A New Philosophy : $b Henri BergsonLe Roy, Edouard
Philosophy
A New Philosophy : $b Henri Bergson
Le Roy, Edouard
Bergson, Henri, 1859-1941
Let us push still further into the hidden retreat of the soul. Here we
are in these regions of twilight and dream, where our ego takes shape,
where the spring within us gushes up, in the warm secrecy of the
darkness which ushers our trembling being into birth. Distinctions fail
us. Words are useless now. We hear the wells of consciousness at their
mysterious task like an invisible shiver of running water through the
mossy shadow of the caves. I dissolve in the joy of becoming. I abandon
myself to the delight of being a pulsing reality. I no longer know
whether I see scents, breathe sounds, or smell colours. Do I love? Do I
think? The question has no longer a meaning for me. I am, in my complete
self, each of my attitudes, each of my changes. It is not my sight which
is indistinct or my attention which is idle. It is I who have resumed
contact with pure reality, whose essential movement admits no form of
number. He who thus makes the really "deep" and "inner" effort necessary
to becoming--were it only for an elusive moment--discovers, under the
simplest appearance, inexhaustible sources of unsuspected wealth; the
rhythm of his duration becomes amplified and refined; his acts become
more conscious; and in what seemed to him at first sudden severance or
instantaneous pulsation he discovers complex transitions imperceptibly
shaded off, musical transitions full of unexpected repetitions and
threaded movements.
Thus, the deeper we go in consciousness, the less suitable become these
schemes of separation and fixity existing in spatial and numerical
forms. The inner world is that of pure quality. There is no measurable
homogeneity, no collection of atomically constructed elements. The
phenomena distinguished in it by analysis are not composing units, but
phases. And it is only when they reach the surface, when they come in
contact with the external world, when they are incarnated in language
or gesture, that the categories of matter become adapted to them. In
its true nature, reality appears as an uninterrupted flow, an impalpable
shiver of fluid changing tones, a perpetual flux of waves which ebb and
break and dissolve into one another without shock or jar. Everything is
ceaseless change; and the state which appears the most stable is already
change, since it continues and grows old. Constant quantities are
represented only by the materialisation of habit or by means of
practical symbols. And it is on this point that Mr Bergson rightly
insists. ("Creative Evolution", page 3.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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