H. BERGSON.
February, 1888.
[CONTENTS]
CHAPTER I
THE INTENSITY OF PSYCHIC STATES
Quantitative differences applicable to magnitudes but not to intensities, [1]-[4]; Attempt to estimate intensities by objective causes or atomic movements, [4]-[7]; Different kinds of intensities, [7]; Deep-seated psychic states: desire, [8], hope, [9], joy and sorrow, [10]; Aesthetic feelings, [11]-[18]: grace, [12], beauty, [14]-[18], music, poetry, art, [15]-[18]; Moral feelings, pity, [19]; Conscious states involving physical symptoms, [20]: muscular effort, [21]-[26], attention and muscular tension, [27]-[28]; Violent emotions, 29-[31]: rage, [29], fear, [30]; Affective sensations, [32]-[39]: pleasure and pain, [33]-[39], disgust, [36]; Representative sensations, [39]-[60]: and external causes, [42], sensation of sound, [43], intensity, pitch and muscular effort, [45]-[46], sensations of heat and cold, [46]-[47], sensations of pressure and weight, [47]-[50], sensation of light, [50]-[60], photometric experiments, [52]-[60], Delbœuf's experiments, [56]-[60]; Psychophysics, [60]-[72]: Weber and Fechner, [61]-[65], Delbœuf, [67]-[70], the mistake of regarding sensations as magnitudes, [70]-[72]; Intensity in (1) representative, (2) affective states, intensity and multiplicity, [72]-[74].
CHAPTER II
THE MULTIPLICITY OF CONSCIOUS STATES
THE IDEA OF DURATION
Number and its units, [75]-[77], number and accompanying intuition of space, [78]-[85]; Two kinds of multiplicity, of material objects and conscious states, [85]-[87], impenetrability of matter, [88]-[89], homogeneous time and pure duration, [90]-[91]; Space and its contents, [92], empirical theories of space, [93]-[94], intuition of empty homogeneous medium peculiar to man, [95]-[97], time as homogeneous medium reducible to space, [98]-[99]; Duration, succession and space, [100]-[104], pure duration, [105]-[106]; Is duration measurable? [107]-[110]; Is motion measurable? [111]-[112]; Paradox of the Eleatics, [113]-[115]; Duration and simultaneity, [115]-[116]; Velocity and simultaneity, [117]-[119]; Space alone homogeneous, duration and succession belong to conscious mind, [120]-[121]; Two kinds of multiplicity, qualitative and quantitative, [121]-[123], superficial psychic states invested with discontinuity of their external causes, [124]-[126], these eliminated, real duration is felt as a quality, [127]-[128]; The two aspects of the self, on the surface well-defined conscious states, deeper down states which interpenetrate and form organic whole, [129]-[139], solidifying influence of language on sensation, [129]-[132], analysis distorts the feelings, [132]-[134], deeper conscious states forming a part of ourselves, [134]-[136]; Problems soluble only by recourse to the concrete and living self, [137]-[139].
CHAPTER III
THE ORGANIZATION OF CONSCIOUS STATES
FREE WILL
Dynamism and mechanism, [140]-[142]; Two kinds of determinism, [142]; Physical determinism, [143]-[155]: and molecular theory of matter, [143], and conservation of energy, [144], if conservation universal, physiological and nervous phenomena necessitated, but perhaps not conscious states, [145]-[148], but is principle of conversation universal? [149], it may not apply to living beings and conscious states, [150]-[154], idea of its universality depends on confusion between concrete duration and abstract time, [154]-[155]; Psychological determinism, [155]-[163]: implies associationist conception of mind, [155]-[158], this involves defective conception of self, [159]-[163]; The free act: freedom as expressing the fundamental self, [165]-[170]; Real duration and contingency, [172]-[182]: could our act have been different? [172]-[175], geometrical representation of process of coming to a decision, [175]-[178], the fallacies to which it leads determinists and libertarians, [179]-[183]; Real duration and prediction, [183]-[198]: conditions of Paul's prediction of Peter's action (1) being Peter (2) knowing already his final act, [184]-[189], the three fallacies involved, [190]-[192], astronomical prediction depends on hypothetical acceleration of movements, [193]-[195], duration cannot be thus accelerated, [196]-[198]; Real duration and causality, [199]-[221]: the law "same antecedents, same consequents," [199]-[201], causality as regular succession, [202]-[203], causality as prefiguring: two kinds (1) prefiguring as mathematical pre-existence; implies non-duration, but we endure and therefore may be free, [204]-[210], (2) prefiguring as having idea of future act to be realized by effort; does not involve determinism, [211]-[214], determinism results from confusing these two senses, [215]-[218]; Freedom real but indefinable, [219]-[221].
CONCLUSION
States of self perceived through forms borrowed from external world, [223]; Intensity as quality, [225]; Duration as qualitative multiplicity, [226]; No duration in the external world, [227]; Extensity and duration must be separated, [229]; Only the fundamental self free, [231]; Kant's mistaken idea of time as homogeneous, [232], hence he put the self which is free outside both space and time, [233]; Duration is heterogeneous, relation of psychic state to act is unique, and act is free, [235]-[240].