A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson Part 8

The answer is easy. Why speak thus of limit? This word has two senses: at one time it designates a last term in a series of approximations, and at another a certain internal character of convergence, a certain quality of progression.

Now, it is the second sense only which suits the case before us.

Immediacy contains no matter statically defined, and no thing. The notion of fact is quite relative. What is fact in one case may become construction in another. For example, the percepts of common experience are facts for the physicist, and constructions for the philosopher; the same applies to a table of numerical results, for the scholar who is trying to establish a theory, or for the observer and the psychologist.

We may then conceive a series in which each term is fact in relation to those which follow it, and constructed in relation to those which precede it. The expression "primitive fact" then determines not so much a final object as a direction of thought, a movement of critical retrogression, a journey from the most to the least elaborate, and the "contact with pure immediacy" is only the effort, more and more prolonged, to convert the elements of experience into real and profound action.

III. Theory of Perception.

Of what the work of return to immediacy consists, and how the intuition which it calls up reveals absolute fact, we shall see by an example, if we study more closely a capital point of Mr Bergson's philosophy, the theory of external perception.

If the act of perceiving realises the lived communion of the subject and object in the image, we must admit that here we have the perfect knowledge which we wish to obtain always: we resign ourselves to conception only for want of perception, and our ideal is to convert all conception into perception. Doubtless we might define philosophy by this same ideal, as an effort to expand our perceptive power until we render it capable of grasping all the wealth and all the depth of reality at a single glance. Too true it is that such an ideal remains inaccessible to us. Something, however, is given us already in aesthetic intuition. Mr Bergson has pointed it out in some admirable pages, ("Laughter", pages 153-161.) and has explained to us also how philosophy pursues an a.n.a.logous end. (First lecture on "The Perception of Change", delivered at Oxford, 26th May 1911.)

But philosophy must be conceived as an art implying science and criticism, all experience and all reason. It is when we look at metaphysics in this way that they become a positive order of veritable knowledge. Kant has conclusively established that what lies beyond language can only be attained by direct vision, not by dialectic progress. His mistake was that he afterwards believed such a vision for ever impossible; and whence did this mistake arise, if not from the fact that, for his new vision, he exacted intuitive faculties quite different from those at man's disposal. Here again the artist will be our example and model. He appeals to no transcendent sense, but detaches common-sense from its utilitarian prejudices. Let us do the same: we shall obtain a similar result without lying ourselves open to Kant's objections. This work is everywhere possible, and it is, par excellence, the work of philosophy: let us try then to sketch it in relation to the perception of matter.

We must distinguish two senses of the word "perception." This word means first of all simple apprehension of immediacy, grasp of primitive fact.

When we use it in this sense, we will agree to say pure perception.

It is perhaps in place to see in it nothing but a limit which concrete experience never presents unmixed, a direction of research rather than the possession of a thing.

However that may be, the first sense is the fundamental sense, and what it designates must be at the root of all ordinary perception; I mean, of every mental operation which results in the construction of a percept: a term formed by a.n.a.logy with concept, representing the result of a complex work of a.n.a.lysis and synthesis, with judgment from externals.

We live the images in an act of pure perception, whilst the objects of ordinary perception are, for example, the bodies of which we speak in common language.

With regard to the relation of the two senses which we have just distinguished, common opinion seems very precise. It might be thus resumed: at the point of departure we have simple sensations, similar to qualitative atoms (this is the part of pure perception), and afterwards their arrangement into connected systems, which are percepts.

But criticism does not authorise this manner of looking at it. Nowhere does knowledge begin by separate elements. Such elements are always a product of a.n.a.lysis. So there is a problem to solve to regain the basis of pure perception which is hidden and obscured by our familiar percepts.

Do not suppose that the solution of this problem is easy. One method only is of any use: to plunge into reality, to become immersed in it, in a long-pursued effort to a.s.similate all the records of common-sense and positive science. "For we do not obtain an intuition of reality, that is to say, an intellectual sympathy with its inmost content, unless we have gained its confidence by long companionship with its superficial manifestations. And it is not a question merely of a.s.similating the leading facts; we must acc.u.mulate and melt them down into such an enormous ma.s.s that we are sure, in this fusion, of neutralising in one another all the preconceived and premature ideas which observers may have unconsciously allowed to form the sediment of their observations.

