A new philosophy

Preface

This little book is due to two articles published under the same title in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st and 15th February 1912.

Their object was to present Mr Bergson's philosophy to the public at large, giving as short a sketch as possible, and describing, without too minute details, the general trend of his movement. These articles I have here reprinted intact. But I have added, in the form of continuous notes, some additional explanations on points which did not come within the scope of investigation in the original sketch.

1 need hardly add that my work, though thus far complete, does not in any way claim to be a profound critical study. Indeed, such a study, dealing with a thinker who has not yet said his last word, would to-day be premature. I have simply aimed at writing an introduction which will make it easier to read and understand vi A NEW PHILOSOPHY

Mr Bergson's works, and serve as a preliminary guide to those who desire initiation in the new philosophy.

I have therefore firmly waived all the paraphernalia of technical discussions, and have made no comparisons, learned or otherwise, between Mr Bergson's teaching and that of older philosophies.

I can conceive no better method of misunderstanding the point at issue, I mean the simple unity of productive intuition, than that of pigeon-holing names of systems, collecting instances of resemblance, making up analogies, and specifying ingredients. An original philosophy is not meant to be studied as a mosaic which takes to pieces, a compound which analyses, or a body which dissects. On the contrary, it is by considering it as a living act, not as a rather clever discourse, by examining the peculiar excellence of its soul rather than the formation of its body, that the inquirer will succeed in understanding it. Properly speaking, I have only applied to Mr Bergson the method which he himself justifiably prescribes in a recent article {Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, November 1911), the only method, in fact, which is in all senses of the word fully " exact." I shall none the less

PREFACE vii

be glad if these brief pages can be of any interest to professional philosophers, and have endeavoured, as far as possible, to allow them to trace, under the concise formulae employed, the scheme which I have refused to develop.

It has become evident to me that even to-day the interpretation of Mr Bergson's position is in many cases full of faults, which it would undoubtedly be worth while to assist in removing. I may or may not have succeeded in my attempt, but such, at any rate, is the precise end I had in view.

In conclusion, I may say that I have not had the honour of being Mr Bergson's pupil ; and, at the time when I became acquainted with his outlook, my own direct reflection on science and life had already produced in me similar trains of thought. I found in his work the striking realisation of a presentiment and a desire. This "correspondence," which I have not exaggerated, proved at once a help and a hindrance to me in entering into the exact comprehension of so profoundly original a doctrine. The reader will thus understand that I think it in place to quote my authority to him in the following lines which Mr Bergson kindly wrote me after the publication of the articles reproduced in this volume :

viii A NEW PHILOSOPHY

"Underneath and beyond the method you have caught the intention and the spirit. . . . Your study could not be more conscientious or true to the original. As it advances, condensation increases in a marked degree: the reader becomes aware that the explanation is undergoing a progressive involution similar to the involution by which we determine the reality of Time. To produce this feeling, much more has been necessary than a close study of my works: it has required deep sympathy of thought, the power, in fact, of rethinking the subject in a personal and original manner. Nowhere is this sympathy more in evidence than in your concluding pages, where in a few words you point out the possibilities of further developments of the doctrine. In this direction I should myself say exactly what you have said/'

Paris, 28th March 1912.

Contents

PAGE

Preface v

GENERAL VIEW

II

Every philosophy, prior to taking shape in a group of co-ordinated theses, presents itself, in its initial stage, as an attitude, a frame of mind, a method. Nothing can be more important than to study this starting-point, this elementary act of direction and movement, if we wish afterwards to arrive at the precise shade of meaning of the subsequent teaching. Here is really the fountain-head of thought ; it is here that the form of the future system is determined, and here that contact with reality takes effect.

The last point, particularly, is vital. To return to the direct view of things beyond all figurative symbols, to descend into the inmost depths of being, to watch the throbbing life in its pure state, and listen to the secret rhythm of its inmost breath, to measure it, at least so far as measurement is possible, has always been the philosopher's ambition ; and the new philosophy has not departed from this ideal. But in what light does it regard its task? That is the first point to clear up. For the problem is complex, and the goal distant.

"We are made as much, and more, for action than for thought," says Mr Bergson;

"or rather, when we follow our natural impulse, it is to act that we think." * And again, " What we ordinarily call a fact is not reality such as it would appear to an immediate intuition, but an adaptation of reality to practical interests and the demands of social life." 2 Hence the question which takes precedence of all others is : to distinguish in our common representation of the world, the fact in its true sense from the combinations which we have introduced in view of action and language.

