The Misuse of Mind Part 3

This qualitative flavour, however, is, of course, not a quality in the logical sense which implies distinctness and externality of relations.

Facts have logical qualities only if they are taken in abstraction isolated from their context. This is not how fact actually occurs.

Every fact occurs in the course of the duration of some mental life which itself changes as a process of duration and not as a logical series. The mental life of an individual is, as it were, a comprehensive fact which embraces all the facts directly known to that individual in a single process of creative duration. Facts are to the mental life of an individual what bare sensation is to the actual fact directly known in perception: facts are, as it were, the matter of mental life. Imagine a fact directly known, such as we have described in discussing sensible perception, lasting on and on, perpetually taking up new bare sensations and complicating them with meaning which consists of all the past which it already contains so as to make out of this combination of past and present fresh fact, that will give you some idea of the way in which Bergson thinks that mental life is created out of matter by memory. Only this description is still unsatisfactory because it is obliged to speak of what is created either in the plural or in the singular and so fails to convey either the differentiation contained in mental life or else its unbroken continuity as all one fact progressively modified by absorbing more and more matter.

If Bergson's account of the way in which memory works is true there is a sense in which the whole past of every individual is preserved in memory and all unites with any present bare sensation to const.i.tute the fact directly known to him at any given moment. If the continuity of duration is really unbroken there is no possibility of any of the past being lost.

This is why Bergson maintains that the whole of our past is contained in our virtual knowledge: what he means by our virtual knowledge is simply everything which enters into the process of duration which const.i.tutes our whole mental life. Besides our whole past this virtual knowledge must also contain much more of present bare sensation than we are usually aware of.

We said that, for Bergson, actual fact directly known was the only reality; this actual fact, however, does not mean merely what is present to the perception of a given individual at any given moment, but the whole of our virtual knowledge. The field of virtual knowledge would cover much the same region as the subconscious, which plays such an important part in modern psychology. The limits of this field are impossible to determine. Once you give up limiting direct knowledge to the fact actually present in perception at any given moment it is difficult to draw the line anywhere. And yet to draw the line at the present moment is impossible for "the present moment" is clearly an abstract fiction. For practical purposes "the present" is what is known as "the specious present," which covers a certain ill-defined period of duration from which the instantaneous "present moment" is recognised to be a mere abstraction. According to Bergson, however, just as "the present moment" is only an abstraction from a wider specious present so this specious present itself is an abstraction from a continuous process of duration from which other abstractions, days, weeks, years, can be made, but which is actually unbroken and forms a single continuous changing whole. And just as facts are only abstractions from the whole mental life of an individual so individuals must be regarded as abstractions from some more comprehensive mental whole and thus our virtual knowledge seems not merely to extend over the whole of what is embraced by our individual acts of perception and preserved by our individual memories but overflows even these limits and must be regarded as co-extensive with the duration of the whole of reality.

It may be open to question how much of this virtual knowledge of both past and present we ever could know directly in any sense comparable to the way in which we know the fact actually presented at some given moment, however perfectly we might succeed in ridding ourselves with our intellectual pre-occupation with explaining instead of knowing; but, if reality forms an unbroken whole in duration, we cannot in advance set any limits, short of the whole of reality, to the field of virtual knowledge. And it does really seem as if our pre-occupation with discovering repet.i.tions in the interests of explanation had something to do with the limited extent of the direct knowledge which we ordinarily enjoy, so that, if we could overcome this bias, we might know more than we do now, though how much more it is not possible, in advance, to predict. For in the whole field of virtual knowledge, which appears to be continuous with the little sc.r.a.p of fact which is all that we usually attend to, present bare sensation and such bare sensations as resemble it, form very insignificant elements: for purposes of abstraction and explanation, however, it is only these insignificant elements that are of any use. So long, therefore, as we are preoccupied with abstraction, we must bend all our energies towards isolating these fragments from the context which extends out and out over the whole field of virtual knowledge, rivetting our attention on them and, as far as possible, ignoring all the rest. If Bergson's theory of virtual knowledge is correct, then, it does seem as if normally our efforts were directed towards shutting out most of our knowledge rather than towards enjoying it, towards forgetting the greater part of what memory contains rather than towards remembering it.