Thus, and only thus, is crude materiality to be disengaged from known facts." ("Introduction to Metaphysics" in the "Metaphysical and Moral Review", January 1903. For the correct interpretation of this pa.s.sage ("intellectual sympathy") it must not be forgotten that before "Creative Evolution", Mr Bergson employed the word "intelligence" in a wider acceptation, more akin to that commonly received.)

A directing principle controls this work and reintroduces order and convergence, after dispensing with them at the outset; viz. that, contrary to common opinion, perception as practised in the course of daily life, "natural" perception does not aim at a goal of disinterested knowledge, but one of practical utility, or rather, if it is knowledge, it is only knowledge elaborated in view of action and speech.

Need we repeat here the proofs by which we have already established in the most positive manner that such is really the meaning of ordinary perception, the underlying reason which causes it to take the place of pure perception? We perceive by habit only what is useful to us, what interests us practically; very often, too, we think we are perceiving when we are merely inferring, as for example when we seem to see a distance in depth, a succession of planes, of which in reality we judge by differences of colouring or relief.

Our senses supplement one another. A slow education has gradually taught us to co-ordinate their impressions, especially those of touch to those of vision. (H. Bergson, "Note on the Psychological Origins of Our Belief in the Law of Causality". Vol. i. of the "Library of the International Philosophical Congress", 1900.)

Theoretical forms come between nature and us: a veil of symbols envelops reality; thus, finally, we no longer see things themselves, we are content to read the labels on them.

Moreover, our perception appears to a.n.a.lysis completely saturated with memories, and that in view of our practical insertion in the present. I will not come back to this point which has been so lucidly explained by Mr Bergson in a lecture on "Dream" ("Report of the International Psychological Inst.i.tute", May 1901.) and an article on "Intellectual Effort", ("Philosophical Review", January 1902.) the reading of which cannot be too strongly recommended as an introduction to the first chapter of "Matter and Memory", in which further arguments are to be found. I will only add one remark, following Mr Bergson, as always: perception is not simply contemplation, but consciousness of an original visual emotion combined with a complete group of actions in embryo, gestures in outline, and the graze of movement within, by which we prepare to grasp the object, describe its lines, test its functions, sound it, move it, and handle it in a thousand ways. (This is attested by the facts of apraxia or psychic blindness. Cf. "Matter and Memory", chapter ii.)

From the preceding observations springs the utilitarian and practical nature of common perception. Let us attempt now to see of what the elaboration which it makes reality undergo consists. This time I am summing up the fourth chapter of "Matter and Memory". First of all, we choose between the images, emphasising the strong, extinguishing the weak, although both have, a priori, the same interest for pure knowledge; we make this choice above all by according preference to impressions of touch, which are the most useful from the practical point of view. This selection determines the parcelling up of matter into independent bodies, and the artificial character of our proceeding is thus made plain. Does not science, indeed, conclude in the same way, showing us--as soon as she frees herself even to a small extent from common-sense--full continuity re-established by "moving strata," and all bodies resolved into stationary waves and knots of intersecting fluxes?

Already, then, we shall be nearer pure perception if we cease to consider anything but the perceptible stuff in which numerically distinct percepts are cut. Even there, however, a utilitarian division continues. Our senses are instruments of abstraction, each of them discerning a possible path of action. We may say that corporal life functions in the manner of an absorbing milieu, which determines the disconnected scale of simple qualities by extinguishing most of the perceptible radiations. In short, the scale of sensations, with its numerical aspect, is nothing but the spectrum of our practical activity.

Commonly we perceive only averages and wholes, which we contract into distinct "qualities". Let us disengage from this rhythm what is peculiar to ourselves.

Above all, let us strive to disengage ourselves from h.o.m.ogeneous s.p.a.ce, this substratum of fixity, this arbitrary scheme of measurement and division, which, to our greater advantage, subtends the natural, qualitative, and undivided extension of images. (We usually represent h.o.m.ogeneous s.p.a.ce as previous to the heterogeneous extension of images: as a kind of empty room which we furnish with percepts. We must reverse this order, and conceive, on the contrary, that extension precedes s.p.a.ce.) And we shall finally have pure perception in so far as it is accessible to us.

