An Introduction To Metaphysics

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Episode Transcript

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Translator's preface of an Introduction to Metaphysics. This is a libriovox recording. All
libribox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
please visit LibriVox dot org. AnIntroduction to Metaphysics by Henri Bergson, translated

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by T. E. Holme,read by Mark Cawley translator's preface. This
celebrated essay was first published in theReview de Metaphysique a DeMarle in January nineteen
o three. It appeared then aftertime and free Will, and matter and
memory, and before creative evolution,And while containing ideas set forth in the

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first two of these works, itannounces some of those which were afterwards developed
in the last. Though this bookcan in no sense be regarded as an
epito me of the others, ityet forms the best introduction to them.
Monsieur Edward Leroy, in his latelypublished book on Monsieur Bergson's philosophy, speaks

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of this marvelously suggestive study, whichconstitutes the best preface to the books themselves.
It has, however, more importancethan a simple introduction would have,
for in it, Monsieur Bergson explainsat greater length and in greater detail than
in the other books, exactly whathe means to convey by the word intuition.

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The intuitive method is treated independently andnot as elsewhere in his writings,
incidentally in its applications to particular problems. For this reason, every writer who
has attempted to give a complete expositionof Monsieur Berston's philosophy has been obliged to
quote this essay at length, andit is indispensable therefore to the full understanding

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of its author's position. Translates intoGerman, Italian, Hungarian, Polish,
Swedish, and Russian have lately appeared, but the French original is at present
out of print. This translation hashad the great advantage of being revised in
proof by the author. I haveto thank him for many alternative renderings,

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and also for a few slight alterationsin the text which he thought would make
his meaning clearer. T. E. Holme, Saint John's College, Cambridge,
end of translator's preface, Part oneof an Introduction to Metaphysics. This

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is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVoxrecordings are in the public domain. For
more information or to volunteer, pleasevisit LibriVox dot org. An Introduction to
Metaphysics by Henri Bergsen, translated byT. E. Hulm, Part one.
A comparison of the definitions of metaphysicsand the various conceptions of the absolute,

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leads to the discovery that philosophers,in spite of their apparent divergencies,
agree in distinguishing two profoundly different waysof knowing a thing. The first implies
that we move round the object,the second that we enter into it.
The first depends on the point ofview at which we are placed and on
the symbols by which we express ourselves. The second neither depends on a point

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of view nor relies on any symbol. The first kind of knowledge may be
said to stop at the relative thesecond. In those cases where it is
possible to attain the absolute, consider, for example, the movement of an
object in space. My perception ofthe motion will vary with the point of

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view moving our stationary from which Iobserve it. My expression of it will
vary with the systems of axes orthe points of reference to which I relate
it, that is, with thesymbols by which I translate it. For
this double reason I call such motionrelative. In the one case, as
in the other, I am placedoutside the object itself. But when I

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speak of an absolute movement, Iam attributing to the moving object an interior
and so to speak, states ofmind. I also imply that I am
in sympathy with those states, andthat I insert myself in them by an
effort of imagination. Then, accordingas the object is moving or stationary,
according as it adopts one movement oranother, what I experience will vary,

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and what I experience will depend.Neither on the point of view I may
take up in regard to the object, since I am inside the object itself,
nor on the symbols by which Imay translate the motion, since I
have rejected all translations in order topossess the original. In short, I
shall know no longer grasp the movementfrom without remaining where I am, but

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from where it is from within,as it is in itself. I shall
possess an absolute. Consider again,a character whose adventures are related to me
in a novel. The author maymultiply the traits of his hero's character,
may make him speak and act asmuch as he pleases, But all this

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can never be equivalent to the simpleand indivisible feeling which I should experience.
If I were able, for aninstant to identify myself with the person of
the hero himself. Out of thatindivisible feeling, as from a spring,
all the words, gestures, andactions of the man would appear to me
to flow naturally. They would nolonger be accidents which added to the idea

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I had already formed of the charactercontinually enriched that idea without ever completing it.
The character would be given to meall at once in its entirety,
and the thousand instances which manifest it, instead of adding themselves to the idea
and so enriching it, would seemto me, on the contrary, to

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detach themselves from it, without however, exhausting it or impoverishing its essence.
All the things I am told aboutthe man provide me with so many points
of view from which I can observehim, all the traits which describe him,
and which can make him known tome only by so many comparisons with
persons or things I know already aresigns by which he has expressed more or

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less symbolically. Symbols and points ofview therefore place me outside him. They
give me only what he has incommon with others, and not what belongs
to him and to him alone,But that which is properly himself, that
which constitutes his essence, cannot beperceived from without being internal by definition,

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nor be expressed by symbols, beingincommensurable with anything, elsecription, history,
and analysis leave me here in therelative coincidence with the person himself would alone
give me the absolute. It isin this sense, and in this sense
only, that absolute is synonymous withperfection. Were all the photographs of a

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town taken from all possible points ofview, to go on indefinitely completing one
another, they would never be equivalentto the solid town in which we walk
about. Were all the translations ofa poem into all possible languages to add
together their various shades of meaning,and correcting each other by a kind of
mutual retouching, to give a moreand more faithful image of the poem they

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translate, they would yet never succeedin rendering the inner meaning of the original.
A representation taken from a certain pointof view, a translation made with
certain symbols, will always remain imperfectin comparison with the object of which a
view has been taken, or whichthe symbol seek to express. But the
absolute, which is the object andnot its representation, the original and not

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its translation, is perfect by beingperfectly what it is. It is doubtless
for this reason that the absolute hasoften been identified with the infinite. Suppose
that I wished to communicate to someonewho did not know Greek the extraordinarily simple
impression that a passage in Homer makesupon me. I should first give a

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translation of the lines. I shouldthen comment on my translation, and then
develop the commentary. In this way, by piling up explanation on explanation,
I might approach nearer and nearer towhat I wanted to express, but I
should never quite reach it. Whenyou raise your arm, you accomplish a
movement of which you have from withina simple perception. But for me watching

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it from the outside, your armpasses through one point, then through another.
Between these two there will be stillother points, so that if I
began to count, the operation wouldgo on forever. Viewed from the inside,
then and absolute is a simple thing, but looked at from the outside,
that is to say, relatively toother things, it becomes in relation

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to these signs which express it thegold coin for which we never seem able
to finish giving small change. Now, that which lends itself at the same
time both to an indivisible apprehension andto an inexhaustible enumeration is, by the
very definition of the word an infinite. It follows from this that an absolute

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could only be given in an intuition, whilst everything else falls within the province
of analysis. By intuition is meantthe kind of intellectual sympathy by which one
places one's self within an object inorder to coincide with what is unique in
it and consequently inexpressible. Analysis,on the contrary, is the operation which

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reduces the object to elements already known, that is, to elements common both
to it and other objects. Toanalyze, therefore is to express a thing
as a function of something other thanitself. All analysis is thus a translation,
a development into symbols, a representationtaken from successive points of view,

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from which we note as many resemblancesas possible between the new object which we
are studying and others which we believewe know already in its eternally unsatisfied desire
to embrace the object around which itis compelled to turn. Analysis multiplies without
end the number of its points ofview in order to complete its always incomplete

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representation, and ceaselessly varies its symbolsthat it may perfect the always imperfect translation.
It goes on therefore to infinity.But intuition, if into tuition is
possible, is a simple act.Now it is easy to see that the
ordinary function of positive science is analysis. Positive science works, then, above

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all, with symbols, even themost concrete of the natural sciences. Those
concerned with life confine themselves to thevisible form of living beings, their organs
and anatomical elements. They make comparisonsbetween these forms. They reduce the more
complex to the more simple. Inshort, they study the workings of life

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in what is, so to speak, only its visual symbol. If there
exists any means of possessing a realityabsolutely, instead of knowing it relatively,
of placing one's self within it,instead of looking at it from outside points
of view, of having the intuition, instead of making the analysis in short,

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of seizing it without any expression,translation or symbolic representation, metaphil physics
is that means Metaphysics, then,is the science which claims to dispense with
symbols. End of Part one,Part two of an Introduction to metaphysics.