Now, to rediscover nature in her fresh springs of reality, it is not sufficient to abandon the images and conceptions invented by human initiative ; still less is it sufficient to fling ourselves into the torrent of brute sensations. By so doing we are in danger of dissolving our thought in dream or quenching it in night.

Above all, we are in danger of committal to a path which it is impossible to follow. The philosopher is not free to begin the work of knowledge again upon other planes, with a mind which would be adequate to the new and virgin issue of a simple writ of oblivion.

At the time when critical reflection begins, we have already been long engaged in action

1 & Evolution Creatrice, p. 321.

2 Matter e et Memoir e, p. 201.

and science ; by the training of individual life, as by hereditary and racial experience, our faculties of perception and conception, our senses and our understanding, have contracted habits, which are by this time unconscious and instinctive ; we are haunted by all kinds of ideas and principles, so familiar to-day that they even pass unobserved. But what is it all worth ?

Does it, in its present state, help us to know the nature of a disinterested intuition ?

Nothing but a methodical examination of consciousness can tell us that ; and it will take more than a renunciation of explicit knowledge to recreate in us a new mind, capable of grasping the bare fact exactly as it is : what we require is perhaps a penetrating reform, a kind of conversion.

The rational and perceptive function we term our intelligence emerges from darkness through a slowly lifting dawn. During this twilight period it has lived, worked, acted, fashioned and informed itself. On the threshold of philosophical speculation it is full of more or less concealed beliefs, which are literally prejudices, and branded with a secret mark influencing its every movement. Here is an actual situation. Exemption from it is beyond anyone's province. Whether we will or no, we are from the beginning of our inquiry immersed in a doctrine which disguises nature to us, and already at bottom constitutes a complete metaphysic. This we term common-sense, and positive science is itself only an extension and refinement of it. What is the value of this work performed without clear consciousness or critical attention? Does it bring us into true relation with things, into relation with pure consciousness ?

This is our first and inevitable doubt, which requires solution.

But it would be a quixotic proceeding first to make a void in our mind, and afterwards to admit into it, one by one, after investigation, such and such a concept, or such and such a principle. The illusion of the clean sweep and total reconstruction can never be too vigorously condemned.

Is it from the void that we set out to think ? Do we think in void, and with nothing? Common ideas of necessity form the groundwork for the broidery of our advanced thought. Further, even if we succeeded in our impossible task, should we, in so doing, have corrected the causes of error which are to-day graven upon the very structure of our intelligence, such as our past life has made it? These errors would not cease to act imperceptibly upon the work of revision intended to apply the remedy.

It is from within, by an effort of immanent purgation, that the necessary reform must be brought about. And philosophy's first task is to institute critical reflection upon the obscure beginnings of thought, with a view to shedding light upon its spontaneous virgin condition, but without any vain claim to lift it out of the current in which it is actually plunged.

One conclusion is already plain : the groundwork of common-sense is sure, but the form is suspicious.

In common-sense is contained, at any rate virtually and in embryo, all that can ever be attained of reality, for reality is verification, not construction.

Everything has its starting-point in construction and verification. Thus philosophical research can only be a conscious and deliberate return to the facts of primal intuition. But common-sense, being prepossessed in a practical direction, has doubtless subjected these facts to a process of interested alteration, which is artificial in proportion to the labour bestowed. Such is Mr Bergson's fundamental hypothesis, and it is far-reaching. u Many metaphysical difficulties probably arise from our habit of confounding speculation and practice ; or of pushing an idea in the direction of utility, when we think we fathom it in theory ; or, lastly, of employing in thought the forms of action. 5 ' 1

The work of reform will consist therefore in freeing our intelligence from its utilitarian habits, by endeavouring at the outset to become clearly conscious of them.

Notice how far presumption is in favour of our hypothesis. Whether we regard organic life in the genesis and preservation of the individual, or in the evolution of species, we see its natural direction to be towards utility : but the effort of thought comes after the effort of life ; it is not added from outside, it is the continuance and the flower of the former effort. Must we not expect from this that it will preserve its former habits ? And what do we actually observe ? The first gleam of human intelligence in prehistoric times is revealed to us by an industry ; the cut flint of the primitive caves marks the first stage of the road which was one day to end in the most sublime philosophies. Again, every science has begun

1 Preface to Matter and Memory. First edition.

T'-rrfcTE , by practical arts. Indeed, our science of to-day, however disinterested it may have become, remains none the less in close relation with the demands of our action ; it permits us to speak of and to handle things rather than to see them in their intimate and profound nature. Analysis, when applied to our operations of knowledge, shows us that our understanding parcels out, arrests, and quantifies, whereas reality, as it appears to immediate intuition, is a moving series, a flux of blended qualities.