There is no disputing the absolute value of this pure perception. The impotence of speculative reason, as demonstrated by Kant, is perhaps, at bottom, only the impotence of an intelligence in bondage to certain necessities of the corporal life, and exercised upon a matter which it has had to disorganise for the satisfaction of our needs. Our knowledge of things is then no longer relative to the fundamental structure of our mind, but only to its superficial and acquired habits, to the contingent form which it takes on from our corporal functions and our lower needs.

The relativity of knowledge is therefore not final. In unmaking what our needs have made we re-establish intuition in its original purity, and resume contact with reality. ("Matter and Memory", page 203.)

That is how things are really presented. Here we are confronted by the moving continuity of images. Pure perception is complete perception.

From it we pa.s.s to ordinary perception by diminution, throwing shadows here and there: the reality perceived by common-sense is nothing else actually than universal interaction rendered visible by its very interruption at certain points.

Whence we have this double conclusion already formulated higher up: the relation of perception to matter is that of the part to the whole, and our consciousness is rather limited than relative. It must be stated that primarily we perceive things in themselves, not in us; the subjectivity of our current perception comes from our work of outlining it in the bosom of reality, but the root of pure perception plunges into full objectivity. If, at each point of matter, we were to succeed in possessing the stream of total interaction of which it marks a wave, and if we were to succeed in seeing the multiplicity of these points as a qualitative heterogeneous flux without number or severance, we should coincide with reality itself. It is true that such an ideal, while inaccessible on the one hand, would not succeed on the other without risk to knowledge; in fact, says Mr Bergson, ("Matter and Memory", page 38.) "to perceive all the influences of all the points of all bodies would be to descend to the state of material object."

But a solution of this double difficulty remains possible, a dynamic and approximate solution, which consists in looking for the absolute intuition of matter in such a mobilisation of our perspective faculties that we become capable of following, according to the circ.u.mstances, all the paths of virtual perception of which the common anxiety for the practical has made us choose one only, and capable of realising all the infinitely different modes of qualification and discernment.

But we have still to see how this "complete experience" can be practically thought.

IV. Critique of Language.

The perception of reality does not obtain the full value of knowledge, except when once socialised, once made the common property of men, and thereby also tested and verified.

There is one means only of doing that; viz. to a.n.a.lyse it into manageable and portable concepts. By language I mean the product of this conceptualisation. Thus language is necessary; for we must always speak, were it only to utter the impotence of words. Not less necessary is a critique of spontaneous language, of the laws which govern it, of the postulates which it embraces, of the methods which convey its implicit doctrines. Synthetic forms are actually theories already; they effect an adaptation of reality to the demands of practical use. If it is impossible to escape them, it is at least fitting not to employ them except with due knowledge, and when properly warned against the illusion of the false problems which they might arouse.

Let us first of all consider thought in itself, in its concrete life.

What are the princ.i.p.al characteristics, the essential steps? We readily say, a.n.a.lysis and synthesis.

Nothing can be known except in contrast, correlation, or negation of another thing; and the act of knowledge, considered in itself, is unification. Thus number appears as a fundamental category, as an absolute condition of intelligibility; some go so far as to regard atomism as a necessary method. But that is inexact. No doubt the use of number and the resulting atomism are imposed by definition, we might say, on the thought which proceeds by conceptual a.n.a.lysis, and then by unifying construction; that is to say, on synthetic thought. But, in greater depth, thought is dynamic continuity and duration. Its essential work does not consist in discerning and afterwards in a.s.sembling ready-made elements. Let us see in it rather a kind of creative maturation, and let us attempt to grasp the nature of this causal activity. (H. Bergson, "Intellectual Effort" in the "Philosophical Review", January 1902.)

The act of thought is always a complex play of moving representations, an evolution of life in which incessant inner reactions occur. That is to say, it is movement. But there are several planes of thought, from intuition to language, and we must distinguish between the thought which moves on the surface among terms displayed on a single plane, and the thought with goes deeper and deeper from one plane to another.

