mobility was set up as an independent I'eality. It dates from the day wUen Galileo, setting a ball rolling down an in- clined plane, finnly resolved to study this movement from top to bottom for itself, in itself, instead of seeking its principle in the concepts of high and low, two im- '' mobilities by which Aristotle believed he could adequately explain the mobility. And this is not an isolated fact in the history of science. Several of the great discoveries, of those at least which have transformed the positive sciences or which have created new ones, have been so many soundings in the depths of pure duration. The more living the reality touched, the deeper was the sounding.

But the lead-line sunk to the sea bottom brings up a fluid mass which the sun's heat quickly dries into solid and discontinuous grains of sand. And the intuition of dura: tion, when it is exposed to the rays of the understanding, in like manner quickly turns into -fixed, distinct, and immobile concepts.

kletapnysics

[ In the living mobility of things the un- I deratandiug is bent on marking real or I virtual stations, it notes departures and arrivals; for this is all that concerns the I thought of man in so far as it is simply human. It is more than human to grasp what is happening in the interval. But philosophy can only be an efEort to tran- . Bcend the human condition, I Men of science have fixed their attention mainly on the concepts with which they have marked out the pathway of intuition. The more they laid stress on these residual I products, which have turned into symbols, * the more they attributed a symbolic char- acter to every kind of science. And the more they believed in the symbolic char- acter of science, the more did they indeed [•make science symbolical. Gradually they have blotted out all difference, in positive science, between the natural and the arti- ficial, between the data of immediate intu- ition, and the enormous work of analysis which the understanding pursues round

An Introduction to

intuition. Thus they have prepared the way for a doctrine which aflfirms the relativity of all our knowledge.

But metaphysics has also labored to the Kame end.

Thus they have prepared the way for a doctrine which aflfirms the relativity of all our knowledge.

But metaphysics has also labored to the Kame end.

^ow could the masters of modem philoso- phy, who have been renovators of science as well as of metaphysics, have had no sense of the moving continuity of reality? How could they have abstained from placing themselves in what we call concrete dura- tion? They have done so to a greater ex- tent than they were aware ; above all, much more than they said. If we endeavor to link together, by a continuous connection, the intuitions about which systems have become organized, we find, together with other convergent and divergent lines, one very determinate direction of thought and of feeling. What is this latent thought? How shall we express the feeling? To borrow once more the language of the Platonists, we will say- — depriving the words of their psychological sense, and g

Metaphysics 79

ing the name of Idea to a certain settling down into easy intelligibility, and that of Soul to a certain longing after the restless- ness of life — that an invisible current causes modem philosophy to place the Soul above the Idea. It thus tends, like mod3rn science, and even more so than modern science, to advance in an opposite direc- tion to ancient thought.

But this metaphysics, like this science, ^\ has enfolded its deeper life in a rich tissue ^ of symbols, forgetting something that, while . / science needs symbols for its analytical de- velopment, the main object of metaphysics is to do away with symbols. Here, again, the understanding has pursued its work of fixing, dividing, and reconstructing. It has ' pursued this, it is true, under a rather dif- / ferent form. Without insisting on a point which we propose to develop elsewhere, it is enough here to say that the understand- '^ ing, whose function it is to operate on stable elements, may look for stability either in relations or in things. In so far as it workw

An Introduction^i

on concepts of relations, it culminates in scientific symbolism. In so far as it works on concepts of things, it culminates in metaphysical symbolism. But in both cases the arrangement comes from the under- standing. Hence, it would fain believe itself independent. Rather than recognize at once what it awes to an intuition of the depths of reality, /it prefers exposing itself to the danger that its whole work may \te looked upon as nothing but an artificial arrange- ment of symbols. So that if we were to hold on to the letter of what metaphysicians and scientists say, and also to the material aspect of what they do, we might believe that the metaphysicians have dug a deep tunnel beneath reality, that the scientists have thrown an elegant bridge over it, but that the moving stream of things passes between these two artificial constructions without touching them.

One of the principal artifices of the -Kantian criticism consisted in taking the : metaphysician and the scientist literally,

Metaphysics

forcing both metaphysics and science to the extreme limit of symbolism to which they could go, and to which, moreover, they make their way of their own accord as soon as the understanding claims an independence full of perils. Having once overlooked the-. ties that bind science and metaphysics to intellectual intuition, Kant has no diffi- culty in showing that our science is wholly i relative, and our metaphysics entirely arti-, | ficial. Since he has exaggerated the ind((- i pendence of the understanding in both cases, since he has relieved both meta- physics and science of the intellectual in- tuition which served them as inward ballast, science with its relations presents to him "" no more than a film of form, and meta- physics, with its things, no more than a film of matter. Is it surprising that the first, then, reveals to him only frames , packed within frames, and the second only phantoms chasing phantoms?