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This is a LibriVox recording. AllLibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer,please visit LibriVox dot org. An Introduction
to Metaphysics by Henri Bergsen, translatedby T. E. Holm. Part
two. There is one reality atleast which we all seize from within by

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intuition and not by simple analysis.It is our own personality, in its
flowing through time, our self whichendures. We may sympathize intellectually with nothing
else, but we certainly sympathize withour own selves. When I direct my
attention inward to contemplate my own self, supposed for the moment to be inactive,

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I perceive at first as a crustsolidified on the surface all the perceptions
which come to it from the materialworld. These perceptions are clear, distinct,
juxtaposed or juxtaposable one with another.They tend to group themselves into objects.
Next, I notice the memories whichmore or less adhere to these perceptions

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and which serve to interpret them.These memories have been detached, as it
were, from the depth of mypersonality, drawn to the surface by the
perceptions which resemble them. They reston the surface of my mind, without
being absolutely myself. Lastly, Ifeel the stir of tendencies and motor habits,

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a crowd of virtual actions, moreor less firmly bound to these perceptions
and memories. All these clearly definedelements appear more distinct from me the more
distinct they are from each other.Radiating as they do from within outwards.
They form collectively the surface of asphere which tends to grow larger and lose

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itself in the exterior world. Butif I draw myself in from the periphery
towards the center, if I searchin the depth of my being that which
is most uniformly, most constantly,and most enduringly myself, I find an
altogether different thing. There is beneaththese sharply cut crystals and this frozen surface,

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a continuous flux which is not comparableto any flux I have ever seen.
There is a succession of states,each of which announces that which follows
and contains that which precedes it.They can properly speaking only be said to
form multiple states when I have alreadypassed them and turned back to observe their

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track. Whilst I was experiencing them, they were so solidly organized, so
profoundly animated, with a common life, that I could not have said where
any one of them finished, orwhere another commenced. In reality, no
one of them begins or ends,but I'll extend into each other. This
inner life may be compared to theunrolling of a coil, for there is

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no living being who does not feelhimself coming gradually to the end of his
role, and to live is togrow old. But it may just as
well be compared to a continual rollingup, like that of a thread on
a ball. For our past followsus, it swells incessantly with the present
that it picks up on its way. And consciousness means memory. But actually

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it is neither an unrolling nor arolling up. For these two similes evoke
the idea of lines and surfaces whoseparts are homogeneous and superimposable on one another.
Now there are no two identical momentsin the life of the same conscious
being. Take the simplest sensation,suppose it constant, absorb in it the

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entire personality. The consciousness which willaccompany this sensation cannot remain identical with itself
for two consecutive moments, because thesecond moment always contains, over and above
the first the memory that the firsthas bequeathed to it. A consciousness which
could experience two identical moments would bea consciousness without memory. It would die

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and be born again continually. Inwhat other way could one represent unconsciousness?
It would be better, then,to use as a comparison the myriad tinted
spectrum, with its insensible gradations leadingfrom one shade to another, a current
of feeling which passed along the spectrum, assuming in turn, the tint of

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each of its shades would experience aseries of gradual changes, each of which
would announce the one to follow,and would sum up those which preceded it.
Yet, even here, the successiveshades of the spectrum always remain external
one to another. They are juxtaposed. They occupy space. But pure duration,

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on the contrary, excludes all ideaof juxtaposition, reciprocal externality, and
extension. Let us, then,rather imagine an infinitely small elastic body contracted
if it were possible to a mathematicalpoint. Let this be drawn out gradually,
in such a manner that from thepoint comes a constantly lengthening line.

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Let us fix our attention not onthe line as a line, but on
the action by which it is traced. Let Us bear in mind that this
action, in spite of its duration, is indivisible if accomplished without stopping.
That if a stopping point is inserted, we have two actions instead of one.
That each of these separate actions isthen the indivisible operation of which we

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speak, and that it is notthe moving action itself which is divisible,
but rather the stationary line it leavesbehind it as its track in space.
Finally, let us free ourselves fromthe space which underlies the movement, in
order to consider only the movement itself, the act of tension or extension,

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in short, pure mobility. Weshall have this time or more faithful image
of the development of our self induration. However, even this image is
incomplete, and indeed every comparison willbe insufficient, because the unrolling of our
duration resembles in some of its aspectsthe unity of an advancing movement, and

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in others the multiplicity of expanding states. And clearly No metaphor can express one
of these two aspects without sacrificing theother. If I use the comparison of
the spectrum with its thousand shades,I have before me a thing already made,
whilst duration is continually in the making. If I think of an elastic

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which is being stress catch, orof a spring which is extended or relaxed,
I forget the richness of color characteristicof duration that is lived, to
see only the simple movement by whichconsciousness passes from one shade to another.
The inner life is all this atonce, variety of qualities, continuity of
progress, and unity of direction.It cannot be represented by images, but

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it is even less possible to representit by concepts, that is, by
abstract, general or simple ideas.It is true that no image can reproduce
exactly the original feeling I have ofthe flow of my own conscious life.
But it is not even necessary thatI should attempt to render it. If
a man is incapable of getting forhimself the intuition of the constitutive duration of

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his own being, nothing will evergive it to him concepts no more than
images. Here, the single aimof the philosophers should be to promote a
certain ac effort, which in mostmen is usually fettered by habits of mind
more useful to life. Now,the image has at least this advantage that
it keeps us in the concrete.No image can replace the intuition of duration.

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But many diverse images, borrowed frommany different orders of things, may,
by the convergence of their action,direct consciousness to the precise point where
there is a certain intuition to beseized. By choosing images as dissimilar as
possible, we shall prevent any oneof them from usurping the place of the
intuition it is intended to call up, since it would then be driven away

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at once by its rivals. Byproviding that, in spite of their differences
of aspect, they all require fromthe mind the same kind of attention,
and in some sort the same degreeof tension, we shall gradually accustom consciousness
to a particular and clearly defined disposition, that precisely which it must adopt in

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order to appear to itself as itreally is, without any veil. But
then consciousness must at least consent tomake the effort, for it will have
been shown nothing. It will simplyhave been placed in the attitude it must
take up in order to make thedesired effort, and so come by itself
to the intuition. Concepts, onthe contrary, especially if they are simple,

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have the disadvantage of being in realitysymbols substituted for the object they symbolize,
and demand no effort on our part. Examined closely, each of them,
it would be seen, retains onlythat part of the object which is
common to it and to others,and expresses still more than the image does
a comparison between the object and otherswhich resemble it. But as the comparison

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has made manifest a resemblance, asthe resemblance is a property of the object,
and as a property has every appearanceof being a part of the object
which possesses it, we easily persuadeourselves that by setting concept beside concept,
we are reconstructing the whole of theobject with its parts, thus obtaining,
so to speak, its intellectual equivalent. In this way, we believe that

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we can form a faithful representation ofduration by setting in line the concepts of
unity, multiplicity, continuity, finiteor infinite divisibility, et cetera. There
precisely is the illusion. There alsois the danger, just in so far
as abstract ideas can render service toanalysis, that is, to the scientific

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study of the object in its relationsto other objects, so far are they
incapable of replacing intuition, that is, the metaphysical investigation of what is essential
and unique in the object. Foron the one hand, these concepts laid
side by side never actually give usmore than an artificial reconstruction of the object,

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of which they can only symbolize certaingeneral and in a way impersonal aspects.
It is therefore useless to believe thatwith them we can see the reality
of which they present to us theshadow alone. And on the other hand,
besides the illusion, there is alsoa very serious danger, for the

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concept generalizes at the same time asit abstracts. The concept can only symbolize
a particular property by making it commonto an infinity of things. It therefore
always more or less deforms the propertyby the extension it gives to it.
Replaced in the metaphysical object to whichit belongs, a property coincides with the

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object, or at least molds itselfon it and adopts the same outline extracted
from the metaphysical object, and presentedin a concept, it grows indefinitely larger
and goes beyond the object itself,since henceforth it has to contain it along
with a number of other objects.Thus, the different concepts that we form

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of the properties of a thing inscriberound it so many circles, each much
too large, and none of themfitting it exactly. And yet in the
thing itself the properties coincided with thething, and coincided consequently with one another,
So that if we are bent onreconstructing the object with concepts, some

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artifice must be sought whereby this coincidenceof the object and its properties can be
brought about. For example, wemay choose one of the concepts and try
starting from it to get round tothe others. But we shall then soon
discover that according as we start fromone concept or another, the meeting and
combination of the concepts will take placein an altogether different way. According as

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we start, for example, fromunity or from multiplicity, we shall have
to conceive differently the multiple unity ofduration. Everything will depend on the weight
we attribute to this or that concept, and this way it will always be
arbitrary, since the concept extracted fromthe object has no weight, being only

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the shadow of a body. Inthis way, as many different systems will
spring up, as there are externalpoints of view from which the reality can
be examined, or larger circles inwhich it can be enclosed. Simple concepts
have then not only the inconvenience ofdividing the concrete unity of the object into

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so many symbolical expressions, They alsodivide philosophy into distinct schools, each of
which takes its seat, chooses itscounters, and carries on with the others
a game that will never end.Either. Metaphysics is only this play of
ideas or else. If it isa serious occupation of the mind, if
it is a science and not simplyan exercise, it must transcend concepts in

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order to reach intuition. Certainly,concepts are necessary to it, for all
the other sciences work as a rulewith concepts, and metaphysics cannot dispense with
the other sciences. But it isonly truly itself when it goes beyond the
concept, or at least when itfrees itself from rigid and ready made concepts,

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in order to create a kind verydifferent from those which we habitually use
I mean supple, mobile and almostfluid representations, always ready to mold themselves
on the fleeting forms of intuition.We shall return later to this important point.
Let it suffice us for the momentto have shown that our duration can

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be presented to us directly in anintuition, that it can be suggested to
us indirectly by images, but thatit can never if we can find the
word concept to its proper meaning beenclosed in a conceptual representation. Let us
try, for an instant to considerour duration as a multiplicity. It will

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then be necessary to add that theterms of this multiplicity, instead of being
distinct, as they are in anyother minde multiplicity, encroach on one another.
And that while we can, nodoubt, by an effort of imagination,
solidify duration once it has elapsed,divide it into juxtaposed portions, and
count all these portions, yet thisoperation is accomplished on the frozen memory of

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the duration, on the stationary tracewhich the mobility of duration leaves behind it,
and not on the duration itself.We must admit, therefore, that
if there is a multiplicity here,it bears no resemblance to any other multiplicity
we know. Shall we say then, that duration has unity. Doubtless,

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a continuity of elements which prolong themselvesinto one another participates in unity as much
as in multiplicity. But this moving, changing, colored, living unity has
hardly anything in common with the abstract, motionless and empty unity which the concept
of pure unity circumscribes. Shall weconclude from this that duration must be defined