That is to say, our understanding solidifies all that it touches. Have we not here exactly the essential postulates of action and speech ? To speak, as to act, we must have separable elements, terms and objects which remain inert while the operation goes on, maintaining between themselves the constant relations which find their most perfect and ideal presentment in mathematics.

Everything tends, then, to incline us towards the hypothesis in question. Let us regard it henceforward as expressing a fact.

The forms of knowledge elaborated by common-sense were not originally intended to allow us to see reality as it is.

Their task was rather, and remains so, to enable us to grasp its practical aspect. It is for that they are made, not for philosophical speculation.

Now these forms nevertheless have existed in us as inveterate habits, soon becoming unconscious, even when we have reached the point of desiring knowledge for its own sake.

But in this new stage they preserve the bias of their original utilitarian function, and carry this mark with them everywhere, leaving it upon the fresh tasks which we are fain to make them accomplish.

An inner reform is therefore imperative to-day, if we are to succeed in unearthing and sifting, in our perception of nature, under the veinstone of practical symbolism, the true intuitional content.

This attempt at return to the standpoint of pure contemplation and disinterested experience is a task very different from the task of science. It is one thing to regard more and more or less and less closely with the eyes made for us by utilitarian evolution : it is another to labour at remaking for ourselves eyes capable of seeing, in order to see, and not in order to live.

Philosophy understood in this manner — and we shall see more and more clearly as we go on that there is no other legitimate method of understanding it — demands from us an almost violent act of reform and conversion.

The mind must turn round upon itself, invert the habitual direction of its thought, climb the hill down which its instinct towards action has carried it, and go to seek experience at its source, " above the critical bend where it inclines towards our practical use and becomes, properly speaking, human experience." 1 In short, by a twin effort of criticism and expansion, it must pass outside common-sense and synthetic understanding to return to pure intuition.

Philosophy consists in reliving the immediate over again, and in interpreting our rational science and everyday perception by its light. That, at least, is the first stage. We shall find afterwards that that is not all.

Here is a genuinely new conception of philosophy. Here, for the first time, philosophy is made specifically distinct from science, yet remains no less positive.

What science really does is to preserve the general attitude of common-sense, with its apparatus of forms and principles.

It is true that science develops and perfects it, refines and extends it, and even now and again corrects it. But science does not change either the direction or the essential steps.

In this philosophy, on the contrary, what is at first suspected and finally modified, is the setting of the points before the journey begins.

Not that, in saying so, we mean to condemn science ; but we must recognise its just limits. The methods of science proper are in their place and appropriate, and lead to a knowledge which is true (though still symbolical), so long as the object studied is the world of practical action, or, to put it briefly, the world of inert matter.

But soul, life, and activity escape it, and yet these are the spring and ultimate basis of everything : and it is the appreciation of this fact, with what it entails, that is new. And yet, new as Mr Bergson's conception of philosophy may deservedly appear, it does not any the less, from another point of view, deserve to be styled classic and traditional.

What it really defines is not so much a particular philosophy as philosophy itself, in its original function.

Everywhere in history we find its secret current at its task.

All great philosophers have had glimpses of it, and employed it in moments of discovery.

Only as a general rule they have not clearly recognised what they were doing, and so have soon turned aside.

But on this point I cannot insist without going into lengthy detail, and am obliged to refer the reader to the fourth chapter of Creative Evolution, where he will find the whole question dealt with.

One remark, however, has still to be made. Philosophy, according to Mr Bergson's conception, implies and demands time; it does not aim at completion all at once, for the mental reform in question is of the kind which requires gradual fulfilment. The truth which it involves does not set out to be a non-temporal essence, which a sufficiently powerful genius would be able, under pressure, to perceive in its entirety at one view ; and that again seems to be very new.

I do not, of course, wish to abuse systems of philosophy. Each of them is an experience of thought, a moment in the life of thought, a method of exploring reality, a reagent which reveals an aspect. Truth undergoes analysis into systems as does light into colours.