He has struck such telling blows at our science and our metaphysic that they have

An Introduction to

not even yet quite recovered from their bewilderment. Our mind would readily re- sign itself to seeing in science a knowledge that is wholly relative, and in metaphysics a speculation that is entirely empty. It seems to us, even at this present date, that the Kantian criticism applies to all meta- physics and to all science. In reality, it applies more especially to the philosophy of the ancients, as also to the form — itself borrowed from the ancients — in which the moderns have most often left their thought. It is valid against a metaphysic which claims to give us a single and completed system of things, against a science profess- ing to he a single system of relations; in short, against a science and a metaphysic presenting themselves with the architec- tural simplicity of the Platonic theory of ideas op of a Greek temple. If meta- physics claims to he made up of concepts which were ours before its advent, if it con- sists in an ingenious arrangement of pre- existing ideas which we utilize as building

Metaphysics

Bciei

If meta- physics claims to he made up of concepts which were ours before its advent, if it con- sists in an ingenious arrangement of pre- existing ideas which we utilize as building

Metaphysics

Bciei

material for an edifice, if, in short, it is anything else but the constant expansion of our mind, the ever-renewed effort to transcend our actual ldea« and perhaps also our elementary logic, it is but too evi- dent that, like all the works of pure under- standing, it becomes artificial. And if Bcieuce is wholly and entirely a work of .lysis or of conceptual representation, experience is only to serve therein as a verification for " clear ideas," if, instead of starting from multiple and diverse intu- ition — which insert themselves in the par- icular movement of each reality, hut do not .ways dovetail into each other, — it pro- fesses to be a vast mathematic, a single and closed-in system of relations, imprison- ing the whole of reality in a network pre- pared in advance,-^it becomes a knowledge purely relative to human understanding. If we look carefully into the Critique of Pure Reason, we see that science for Kant did indeed mean this kind of universal matfie- matic, and metaphysics this practically un-

\n Introduction to

altpred Platonism, In truth, the drt a universal mathematic is itself but a sur- vival nf Platonism, TJniversai mathematic is what the world of ideas becomes when we suppose that the Idea consists in a relation or in a law, and no Icmger in a thing. Kant ^ took this dream of a few modem philosophers for a reality; more than this, he believed that all scientific knowledge was only a detached fragment of, or rather a stepping-stone to, universal mathematics, Henr-e the main task of the Critique was to lay the foundation of this mathematic — that is, to determine what the intellect must be, and what the object, in order that an uninterrupted mathe- matic may bind them together. And of necessity, if all possible experience can be made to enter thus into the rigid and al- ready formed framework of our understand- ing, it is (unless we assume a pre-established ' See on thia subject a very interesting article by Radulescu-Motru, " Zur Entwickelung von Kant'a Theorie der Nature a uaali tat," in Wundt's Fhiloao- pkwehe Studien (vol, ix., 1894).

Metaphysics 85

harmony) because our understanding itself organizes nature, and finds itself again therein as in a mirror. Hence the possi- bility of science, which owes all its efficacy to its relativity, and the impossibility of metaphysics, since the latter finds nothing more to do than to parody with phantoms of things the work of conceptual arrangement which science practises seriously on rela- tions. Briefly, the whole Critique of Pure Reason ends in establishing that Platonism, illegitimate if Ideas are things, becomes le- gitimate if Ideas are relations, and that the ready-made idea, once brought down in this way from heaven to earth, is in fact, as Plato held, the common basis alike of thought and of nature. But the whole of the Critique of Pure Reason also rests on this postulate, that our intellect is incapable of anything but Platonizing — ^that is, of pouring all pos- sible experience into pre-existing moulds.

On this the whole question depends. If scientific knowledge is indeed what Ksmt supposed, then there is one simple science,

An Introduction to

preformed and even preformulated in ture, as Aristotle believed; great discov- eries, then, serve only to illuminate, point Iiy point, the already drawn line of this logio, immanent in things, just as on the night of a f^te we light tip one by one the rows of gas-jets which already outline the shape of some building. And if meta- physical knowledge is really what Kant supposed, it is reduced to a choice between two attitudes of the mind before all the great problems, both equally possible ; its manifestations are so many arbitrary and always ephemeral choices between two solu- tions, virtually formulated from all eter- iiity ; it lives and dies by antinomies. But the truth is that rai>dern science does not present this unilinear simplicity, nor di modern metaphysics present these ii ducible oppositions.

Modern science is neither one nor simple. It rests, I freely admit, on ideas which in the end we find clear; but these idea,8 have gradually become clear through the use

not inle. I

Metaphysics 87

Modern science is neither one nor simple. It rests, I freely admit, on ideas which in the end we find clear; but these idea,8 have gradually become clear through the use

not inle. I

Metaphysics 87

made of them ; they owe most of their clear- ness to the light which the facts, and the applications to which they led, have by reflection shed on them — the clearness of a concept being scarcely anything more at bottom than the certainty, at last obtained, of manipulating the concept profitably. At its origin, more than one of these concepts must have appeared obscure, not easily reconcilable with the concepts already ad- mitted into science, and indeed very near the border-line of absurdity. This means that science does not proceed by an orderly dovetailing together of concepts predestined to fit each other exactly. True and fruitful ideas are so many close contacts with cur- rents of reality, which do not necessarily converge on the same point. However, the concepts in which they lodge themselves manage somehow, by rubbing off each other's comers, to settle down well enough together. On the other hand, modem metaphysics is not made up of solutions so radical that they can culminate in irreducible oppo-

An Introduction to

sitions. It would be so, no doubt, if the were no means of accepting at the i time and on the same level the thesis i the antithesis of the antinomies. Bnf ' philosophy consists precisely in this, that by an effort of intuition one places oneself within that concrete reality, of which l Critique takes from without the two

whoM influence hai gone oul through all the thinking worhi . . ,

id iheu powerful pages mth ook we have the bat of hii mind and heart.' Boiton TraOMcf^t. The phila»phy of Eucken iharei with that of Betgtoa the keeneil living Intereit of thoughful men of all clanei at the preient day. , . , Elucken hai endeavored in thii book lo put hia conitmclive lyitem into the clearest and moit elaborate lona," ^-Cealineat.

New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London

; Euck

An Introduction to Metaphysics — Henri Bergson (trans. T. E. Hulme, 1912)

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