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as unity and multiplicity at the sametime. But singularly enough, however much
I manipulate the two concepts, portionthem out, combine them differently, practice
on them the most subtle operations ofmental chemistry, I never obtain anything which
resembles the simple intuition that I haveof duration, While on the contrary,

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when I replace myself in duration byan effort of intuition, I immediately perceive
how it is unity, multiplicity,and many other things. Besides these different
concepts, then, are only somany standpoints from which we could consider duration
neither separated nor reunited. Have theymade us penetrate into it. We do

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penetrate into it, however, andthat can only be by an effort of
intuition. In this sense, aninner absolute knowledge of the duration of the
self, by the self is possible. But if metaphysics here demands and can
obtain an intuition, science has nonethe less need of an analysis. Now
it is a confusion between the functionof analysis and that of intuition, which

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gives birth to the discussions between theschools and the conflicts between systems. Psychology,
in fact, proceeds, like allthe other sciences, by analysis.
It resolves the self, which hasbeen given to it at first in a
simple intuition, into sensations, feelings, ideas, et cetera, which it

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studies separately. It substitutes, thenfor the self a series of elements which
form the facts of psychology. Butare these elements really parts? That is
the whole question, And it isbecause it has been evaded that the problem
of human personality has so often beenstated in insoluble terms. It is incontestable

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that every psychical state, simply becauseit belongs to a person, reflects the
whole of a personality. Refeeling,however simple it may be, contains virtually
within it the whole past and presentof the being experiencing it, and consequently
can only be separated and constituted intoa state by an effort of abstraction or

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of analysis. But it is noless incontestable that without this effort of abstraction
or analysis, there would be nopossible development of the science of psychology.
What, then, exactly, isthe operation by which a psychologist detaches a
mental state in order to erect itinto a more or less independent entity.

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He begins by neglecting that special coloringof the personality which cannot be expressed in
known and common terms. Then heendeavors to isolate in the person already thus
simplified, some aspect which lends itselfto an interesting inquiry. If he is
considering inclination, for example, hewill neglect the inexpressible shade which colors it,

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and which makes the inclination mine andnot yours. He will fix his
attention on the movement by which ourpersonality leans towards a certain object. He
will isolate this attitude, and itis this special aspect of the personality,
this snap shot of the mobility ofthe inner life, this diagram of concrete
inclination, that he will erect intoan independent fact. There is in this

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something very like what an artist passingthrough Paris does when he makes, for
example, a sketch of a towerof Notre Dame. The tower is inseparably
united to the building, which isin itself no less inseparably united to the
ground, to its surroundings, tothe whole of Paris, and so on.
It is first necessary to detach itfrom all these. Only one aspect

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of the whole is noted, thatformed by the tower of Notre Dame.
Moreover, the special form of thistower is due to the grouping of the
stones of which it is composed.But the artist does not concern himself with
these stones. He notes only thesilhouette of the tower. For the real
and internal organization of the thing.He substitutes then an external and schematic representation,

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so that on the whole his sketchcorresponds to an observation of the object
from a certain point of view,and to the choice of a certain means
of representation. But exactly the samething holds true of the operation by which
the psychologist extracts a single mental statefrom the whole personality. This isolated psychical

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state is hardly anything but a sketch, the commencement of an artificial reconstruction.
It is the whole considered under acertain elementary aspect in which we are specially
interested, and which we have carefullynoted. It is not a part but
an element. It has not beenobtained by a natural dismemberment, but by

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analysis. Now beneath all the sketcheshe has made at Paris, the visitor
will probably, by way of memento, write the word Paris, and as
he has really seen Paris, hewill be able, with the help of
the original intuition he had of thewhole, to place his sketches therein and
so join them up together. Butthere is no way of performing the inverse

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operation. It is impossible, evenwith an infinite number of accurate sketches,
and even with the word Paris,which indicates that they must be combined together,
to get back to an intuition thatone has never had, and to
give oneself an impression of what Parisis like if one has never seen it.
This is because we are not dealinghere with real parts, but with

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mere notes of the total impression.To take a still more striking example,
where the notation is more completely symbolic, suppose that I am shown mixed together
at random the letters which make upa poem. I am ignorant, of
If the letters were parts of thepoem, I could attempt to reconstitute the
poem with them by trying the differentpossible arrangements, as a child does with

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the pieces of a Chinese puzzle.But I should never for a moment think
of attempting such a thing in thiscase, because the letters are not component
parts, but only partial expressions,which is quite a different thing. That
is why, if I know thepoem, I at once put each of
the letters in its proper place andjoin them up without difficulty by a continuous

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connection, whilst the inverse operation isimpossible even when I believe I am actually
attempting this inverse operation, Even whenI put the letters end to end,
I begin by thinking of some plausiblemeaning. I thereby give myself an intuition,
and from this intuition I attempt toredscent to the elementary symbols which would

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reconstitute its expression. The very ideaof rec instituting a thing by operations practiced
on symbolic elements alone implies such anabsurdity that it would never occur to anyone
if they recollected that they were notdealing with fragments of the thing, but
only, as it were, withfragments of its symbol. Such is,

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however, the undertaking of philosophers whotry to reconstruct personality with psychical states,
whether they confine themselves to these statesalone, or whether they add a kind
of thread for the purpose of joiningthe states together. Both empiricists and rationalists
are victims of the same fallacy.Both of them mistake partial notations for real

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parts, thus confusing the point ofview of analysis and of intuition, of
science and of metaphysics. The empiricistssay quite rightly that psychological analysis discovers nothing
more in personality than psychical states.Such is, in fact the function and
the very definition of analysis. Thepsychologist has nothing else to do but analyze

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personality, that is, to notecertain states. At the most, he
may put the label ego on thesestates, in saying they are states of
the ego, just as the artistwrites the word Paris on each of his
sketches. On the level at whichthe psychologist places himself and on which he
must place himself, the ego isonly a sign by which the primitive and

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moreover very confused intuition, which hasfurnished the psychologist with his subject matter is
recalled, it is only a word, and the great error here lies in
believing that, while remaining on thesame level, we can find behind the
word a thing. Such has beenthe error of these philosophers who have not
been able to resign themselves to beingonly psychologists in psychology Tayne and Stuart Mill,

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for example, psychologists in the methodthey apply, they have remained metay
physicians in the object they set beforethemselves. They desire an intuition, and
by a strange inconsistency, they seekthis intuition in analysis, which is the
very negation of it. They lookfor the ego, and they claim to

(37:15):
find it in psychical states, thoughthis diversity of states has itself only been
obtained, and could only be obtainedby transporting oneself outside the ego altogether,
so as to make a series ofsketches, notes, and more or less
symbolic and schematic diagrams. Thus,however much they placed the states side by

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side, multiplying points of contact andexploring the intervals, the ego always escapes
them, so that they finish byseeing in it nothing but a vain phantom.
We might as well deny that theiliad had a meaning on the ground
that we had looked in vain forthat meaning, in the intervals between the
letters of which it is composed.Philosophical empiricism is orn here, then,

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of a confusion between the point ofview of intuition and that of analysis.
Seeking for the original in the translation, where naturally it cannot be, it
denies the existence of the original onthe ground that it is not found in
the translation. It leads of necessityto negations. But on examining the matter

(38:21):
closely, we perceive that these negationssimply mean that analysis is not intuition,
which is self evident from the original, and one must add very indistinct intuition,
which gives positive science its material sciencepasses immediately to analysis, which multiplies
to infinity its observations of this materialfrom outside points of view. It soon

(38:45):
comes to believe that by putting togetherall these diagrams, it can reconstitute the
object itself. No wonder then,that it sees this object fly before it
like a child that would like tomake a solid plaything out of the shadows
outlined along the wall. But rationalismis the dupe of the same illusion.

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It starts out from the same confusionas empiricism, and remains equally powerless to
reach the inner self. Like empiricism, it considers psychical states as so many
fragments detached from an ego that bindsthem together. Like empiricism, it tries
to join these fragments together in orderto recreate the unity of the self.