If we really could reverse this effort and concentrate upon knowing the whole field of past and present as fully as possible, instead of cla.s.sifying it, which involves selecting part of the field and ignoring the rest, it is theoretically conceivable that we might succeed in knowing directly the whole of the process of duration which const.i.tutes the individual mental life of each one of us. And it is not even certain that our knowledge must necessarily be confined within the limits of what we have called our individual mental life.

Particular facts, as we have seen, are not really distinct parts of a single individual mental life: the notion of separateness applies only to abstractions and it is only because we are much more pre-occupied with abstractions than with actual facts that we come to suppose that facts can ever really be separate from one another. When we shake off our common sense a.s.sumptions and examine the actual facts which we know directly we find that they form a process and not a logical series of distinct facts one after the other. Now on a.n.a.logy it seems possible that what we call individual mental lives are, to the wider process which contains and const.i.tutes the whole of reality, as particular facts are to the whole process which const.i.tutes each individual mental life. The whole of reality may contain individual lives as these contain particular facts, not as separate distinct units in logical relations, but as a process in which the line of demarcation between "the parts" (if we must speak of "parts") is not clear cut. If this a.n.a.logy holds then it is impossible in advance to set any limits to the field of direct knowledge which it may be in our power to secure by reversing our usual mental att.i.tude and devoting our energies simply to knowing, instead of to cla.s.sifying and explaining.

But without going beyond the limits of our individual experience, and even without coming to know directly the whole field of past and present fact which that experience contains, it is still a considerable gain to our direct knowledge if we realize what false a.s.sumptions our preoccupation with cla.s.sification leads us to make even about the very limited facts to which our direct knowledge is ordinarily confined. We then realize that, besides being considerably less than what we probably have it in our power to know, these few facts that we do know are themselves by no means what we commonly suppose them to be.

The two fundamental errors into which common sense leads us about the facts are the a.s.sumptions that they have the logical form, that is contain mutually exclusive parts in external relations, and that these parts can be repeated over and over again. These two false a.s.sumptions are summed up in the common sense view that the fact which we know directly actually consists of events, things, states, qualities.

Bergson tells us that when once we have realized that this is not the case we have begun to be philosophers.

Having stripped the veil of common sense a.s.sumptions from what we know directly our task will then be to hold this direct knowledge before us so as to know as much as possible. The act by which we know directly is the very same act by which we perceive and remember; these are all simply acts of synthesis, efforts to turn matter into creative duration. What we have to do is, as it were, to make a big act of perception to embrace as wild a field as possible of past and present as a single fact directly known. This act of synthesis Bergson calls "intuition."

Intuition may be described as turning past and present into fact directly known by transforming it from mere matter into a creative process of duration: but, of course, actually, there is not, first matter, then an act of intuition which synthesises it, and finally a fact in duration, there is simply the duration, and the matter and the act of intuition are only abstractions by which we describe and explain it.

The effort of intuition is the reversal of the intellectual effort to abstract and explain which is our usual way of treating facts, and these two ways of attending are incompatible and cannot both be carried on together. Intuition, (or, to give it a more familiar name, direct knowledge,) reveals fact: intellectual attention a.n.a.lyses and cla.s.sifies this fact in order to explain it in general terms, that is to explain it by subst.i.tuting abstractions for the actual fact.

Obviously we cannot perform acts of a.n.a.lysis without some fact to serve as material: a.n.a.lysis uses the facts supplied by direct knowledge as its material. Bergson maintains that in so doing it limits and distorts these facts and he says that if we are looking for speculative knowledge we must go back to direct knowledge, or, as he calls it, intuition.

But bare acquaintance is in-communicable, moreover it requires a great effort to maintain it. In order to communicate it and retain the power of getting the facts back again after we have relaxed our grip on them we are obliged, once we have obtained the fullest direct knowledge of which we are capable, to apply the intellectual method to the fact thus revealed and attempt to describe it in general terms.

