The Misuse of Mind Part 2

We have seen that this a.s.sumption is taken for granted in the account which is ordinarily given (or would be given if people were in the habit of putting their common sense a.s.sumptions into words) of how it is that facts come to be cla.s.sified: facts are supposed to fall into cla.s.ses because they share common qualities, that is because, in the changing fact directly known, the same qualities recur over and over again. There is no doubt that the fact with which we are directly acquainted can be cla.s.sified, and it is equally undeniable that this fact is always changing, but if this change has the form of creative duration then its cla.s.sification cannot be based upon the repet.i.tion of qualities at different "stages" in its course. It follows that either the fact with which we are directly acquainted does not change as a creative process, or else that we are quite wrong in a.s.suming, as we ordinarily do, that we actually know qualities directly and that it is these qualities which form the basis of cla.s.sification, and hence of all description and explanation. We have already seen that this a.s.sumption, though at first sight one naturally supposes it to be based on direct acquaintance, may really depend not on any fact directly known but on our preoccupation with explanation rather than with mere knowing.

But if we never really are acquainted with qualities, if qualities are, as Bergson says, mere abstractions, how come we to be able to make these abstractions, and why do they apply to actual facts? If cla.s.sification is not based on common qualities discovered by a.n.a.lysis and repeated over and over as actual facts directly known, on what is it based? We certainly can cla.s.sify facts and these abstract common qualities, if abstractions they be, certainly correspond to something in the facts since they apply to them: what is the foundation in directly knowu fact which accounts for this correspondence between abstractions and facts if it is not qualities actually given as part of the facts? These questions are so very pertinent and at the same time so difficult to answer satisfactorily that one is tempted to throw over the view that the changing fact which we know directly forms a creative duration. This view is impossible to express without self-contradiction and it does not fit in with our accustomed habits of mind: nevertheless if we do not simply reject it at once as patently absurd but keep it in mind for a while and allow ourselves time to get used to it, it grows steadily more and more convincing: we become less and less able to evade these difficult questions by accepting the common sense account of what we know directly as consisting of a series of qualities which are repeated over and over, and more and more driven to regard it as a process in creative duration which does not admit of repet.i.tions. There is no difficulty in seeing, the moment we pay attention, that what we know directly certainly does change all the time: but if we try to pin this change down and hold it so as to examine it we find it slipping through our fingers, and the more we look into the supposed stages, such as things and qualities and events, by means of which common sense a.s.sumes that this change takes place, the more it becomes apparent that these stages are all of them mere arbitrary abstractions dragged from their context in a continuous process, fict.i.tious halting places in a stream of change which goes on unbroken. Unbia.s.sed attention to the actual fact cannot fail to convince us that what we know directly changes as a process and not by a series of stages.

The creativeness of this process is perhaps at first not quite so obvious, but if we look into the fact once more, with the object of observing repet.i.tions in it, we realize that we cannot find any. It is true that you can pick out qualities which at first appear to recur: you may, for example, see a rose and then a strawberry ice cream, and you may be inclined to say that here you saw the quality pink twice over. But you can only say that what you saw was the same both times by abstracting what we call the colour from the whole context in which it actually appeared on the two different occasions. In reality the colour is not known in isolation: it has its place, in the whole changing fact in a particular context which you may describe in abstract terms as consisting of the shape and smell and size of the object together with all the rest of your state of mind at the moment, which were not the same on the two different occasions, while further this pink colour was modified on each occasion by its position in the whole changing fact which may again be described in abstract terms by saying, for instance, that the pink on the occasion of your seeing the strawberry ice cream, coming after the pink on the occasion of your seeing the rose, had a peculiar flavour of "seen before" which was absent on the previous occasion. Thus although, by isolating "parts"

of the whole process of changing which you know directly, you may bring yourself for a moment to suppose that you are acquainted with repet.i.tions, when you look at the whole fact as it actually is, you see that what you know is never the same twice over, and that your direct experience forms, not a series of repet.i.tions, but a creative process.

But, once you grant that the fact which you know directly really changes, there is, according to Bergson, no getting away from the conclusion that it must form a creative process of duration. For he thinks that creative duration is the only possible way in which the transition between past and present, which is the essential feature of change and time, could be accomplished: all pa.s.sing from past to present, all change, therefore, and all time, must, he says, form a creative process of duration. The alternative is to suppose that time and change form logical series of events in temporal relations of before and after, but, according to Bergson, this not only leaves out the transition altogether but is, even as it stands, unintelligible.