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Like empiricism. Finally, it seesthis unity of the self in the continually
renewed effort it makes to clasp itsteal away indefinitely like a phantom. But
whilst empiricism, weary of the struggle, ends by declaring that there is nothing
else but the multiplicity of psychical states, rationalism persists in affirming the unity of

(39:50):
the person. It is true thatseeking this unity on the level of the
psychical states themselves, and obliged besides, to put down to the account of
these states all the qualities and determinationsthat it finds by analysis. Since analysis,
by its very definition, leads alwaysto states, nothing is left to
it for the unity of personality butsomething purely negative, the absence of all

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determination. The psychical states having necessarily, in this analysis taken and kept for
themselves everything that can serve as matter. The unity of the ego can never
be more than a form without content. It will be absolutely indeterminate and absolutely
void to these detached psychical states,To these shadows of the ego, the

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sum of which was for the empiriciststhe equivalent of the self. Rationalism,
in order to reconstitute personality adds somethingstill more unreal, the void in which
these shadows move. A place forshadows, one might say, how could
this form, which is in truthformless, serve to carecharacterize a living,

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active, concrete personality, or todistinguish Peter from Paul? Is it astonishing
that the philosophers who have isolated thisform of personality should then find it insufficient
to characterize a definite person, andthat they should be gradually led to make
their empty ego a kind of bottomlessreceptacle which belongs no more to Peter than

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to Paul, and in which thereis room, according to our preference,
for entire humanity, for God,or for existence in general. I see
in this matter only one difference betweenempiricism and rationalism. The former, seeking
the unity of the ego in thegaps, as it were, between the
psychical states, is led to fillthe gaps with other states. And so

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on indefinitely, so that the ego, compressed in a constantly narrowing interval,
tends towards zero, as analysis ispushed farther and farther, whilst rationalism,
making the ego the place where mentalstates are loved, is confronted with an
empty space which we have no reasonto limit here rather than there, which

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goes beyond each of the successive boundariesthat we try to assign to it,
which constantly grows larger, and whichtends to lose itself no longer in zero,
but in the infinite. The distance, then, between a so called
empiricism like that of Tain and themost transcendental speculations of certain German pantheists,

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is very much less than is generallysupposed. The method is analogous in both
cases. It consists in reasoning aboutthe elements of a translation as if they
were parts of the original. Buta true empiricism is that which proposes to
get as near to the original itselfas possible, to search deeply into its
life, and so by a kindof intellectual ascultation, to feel the throbbings

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of its soul. And this trueempiricism is the true metaphysics. It is
true that the task is an extremelydifficult one, for none of the ready
made conceptions which thought employs in itsdaily operations can be of any use.
Nothing is more easy than to saythat the ego is multiplicity, or that

(43:13):
it is unity, or that itis the synthesis of both Unity and multiplicity.
Are here representations that we have noneed to cut out on the model
of the object. They are foundready made and have only to be chosen
from a heap. They are stocksized clothes which do just as well for
Peter as for Paul. For theyset off the form of neither but an

(43:37):
empiricism worthy of the name. Anempiricism which works only to measure, is
obliged for each new object that itstudies to make an absolutely fresh effort.
It cuts out for the object aconcept which is appropriate to that object alone,
a concept which can as yet hardlybe called a concept, since it

(43:57):
applies to this one thing. Itdoes not proceed by combining current ideas like
unity and multiplicity, but it leadsus on the contrary to a simple unique
representation, which, however, onceformed, enables us to understand easily how
it is that we can place itin the frame's unity, multiplicity, et
cetera, all much larger than itself. In short, philosophy, thus defined,

(44:23):
does not consist in the choice ofcertain concepts and in taking sides with
a school, but in the searchfor a unique intuition from which we can
descend with equal ease to different concepts. Because we are placed above the divisions
of the schools. That personality hasunity cannot be denied. But such an

(44:44):
affirmation teaches one nothing about the extraordinarynature of the particular unity presented by personality.
That our self is multiple I alsoagree, But then it must be
understood that it is a multiplicity whichhas nothing in com with any other multiplicity.
What is really important for philosophy isto know exactly what unity, what

(45:07):
multiplicity, and what reality superior bothto abstract unity and multiplicity the multiple unity
of the self actually is. Now. Philosophy will know this only when it
recovers possession of the simple intuition ofthe self by the self. Then,
according to the direction it chooses forits descent from this summit, it will

(45:29):
arrive at unity or multiplicity, orat any one of the concepts by which
we try to define the moving lifeof the self. But no mingling of
these concepts would give anything which itall resembles the self that endures. If
we are shown a solid cone,we see without any difficulty how it narrows
towards the summit and tends to belost in a mathematical point, and also

(45:53):
how it enlarges in the direction ofthe base into an indefinitely increasing circle.
But neither the point, nor thecircle, nor the duxtaposition of the two
on a plane would give us theleast idea of a cone. The same
thing holds true of the unity andmultiplicity of mental life, and of the

(46:14):
zero and the infinite towards which empiricismand rationalism conduct personality. End of Part
two, Part three of an Introductionto Metaphysics. This is a LibriVox recording.

(46:37):
All LibriVox recordings are in the publicdomain. For more information or to
volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. An Introduction to Metaphysics by Henri Bergsen,
translated by T. E. Holm. Part three. Concepts, as
we shall show elsewhere, generally gotogether in groups and represent two contraries.

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There is hardly any concrete reality whichcannot be observed from two opposing standpoints,
which cannot consequently be subsumed under twoantagonistic concepts, hence a thesis and an
anti thesis, which we endeavor invain to reconcile logically, for the very
simple reason that it is impossible withconcepts and observations taken from outside points of

(47:23):
view to make a thing. Butfrom the object seized by intuition we pass
easily in many cases to the twocontrary concepts, and as in that way
thesis and anti thesis can be seento spring from reality, we grasp at
the same time how it is thatthe two are opposed, and how they

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are reconciled. It is true thatto accomplish this it is necessary to proceed
by a reversal of the usual workof the intellect. Thinking usually consists in
passing from concepts to things, andnot from things to concepts. To know
a reality in the usual sense ofthe word no is to take ready made

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concepts, to portion them out,and to mix them together until a practical
equivalent of the reality is obtained.But it must be remembered that the normal
work of the intellect is far frombeing disinterested. We do not aim generally
at knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but in order to take sides,
to draw profit, in short,to satisfy an interest. We inquire up

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to what point the object we seekto know, is this or that to
what known class it belongs, andwhat kind of action, bearing or attitude
it should suggest to us. Thesedifferent possible actions and attitudes are so many
conceptual directions of our thought determined oncefor all, It remains only to follow

(48:50):
them in that precisely consists the applicationof concepts to things. To try to
fit a concept on an object issimply to ask what we can do with
the object and what it can dofor us. To label an object with
a certain concept is to mark inprecise terms the kind of action or attitude
the object should suggest to us.All knowledge, properly so called, is

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then oriented on a certain direction ortaken from a certain point of view.
It is true that our interest isoften complex. This is why it happens
that our knowledge of the same objectmay face several successive directions, and may
be taken from various points of view. It is this which constitutes, in
the usual meaning of the terms,a broad and comprehensive knowledge of the object.

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The object is then brought not underone single concept, but under several
in which it is supposed to participate. How does it participate in all these
concepts at the same time. Thisis a question which does not concern our
practical action, and about which weneed not trouble. It is therefore and

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legitimate in daily life to proceed bythe juxtaposition and portioning out of concepts.
No philosophical difficulty will arise from thisprocedure, since by a tacit agreement we
shall abstain from philosophizing. But tocarry this modus operandi into philosophy. To
pass here also from concepts to thething to use in order to obtain a

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disinterested knowledge of an object that thistime we desire to grasp, as it
is in itself a manner of knowinginspired by a determinate interest, consisting by
definition in an externally taken view ofthe object. Is to go against the
end that we have chosen, tocondemn philosophy to an eternal skirmishing between the

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schools, and to install contradiction inthe very heart of the object and of
the method. Either there is nophilosophy possible, and all knowledge of things
is a practical knowledge aimed at theprofit to be drawn from them or else.
Philosophy consists in placing one's self withinthe object itself by an effort of
intuition. But in order to understandthe nature of this intuition, in order

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to fix with precision where intuition endsand where analysis begins, it is necessary
to return to what was said earlierabout the flux of duration. It will
be noticed that an essential characteristic ofthe concepts and diagrams to which analysis leads
is that, while being considered,they remain stationary. I isolate from the

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totality of interior life that psychical entitywhich I call a simple sensation. So
long as I study it, Isuppose that it remains constant. If I
noticed any change in it, Ishould say that it was not a single
sensation, but several successive sensations.And I should then transfer to each of

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these successive sensations the immutability that Ifirst attributed to the total sensation. In
any case, I can, andby pushing the analysis far enough, always
managed to arrive at elements which Iagree to consider immutable. There and there
only shall I find the solid basisof operations which science needs for its own

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proper development. But then I cannotescape the objection that there is no state
of mind, however, simple,which does not change every moment. Since
there is no consciousness without memory,and no continuation of a state without the
addition to the present feeling of thememory of past moments. It is this
which constitutes duration. Inner duration isa continuous life of a memory which prolongs

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the past into the present the present, either containing within it in a distinct
form, the ceaselessly growing image ofthe past, or, more probably,
showing by its continual change of quality, the heavier and still heavier load we
drag behind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into

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the present, there would be noduration, but only instantaneity. Probably,
if I am thus accused of takingthe mental state out of duration by the
mere fact that I analyze it,I shall reply, is not each of
these elementary psychical states to which myanalysis leads its self a state which occupies

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time? My analysis, I shallsay, does indeed resolve the inner life
into states, each of which ishomogeneous with itself. Only since the homogeneity
extends over a definite number of minutesor of seconds. The elementary psychical state
does not cease to endure, althoughit does not change. But in saying

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that, I fail to see thatthe definite number of minutes and of seconds
which I am attributing here to theelementary psychical state has simply the value of
a sign intended to remind me thatthe psychical state, supposed homogeneous, is
in reality a state which changes andendure. The state taken in itself is
a perpetual becoming. I have extractedfrom this becoming a certain average of quality,

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which I have supposed invariable. Ihave, in this way constituted a
stable and consequently schematic state. Ihave, on the other hand, extracted
from it becoming in general, ie. A becoming which is not the
becoming of any particular thing. Andthis is what I have called the time

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the state occupies. Were I tolook at it closely, I should see
that this abstract time is as immobilefor me as the state which I localize
in it, that it could flowonly by a continual change of quality,
and that if it is without qualitymerely the theater of the change, it
thus becomes an immobile medium. Ishould see that the construction of This homogeneous

