If we cannot conceptualize our psychic facts, we cannot think them, then—the meaning is the same. But if we say that anything (which we name and, in the saying, define and think) is unnamable, indefinable and cannot be thought, we contradict ourselves. The doctrine, if true, must mean something that is not a self-contradiction. Does it mean that what we name and discourse about is only the spatialized symbol of the psychic fact? There can be little doubt. I think, that this is Bergson’s meaning; but then the psychic fact is of such a nature as to be symbolized; and the distinction between a symbol and a name, by virtue of which a thing which can be symbolized may not be namable, requires explanation.
[110] Present Philosophical Tendencies, pp. 232–4.
[111] Pp. 42, 43. Cf. also below, p. 93.
[112] Op. cit., p. 128.
[113] Time and Free Will, p. 98.
[114] Time and Free Will, p. 113.
[115] Cf. above, p. 58.
[116] In order to give any meaning to the term “compenetrating” or “interpenetration” (which I take to be mutually equivalent, in Bergson’s use), I am compelled to interpret them as synonymous with the “compactness” of a continuum—as synonymous. In fact, with “continuity.” Bergson does not make clear how these terms can mean anything else (cf. below, p. 101.)
[117] Bergson himself, of course, is perfectly aware—in other connections—of the continuity of space!
[118] Creative Evolution, p. 1.