The argument is this.

If time and change are real, then, when the present is, the past simply is not. But it is impossible to see how, in that case, there can be any relation between past and present, for a relation requires at least two terms in between which it holds, while in this case there could never be more than one term, the present, ipso facto, abolis.h.i.+ng the past. If, on the other hand, the past is preserved, distinct from the present, then temporal relations can indeed hold between them, but in that case there is no real change nor time at all.

This dilemma all follows, of course, from regarding "past" and "present" as mutually exclusive and distinct, and requiring to be united by external relations, in short as terms in a logical series: for Bergson himself this difficulty simply does not arise since he denies that, within the actual changing fact directly known, there are any clear cut logical distinctions such as the words "past" and "present" imply. But when it comes to describing this changing fact distinct terms have to be employed because there are no others, and this creates pseudo-problems such as this question of how, a.s.suming past and present to be distinct, the transition between them ever can be effected. The real answer is that the transition never is effected because past and present are, in fact, not distinct.

According to Bergson a very large proportion of the problems over which philosophers have been accustomed to dispute have really been pseudo-problems simply arising out of this confusion between facts and the abstractions by which we describe them. When once we have realized how they arise these pseudo-problems no longer present any difficulties; they are in fact no longer problems at all, they melt away and cease to interest us. If Bergson is right this would go far to explain the suspicion which, in spite of the prestige of philosophy, still half unconsciously colours the feeling of the "plain man" for the "intellectual," and which even haunts the philosopher himself, in moments of discouragement, the suspicion that the whole thing is trivial, a dispute about words of no real importance or dignity. If Bergson is right this suspicion is, in many cases, all too well founded: the discussion of pseudo-problems is not worth while.

But then the discussion of pseudo-problems is not real philosophy: the thinker who allows himself to be entangled in pseudo-problems has lost his way.

In this, however, the "intellectuals" are not the only ones at fault.

"Plain men" are misled by abstractions about facts just as much, only being less thorough, their mistake has less effect: at the expense of a little logical looseness their natural sense of fact saves them from all the absurdities which follow from their false a.s.sumptions. For the "intellectual" there is not this loophole through which the sense of fact may undo some of the work of false a.s.sumptions: the "intellectual" follows out ruthlessly the implications of his original a.s.sumptions and if these are false his very virtues lead him into greater absurdities than those committed by "plain men."

One of the most important tasks of philosophy is to show up the pseudo-problems so that they may no longer waste our time and we may be free to pursue the real aim of philosophy which is the reconquest of the field of virtual knowledge. Getting rid of the pseudo-problems, however, is no easy task: we may realize, for example, that the difficulty of seeing how the transition between past and present ever can be effected is a pseudo-problem because in fact past and present are not distinct and so no transition between them is needed. But since we have constantly to be using words which carry the implication of distinctness we are constantly liable to forget this simple answer when new problems, though in fact they all spring from this fundamental discrepancy between facts and the abstractions by which we describe them, present themselves in some slightly different form.

The notion of duration as consisting of "parts" united by "creative synthesis" is a device, not for explaining how the transition from past to present really takes place (this does not need explaining since, "past" and "present" being mere abstractions, no transition between them actually takes place at all), but for enabling us to employ the abstractions "past" and "present" without constantly being taken in by their logical implications. The notion of "creative synthesis" as what joins "past" and "present" in a process of duration is an antidote to the logical implications of these two distinct terms: creative synthesis, unlike logical relations, is not external to the "parts" which it joins; "parts" united by creative synthesis are not distinct and mutually exclusive. Such a notion as this of creative synthesis contradicts the logical implications contained in the notion of parts. The notion of "parts" united by "creative synthesis" is really a hybrid which attempts to combine the two incompatible notions of logical distinction and duration. The result is self-contradictory and this contradiction acts as a reminder warning us against confusing the actual changing fact with the abstractions in terms of which we describe it and so falling into the mistake of taking it for granted that this changing fact must form a series of distinct stages or things or events or qualities, which can be repeated over and over again.