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time is simply designed to facilitate thecomparison between the different concrete durations, to
permit us to count simultaneous, andto measure one flux of duration in relation
to another. And lastly, Ishould understand that in attaching the sign of
a definite number of minutes and ofseconds to the representation of an elementary psychical

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state, I am merely reminding myselfand others that the state has been detached
from an ego which endures, andmerely marking out the place where it must
again be set in movement in orderto bring it back from the abstract schematic
thing it has become to the concretestate it was at first. But I
ignore all that because it has nothingto do with analysis. This means that

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analysis operates always on the immobile,whilst intuition places itself in mobility or what
comes to the same thing in duration. There lies the very distinct line of
demarcation between intuition and analysis. Thereal, the experience, and the concrete
are recognized by the fact that theyare variability itself, the element by the

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fact that it is invariable, andthe element is invariable by definition, being
a diagram, a simplified reconstruction,often a mere symbol in any case,
a motionless view of the moving reality. But the error consists in believing that
we can reconstruct the real with thesediagrams. As we have already said and

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may as well repeat here, fromintuition one can pass to analysis, but
not from analysis to intuition. Outof variability. We can make as many
variations, qualities, and modifications aswe please, since these are so many
static views taken by analysis of themobility given to intuition. But these modifications,

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put end to end will produce nothingwhich resembles variability, since they are
not parts of it, but elements, which is quite a different thing.
Consider, for example, the variabilitywhich is nearest to home m geneity,
that of movement in space. Alongthe whole of this movement, we can
imagine possible stoppages. These are whatwe call the positions of the moving body,

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or the points by which it passes. But with these positions, even
with an infinite number of them,we shall never make movement. They are
not parts of the movement. Theyare so many snapshots of it. They
are one might say, only supposedstopping places the moving body is never really

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in any of the points. Themost we can say is that it passes
through them. But passage, whichis movement, has nothing in common with
stoppage, which is immobility. Amovement cannot be superimposed on an immobility,
or it would then coincide with it, which would be a contradiction. The
points are not in the movement asparts, nor even beneath it, as

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positions occupied by the moving body.They are simply projected by us under the
movement, as so many places wherea moving body, which by hypothesis does
not stop, would be if itwere to stop. They are not,
therefore, properly speaking, positions,but suppositions, aspects or points of view

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of the mind. But how couldwe construct a thing with points of view?
Nevertheless, this is what we tryto do whenever we reason about movement
and also about time, for whichmovement serves as a means of representation,
as a result of an illusion deeplyrooted in our mind, and because we
cannot prevent ourselves from considering analysis asthe equivalent of intuition, we begin by

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distinguishing, along the whole extent ofthe movement a certain number of possible stoppages
or points, which we make,whether they like it or know parts of
the movement. Faced with our impotenceto reconstruct the movement with these points,
we insert other points, believing thatwe can in this way get nearer to
the essential mobility in the movement.Then, as the mobility still escapes us,

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we substitute for a fixed and finitenumber of points and indefinitely increasing number,
thus vainly trying to counterfeit by themovement of a thought that goes on
indefinitely adding points to points the realand undivided motion of the moving body.
Finally, we say that movement iscomposed of points, but that it comprises,

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in addition, the obscure and mysteriouspassage from one position to the next,
as if the obscurity was not dueentirely to the fact that we have
supposed immobility to be clearer than mobilityand rest anterior to movement, as if
the mystery did not follow entirely fromour attempting to pass from stoppages to movement

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by way of addition, which isimpossible when it is so easy to pass
by simple diminution from movement to theslackening of movement, and so to immobility.
It is movement that we must accustomourselves to look upon as simplest and
clear arrest, immobility being only theextreme limit of the slowing down of movement,

(01:00:05):
a limit reached only perhaps in thought, and never realized in nature.
What we have done is to seekfor the meaning of the poem in the
form of the letters of which itis composed. We have believed that by
considering an increasing number of letters wewould grasp at last the ever escaping meaning,
And, in desperation, seeing thatit was useless to seek for a

(01:00:27):
part of the sense in each ofthe letters, we have supposed that it
was between each letter and the nextthat this long sought fragment of the mysterious
sense was lodged. But the letters, it must be pointed out once again,
are not parts of the thing,but elements of the symbol. Again,
the positions of the moving body arenot parts of the movement. They

(01:00:49):
are points of the space which issupposed to underlie the movement. This empty
and immobile space, which is merelyconceived, never perceived, has the value
of a symbol only. How couldyou ever manufacture reality by manipulating symbols,
but the symbol in this case respondsto the most inveterate habits of our thought.

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We place ourselves as a rule inimmobility, in which we find a
point of support for practical purposes,and with this immobility we try to reconstruct
motion. We only obtain in thisway a clumsy imitation, a counterfeit of
real movement. But this imitation ismuch more useful in life than the intuition

(01:01:31):
of the thing itself would be.Now, our mind has an irresistible tendency
to consider that idea clearest which ismost often useful to it. That is
why immobility seems to it clearer thanmobility and rest anterior to movement. The
difficulties to which the problem of movementhas given rise from the earliest antiquity have

(01:01:53):
originated in this way. They resultalways from the fact that we insist on
passing from space to movement, fromthe trajectory to the flight, from immobile
positions to mobility, and on passingfrom one to the other by way of
addition. But it is movement whichis anterior to immobility, and the relation

(01:02:15):
between positions and a displacement is notthat of parts to a whole, but
that of the diversity of possible pointsof view to the real indivisibility of the
object. Many other problems are borneout of the same illusion. What stationary
points are to the movement of amoving body, concepts of different qualities are

(01:02:35):
to the qualitative change of an object. The various concepts into which a change
can be analyzed are therefore so manystable views of the instability of the real.
And to think of an object inthe usual meaning of the word thing
is to take one or more ofthese immobile views of its mobility. It
consists, in short, in askingfrom time to time where the object is,

(01:03:00):
in order that we may know whatto do with it. Nothing could
be more legitimate. More Over thanthis method of procedure, so long as
we are concerned only with a practicalknowledge of reality, knowledge in so far
as it is directed to practical matters, has only to enumerate the principle possible
attitudes of the thing towards us,as well as our best possible attitude towards

(01:03:22):
it. Therein lies the ordinary functionof ready made concepts, those stations with
which we mark out the path ofbecoming. But to seek to penetrate with
them into the inmost nature of things. Is to apply to the mobility of
the real a method created in orderto give stationary points of observation on it.

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It is to forget that, ifmetaphysic is possible, it can only
be a laborious and even painful effortto remount the natural slope of the work
of thought, in order to placeone's self directly by a kind of intellectual
expansion within the thing studied in shore, a passage from reality to concepts,
and no longer from concepts to reality. Is it astonishing that, like children

(01:04:06):
trying to catch smoke by closing theirhands, philosophers so often see the object
they would grasp fly before them.It is in this way that many of
the quarrels between the schools are perpetuated, each of them reproaching the others with
having allowed the real to slip away. But if metaphysics is to proceed by
intuition, if intuition has the mobilityof duration as its object, and if

(01:04:31):
duration is of a psychical nature,shall we not be confining the philosopher to
the exclusive contemplation of himself. Willnot philosophy come to consist in watching oneself
merely live as a sleepy shepherd watchesthe water flow. To talk in this
way would be to return to theerror which since the beginning of this study

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we have not ceased to point out. It would be to misconceive the singular
nature of duration and at the sametime the essentially active, I might almost
say, violent character of metaphysical intuition. It would be failing to see that
the method we speak of alone permitsus to go beyond idealism as well as

(01:05:13):
realism, to affirm the existence ofobjects inferior and superior, though in a
certain sense interior to us, tomake them coexist together without difficulty, and
to dissipate gradually the obscurities that analysisaccumulates round these great problems. Without entering
here upon the study of these differentpoints, let us confine ourselves to showing

(01:05:35):
how the intuition we speak of isnot a single act, but an indefinite
series of acts, all doubtless ofthe same kind, but each of a
very particular species, and how thisdiversity of acts corresponds to all degrees of
being. If I seek to analyzeduration, that is, to resolve it

(01:05:55):
into a ready made concepts. Iam compelled by the very nature of the
content of analysis to take two opposingviews of duration in general, with which
I can then attempt to reconstruct it. This combination, which will have moreover
something miraculous about it, since onedoes not understand how two contraries would ever
meet each other, can present neithera diversity of degrees nor a variety of

(01:06:20):
forms. Like all miracles, itis or it is not. I shall
have to say, for example,that there is, on the one hand,
a multiplicity of successive states of consciousness, and on the other, a
unity which finds them together. Durationwill be the synthesis of this unity,
and this multiplicity a mysterious operation whichtakes place in darkness, and in regard

(01:06:45):
to which I repeat, one doesnot see how it would admit of shades
or of degrees. In this hypothesis, there is and can only be,
one single duration, that in whichour own consciousness habitually works. To express
it more clearly, if we considerduration under the simple aspect of a movement
accomplishing itself in space, and weseek to reduce to concepts movement considered as

(01:07:11):
representative of time, we shall have, on the one hand, as great
a number of points on the trajectoryas we may desire, and on the
other hand, an abstract unity whichholds them together as a thread holds together
the pearls of a necklace between thisabstract multiplicity and this abstract unity. The
combination, when once it has beenposited as possible, is something unique,

(01:07:34):
which will no more admit of shadesthan does the addition of given numbers in
arithmetic. But if, instead ofprofessing to analyze duration i e. At
bottom, to make a synthesis ofit with concepts, we at once place
ourselves in it by an effort ofintuition, we have the feeling of a
certain, very determinate tension, inwhich the determination itself appears as a choice

(01:07:59):
between an infinity of possible durations.Henceforward, we can picture to ourselves as
many durations as we wish, allvery different from each other, although each
of them, on being reduced toconcepts that is observed externally from two opposing
points of view, always comes inthe end to the same indefinable combination of
the many and the one. Letus express the same idea with more precision.

