At the same time there is no getting away from the fact that this changing fact lends itself to classification and that explanations in terms of abstractions really do apply to it most successfully. We are therefore faced with the necessity of finding some way of accounting for this, other than by assuming that the facts which we know directly consist of qualities which recur over and over again.
CHAPTER III
MATTER AND MEMORY
We have seen that, according to the theory of change which is fundamental for Bergson’s philosophy, the changing fact which we know directly is described as a process of becoming which does not contain parts nor admit of repetitions. On the other hand this changing fact certainly does lend itself to analysis and classification and explanation and, at first sight at any rate, it is natural to suppose that whatever can be classified and explained must consist of qualities, that is distinct parts which can be repeated on different occasions. The problem for Bergson, if he is to establish his theory of change, is to show that the fact that a changing process can be analysed and classified does not necessarily imply that such a process must consist of distinct qualities which can be repeated. Bergson’s theory of the relation of matter to memory suggests a possible solution of this problem as to how it is possible to analyse and so apply general laws to and explain duration: it becomes necessary, therefore, to give some account of this theory.
Like all other descriptions and explanations, such an account must, of course, be expressed in terms of abstractions, and so is liable to be misunderstood unless the false implications of these abstractions are allowed for and discounted.
According to Bergson the only actual reality is the changing fact itself, everything else is abstraction: this reality however is not confined to the fragment called “our present experience” which is in the full focus of consciousness and is all that we usually suppose ourselves to know directly; it includes besides everything that we are in a sense aware of but do not pay attention to, together with our whole past: for Bergson, in fact, reality coincides with the field of virtual knowledge, anything short of this whole field is an abstraction and so falsified. Even to say “we know this fact” is unsatisfactory as implying ourselves and the fact as distinct things united by an external relation of knowing: to say “the fact is different from the abstraction by which it is explained” similarly implies logically distinct terms in an external relation of difference, and so on. If Bergson is right in claiming that the actual fact is non-logical then obviously all attempts to describe it, since they must be expressed in terms of abstractions, will teem with false implications which must be discounted if the description is to convey the meaning intended.
Bergson’s claim is that if we allow ourselves to attend to the changing fact with which we are actually acquainted we are driven to a theory of reality different from the theory of things and relations accepted by common sense. The two abstractions by means of which he attempts to express this new theory are matter and memory. In the actual fact Bergson would hold that both these notions are combined by synthesis in such a way as no longer to be distinct, or rather, for this implies that they started distinct and then became merged, it would perhaps be better to say that these two notions are abstractions from two tendencies which are present in the actual fact. In the actual fact they combine and, as it were, counteract one another and the result is something different from either taken alone, but when we abstract them we release them from each other’s modifying influence and the result is an exaggeration of one or other tendency which does not really represent anything which actually occurs but can be used, in combination with the contrary exaggeration, to explain the actual fact which may be described as being like what would result from a combination of these two abstractions.
We will take matter first.
Matter, for Bergson, is an exaggeration of the tendency in reality, (that is in the actual changing fact directly known) towards logical distinctness, what he calls “spatiality.” His use of the word “matter” in this sense is again, perhaps, like his use of the word “space,” rather misleading. Actual reality, according to him, is never purely material, the only purely material things are abstractions, and these are not real at all but simply fictions. Bergson really means the same thing by “matter” as by “space” and that is simply mutual distinctness of parts and externality of relations, in a word logical complexity. Matter, according to this definition of the word, has no duration and so cannot last through any period of time or change: it simply is in the present, it does not endure but is perpetually destroyed and recreated.
The complementary exaggeration which, taken together with matter, completes Berg-son’s explanation of reality, is memory. Just as matter is absolute logical complexity memory is absolute creative synthesis. Together they constitute the hybrid notion of creative duration whose “parts” interpenetrate which, according to Bergson, comes nearest to giving a satisfactory description of the actual fact directly known which is, for him, the whole reality.
The best way to accustom one’s mind to these two complementary exaggerations, matter and memory, and to see in more detail the use that Bergson makes of them in explaining the actual facts, will be to examine his theory of sensible perception, since it is just in the act of sensible perception that memory comes in contact with matter.