Bergson himself would give to his philosophy the title, The Philosophy
of Change, and this for a very good reason, for the principle of
Change and an insistence on its reality lies at the root of his
thought.[Footnote: He suggested this as a sub-title to Dr. H. Wildon
Carr for his little work Henri Bergson (People's Books). Dr. Wildon
Carr's later and larger work bears this as its full title.] "We know
that everything changes," we find him saying in his London lectures,
"but it is mere words. From the earliest times recorded in the history
of philosophy, philosophers have never stopped saying that everything
changes; but, when the moment came for the practical application of this
proposition, they acted as if they believed that at the bottom of things
there is immobility and invariability. The greatest difficulties of
philosophy are due to not taking account of the fact that Change and
Movement are universal. It is not enough to say that everything changes
and moves--we must believe it." [Footnote: Second of the four lectures on
La Nature de l'Ame delivered at London University, Oct. 21, 1911. From
report in The Times for Oct. 23, 1911, p. 4.] In order to think Change
and to see it, a whole mass of prejudices must be swept aside--some
artificial, the products of speculative philosophy, and others the
natural product of common-sense. We tend to regard immobility as a
more simple affair than movement. But what we call immobility is really
composite and is merely relative, being a relation between movements.
If, for example, there are two trains running in the same direction on
parallel lines at exactly the same speed, opposite one another, then the
passengers in each train, when observing the other train, will regard
the trains as motionless. So, generally, immobility is only apparent,
Change is real. We tend to be misled by language; we speak, for
instance, of 'the state of things'; but what we call a state is the
appearance which a change assumes in the eyes of a being who, himself,
changes according to an identical or analogous rhythm. "Take, for
example," says Bergson, "a summer day. We are stretched on the grass, we
look around us--everything is at rest--there is absolute immobility--no
change. But the grass is growing, the leaves of the trees are developing
or decaying--we ourselves are growing older all the time. That which
seems rest, simplicity itself, is but a composite of our ageing with the
changes which takes place in the grass, in the leaves, in all that is
around us. Change, then, is simple, while 'the state of things' as
we call it, is composite. Every stable state is the result of the
co-existence between that change and the change of the person who
perceives it." [Footnote: La Nature de l'Ame, lecture 2.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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