We do not think solely by concepts or images; we think, first of all, according to Mr Bergson's expression, by dynamic schemes. What is a dynamic scheme? It is motive rather than representative, inexpressible in itself, but a source of language containing not so much the images or concepts in which it will develop as the indication of the path to be followed in order to obtain them. It is not so much system as movement, progress, genesis; it does not mark the gaze directed upon the various points of one plane of deliberate contemplation so much as an effort to pa.s.s through successive planes of thought in a direction leading from intuition to a.n.a.lysis. We might define it by its function of calling up images and concepts, representations which, for one and the same scheme, are neither strictly determined nor anything in particular in themselves, concurrent representations which have in common one and the same logical power.

The representations called up form a body to the scheme, and the relation of the scheme to the concepts and images which it calls up resembles, mutatis mutandis, the relation pointed out by Mr Bergson between an idea and its basis in the brain. In short, it is the very act of creative thought which the dynamic scheme interprets, the act not yet fixed in "results."

Nothing is easier than to ill.u.s.trate the existence of this scheme.

Let us merely remark a few facts of current observation. Recall, for example, the suggestive anxiety we experience when we seek to remember a name; the precise syllables of the name still escape us, but we feel them approaching, and already we possess something of them, since we immediately reject those which do not answer to a certain direction of expectancy; and by endeavouring to secure a more intimate feeling of this direction we suddenly arouse the desired recollection.

In the same way, what does it mean to have the sense of a complex situation in active life, if not that we perceive it, not as a static group of explicit details, but as a meeting of powers allied or hostile, convergent or divergent, directed towards this or that, of which the aggregate whole tends of itself to awaken in us the initial reactions which a.n.a.lyse it?

In the same way again, how do we learn, how can we a.s.similate a vast system of conceits or images? Our task is not to concentrate an enumerative attention on each individual factor; we should never get away from them, the weight would be too heavy.

What we entrust to memory is really a dynamic scheme permitting us to "regain" what we should not have succeeded in "retaining." In reality our only "knowledge" is through such a scheme, which contains in the state of potential implication an inexhaustible multiplicity ready to be developed in actual representations.

How, finally, is any discovery made? Finding is solving a problem; and to solve a problem we must always begin by supposing it solved. But of what does such a hypothesis consist?

It is not an antic.i.p.ated view of the solution, for then all would be at an end; nor is it a simple formula putting in the present indicative what the enunciation expressed in the future or the imperative, for then nothing would be begun. It is exactly a dynamic scheme; that is to say, a method in the state of directed tension; and often, the discovery once realised as theory or system, capable of unending developments and resurrections, remains by the best of itself a method and a dynamic scheme.

But one last example will perhaps reveal the truth still more. "Anyone who has attempted literary composition knows well that when the subject has been long studied, all the doc.u.ments collected, all the notes taken, we need, to embark on the actual work of composition, something more, an effort, often very painful, to place oneself suddenly in the very heart of the subject, and to seek as deep down as possible an impulse to which afterwards we shall only have to let ourselves go. This impulse, once received, projects the mind on a road where it finds both the information which it had collected and a thousand other details as well; it develops and a.n.a.lyses itself in terms, the enumeration of which would have no end; the further we advance, the more we discover; we shall never succeed in saying everything; and yet, if we turn sharply round towards the impulse we feel behind ourselves, to grasp it, it escapes; for it was not a thing but a direction of movement, and though indefinitely extensible, it is simplicity itself." (H. Bergson, "Metaphysical and Moral Review", January 1903. The whole critique of language is implicitly contained in this "Introduction to Metaphysics".)

The thought, then, which proceeds from one representation to another in one and the same plane is one kind; that which follows one and the same conceptual direction through descending planes is another. Creative and fertile thought is the thought which adopts the second kind of work. The ideal is a continual oscillation from one plane to the other, a restless alternative of intuitive concentration and conceptual expansion. But our idleness takes exception to this, for the feeling of effort appears precisely in the traject from the dynamic scheme to the images and concepts, in the pa.s.sing from one plane of thought to another.

Thus the natural tendency is to remain in the last of these planes, that of language. We know what dangers threaten us there.

Suppose we have some idea or other and the word representing it. Do not suppose that to this word there is one corresponding sense only, nor even a finished group of various distinct and rigorously separable senses. On the contrary, there is a whole scale corresponding, a complete continuous spectrum of unstable meanings which tend unceasingly to resolve into one another. Dictionaries attempt to illuminate them.