instability, and distinct names in spite of their interpenetration.
Above all it enables us to objectify them, to throw them out into the
current of social life. But just for this very reason we are in danger
of living our lives superficially and of covering up our real self.
We are generally content with what is but a shadow of the real self,
projected into space. Consciousness, goaded on by an insatiable desire
to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality or perceives the
reality only through the symbol. As the self thus refracted and thereby
broken in pieces, is much better adapted to the requirements of social
life in general, and of language in particular, consciousness prefers it
and gradually loses sight of the fundamental self which is a qualitative
multiplicity of conscious states flowing, interpenetrating, melting
into one another, and forming an organic whole, a living unity or
personality. It is through a consideration of la duree and what it
implies that Bergson is led on to the distinction of two selves in each
of us.
Towards the close of his essay on Time and Free Will, he points out that
there are finally two different selves, a fundamental self and a social
self. We reach the former by deep introspection which leads us to grasp
our inner states as living things, constantly becoming, never amenable
to measure, which permeate one another and of which the succession in
la duree has nothing in common with side-by-sideness. But the moments at
which we thus grasp ourselves are rare; the greater part of our time we
live outside ourselves, hardly perceiving anything of ourselves but our
own ghost--a colourless shadow which is but the social representation
of the real and largely concealed Ego. Hence our life unfolds in space
rather than in time. We live for the external world rather than for
ourselves, we speak rather than think, we are "acted" rather than "act"
ourselves. To act freely, however, is to recover possession of one's
real self and to get back into la duree reele. [Footnote: Time and Free
Will, p. 232 (Fr. p. 178).]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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