Metaphysics 35
concrete personality, op to distinguish Peter
from Paul? Is it astonishing that the
philosophers who have isolated this " form "
of personality should, then, find it insuf-
ficient to characterize a definite person, and
that they should be gradually led to make
their empty ego a kind of bottomless re-
ceptacle, which belongs no more to Peter
than to Paul, and in which there is room,
according to our preference, for entire hu-
manity, for God, or for existence in general?
I see in this matter only one difference '^^
between empiricism and rationalism. The
former, seeking the unity of the ego in
the gaps, as it were, between the psychi-
cal states, is led to fill the gaps with
other states, and so on indefinitely, so
that the ego, compressed in a constantly
narrowing interval, tends towards zero, as
analysis is pushed farther and farther;
whilst rationalism, making the ego the place
where mental states are lodged, is confronted
with an empty space which we have no rea-
son to limit here rather than there, which
An Introduction to
goes beyond each of the successive bou!
daries that we try to assign to it, which
constantly grows larger, and which tends
to lose itself no longer in zero, but in the
infinite.
The distance, then, between a so-called
" empiriciam " like that of Taine and the
most transcendental speculations of certain
German pantheists is very much less than is
generally supposed. The method is analo-
gous in both cases; it consists in reason-
ing about the elements of a translation as
, y if they were parts of the original. But a
true empiricism is that which proposes to
get as near to the original itself as pos-
sible, to search deeply into its life, and so,
I by a kind of intellectual auscultation, to
feel the throbbinga of its soul; and this
tnie empiricism is the true metaphysics. It
is true that the task is an extremely diffi-
cult one, for none of the ready-made concep-
tions which thought employs in its daily
operations can be of any use. Nothing is
mure easy than to aay that the ego is multi-
Metaphysics
Iplieity, or that it is unity, or that it is tlie
byntheslB of both. Unity and multiplicity
iare liere representations that we have no
need to cut out on tlie model of the object ;
they are found i-eady-made, and have only
I to be chosen from a heap. Thoy are stock-
l.flize clothes which do just as well for Peter
[ as for Paul, for they set ofE the form of
neither. But an empiricism worthy of the
name, an empiriciBm which works only to I
measure, is obliged for each new object that
it studies to make an absolutely fresh effort.
It cuts out for the object a concept which
■ IB appropriate to that object alone, a con-
Pcept which can as yet hardly be called a
concept, since it applies to this one thing.
It does not proceed by combining current
ideas like unity and multiplicity; hut it
leads us, on the contrary, to a simple,
unique representation, which, however once
vformed, enables us to understand easily how
pt is that we can place it in the frames
fcnity, multiplicity, etc., all much larger
an itself. In short, philosophy thus de-^
An Introduction to
fined does not consist in the choice of cer-J
tain concepts, and in taking sides with i
Bchool, but in the search for a unique intui- 1
tion from which we can descend with equal-l
ease to different concepts, because we arftl
placed above the divisions of the school8.'J
,/ That personality has unity cannot be c
^ nied; but such an affirmation teaches cm
nothing about the extraordinary nature o^
I the particular unity presented by per8on,4
' ality. That our self is multiple I i
agree, but then it must be understood 1
it is a multiplicity which has nothing '
common with any other multiplicity. Whi
is really important for philosophy is tori
know exactly what unity, what multiplicity,
and what reality superior both to abstract
unity and multiplicity the multiple unity
of the self actually is. Now philosopl^
will know this only when it recovers poi
session of the simple intuition of the 8ell|
■ by the self. Then, according to the direcl
jtion it chooses for its descent from this
Bnmmit, it will arrive at unity or multj
Metaphysics 39
plicity, or at any one of the concepts by
which we try to define the moving life of
the self. But no mingling of these con-
cepts would give anything which at all
resembles the self that endures.
If we are shown a solid cone, we see with-
out any difficulty how it narrows towards
the summit and tends to be lost in a mathe-
matical point, and also how it enlarges in
the direction of the base into an indefinitely
increasing circle. But neither the point
nor the circle, nor the juxtaposition of the
two on a plane, would give us the least
idea of a cone. The same thing holds true
of the unity and multiplicity of mental life,
and of the ze ro and the infinite towards
which empiricism and rationalism conduct
personality.
Concepts, as we shall show elsewhere, v
generally go together in couples and repre-
sent two contraries. There is hardly any
concrete reality which cannot be observed
from two opposing standpoints, which can-
not consequently be subsumed under two
An Introduction to
antagonistic concepts. Hence a thesis and
an antithesis which we endearor in vain
to reconcile logically, for the very simple
reason that it is impossible, with concepts
and observations taken from outside points
of view, to make a thing. But from the
object, seized by intuition, we pass easily
in many cases to the two contrary concepts j
and as in that way thesis and antithesis can
be seen to spring from reality, we grasp at
the same time how it is that the two a:
opposed and how they are reconciled.
It is true that to accomplish this, it_u
necessary to proceed by a reversal _ of _ the
usual work of the intellect. Thinking usu-
ally consists in passing from concepts to
Nothings, and not from things to concepts.
To know a reality, in the usual sense of the
word " know," is to take ready-made con-
cepts, to portion them out and to mix them
together until a practical equivalent of the
reality is obtained. But it must he remem-
bered that the normal work of the intellect
is far from being disinterested. We do not
Metaphysics 41
aim genemlly^t knowledge for the sake of
knowledge, but in order to take sides, to
draw profit— in short, to satisfy an inter-
est. We inquire up to what point the
object we seek to know is this or that^ to
what known class it belongs, and what kind
of action, bearing, or attitude it should
suggest to us. These different possible
actions and attitudes are so many concept
tual directions of our thought, determined
once for all; it remains only to follow
them: in that precisely consists the appli-
cation of concepts to things. To try to fit
a concept on an object is simply to ask
what we can do with the object, and what
it can do for us. To label an object with
a certain concept is to mark in precise terms
the kind of action or attitude the object
should suggest to us. All knowledge, prop-V.
erly so called, is t hen o ri ented in a cer tain 1 7
direction, or taken from a certain^ppint of /
view. It is true that our interest is often/
complex. This is why it happens that our
knowledge of the same object may face sev-
42 An Introduction to
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.
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
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