At the same time there is no getting away from the fact that this changing fact lends itself to cla.s.sification and that explanations in terms of abstractions really do apply to it most successfully. We are therefore faced with the necessity of finding some way of accounting for this, other than by a.s.suming that the facts which we know directly consist of qualities which recur over and over again.

CHAPTER III

MATTER AND MEMORY

WE have seen that, according to the theory of change which is fundamental for Bergson's philosophy, the changing fact which we know directly is described as a process of becoming which does not contain parts nor admit of repet.i.tions. On the other hand this changing fact certainly does lend itself to a.n.a.lysis and cla.s.sification and explanation and, at first sight at any rate, it is natural to suppose that whatever can be cla.s.sified and explained must consist of qualities, that is distinct parts which can be repeated on different occasions. The problem for Bergson, if he is to establish his theory of change, is to show that the fact that a changing process can be a.n.a.lysed and cla.s.sified does not necessarily imply that such a process must consist of distinct qualities which can be repeated. Bergson's theory of the relation of matter to memory suggests a possible solution of this problem as to how it is possible to a.n.a.lyse and so apply general laws to and explain duration: it becomes necessary, therefore, to give some account of this theory.

Like all other descriptions and explanations, such an account must, of course, be expressed in terms of abstractions, and so is liable to be misunderstood unless the false implications of these abstractions are allowed for and discounted.

According to Bergson the only actual reality is the changing fact itself, everything else is abstraction: this reality however is not confined to the fragment called "our present experience" which is in the full focus of consciousness and is all that we usually suppose ourselves to know directly; it includes besides everything that we are in a sense aware of but do not pay attention to, together with our whole past: for Bergson, in fact, reality coincides with the field of virtual knowledge, anything short of this whole field is an abstraction and so falsified. Even to say "we know this fact" is unsatisfactory as implying ourselves and the fact as distinct things united by an external relation of knowing: to say "the fact is different from the abstraction by which it is explained" similarly implies logically distinct terms in an external relation of difference, and so on. If Bergson is right in claiming that the actual fact is non-logical then obviously all attempts to describe it, since they must be expressed in terms of abstractions, will teem with false implications which must be discounted if the description is to convey the meaning intended.

Bergson's claim is that if we allow ourselves to attend to the changing fact with which we are actually acquainted we are driven to a theory of reality different from the theory of things and relations accepted by common sense. The two abstractions by means of which he attempts to express this new theory are matter and memory. In the actual fact Bergson would hold that both these notions are combined by synthesis in such a way as no longer to be distinct, or rather, for this implies that they started distinct and then became merged, it would perhaps be better to say that these two notions are abstractions from two tendencies which are present in the actual fact. In the actual fact they combine and, as it were, counteract one another and the result is something different from either taken alone, but when we abstract them we release them from each other's modifying influence and the result is an exaggeration of one or other tendency which does not really represent anything which actually occurs but can be used, in combination with the contrary exaggeration, to explain the actual fact which may be described as being like what would result from a combination of these two abstractions.

We will take matter first.

Matter, for Bergson, is an exaggeration of the tendency in reality, (that is in the actual changing fact directly known) towards logical distinctness, what he calls "spatiality." His use of the word "matter"

in this sense is again, perhaps, like his use of the word "s.p.a.ce,"

rather misleading. Actual reality, according to him, is never purely material, the only purely material things are abstractions, and these are not real at all but simply fictions. Bergson really means the same thing by "matter" as by "s.p.a.ce" and that is simply mutual distinctness of parts and externality of relations, in a word logical complexity.

Matter, according to this definition of the word, has no duration and so cannot last through any period of time or change: it simply is in the present, it does not endure but is perpetually destroyed and recreated.

The complementary exaggeration which, taken together with matter, completes Berg-son's explanation of reality, is memory. Just as matter is absolute logical complexity memory is absolute creative synthesis.

Together they const.i.tute the hybrid notion of creative duration whose "parts" interpenetrate which, according to Bergson, comes nearest to giving a satisfactory description of the actual fact directly known which is, for him, the whole reality.

The best way to accustom one's mind to these two complementary exaggerations, matter and memory, and to see in more detail the use that Bergson makes of them in explaining the actual facts, will be to examine his theory of sensible perception, since it is just in the act of sensible perception that memory comes in contact with matter.