Now the directly known forms a creative duration whose special characteristics are that it is non-logical, (i.e., is not made up of distinct mutually exclusive terms united by external relations) and does not contain parts which can be repeated over and over, while on the other hand the terms which we have to subst.i.tute for it if we want to describe it only stand for repet.i.tions and have the logical form.

It looks, therefore, as if our descriptions could not, as they stand, be very successful in conveying to others the fact known to us directly, or in recalling it to ourselves.

In order that the description subst.i.tuted by our intellectual activity for the facts which we want to describe may convey these facts it is necessary to perform an act of synthesis on the description a.n.a.logous to the act of perception which originally created the fact itself out of mere matter. The words used in a description should be to the hearer what mere matter is to the perceiver: in order that matter may be perceived an act of synthesis must be performed by which the matter is turned into fact in duration: similarly in order to gather what a description of a fact means the hearer must take the general terms which are employed not as being distinct and mutually exclusive but as modifying one another and interpenetrating in the way in which the "parts" of a process of creative duration interpenetrate. In the same way by understanding the terms employed synthetically and not intellectually we can use a description to recall any fact which we have once known directly. Thus our knowledge advances by alternate acts of direct acquaintance and a.n.a.lysis.

Philosophy must start from a fresh effort of acquaintance creating, if possible, a fact wider and fuller than the facts which we are content to know for the purposes of everyday life. But a.n.a.lysis is essential if the fact thus directly known is to be conveyed to others and recalled. By a.n.a.lysis the philosopher fixes this wider field in order that he may communicate and recall it. Starting later from the description of some fact obtained by a previous effort of acquaintance, or from several facts obtained at different times, and also from the facts described by others, and using all these descriptions as material, it may be possible, by a fresh effort, to perform acts of acquaintance, (or synthesis) embracing ever wider and wider fields of knowledge. This, according to Bergson, is the way in which philosophical knowledge should be built up, facts, obtained by acts of acquaintance, being translated into descriptions only that these descriptions may again be further synthesised so directing our attention to more and more comprehensive facts.

Inevitably, of course, these facts themselves, being less than all the stream of creative duration to which they belong, will be abstractions, if taken apart from that whole stream, and so distorted.

This flaw in what we know even by direct acquaintance can never be wholly remedied short of our succeeding in becoming acquainted with the whole of duration. It is something, however, to be aware of the flaw, even if we cannot wholly remedy it, and the wider the acquaintance the less is the imperfection in the fact known.

The first step, in any case, towards obtaining the wider acquaintance at which philosophy aims consists in making the effort necessary to rid ourselves of the practical preoccupation which gives us our bias towards explaining everything long before we have allowed ourselves time to pay proper attention to it, in order that we may at least get back to such actual facts as we do already know directly. When this has been accomplished (and our intellectual habits are so deeply ingrained that the task is by no means easy) we can then go on to other philosophers' descriptions of the facts with which their own efforts to widen their direct knowledge have acquainted them and, by synthesising the general terms which they have been obliged to employ, we also may come to know these more comprehensive facts. Unless it is understood synthetically, however, a philosopher's description of the facts with which he has acquainted himself will be altogether unsatisfactory and misleading. It is in this way that Bergson's own a.n.a.lysis of the fact which we all know directly into matter and the act of memory by which matter is turned into a creative process should be understood. The matter and the act of memory are both abstractions from the actual fact: he does not mean that over and above the fact there is either any matter or any force or activity called memory nor are these things supposed to be in the actual fact: they are simply abstract terms in which the fact is described.

Bergson tries elsewhere to put the same point by saying that there are two tendencies in reality, one towards s.p.a.ce (that is logical form) and the other towards duration, and that the actual fact which we know directly "tends" now towards "s.p.a.ce" and now towards duration. The two faculties intellect and intuition are likewise fictions which are not really supposed to exist, distinct from the fact to which they are applied, but are simply abstract notions invented for the sake of description.

Whatever the description by which a philosopher attempts to convey what he has discovered we shall only understand it if we remember that the terms in which the fact is described are not actually parts of the fact itself and can only convey the meaning intended if they are grasped by synthesis and not intellectually understood.