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 assimilate 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 assimilating the leading facts; we must accumulate and melt them down into such an enormous mass 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 passage ("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 analysis 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 Institute", 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 homogeneous space, 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 homogeneous space 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 space.) 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.)