The unsophisticated view is that in sensible perception we become acquainted with things which exist whether we perceive them or not, and these things, taken all together, are commonly called the material world. According to Bergson's theory also sensible perception is direct acquaintance with matter. The unsophisticated view holds further, however, that this material world with which sensible perception acquaints us is the common sense world of solid tables, green gra.s.s, anger and other such states and things and qualities, but we have already seen that this common sense world is really itself only one among the various attempts which science and common sense are continually making to explain the facts in terms of abstractions. The worlds of electrons, vibrations, forces, and so on, constructed by physics, are other attempts to do the same thing and the common sense world of "real" things and qualities has no more claim to actual existence than have any of these scientific hypotheses. Berg-son's matter is not identified with any one of these constructions, it is that in the facts which they are all attempts to explain in terms of abstractions, the element in the facts upon which abstractions are based and which makes facts cla.s.sifiable and so explicable.

The words by which we describe and explain the material element in the facts in terms of series of distinct stages or events in external relations would leave out change if their implications were followed out consistently, but it is only a few "intellectuals" who have ever been able to bring themselves to follow out this implication to the bitter end and accept the conclusion, however absurd. Since it is obvious that the facts do change the usual way of getting round the difficulty is to say that some of these stages are "past" and some "present," and then, not clearly realizing that the explanations we construct are not really facts at all, to take it for granted that a transition between past and present, though there is no room for it in the logical form of the explanation, yet somehow manages actually to take place. Bergson agrees that change does actually take place but not as a transition between abstractions such as "past" and "present."

We think that "past" and "present" must be real facts because we do not realize clearly how these notions have been arrived at. Once we have grasped the idea that these notions, and indeed all clear concepts, are only abstractions, we see that it is not necessary to suppose that these abstractions really change at all. Between the abstractions "the past" and "the present" there is no transition, and it is the same with events and things and qualities: all these, being nothing but convenient fictions, stand outside the stream of actual fact which is what really changes and endures.

Matter, then, is the name which Bergson gives to that element in the fact upon which the purely logical form appropriate to abstractions is based. The actual facts are not purely logical but neither are they completely interpenetrated since they lend themselves to cla.s.sification: they tend to logical form on the one hand and to complete inter-penetration on the other without going the whole way in either direction. What Bergson does in the description of the facts which he offers is to isolate each of these tendencies making them into two separate distinct abstractions, one called matter and the other mind. Isolated, what in the actual fact was blended becomes incompatible. Matter and mind, the clear cut abstractions, are mutually contradictory and it becomes at once a pseudo-problem to see how they ever could combine to const.i.tute the actual fact.

The matter which Bergson talks about, being what would be left of the facts if memory were abstracted, has no past: it simply is in the present moment. If there is any memory which can retain previous moments then this memory may compare these previous moments with the present moment and call them the past of matter, but in itself, apart from memory, (and so isolated in a way in which this tendency in the actual fact never could be isolated) matter has no past.

Noticing how very different the actual facts which we know directly are from any of the material worlds by which we explain them, each of which lays claim to being "the reality with which sensible perception acquaints us," some philosophers have put forward the view that in sensible perception we become acquainted, not with matter itself, but with signs which stand for a material world which exists altogether outside perception. This view Bergson rejects. He says that in sensible perception we are not acquainted with mere signs but, in so far as there is any matter at all, what we know in sensible perception is that matter itself. The facts which we know directly are matter itself and would be nothing but matter if they were instantaneous. For Bergson, however, an instantaneous fact is out of the question: every fact contains more than the mere matter presented at the moment of perception. Facts are distinguished from matter by lasting through a period of duration, this is what makes the difference between the actual fact and any of the material worlds in terms of which we describe them: matter, is, as we have said, only an abstraction of one element or tendency in the changing fact which is the sole reality: memory is the complementary abstraction. Apart from the actual fact neither matter nor memory have independent existence. This is where Berg-son disagrees with the philosophers who regard the facts as signs of an independent material world, or as phenomena which misrepresent some "thing" in "itself" which is what really exists but which is not known directly but only inferred from the phenomena. For Bergson it is the fact directly known that really exists, and matter and memory, solid tables, green gra.s.s, electrons, forces, the absolute, and all the other abstract ideas by which we explain it are misrepresentations of it, not it of them.