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If I consider duration as a multiplicityof moments bound to each other by
a unity which goes through them likea thread. Then, however short the
chosen duration may be, these momentsare unlimited in number. I can suppose
them as close together as I please. There will always be between these mathematical
points, other mathematical points, andso on to infinity. Looked at from

(01:08:49):
the point of view of multiplicity,then duration disintegrates into a powder of moments,
none of which endures, each beingan instantaneity. If, on the
other hand, I consider the unitywhich finds the moments together, this cannot
endure either, since by hypothesis,everything that is changing and everything that is

(01:09:10):
really durable in the duration has beenput to the account of the multiplicity of
moments. As I probe more deeplyinto its essence, this unity will appear
to me as some immobile substratum ofthat which is moving, as some in
temporal essence of time. It isthis that I shall call eternity, an
eternity of death, since it isnothing else than the movement emptied of the

(01:09:32):
mobility which made its life. Closelyexamined, the opinions of the opposing schools
on the subject of duration would beseen to differ solely in this that they
attribute a capital importance to one orthe other of these two concepts. Some
adhere to the point of view ofthe multiple. They set up as concrete

(01:09:53):
reality, the distinct moments of atime, which they have reduced to powder,
the unity which enables us to comethe grains of powder they hold to
be much more artificial. Others,on the contrary, set up the unity
of duration as concrete reality. Theyplace themselves in the eternal, but as
their eternity remains notwithstanding abstract, Sinceit is empty, being the eternity of

(01:10:17):
a concept which, by hypothesis excludesfrom itself the opposing concept, one does
not see how this eternity would permitof an indefinite number of moments coexisting in
it. In the first hypothesis,we have a world resting on nothing,
which must end and begin again ofits own accord at each instant. In

(01:10:39):
the second, we have an infinityof abstract eternity, about which also it
is just as difficult to understand whyit does not remain enveloped in itself and
how it allows things to coexist withit. But in both cases, and
whichever of the two metaphysics it bethat one is switched into time appears from
the psychological point of view, viewas a mixture of two abstractions which admit

(01:11:02):
of neither degrees nor shades. Inone system, as in the other,
there is only one unique duration whichcarries everything with it, a bottomless,
bankless river which flows without assignable forcein a direction which could not be defined.
Even then, we can call itonly a river, and the river

(01:11:23):
only flows because reality obtains from thetwo doctrines this concession, profiting by a
moment of perplexity in their logic.As soon as they recover from this perplexity,
they freeze this flux, either intoan immense solid sheet or into an
infinity of crystallized needles, always intoa thing which necessarily partakes of the immobility

(01:11:45):
of a point of view. Itis quite otherwise. If we place ourselves
from the first by an effort ofintuition in the concrete flow of duration,
certainly we shall then find no logicalreason for positing multiple and die diverse durations.
Strictly, there might well be noother duration than our own, as
for example, there might be noother color in the world but orange.

(01:12:10):
But just as a consciousness based oncolor, which sympathized internally with orange,
instead of perceiving it externally, wouldfeel itself held between red and yellow,
would even perhaps suspect beyond this lastcolor a complete spectrum into which the continuity
from red to yellow might expand naturally. So the intuition of our duration,

(01:12:30):
far from leaving us suspended in thevoid, as pure analysis would do,
brings us into contact with a wholecontinuity of durations, which we must try
to follow, whether downwards or upwards. In both cases we can extend ourselves
indefinitely by an increasingly violent effort.In both cases we transcend ourselves. In

(01:12:51):
the first, we advance towards amore and more attenuated duration, the pulsations
of which, being rapider than ours, and divise our simple sensation, dilute
its quality into quantity. At thelimit would be pure homogeneity, that pure
repetition by which we define materiality.Advancing in the other direction, we approach

(01:13:14):
a duration which strains, contracts,and intensifies itself more and more. At
the limit would be eternity, nolonger conceptual eternity, which is an eternity
of death, but an eternity oflife, a living and therefore still moving
eternity in which our own particular durationwould be included, as the vibrations are

(01:13:34):
in light an eternity, which wouldbe the concentration of all duration. As
materiality is its dispersion between these twolimits, intuition moves, and this movement
is the very essence of metaphysics.End of Part three, Part four of

(01:13:59):
an Introductor to Metaphysics. This isa LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are
in the public domain. For moreinformation or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox
dot org. An Introduction to Metaphysicsby Henri Bergsen, translated by T.
E. Holme. Part four.There can be no question of following here

(01:14:21):
the various stages of this movement.But having presented a general view of the
method and made a first application ofit, it may not be amiss to
formulate as precisely as we can theprinciples on which it rests. Most of
the following propositions have already received inthis essay some degree of proof. We

(01:14:43):
hope to demonstrate them more completely whenwe come to deal with other problems.
One, there is a reality thatis external and yet given immediately to the
mind. Common sense is write onthis point as against the idealism and realism
of the flohilosophers. Two, Thisreality is mobility, not things made,

(01:15:06):
but things in the making. Notself maintaining states, but only changing states
exist. Rest is never more thanapparent, or rather relative. The consciousness
we have of our own self,in its continual flux, introduces us to
the interior of a reality on themodel of which we must represent other realities.

(01:15:29):
All reality, therefore is tendency,if we agree to mean by tendency
an incipient change of direction. Three, Our mind, which seeks for solid
points of support, has for itsmain function in the ordinary course of life,
that of representing states and things.It takes, at long intervals almost

(01:15:50):
instantaneous views of the undivided mobility ofthe real It thus obtains sensations and ideas.
In this way way it substitutes forthe continuous, the discontinuous, for
motion, stability, for tendency,in process of change, fixed points marking
a direction of change and tendency.This substitution is necessary to common sense,

(01:16:15):
to language, to practical life,and even in a certain degree which we
shall endeavor to determine, to positivescience. Our intellect, when it follows
its natural bend, proceeds on theone hand by solid perceptions and on the
other by stable conceptions. It startsfrom the immobile and only conceives and expresses

(01:16:36):
movement. As a function of immobility. It takes up its position in ready
made concepts and endeavors to catch inthem, as in a net, something
of the reality which passes. Thisis certainly not done in order to obtain
an internal and metaphysical knowledge of thereal, but simply in order to utilize

(01:16:58):
the real. Each concept, asalso each sensation, being a practical question
which our activity puts to reality,and to which reality replies, as must
be done in business, by ayes or a no. But in doing
that it lets that which is itsvery essence escape from the real. Four.

(01:17:18):
The inherent difficulties of metaphysic, theantinomies which it gives rise to,
and the contradictions into which it falls. The division into antagonistic schools, and
the irreducible opposition between systems, arelargely the result of our applying to the
disinterested knowledge of the real processes whichwe generally employ for practical ends. They

(01:17:43):
arise from the fact that we placeourselves in the immobile in order to lie
in wait for the moving thing asit passes, instead of replacing ourselves in
the moving thing itself in order totraverse with it. The immobile positions they
arise from our professing to re constructreality, which is tendency and consequently mobility

(01:18:03):
with percepts and concepts, whose functionit is to make it stationary. With
stoppages, however numerous they may be, We shall never make mobility. Whereas
if mobility is given, we can, by means of diminution obtained from it
by thought, as many stoppages aswe desire. In other words, it

(01:18:25):
is clear that fixed concepts may beextracted by our thought from mobile reality,
but there are no means of reconstructingthe mobility of the real with fixed concepts.
Dogmatism, however, in so faras it has been a builder of
systems, has always attempted this reconstruction. Five. In this it was bound

(01:18:46):
to fail. It is on thisimpotence, and on this impotence only,
that the skeptical idealist critical doctrines reallydwell. In fact, all doctrines that
deny to our intelligence of attaining theabsolute. But because we fail to reconstruct
the living reality with stiff and readymade concepts, it does not follow that

(01:19:09):
we cannot grasp it in some otherway. The demonstrations which have been given
of the relativity of our knowledge aretherefore tainted with an original vice. They
imply, like the dogmatism, theyattack that all knowledge must necessarily start from
concepts with fixed outlines, in orderto clasp with them the reality which flows

(01:19:30):
six. But the truth is thatour intelligence can follow the opposite method.
It can place itself within the mobilereality and adopt it ceaselessly changing direction.
In short, can grasp it bymeans of that intellectual sympathy which we call
intuition. This is extremely difficult.The mind has to do violence to itself,

(01:19:55):
has to reverse the direction of theoperation by which it habitually thinks,
has perpetually to revise, or ratherto recast, all its categories. But
in this way it will attain tofluid concepts, capable of following reality in
all its sinuosities, and of adoptingthe very movement of the inward life of

(01:20:15):
things. Only thus will a progressivephilosophy be built up, freed from the
disputes which arise between the various schools, and able to solve its problems naturally,
because it will be released from theartificial expression in terms of which such
problems are positive. To philosophize,therefore, is to invert the habitual direction

(01:20:36):
of the work of thought. Seven. This inversion has never been practiced in
a methodical manner, but a profoundlyconsidered history of human thought would show that
we owe to it all that isgreatest in the sciences, as well as
all that is permanent. In metaphysics, the most powerful of the methods of

(01:20:57):
investigation at the disposal of the humanmind. The infinitesimal calculus, originated from
this very inversion. Modern mathematics isprecisely an effort to substitute the being made
for the ready made, to followthe generation of magnitudes, to grasp motion
no longer from without and in itsdisplayed result, but from within and in

(01:21:20):
its tendency to change. In short, to adopt the mobile continuity of the
outlines of things. It is truethat it is confined to the outline,
being only the science of magnitudes.It is true also that it has only
been able to achieve its marvelous applicationsby the invention of certain symbols, and

(01:21:41):
that if the intuition of which wehave just spoken lies at the origin of
invention, it is the symbol alonewhich is concerned in the application. But
metaphysics, which aims at no application, can and usually must, abstain from
converting intuition into symbols. Liberated fromthe obligation of working for practically useful results,

(01:22:03):
it will indefinitely enlarge the domain ofits investigations. What it may lose
in comparison with science in utility andexactitude, it will regain in range and
extension. Though mathematics is only thescience of magnitudes, though mathematical processes are
applicable only to quantities, it mustnot be forgotten that quantity is always quality.

