A New Philosophy

by Edouard Le Roy

On the contrary, we must represent the state of consciousness to ourselves as variable according to the whole of which it forms a part. Here and there, although it always bears the same name, it is no longer the same thing. "The more the ego becomes itself again, the more also do its states of consciousness, instead of being in juxtaposition, penetrate one another, blend with one another, and tinge one another with the colouring of all the rest. Thus each of us has his manner of loving or hating, and this love or hate reflect our entire personality." ("Essay on the Immediate Data", pages 125-126.)

At bottom Mr Bergson is bringing forward the necessity, in the case before us, of substituting a new notion of continuous qualitative heterogeneity for the old notion of numerical and spatial continuity. Above all, he is emphasising the still more imperious necessity of regarding each state as a phase in duration; and we are here touching on his principal and leading intuition, the intuition of real duration.

Historically this was Mr Bergson's starting-point and the origin of his thought: a criticism of time under the form in which common-sense imagines it, in which science employs it. He was the first to notice the fact that scientific time has no "duration." Our equations really express only static relations between simultaneous phenomena; even the differential quotients they may contain in reality mark nothing but present tendencies; no change would take place in our calculations if the time were given in advance, instantaneously fulfilled, like a linear whole of points in numerical order, with no more genuine duration than that contained in the numerical succession. Even in astronomy there is less anticipation than judgment of constancy and stability, the phenomena being almost strictly periodic, while the hazard of prediction bears only upon the minute divergence between the actual phenomenon and the exact period attributed to it. Notice under what figure common-sense imagines time: as an inert receptacle, a homogeneous milieu, neutral and indifferent; in fact, a kind of space.

The scholar makes use of a like image; for he defines time by its measurement, and all measurement implies interpretation in space. For the scholar the hour is not an interval, but a coincidence, an instantaneous arrangement, and time is resolved into a dust of fixities, as in those pneumatic clocks in which the hand moves forward in jerks, marking nothing but a sequence of pauses.

Such symbols are sufficient, at least for a first approximation, when it is only a question of matter, the mechanism of which, strictly considered, contains nothing "durable." But in biology and psychology quite different characteristics become essential; age and memory, heterogeneity of musical phases, irreversible rhythm "which cannot be lengthened or shortened at will." ("Creative Evolution", page 10.)

Then it is that the return of time becomes necessary to duration. How are we to describe this duration? It is a melodious evolution of moments, each of which contains the resonance of those preceding and announces the one which is going to follow; it is a process of enriching which never ceases, and a perpetual appearance of novelty; it is an indivisible, qualitative, and organic becoming, foreign to space, refractory to number.

Summon the image of a stream of consciousness passing through the continuity of the spectrum, and becoming tinged successively with each of its shades. Or rather imagine a symphony having feeling of itself, and creating itself; that is how we should conceive duration.

That duration thus conceived is really the basis of ourselves Mr Bergson proves by a thousand examples, and by a marvellous employment of the introspective method which he has helped to make so popular. We cannot quote these admirable analyses here. A single one will serve as model, specially selected as referring to one of the most ordinary moments of our life, to show plainly that the perception of real duration always accompanies us in secret.

"At the moment when I write these lines a clock near me is striking the hour; but my distracted ear is only aware of it after several strokes have already sounded; that is, I have not counted them. And yet an effort of introspective attention enables me to total the four strokes already struck and add them to those which I hear. If I then withdraw into myself and carefully question myself about what has just happened, I become aware that the first four sounds had struck my ear and even moved my consciousness, but that the sensations produced by each of them, instead of following in juxtaposition, had blended into one another in such a way as to endow the whole with a peculiar aspect and make of it a kind of musical phrase. In order to estimate in retrospect the number of strokes which have sounded, I attempted to reconstitute this phrase in thought: my imagination struck one, then two, then three, and so long as it had not reached the exact number four, my sensibility, on being questioned, replied that the total effect differed in quality. It had therefore noted the succession of the four strokes in a way of its own, but quite otherwise than by addition, and without bringing in the image of a juxtaposition of distinct terms. In fact, the number of strokes struck was perceived as quality, not as quantity: duration is thus presented to immediate consciousness, and preserves this form so long as it does not give place to a symbolical representation drawn from space." ("Essay on the Immediate Data", pages 95-96.)

And now are we to believe that return to the feeling of real duration consists in letting ourselves go, and allowing ourselves an idle relaxation in dream or dissolution in sensation, "as a shepherd dozing watches the water flow"? Or are we even to believe, as has been maintained, that the intuition of duration reduces "to the spasm of delight of the mollusc basking in the sun"? This is a complete mistake! We should fall back into the misconceptions which I was pointing out in connection with immediacy in general; we should be forgetting that there are several rhythms of duration, as there are several kinds of consciousness; and finally, we should be misunderstanding the character of a creative invention perpetually renewed, which is that of our inner life.