Even Bergson, however, does not get away from the distinction between appearance and reality. The fact is for him the reality, the abstraction the appearance. But then the fact which is the reality is not the fact which we ordinarily suppose ourselves to know, the little fragment which const.i.tutes "our experience at the present moment."

This is itself an abstraction from the vastly wider fact of our virtual knowledge, and it is this wider field of knowledge which is the reality. Abstraction involves falsification and so the little fragment of fact to which our attention is usually confined is not, as it stands, reality: it is appearance. We should only know reality as it is if we could replace this fragment in its proper context in the whole field of virtual knowledge (or reality) where it belongs. What we should then know would not be appearance but reality itself. It is at this knowledge, according to Bergson, that philosophy aims.

Philosophy is a reversal of our ordinary intellectual habits: ordinarily thought progresses from abstraction to abstraction steadily getting further from concrete facts: according to Bergson the task of philosophy should be to put abstractions back again into their context so as to obtain the fullest possible knowledge of actual fact.

In order to describe and explain this fact, however, we have to make use of abstractions. Bergson describes the fact known directly by sensible perception as a contraction of a period of the duration of matter in which the "past" states of matter are preserved along with the "present" and form a single whole with it. It is memory which makes this difference between matter and the actual facts by preserving "past" matter and combining it with "the present." A single perceived fact, however, does not contain memories as distinct from present material: the distinction between "past" and "present" does not hold inside facts whose duration forms a creative whole and not a logical series. Of course it is incorrect to describe facts as "containing past and present matter," but, as we have often pointed out, misleading though their logical implications are, we are obliged to replace facts by abstractions when we want to describe them.

An example may perhaps convey what is meant by saying that a fact is a contraction of a period of the duration of matter. Consider red, bearing in mind that, when we are speaking of the fact actually perceived when we see red we must discount the logical implications of our words. Science says that red, the material, is composed of immensely rapid vibrations of ether: red, the fact, we know as a simple colour. Bergson accepts the scientific abstractions in terms of which to describe matter, making the reservation that, if we are to talk of matter as composed of vibrations, we must not say that these vibrations last through a period of time or change by themselves, apart from any memory which retains and so preserves the "past"

vibrations. If matter is to be thought of at all as existing apart from any memory it must be thought of as consisting of a single vibration in a perpetual present with no past. We might alter the description and say that this present moment of matter should be thought of as being perpetually destroyed and recreated.

Now according to Bergson the red which we know directly is a period of the vibrations of matter contracted by memory so as to produce an actual perceived fact. As matter red does not change, it is absolutely discrete and complex, in a word, logical: as fact it is non-logical and forms a creative process of duration. The difference between matter and the actual fact is made by the mental act which holds matter as it were in tension through a period of duration, when a fact is produced, but which would have had to be absent if there had been no fact but simply present matter. Bergson calls this act memory: memory, he says, turns matter into fact by preserving its past along with its present. Without memory there would be no duration and so no change and no time. Matter, apart from memory would have no duration and it is just in this that it is distinguished from actual fact.

It is, however, of course, only by making abstractions that we can say what things would be like if something were taken away which actually is not taken away. Matter never really does exist without memory nor memory without its content, matter: the actual fact can only be described as a combination of the two elements, but this description must not lead us into supposing that the abstractions, matter and memory, actually have independent existence apart from the fact which they explain. Only the actual fact exists and it is not really made up of two elements, matter and memory, but only described in terms of these two abstractions.

Bergson's account of perception differs from the account ordinarily given in that perception is not described as a relation which is supposed to hold between a subject and an object: for Bergson there is no "I," distinct from what is perceived, standing to it in a relation of perception. For an object, to be perceived consists, not in being related to a perceiver, but in being combined in a new way with other objects. If an object is combined by synthesis with other objects then it is perceived and so becomes a fact. But there is no mind over and above the objects which perceives them by being related to them, or even by performing an act of synthesis upon them. To speak of "our"

perceiving objects is a mere fiction: when objects are combined by synthesis they become perceptions, facts, and this is the same as saying that they are minds. For Bergson a mind is nothing but a synthesis of objects. This explains what he means by saying that in direct knowledge the perceiver is the object perceived.