(01:22:27):
In a nascent state, it is, we might say, the limiting
case of quality. It is natural, then, that metaphysics should adopt the
generative idea of our mathematics in orderto extend it to all qualities, that
is, to reality in general.It will not, by doing this in
any way be moving towards universal mathematics, that chimera of modern philosophy. On

(01:22:51):
the contrary, the farther it goes, the more untranslatable into symbols, will
be the objects it encounters, butit will at least have begun by getting
into contact with the continuity and mobilityof the real. Just where this contact
can be most marvelously utilized. Itwill have contemplated itself in a mirror which

(01:23:12):
reflects an image of itself, muchshrunken, no doubt, but for that
reason very luminous. It will haveseen with greater clearness what the mathematical processes
borrow from concrete reality, and itwill continue in the direction of concrete reality,
and not in that of mathematical processes. Having then discounted beforehand what is

(01:23:33):
too modest and at the same timetoo ambitious, in the following formula,
we may say that the object ofmetaphysics is to perform qualitative differentiations and integrations.
Eight. The reason why this objecthas been lost sight of, and
why science itself has been mistaken inthe origin of the processes it employs,

(01:23:58):
is that intuition, once attained,must find a mode of expression and of
application which conforms to the habits ofour thought, and one which furnishes us
in the shape of well defined concepts, with the solid points of support which
we so greatly need. In thatlies the condition of what we call exactitude
and precision, and also the conditionof the unlimited extension of a general method

(01:24:23):
to particular cases. Now, thisextension, and this work of logical improvement
can be continued for centuries, whilstthe act which creates the method lasts but
for a moment. That is whywe so often take the logical equipment of
science for science itself, forgetting themetaphysical intuition from which all the rest has

(01:24:44):
sprung. From the overlooking of thisintuition proceeds all that has been said by
philosophers and by men of science themselvesabout the relativity of scientific knowledge. What
is relative is the symbolic knowledge bypre existing concepts, which proceeds from the
fixed to the moving, and notthe intuitive knowledge, which installs itself in

(01:25:05):
that which is moving and adopts thevery life of things. This intuition attains
the absolute. Science and metaphysics thereforecome together in intuition. A truly intuitive
philosophy would realize the much desired unionof science and metaphysics, while it would

(01:25:25):
make of metaphysics a positive science thatis a progressive and indefinitely perfectible one.
It would, at the same timelead the positive sciences properly so called,
to become conscious of their true scope, often far greater than they imagine.
It would put more science into metaphysicsand more metaphysics into science. It would

(01:25:47):
result in restoring the continuity between theintuitions which the various sciences have obtained here
and there in the course of theirhistory, and which they have obtained only
by strokes of genius nine. Thatthere are not two different ways of knowing
things. Fundamentally, that the varioussciences have their root in metaphysics is what

(01:26:09):
the ancient philosophers generally thought. Theirerror did not lie there. It consisted
in their being always dominated by thebelief so natural to the human mind that
a variation can only be the expressionand development of what is invariable. Whence
it followed that action was an enfeebledcontemplation duration, a deceptive and shifting image

(01:26:32):
of immobile eternity. The soul afall from the idea. The whole of
the philosophy, which begins with Platoand culminates in Plotinus, is the development
of a principle which may be formulated. Thus, there is more in the
immutable than in the moving, andwe pass from the stable to the unstable
by a mere diminution. Now itis the contrary which is true. Modern

(01:26:58):
science dates from the day when mobilitywas set up as an independent reality.
It dates from the day when Galileo, setting a ball rolling down an inclined
plane, firmly resolved to study thismovement from top to bottom for itself in
itself, instead of seeking its principlein the concepts of high and low to
immobilities by which Aristotle believed he couldadequately explain the mobility. And this is

(01:27:25):
not an isolated fact in the historyof science. Several of the great discoveries,
of those at least which have transformedthe positive sciences or which have created
new ones, have been so manysoundings in the depths of pure duration.
The more living the reality touched,the deeper was the sounding. But the

(01:27:45):
lead line sunk into the sea bottombrings up a fluid mass which the sun's
heat quickly dries into solid and discontinuousgrains of sand, And the intuition of
duration, when it is exposed tothe rays of the understanding, in like
manner, quickly turns into fixed,distinct and immobile concepts in the living mobility
of things. The understanding is benton marking real or virtual stations. It

(01:28:11):
notes departures and arrivals. For thisis all that concerns the thought of man,
in so far as it is simplyhuman. It is more than human
to grasp what is happening in theinterval. But philosophy can only be an
effort to transcend the human condition.Men of science have fixed their attention mainly
on the concepts with which they havemarked out the pathway of intuition. The

(01:28:34):
more they laid stress on these residualproducts, which have turned into symbols,
the more they attributed a symbolic characterto every kind of science. And the
more they believed in the symbolic characterof science, the more did they indeed
make science symbolical. Gradually, theyhave blotted out all difference in positive science

(01:28:56):
between the natural and the artificial,between the data of a mess intuition and
the enormous work of analysis which theunderstanding pursues around intuition. Thus they have
prepared the way for a doctrine whichaffirms the relativity of all our knowledge.
But metaphysics has also labored to thesame end. How could the masters of

(01:29:17):
modern philosophy, who have been renovatorsof science as well as of metaphysics,
have had no sense of the movingcontinuity of reality? How could they have
abstained from placing themselves in what wecall concrete duration. They have done so
to a greater extent than they wereaware, above all, much more than

(01:29:38):
they said. If we endeavor tolink together by a continuous connection the intuitions
about which systems have become organized,we find, together with other convergent and
divergent lines, one very determinate directionof thought and of feeling. What is
this latent thought? How shall weexpress the feeling? To borrow once more

(01:30:00):
the language of the Platonists, wewill say, depriving the words of their
psychological sense, and giving the nameof idea to a certain settling down into
easy intelligibility, and that of soulto a certain longing after the restlessness of
life. That an invisible current causesmodern philosophy to place the soul above the

(01:30:21):
idea. It thus tends, likemodern science, and even more so than
modern science, to advance in anopposite direction to ancient thought. But this
metaphysics, like this science, hasenfolded its deeper life in a rich tissue
of symbols forgetting something that while scienceneeds symbols for its analytical development, the

(01:30:44):
main object of metaphysics is to doaway with symbols. Here again, the
understanding has pursued its work of fixing, dividing, and reconstructing. It has
pursued this, It is true undera rather different form without insist on a
point which we propose to develop elsewhere. It is enough here to say that
the understanding, whose function it isto operate on stable elements, may look

(01:31:09):
for stability either in relations or inthings. In so far as it works
on concepts of relations, it culminatesin scientific symbolism. In so far as
it works on concepts of things,it culminates in metaphysical symbolism. But in
both cases the arrangement comes from theunderstanding. Hence it would fain believe itself

(01:31:31):
independent. Rather than recognize at oncewhat it owes to an intuition of the
depths of reality, It prefers exposingitself to the danger that its whole work
may be looked upon as nothing butan artificial arrangement of symbols. So that
if we were to hold on tothe letter of what metaphysicians and scientists say,

(01:31:53):
and also to the material aspect ofwhat they do. We might believe
that the metaphysicians have dug a deeptunnel beneath reality, that the scientists have
thrown an elegant bridge over it,but that the moving stream of things passes
between these two artificial constructions without touchingthem. One of the principal artifices of

(01:32:13):
the Kantian criticism consisted in taking themetaphysician and the scientists literally, forcing both
metaphysics and science to the extreme limitof symbolism to which they could go,
and to which, moreover, theymake their way of their own accord.
As soon as the understanding claims anindependence full of perils. Having once overlooked

(01:32:34):
the ties that find science and metaphysicsto intellectual intuition, Kant has no difficulty
in showing that our science is whollyrelative and our metaphysics entirely artificial, since
he has exaggerated the independence of theunderstanding in both cases, since he has
relieved both metaphysics and science of theintellectual intuition which served them as inward ballast.

