The more we shake ourselves free from the common sense and scientific bias towards substituting explanations for actual facts the more clearly we see that this continuous process of changing is the very essence of what we know directly, and the more we realize how unlike such a continuous process is to any series of stages in relation of succession.
The unsatisfactoriness of such descriptions is no new discovery: the logical difficulties connected with the attempt to describe change in terms of series of successive things or events have been familiar since the time when Zeno invented the famous dilemma of Achilles’ race with the tortoise. Mathematicians have been in the habit of telling us that these difficulties depend simply on the fact that we imagine the series of positions at which Achilles and the tortoise find themselves from moment to moment as finite: the device of the infinite series, they say, satisfies all the requirements needed for representing change and solves all the logical difficulties which arise from it. Bergson’s difficulties, however, cannot be solved in this way for they are not based upon the discovery of logical absurdities but upon the discrepancy between the description and the fact. What he maintains is that the description of change in terms of an infinite series of stages leaves out the change altogether. Zeno’s logical dilemma as to how Achilles could ever catch up with the tortoise provided the tortoise was given a start, however small, may be countered by the ingenuity of the mathematicians’ infinite series. Bergson’s difficulty turns on a question of fact, not of logic, and cannot be so met. He solves the problem simply by denying that Achilles or the tortoise ever are at particular points at particular moments. Such a description of change, he says, leaves out the real changing. And the introduction of the notion of an infinite series only makes the matter worse. For stages do not change, and so, if there is to be any change, it must, presumably, take place in between one stage and the next. But in between any two stages of an infinite series there are supposed to be an infinite number of other stages, so that to any given stage there is no next stage. Change, therefore, cannot take place between one stage and the next one, there being no next one, and since it is equally impossible that it should take place at any one of the stages themselves it follows that an infinite series of stages leaves out change altogether. Similarly a series of instants before and after one another leaves out of time just the element of passage, becoming, which is its essence.
The truth, Bergson says, is that with fixed stages, no matter how many you take, and no matter in what relation you arrange them, you cannot reproduce the change and time which actually occur as facts directly known. If Achilles or the tortoise are ever at different places at different moments then neither of them really moves at all. Change and time, as represented by abstractions, according to the intellectual method, consist of stages in relations of succession, but the fact does not happen by stages and is not held together by relations: if we compare the representation with the fact we find that they differ profoundly in their form.
According to Bergson this difference in form is one of the two essential respects in which abstractions fail to represent facts and in which, consequently, we are led into error as to the facts if we fail to distinguish them from the abstractions in terms of which we explain them, or take for granted that they correspond exactly with our explanations.
Bergson gives the name “space” to the form which belongs to abstractions but not to actual facts: abstractions, he says, are “spatial,” but facts are not. This use of the word “space” is peculiar and perhaps unfortunate. Even as it is ordinarily used the word “space” is ambiguous, it may mean either the pure space with which higher mathematics is concerned, or the public space which contains the common sense things and objects and their qualities which make up the every day world, or the private space of sensible perception. When Bergson speaks of “space,” however, he does not mean either pure or public or private space, he means an a priori form imposed by intellectual activity upon its object. This resembles Kant’s use of the word, but Bergson’s “space” is not, like Kant’s, the a priori form of sense acquaintance, but of thought, in other words logical form. For Bergson “spatial” means “logical,” and since so much misunderstanding seems to have been caused by his using the word “space” in this peculiar sense we shall perhaps do better in what follows to use the word “logical” instead.
Now whatever is logical is characterised by consisting of distinct, mutually exclusive terms in external relations: all schemes, for instance, and diagrams, such as a series of dots one above the other, or one below the other, or one behind, or in front of the other, or a series of instants one after the other, or a series of numbers, or again any arrangements of things or qualities according to their relations, such as colours or sounds arranged according to their resemblance or difference; in all these each dot or instant or number or colour-shade or note, is quite distinct from all the others, and the relations which join it to the others and give it its position in the whole series are external to it in the sense that if you changed its position or included it in quite another series it would nevertheless still be just the same dot or instant or number or quality as before.
These two logical characteristics of mutual distinction of terms and externality of relations certainly do belong to the abstractions employed in explanations, and we commonly suppose that they belong to everything else besides. Bergson, however, believes that these logical characteristics really only belong to abstractions and are not discovered in facts but are imposed upon them by our intellectual bias, in the sense that we take it for granted that the facts which we know directly must have the same form as the abstractions which serve to explain them.
This habit of taking it for granted that not only our abstractions but also the actual facts have the logical characteristics of consisting of mutually exclusive terms joined by external relations is, according to Bergson, one of the two serious respects in which our intellectual bias distorts our direct acquaintance with actual fact. He points out, as we saw, that the facts with which we are acquainted are in constant process of changing, and that, when we examine carefully what is actually going on, we discover that this change does not really form a series of distinct qualities or percepts or states, united by external relations of time, resemblance, difference, and so on, but a continuous process which has what we might call a qualitative flavour but in which distinct qualities, states and so on do not occur.
“Considered in themselves” he says, “profound states of consciousness have no relation to quantity: they are mingled in such a way that it is impossible to say whether they are one or many, or indeed to examine them from that point of view without distorting them.” Now, strictly speaking, of course, these “states of consciousness” ought not to be referred to in the plural, it is, in fact, a contradiction to speak of “states of consciousness” having “no relation to quantity”: a plurality must always form some quantity. This contradiction is the natural consequence of attempting to put what is non-logical into words. It would have been just as bad to have referred to “the state of consciousness,” in the singular, while at the same time insisting that it contained resemblance and difference. The fact is that plurality and unity, like distinct terms and external relations, apply only to whatever has logical form, and Bergson’s whole point is to deny that the fact (or facts) directly known have this form, and so that any of these notions apply to it (or them.)
This, of course, raises difficulties when we try to describe the facts in words, since words stand for abstractions and carry their logical implications. All descriptions in words of what is non-logical are bound to be a mass of contradictions, for, having applied any word it is necessary immediately to guard against its logical implications by adding another which contradicts them. Thus we say our experience is of facts, and must then hastily add that nevertheless they are not plural, and we must further qualify this statement by adding that neither are they singular. A description of what is non-logical can only convey its meaning if we discount all the logical implications of the words which, for want of a better medium of expression, we are driven to employ. Our whole intellectual bias urges us towards describing everything that comes within our experience, even if the description is only for our own private benefit Unfortunately the language in which these descriptions have to be expressed is so full of logical implications that, unless we are constantly on our guard, we are liable to be carried away by them, and then, at once, we lose contact with the actual facts.