But the mere name system calls up the static idea of a finished building. Here there is nothing of the kind. The new philosophy desires to be a proceeding as much as, and even more than, to be a system. It insists on being lived as well as thought. It demands that thought should work at living its true life, an inner life related to itself, effective, active, and creative, but not on that account directed towards external action. "And," says Mr Bergson, " it can only be constructed by the collective and progressive effort of many thinkers, and of many observers, completing, correcting, and righting one another." 1

Let us see how it begins, and what is its generating act.

Ill

How are we to attain the immediate ? How are we to realise this perception of pure fact which we stated to be the philosopher's first step?

Unless we can clear up this doubt, the end proposed will remain to our gaze an abstract and lifeless ideal. This is, then, the point which requires instant explanation. For there is a serious difficulty in which the very employment of the word "immediate" might lead us astray.

The immediate, in the sense which concerns

1 Preface to Creative Evolution, us, is not at all, or at least is no longer for us the passive experience, the indefinable something which we should inevitably receive, provided we opened our eyes and abstained from reflection.

As a matter of fact, we cannot abstain from reflection : reflection is to-day part of our very vision ; it comes into play as soon as we open our eyes. So that, to come on the trail of the immediate, there must be effort and work. How are we to guide this effort? In what will this work consist ? By what sign shall we be able to recognise that the result has been obtained?

These are the questions to be cleared up. Mr Bergson speaks of them chiefly in connection with the realities of consciousness, or, more generally speaking, of life. And it is here, in fact, that the consequences are most weighty and far-reaching. We shall need to refer to them again in detail. But to simplify my explanation, I will here choose another example : that of inert matter, of the perception on which the physical is based. It is in this case that the divergence between common perception and pure perception, however real it may be, assumes least proportions.

Therefore it appears most in place in the

_.- sketch I desire to trace of an exceedingly complex work, where I can only hope, evidently, to indicate the main lines and general direction.

We readily believe that when we cast our eyes upon surrounding objects, we enter into them unresistingly and apprehend them all at once in their intrinsic nature. Perception would thus be nothing but simple passive registration. But nothing could be more untrue, if we are speaking of the perception which we employ without profound criticism in the course of our daily life. What we here take to be pure fact is, on the contrary, the last term in a highly complicated series of mental operations. And this term contains as much of us as of things.

In fact, all concrete perception comes up for analysis as an indissoluble mixture of construction and fact, in which the fact is only revealed through the construction, and takes on its complexion. We all know by experience how incapable the uneducated person is of explaining the simple appearance of the least fact, without embodying a crowd of false interpretations. We know to a less extent, but it is also true, that the most enlightened and adroit person proceeds in just the same manner : his interpretation is better, but it is still interpretation.

That is why accurate observation is so difficult ; we see or we do not see, we notice such and such an aspect, we read this or that, according to our state of consciousness at the time, according to the direction of the investigation on which we are engaged.

Who was it defined art as nature seen through a mind?. Perception, too, is an art.

This art has its processes, its conventions, and its tools. Go into a laboratory and study one of those complex instruments which make our senses finer or more powerful ; each of them is literally a sheaf of materialised theories, and by means of it all acquired science is brought to bear on each new observation of the student. In exactly the same way our organs of sense are actual instruments constructed by the unconscious work of the mind in the course of biological evolution ; they too sum up and give concrete form and expression to a system of enlightening theories. But that is not all. The most elementary psychology shows us the amount of thought, in the correct sense of the term, recollection, or inference, which enters into what we should be tempted to call pure perception.

METHOD n

Establishment of fact is not the simple reception of the faithful imprint of that fact ; it is invariably interpreted, systematised, and placed in pre-existing forms which constitute veritable theoretical frames. That is why the child has to learn to perceive. There is an education of the senses which he acquires by long training. One day, with the aid of habit, he will almost cease to see things : a few lines, a few glimpses, a few simple signs noted in a brief passing glance, will enable him to recognise them ; and he will hardly retain any more of reality than its schemes and symbols.

" Perception," says Mr Bergson on this subject, " becomes in the end only an opportunity of recollection. 55 *

All concrete perception, it is true, is directed less upon the present than the past. The part of pure perception in it is small, and immediately covered and almost buried by the contribution of memory.

This infinitesimal part acts as a bait. It is a summons to recollection, challenging us to extract from our previous experience, and construct with our acquired wealth a system of images which permits us to read the experience of the moment.