Actually he thinks such notions as the perceiver and the object and the relation which unites them, or again matter and the act of synthesis which turns matter into fact, are nothing but abstractions: the only thing there really is is simply the fact itself. These abstractions, however, do somehow apply to the actual facts, and this brings us back to our problem as to how it is that the actual fact, which is in creative duration, lends itself to cla.s.sification: how it is that general laws in terms of abstractions which can be repeated over and over again, can apply to the actual fact which does not contain repet.i.tions?

Facts lend themselves to explanation when they are perceived as familiar. In this perceived familiarity, which is the basis of all abstraction, and so of all description and explanation, past as well as present is involved, the present owing its familiarity to our memory of past facts. The obvious explanation of perceived familiarity, would be, of course, to say that it results from our perceiving similar qualities shared by past and present facts, or relations of similarity holding between them. But Bergson must find some other explanation than this since he denies that there can be repet.i.tion in actual facts directly known.

Whenever there is actual fact there is memory, and memory creates duration which excludes repet.i.tion. Perceived familiarity depends upon memory but memory, according to Bergson, does not work by preserving a series of repet.i.tions for future reference. If we say that memory connects "the past" with "the present" we must add that it destroys their logical distinctness. But of course this is putting it very badly: there is really no "logical distinctness" in the actual fact for memory to "destroy": our language suggests that first there was matter, forming a logical series of distinct qualities recurring over and over, and then memory occurred and telescoped the series, squeezing "earlier" and "later" moments into one another to make a creative duration. Such a view is suggested by our strong bias towards regarding abstractions as having independent existence apart from the real fact from which they have been abstracted: if we can overcome this bias the description will do well enough.

According to Bergson, as we have just seen, every actual fact must contain some memory otherwise it would not be a fact but simply matter, since it is an act of memory that turns matter into perceived fact. Our ordinary more or less familiar facts, however, contain much more than this bare minimum. The facts of everyday life are perceived as familiar and cla.s.sified from a vast number of points of view. When you look at a cherry you recognise its colour, shape, etc., you know it is edible, what it would taste like, whether it is ripe, and much more besides, all at a glance. All this knowledge depends on memory, memory gives meaning to what we might call bare sensation (which is the same thing as Bergson's present matter) as opposed to the full familiar fact actually experienced. Now the meaning is ordinarily contained in the actual fact along with the bare sensation not as a multiplicity of memories distinct from the bare sensation, but, as we put it, at a glance. This peculiar flavour of a familiar fact can be a.n.a.lysed out as consisting of memories of this or that past experience, if we choose to treat it in that way, just as a fact can be a.n.a.lysed into qualities. According to Bergson this a.n.a.lysis of the meaning of a familiar fact into memories would have the same drawbacks as the a.n.a.lysis of a present fact into qualities: it would leave out much of the meaning and distort the rest. Bergson holds that wherever there is duration the past must be preserved since it is just the preservation of the past, the creation of fact by a synthesis of what, out of synthesis, would be past and present, which const.i.tutes duration. The essential point about mental life is just the performing of this act of synthesis which makes duration: wherever there is mental life there is duration and so wherever there is mental life the past is preserved. "Above everything," Bergson says, "consciousness signifies memory. At this moment as I discuss with you I p.r.o.nounce the word "discussion." It is clear that my consciousness grasps this word altogether; if not it would not see it as a unique word and would not make sense of it. And yet when I p.r.o.nounce the last syllable of the word the two first ones have already been p.r.o.nounced; relatively to this one, which must then be called present, they are past. But this last syllable "sion" was not p.r.o.nounced instantaneously; the time, however short, during which I was saying it, can be split up into parts and these parts are past, relatively to the last of them, and this last one would be present if it were not that it too can be further split up: so that, do what you will, you cannot draw any line of demarcation between past and present, and so between memory and consciousness. Indeed when I p.r.o.nounce the word "discussion" I have before my mind, not only the beginning, the middle and the end of the word, but also the preceding words, also the whole of the sentence which I have already spoken; if it were not so I should have lost the thread of my speech. Now if the punctuation of the speech had been different my sentence might have begun earlier; it might, for instance, have contained the previous sentence and my "present" would have been still further extended into the past. Let us push this reasoning to its conclusion: let us suppose that my speech has lasted for years, since the first awakening of my consciousness, that it has consisted of a single sentence, and that my consciousness has been sufficiently detached from the future, sufficiently disinterested to occupy itself exclusively in taking in the meaning of the sentence: in that case I should not look for any explanation of the total conservation of this sentence any more than I look for one of the survival of the first two syllables of the word "discussion" when I p.r.o.nounce the last one. Well, I think that our whole inner life is like a single sentence, begun from the first awakening of consciousness, a sentence scattered with commas, but nowhere broken by a full stop. And so I think that our whole past is there, subconsciousI mean present to us in such a way that our consciousness, to become aware of it, need not go outside itself nor add anything foreign: to perceive clearly all that it contains, or rather all that it is, it has only to put aside an obstacle, to lift a veil."[3]*

