The application of intensive magnitude and of numerical multiplicity to psychic facts is thus the same fallacy in two aspects, the fallacy of conceptualism, the nature of which is to substitute space for time as the form of mental existence.
But Professor Bergson is not altogether dogmatic in saying that conceptual time is a spatialized symbol of real time. He goes on now to show how it is that the nature of real time is nothing like conceptual time. Durée, his name for real time, seems a bad term for such a use; for the essence of Bergson’s “durée” is change, while duration in every other connection means just the waiting or standing still of the flow of time. Some term like “lapse” seems nearer the idea.
The genetic or empirical theory of space perception regards the sensations by which we succeed in forming the notion of space as themselves unextended and purely qualitative; extension results from their synthesis, as water results from the combination of two elements. Bergson remarks that the fact that water is neither oxygen nor hydrogen nor merely both is just the fact that we embrace the multiplicity of atoms in a single apperception. Eliminate the mind which operates this synthesis and you will at the same time annihilate the water qualities so far as they are other than oxygen and hydrogen qualities; you will, that is, annihilate the aspect under which the synthesis of elementary parts is presented to our consciousness. For space to arise from the coexistence of non-spatial qualities, an act of the mind is necessary, embracing them all together and juxtapositing them—an act which is a Kantian a priori form of sensibility.
This act is the conception of an empty homogeneous medium. It is a principle of differentiation other than qualitative differentiation, enabling us to distinguish qualitatively identical simultaneous sensations. Without this principle, we should have perception of the extended, but we should not have conception of space. That is, simultaneous sensations are never absolutely identical, because the organic elements stimulated are not identical. There are no two points of a homogeneous surface that produce the same impression on sight and touch. So there is a real qualitative difference between any two simultaneous points. This, Bergson says, is enough to give us perception of the extended. But the conception of space is en outre. The higher one rises in the series of intelligent beings, the more clearly the independent idea of a homogeneous space stands out. Space is not so homogeneous for the animal as for us. Directions are not purely geometrical; they have their quality. We ourselves distinguish our right and left by a natural feeling. We cannot define them.
Now, the faculty of conceiving a space without quality is not at all an abstraction; on the contrary, to abstract presupposes the intuition of a homogeneous medium. We know two realities of different order, one heterogeneous, that of sensible qualities, the other homogeneous, which is space. The latter enables us to make sharp distinctions, to count, to abstract, perhaps even to speak. Everybody regards time as an indefinite homogeneous medium, and yet everybody regards it as different from space. Is one, then, reducible to the other?
The genetic or empirical school tries to reduce the relations of extension to more or less complex relations of succession in duration. The relations of situation in space are defined as reversible relations of succession in duration. But succession in duration is not reversible. Pure duration is the form of succession of conscious states when one refrains from reflectively setting up a distinctness between the present state and former states. This does not mean being wholly absorbed in the passing sensation or idea, nor forgetting former states; but it means organizing them instead of juxtapositing them; they become like the notes of a melody, which, though they succeed each other, are apperceived in each other; they interpenetrate like the parts of a living being. Succession, then, can be conceived without distinctness, as a mutual penetration, a solidarity, an intimate organization of elements each of which, representative of the whole, is distinguished and isolated therefrom only for a thought capable of abstraction. We introduce the idea of space into our representation of pure succession; we so juxtaposit our states of consciousness as to perceive them simultaneously, not in, but beside each other; we project time upon space, we express duration in terms of extension. Succession then takes the form of a continuous line or of a chain, whose parts touch without interpenetration, which implies a simultaneous before and after instead of a successive—that is, a simultaneous succession, which is a contradiction.
Now, when the genetic school defines the relations of situation in space as reversible relations of succession in duration, it represents succession in duration in this self-contradictory way. You cannot make out an order among terms without distinguishing the terms and comparing the places they occupy, without perceiving them, therefore, as juxtaposited. Then to make out an order in the terms of a succession is to make the succession a simultaneity. So this attempt to represent space by means of time presupposes the representation of space. Of space in three dimensions, moreover; for the representation of two dimensions—that is, of a line—implies that of three dimensions: to perceive a line is to place oneself outside it and account for the void surrounding it.
Pure duration is nothing but a succession of qualitative changes fusing, interpenetrating, without outlines or tendency to externality by interrelation, without any kinship with number. Pure duration is pure heterogeneity.
No time that can be measured is duration, for heterogeneity is not quantity, not measurable. When we measure a minute we represent a quantity and ipso facto exclude a succession. We represent sixty oscillations of a pendulum, for instance, all together, in one apperception, as we represent sixty points of a line. Now, to represent each of these oscillations in succession, just as it is produced in space, no recollection of a preceding oscillation can enter the representation of any one, for space has kept no trace of it. One is confined to the present, and there is no more succession, or duration, in such a representation than in that of the group as a whole. A third way of representing these oscillations is conceivable. Like the first, it involves retention of preceding oscillations; but, unlike the first, it retains preceding oscillations in succeeding ones, instead of alongside of them; they interpenetrate and interorganize, as was just said, like the notes of a melody. Like the conceptual representation, the intuitional involves a multiplicity. A conceptual multiplicity is distinct, homogeneous, quantitative, numerical; an intuitive multiplicity is indistinct, heterogeneous, qualitative, without analogy with number. Now, it is the latter that characterizes reality; and the multiplicity that we represent conceptually is only a symbol of the reality known to intuition.
Oscillations of a pendulum measure nothing; they count simultaneities. Outside of me, in space, there is only a single position of the pendulum; of past positions none remains. Because my duration is an organization and interpenetration of facts, I represent what I call “past” oscillations of the pendulum at the same time that I perceive the actual oscillation. Eliminate the ego, and there is only a single position of the pendulum, and no duration. Eliminate the pendulum, and there is only the heterogeneous duration of the ego. Within the ego is succession without simultaneity or reciprocal externality: without the ego, reciprocal externality without succession, which can exist only for a conscious spectator who remembers the past, and juxtaposits the symbols of the two oscillations in an auxiliary space.