With our scheme of interpretation thus constituted we encounter the few fugitive traits which we have actually perceived. If the theory we have elaborated adapts itself, and succeeds in accounting for, connecting, and making sense of these traits, we shall finally have a perception properly so called.

Perception then, in the usual sense of the word, is the resolution of a problem, the verification of a theory.

Thus are explained " errors of the senses," which are in reality errors of interpretation. Thus too, and in the same manner, we have the explanation of dreams.

Let us take a simple example. When you read a book, do you spell each syllable, one by one, to group the syllables afterwards into words, and the words into phrases, thus travelling from print to meaning? Not at all : you grasp a few letters accurately, a few downstrokes in their graphical outline ; then you guess the remainder, travelling in the reverse direction, from a probable meaning to the print which you are interpreting. This is what causes mistakes in reading, and the well-known difficulty in seeing printing errors.

This observation is confirmed by curious experiments. Write some everyday phrase or other on a blackboard ; let there be a few intentional mistakes here and there, a letter or two altered, or left out. Place the words in a dark room in front of a person who, of course, does not know what has been written. Then turn on the light without allowing the observer sufficient time to spell the writing.

In spite of this, he will in most cases read the entire phrase, without hesitation or difficulty.

He has restored what was missing, or corrected what was at fault.

Now, ask him what letters he is certain he saw, and you will find he will tell you an omitted or altered letter as well as a letter actually written.

The observer then thinks he sees in broad light a letter which is not there, if that letter, in virtue of the general sense, ought to appear in the phrase. But you can go further, and vary the experiment.

Suppose we write the word " tumult " correctly. After doing so, to direct the memory of the observer into a certain trend of recollection, call out in his ear, during the short time the light is turned on, another word of different meaning, for example, the word " railway."

The observer will read " tunnel " ; that is to say, a word, the graphical outline of which is like that of the written word, but connected in sense with the order of recollection called up.

In this mistake in reading, as in the spontaneous correction of the previous experiment, we see very clearly that perception is always the fulfilment of guesswork.

It is the direction of this work that we are concerned to determine.

According to the popular idea, perception has a completely speculative interest : it is pure knowledge. Therein lies the fundamental mistake.

Notice first of all how much more probable it is, a priori, that the work of perception, just as any other natural and spontaneous work, should have a utilitarian signification.

" Life," says Mr Bergson with justice, " is the acceptance from objects of nothing but the useful impression, with the response of the appropriate reactions." 1

And this view receives striking objective confirmation if, with the author of Matter and Memory, we follow the progress of the perceptive functions along the animal series from

1 Laughter, p. 154.

the protoplasm to the higher vertebrates ; or if, with him, we analyse the task of the body, and discover that the nervous system is manifested in its very structure as, before all, an instrument of action. Have we not already besides proof of this in the fact that each of us always appears in his own eyes to occupy the centre of the world he perceives ?

The Riquet of Anatole France voices Mr Bergson's view : " I am always in the centre of everything, and men and beasts and things, for or against me, range themselves around."

But direct analysis leads us still more plainly to the same conclusion.

Let us take the perception of bodies. It is easy to show — and I regret that I cannot here reproduce Mr Bergson's masterly demonstration — that the division of matter into distinct objects with sharp outlines is produced by a selection of images Avhich is completely relative to our practical needs.

"The distinct outlines which we assign to an object, and which bestow upon it its individuality, are nothing but the graph of a certain kind of influence which we should be able to employ at a certain point in space : it is the plan of our future actions which is submitted to our eyes, as in a mirror, when we perceive the surfaces and edges of things. Remove this action, and in consequence the high roads which it makes for itself in advance by perception, in the web of reality, and the individuality of the body will be reabsorbed in the universal interaction which is without doubt reality itself." Which is tantamount to saying that "rough bodies are cut in the material of nature by a perception of which the scissors follow, in some sort, the dotted line along which the action would pass." 1

Bodies independent of common experience do not then appear, to an attentive criticism, as veritable realities which would have an existence in themselves. They are only centres of co-ordination for our actions. Or, if you prefer it, "our needs are so many shafts of light which, when played upon the continuity of perceptible qualities, produce in them the outline of distinct bodies." 2 Does not science too, after its own fashion, resolve the atom into a centre of intersecting relations, which finally extend by degrees to the entire universe in an indissoluble interpenetration ?

A qualitative continuity, imperceptibly shaded off, over which pass quivers that here