(01:33:00):
Science with its relations presents to himno more than a film of form,
and metaphysics, with its things nomore than a film of matter.
Is it surprising that the first thenreveals to him only frames packed within frames,
and the second only phantoms chasing phantoms? He has struck such telling blows
at our science and our metaphysic thatthey have not even yet quite recovered from

(01:33:25):
their bewilderment. Our mind would readilyresign itself to seeing in science a knowledge
that is wholly relative, and inmetaphysics a speculation that is entirely empty.
It seems to us, even atthis present date, that the Kantian criticism
applies to all metaphysics and to allscience. In reality, it applies more

(01:33:46):
especially to the philosophy of the ancients, as also to the form itself borrowed
from the Ancients in which the modernshave most often left their thought. It
is valid against a metaphysics which claimsto give us a single and completed system
of things, against a science professingto be a single system of relations.

(01:34:08):
In short, against a science anda metaphysic presenting themselves with the architectural simplicity
of the Platonic theory of ideas,or of a Greek temple. If metaphysics
claims to be made up of conceptswhich were ours before its advent, if
it consists in an ingenious arrangement ofpre existing ideas, which we utilize as

(01:34:29):
building material for an edifice, Ifin short, it is anything else but
the constant expansion of our mind,the ever renewed effort to transcend our actual
ideas, and perhaps also our elementarylogic, it is but too evident that,
like all the works of pure understanding, it becomes artificial. And if
science is wholly and entirely a workof analysis or of conceptual representation, if

(01:34:56):
experience is only to serve therein asa verification for clear ideas, If instead
of starting from multiple and diverse intuition, which insert themselves in the particular movement
of each reality, but do notalways dovetail into each other, it professes
to be a vast mathematic, asingle, enclosed in system of relations,

(01:35:17):
imprisoning the whole of reality in anetwork prepared in advance. It becomes a
knowledge purely relative to human understanding.If we look carefully into the critique of
pure reason, we see that science, for Kant, did indeed mean this
kind of universal mathematic and metaphysics thispractically unaltered Platonism. In truth, the

(01:35:41):
dream of a universal mathematic is itselfbut a survival of Platonism. Universal mathematic
is what the world of ideas becomeswhen we suppose that the idea consists in
a relation or in a lah,and no longer in a thing. Kant
took this dream of a few modernphilosophers for a reality. More than this,

(01:36:01):
he believed that all scientific knowledge wasonly a detached fragment of, or
rather a stepping stone to universal mathematics. Hence, the main task of the
critique was to lay the foundation ofthis mathematic, that is, to determine
what the intellect must be and whatthe object, in order that an uninterrupted

(01:36:23):
mathematic may bind them together. Andof necessity, if all possible experience can
be made to enter thus into therigid and already formed framework of our understanding,
it is unless we assume a preestablished harmony, because our understanding itself
organizes nature and finds itself again thereinas in a mirror. Hence the possibility

(01:36:45):
of science, which owes all itsefficacy to its relativity, and the impossibility
of metaphysics, since the latter findsnothing more to do than to purity with
phantoms of things, the work ofconceptual arrangement, which sciences practices seriously on
relations. Briefly, the whole critiqueof pure reason ends in establishing that platonism,

(01:37:08):
illegitimate if ideas are things, becomeslegitimate if ideas are relations, and
that the ready made idea, oncebrought down in this way from heaven to
Earth, is, in fact,as Plato held, the common basis alike
of thought and of nature. Butthe whole of the critique of pure reason
also rests on this postulate, thatour intellect is incapable of anything but platonizing,

(01:37:32):
that is, of pouring all possibleexperience into pre existing molds. On
this the whole question depends. Ifscientific knowledge is indeed what consupposed, then
there is one simple science, preformed and even pre formulated in nature,
as Aristotle believed. Great discoveries thenserve only to illuminate point by point the

(01:37:56):
already drawn line of this logic imminentin things, just as on the night
of a fate we light up oneby one the rows of gas jets which
already outline the shape of some building. And if metaphysical knowledge is really what
Kant supposed. It is reduced toa choice between two attitudes of the mind
before all the great problems, bothequally possible. Its manifestations are so many

(01:38:20):
arbitrary and always ephemeral choices between twosolutions, virtually formulated from all eternity.
It lives and dies by antinomies.But the truth is that modern science does
not present this unilinear simplicity, nordoes modern metaphysics present these irreducible oppositions.

(01:38:42):
Modern science is neither one nor simple. It rests I freely admit on ideas
which, in the end we findclear. But these ideas have gradually become
clear through the use made of them. They owe most of their clearness to
the light which the facts and theapplication to which they led have by reflection
shed on them. The clearness ofa concept being scarcely anything more at bottom

(01:39:06):
than the certainty at last obtained ofmanipulating the concept profitably at its origin,
more than one of these concepts musthave appeared obscure, not easily reconcilable with
the concepts already admitted into science,and indeed very near the borderline of absurdity.

(01:39:26):
This means that science does not proceedby an orderly dovetailing together of concepts
predestined to fit each other exactly.True and fruitful ideas are so many close
contacts with currents of reality which donot necessarily converge on the same point.
However, the concepts in which theylodge themselves managed somehow, by rubbing off

(01:39:47):
each other's corners, to settle downwell enough together. On the other hand,
modern metaphysics is not made up ofsolutions so radical that they can culminate
in irreducible oppositions. It would beso, no doubt, if there were
no means of accepting, at thesame time and on the same level,

(01:40:09):
the thesis and the anti thesis ofthe antinomies. But philosophy consists precisely in
this that by an effort of intuition, one places one's self within that concrete
reality of which the critique takes from. Without the two opposed views thesis and
anti thesis. I could never imaginehow black and white interpenetrate if I had

(01:40:31):
never seen gray. But once Ihave seen gray, I easily understand how
it can be considered from two pointsof view, that of white and that
of Black doctrines, which have acertain basis of intuition, escape the Kantian
criticism exactly in so far as theyare intuitive, And these doctrines are the
whole of metaphysics, provided we ignorethe metaphysics which is fixed and dead in

(01:40:57):
thesis, and consider only that whichis living in philosophers. The divergencies between
the schools, that is, broadlyspeaking, between the groups of disciples formed
round a few great masters, arecertainly striking, but would we find them
as marked between the masters themselves.Something here dominates the diversity of systems.

(01:41:19):
Something we repeat which is simple anddefinite, like a sounding about which one
feels that it has touched it greateror less depth, the bottom of the
same ocean, though each time itbrings up to the surface very different materials.
It is on these materials that thedisciples usually work in. This lies

(01:41:39):
the function of analysis, and themaster, in so far as he formulates,
develops, and translates into abstract ideas, what he brings is already in
a way his own disciple. Butthe simple act which started the analysis,
and which conceals itself behind the analysis, proceeds from a faculty quite different from

(01:42:00):
the analytical. This is, byits very definition, intuition. In conclusion,
we may remark that there is nothingmysterious in this faculty. Every one
of us has had occasion to exerciseit to a certain extent. Any one
of us, for instance, whohas attempted literary composition, knows that when

(01:42:21):
the subject has been studied at length, the materials all collected and the notes
all made, something more is neededin order to set about the work of
composition itself, and that is anoften very painful effort to place ourselves directly
at the heart of the subject,and to seek as deeply as possible an
impulse, after which we need onlyto let ourselves go. This impulse,

(01:42:45):
once received, starts the mind ona path where it rediscovers all the information
it had collected and a thousand otherdetails. Besides, it develops and analyzes
itself into terms which could be enumeratedindefinitely. The farther we go, the
more terms we discover. We shallnever say all that could be said.

(01:43:06):
And yet if we turn back suddenlyupon the impulse that we feel behind us
and try to seize it, itis gone. For it was not a
thing but the direction of a movement, and though indefinitely extensible, it is
infinitely simple. Metaphysical intuition seems tobe something of the same kind. What

(01:43:28):
corresponds here to the documents and notesof literary composition is the sum of observations
and experience gathered together by positive science. For we do not obtain an intuition
from reality, that is, anintellectual sympathy with the most intimate part of
it, unless we have won itsconfidence by a long fellowship with its superficial

(01:43:48):
manifestations. And it is not merelya question of assimilating the most conspicuous facts.
So immense a mass of facts mustbe accumulated and fear used together,
that in this fusion all the preconceivedand premature ideas which observers may unwittingly have
put into their observations will be certainto neutralize each other. In this way,

(01:44:12):
only can the bare materiality of theknown facts be exposed to view.
Even in the simple and privileged casewhich we have used as an example,
even for the direct contact of theself with the self, the final effort
of distinct intuition would be impossible toanyone who had not combined and compared with
each other a very large number ofpsychological analyzes. The masters of modern philosophy

(01:44:39):
were men who had assimilated all thescientific knowledge of their time, and the
partial eclipse of metaphysics for the lasthalf century has evidently no other cause than
the extraordinary difficulty which the philosopher findstoday in getting into touch with positive science,
which has become far too specialized.But metaphysics intuition, although it can

(01:45:00):
be obtained only through material knowledge,is quite other than the mere summary or
synthesis of that knowledge. It isdistinct from these. We repeat, as
the motor impulse is distinct from thepath traversed by the moving body, as
the tension of the spring is distinctfrom the visible movements of the pendulum.
In this sense, metaphysics has nothingin common with a generalization of facts,

(01:45:26):
and nevertheless it might be defined asan integral experience. End of Part four
recording by Tricia G. And ofan introduction to metaphysics by Henri Bergsen,
translated by T. E. Holme