* L'Energie Spirituelle--"L'Ame et le Corps," pages 59 and 60.

If this theory of memory be correct, the occurrence of any present bare sensation itself suffices to recall, in some sense, the whole past. But this is no use for practical purposes, just as the whole of the fact given in present perception is useless for practical purposes until it has been a.n.a.lysed into qualities. According to Bergson we treat the material supplied by memory in much the same way as that supplied by perception. The whole field of the past which the present calls up is much wider than what we actually remember clearly: what we actually remember is arrived at by ignoring all the past except such sc.r.a.ps as appear to form useful precedents for behaviour in the present situation in which we find ourselves. Perhaps this explains why sometimes, at the point of death, when useful behaviour is no longer possible, this selection breaks down and the whole of the past floods back into memory. The brain, according to Bergson, is the organ whose function it is to perform this necessary work of selection out of the whole field of virtual memory of practically useful fragments, and so long as the brain is in order, only these are allowed to come through into consciousness as clear memories. The pa.s.sage just quoted goes on to speak of "the part played by the brain in memory." "The brain does not serve to preserve the past but primarily to obscure it, and then to let just so much as is practically useful slip through."

But the setting of the whole past, though it is ignored for convenience, still makes itself felt in the peculiar qualitative flavour which belongs to every present fact by reason of its past.

Even in the case of familiar facts this flavour is no mere repet.i.tion but is perpetually modified as the familiarity increases, and it is just in this progressively changing flavour that their familiarity consists.

An inspection of what we know directly, then, does not bear out the common sense theory that perceived familiarity, upon which abstraction and all description and explanation are based, consists in the perception of similar qualities shared by present matter and the matter retained by memory. A familiar fact appears to be, not a repet.i.tion, but a new fact. This new fact may be described as containing present and past bare sensations, but it must be added that these bare sensations do not remain distinct things but are synthesised by the act of perception into a fresh whole which is not the sum of the bare sensations which it may be described as containing. Such a perceived whole will be familiar, and so lend itself to abstraction and explanation, in so far as the present bare sensation which it contains, taken as mere matter (that is apart from the act of perception which turns it from mere matter into actual fact), would have been a repet.i.tion of some of the past bare sensations which go to form its meaning and combine with it to create the fact actually known. For bare sensation now may be a repet.i.tion of past bare sensation though the full fact will always be something fresh, its flavour changing as it grows more and more familiar by taking up into itself more and more bare sensation which, taken in abstraction, apart from the act of synthesis which turns it into actual fact, would be repet.i.tions. To take the example which we have already used of perceiving first a rose and then a strawberry ice cream: let us suppose that the rose was the very first occasion on which you saw pink. The perceived fact on that occasion would, like all perceived facts, be a combination of / past and present bare sensations. It would I not be familiar because the elements of present bare sensation would not be repet.i.tions of the elements of past bare sensation (always a.s.suming, as we must for purposes of explanation, that past and present bare sensations ever could be isolated from the actual fact and still both exist, which, however, is not possible).

But when you saw the strawberry ice cream the past perceived rose would be among the memories added to this bare sensation which const.i.tute its meaning and, by forming a synthesis with it, turn it from mere matter into fact. The pink would now be perceived as familiar because the pink of the rose (which as bare sensation is similar to the bare sensation of strawberry-ice-cream-pink) would be included, along with the present bare sensation of pink, in the whole fact of the perception of strawberry ice cream.

Perceived fact, then, combines meaning and present bare sensation to form a whole with a qualitative flavour which is itself always unique, but which lends itself to abstraction in so far as the bare sensations, past and present, which go to produce it, would, as matter in isolation, be repet.i.tions.