In a succession of identical terms, then, each term has two aspects, spatial and temporal, objective and subjective, one always identical with itself, the other specific because of the unique quality its addition gives the collective whole of the series. Now, motion is just such a “qualifying,” the subjective aspect of what, objectively, is a succession of identical terms, to wit the movable in successive positions. It is always the same movable, but in the synthesis, the images of it that memory calls earlier interpenetrate with the actual image; the synthesis, the interpenetration, is motion. Motion is real, and absolute; it is subjective, however, not objective. To represent motion is to objectify it. That is what Zeno did, and what everyone must do for practical purposes. But Zeno’s purpose was speculative, and that, Professor Bergson thinks, is fatally different. When you objectify motion you deny it, for its essence is subjective. Strictly speaking, Zeno was right in finding motion unthinkable; he was wrong only in supposing that what is unthinkable is ipso facto impossible.
Evidently, the ego has these two aspects. The ego touches the external world; and its sensations, though fused in each other, retain something of the reciprocal externality which objectively characterizes their causes. Now, in dreaming, the ego does not touch the external world, and, in dreaming, time is not homogeneous; we do not measure time, in dreams, but only feel it. For sleep retards the play of organic functions and modifies the surface of communication between the ego and external things. But we need not sleep, to be thus withdrawn from environment. As I compose this train of thought, the hour strikes. When I notice the striking, I know some strokes have sounded which I did not notice. I know even their number, four. I know it by filling out the “melody,” as it were, of which I am now conscious. I found the “four” in a way that was not counting, at all. The number of strokes has its quality, and anything but four fails to suit, differs in quality. A counted four and a felt four are absolutely different forms of multiplicity, and each is multiplicity. Under the ego of clearly-defined and countable states is the real ego which it symbolizes, in which succession implies fusion and organization. The states of this real ego language cannot seize, for that were to objectify it and fix its mobility. In giving these states the form of those of the symbolic ego, language makes them fall into the common domain of space, where they straightway become common and impersonal. This common and impersonal ego is the social and practical ego; this is the ego that uses language.
To language is due the illusion that qualities are permanent. But objects change by mere familiarity. We dislike, in manhood, smells and tastes which we call the same as those we liked in childhood. But they are not the same. It is only their causes that remain the same. The interpenetrating elements of conscious states are already deformed the moment a numerical multiplicity is discovered in the confused mass. Just now it had a subtle and unique coloration borrowed from its organization in developing life; here it is decolored and ready to receive a name.
This is the error of the associationistic school. Psychology cannot reason concerning facts being accomplished, as it may concerning accomplished facts. The accomplishing of a fact can in no wise enter into discourse. It is unthinkable in precisely the same way as motion; or rather, it is the same case. Psychology cannot present the living ego as an association of terms mutually distinct and juxtaposited in a homogeneous medium.[108] And association is just conceptualism applied to psychology. Its problems of personality have to be absurdly stated, in order to be stated at all. The terms of such problems deny what the problem posits, merely by being terms or names; they name the unnamable and define the indefinable. The solution is to cease thinking spatially of that which is temporal, to take the other attitude.[109] Or, the author says here, using merely a different phrase, the solution is to substitute the real and concrete ego for its symbolic representation.
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This second chapter of Time and Free Will undertakes to show that the successiveness of conscious states makes them uncountable. Simultaneity is indispensable to distinctness, and so to number. One can count the spatialized symbols of conscious states because these are not successive, but simultaneous.
Psychic multiplicity is non-numerical in the same sense and for the same reason that psychic intensity is non-quantitative, namely that it is pure heterogeneity and temporality. In the foregoing report, I have sometimes mitigated the baldness of the paradox as it is stated by Bergson, by substituting the term “variousness” for “multiplicity,” in speaking of psychic facts. After all, it was a thankless subterfuge—an impertinence, perhaps, since Bergson himself is frank enough to insist that psychic multiplicity is as genuine multiplicity as the spatial and material sort. The difference is that the former is indistinct and the latter distinct. But this difference is abysmal—indeed, it is absolute. All the power of Bergson’s forceful style is concentrated on it. The point is turned and re-turned in every variety of expression. At the same time, the common multiplicity belonging in both conceptions is emphasized as much as their difference. The thesis thus reduces to this, that two varieties of the same genus are “absolutely different;” for we are explicitly advised, on one hand, that there is a multiplicity which is distinct, and a multiplicity which is indistinct; each is multiplicity. And, on the other hand, one is numerical and the other “has no analogy with number.”
In view of the superior qualities of the mind that is guilty of this unreasonableness, the conviction of sincerity which it carries tortures the conscientious critic. One cannot approve of the intolerant scorn of a certain book, in which Bergson’s arguments are vilified as vain display, mere word-play; but patience is overtaxed in finding one’s way through the plausibility of this chapter. The thesis, certainly, may be dismissed from any consideration whatever. Because of it, one knows in advance, beyond peradventure, that there is no validity in any argument in its defense. Yet, in spite of all, the chapter challenges study; and thorough study of it cannot fail to put the truth in clearer light, just because its error is so plausible.
Counting is synthesis, the argument goes; but a synthesized succession is not a succession, it is a simultaneity. And simultaneity presupposes spatial determination in the coexistent elements. From Bergson’s point of view, it is a radical error, however universal an error, to regard the relation of simultaneity as a temporal determination. In fact, there is no such thing as a temporal determination; and every determination, for Bergson, not only is not temporal, but is spatial. Like the argument about non-quantitative intensity, this argument for non-plural multiplicity (save the mark!) turns on the equation of homogeneity with space. But the present argument involves its own peculiar fallacy, as well, namely the fallacy which Professor Perry describes[110] as confusion of a relation symbolized with the relation between symbols. “It is commonly supposed,” Perry writes, “that when a complex is represented by a formula, the elements of the complex must have the same relation as that which subsists between the parts of the formula; whereas, as a matter of fact, the formula as a whole represents or describes a complex other than itself. If I describe a as ‘to the right of b,’ does any difficulty arise because in my formula a is to the left of b? If I speak of a as greater than b, am I to assume that because my symbols are outside one another that a and b must be outside one another? Such a supposition would imply a most naïve acceptance of that very ‘copy theory’ of knowledge which pragmatism has so severely condemned. And yet such a supposition seems everywhere to underlie the anti-intellectualist’s polemic. The intellect is described as substituting for the interpenetration of the real terms [in an “indistinct” psychic multiplicity] the juxtaposition of their symbols; as though analysis discovered terms, and then conferred relations of its own ... Terms are found in relation, and may be thus described without any more artificiality, without any more imposing of the forms of the mind on its subject-matter, than is involved in the bare mention of a single term.
“... one may mean continuity despite the fact that the symbols and words are discrete. The word ‘blue’ may mean blue, although the word is not blue. Similarly, continuity may be an arrangement meant by a discontinuous arrangement of words and symbols.”