We have seen that intensity which is “pure,” pure quality, is pure nothing, being quality of nothing; since, if it is quality of anything, it has its quantitative coefficient, which destroys its purity. So variousness which is “pure” heterogeneity, is not even various, but “nothing” again. For it is “interpenetrating” instead of “juxtaposited” or impenetrable heterogeneity. But impenetrability is just identity, as Bergson remarks;[150] it is a logical principle rather than a physical law. That two bodies cannot occupy the same space and time means that they would therein not be two, or coexistent. Now, interpenetration in any rigorous sense, any but the loose colloquial sense of small division and uniform diffusion, is the mere contradiction of impenetrability or identity. It means that two bodies do occupy the same space at the same time. If, then, this law of interpenetration thus means to require (in the subject) the relation of coexistence, and also (in the predicate) to forbid it--in other words, if it is contradictory to itself--mental states can obey it no better than pebbles. And, finally, non-quantitative causality is a third contradiction, since its “pure” heterogeneity destroys its continuity in time as well as in space (cf. above, page 93). How can any of these three pairs of heterologous principles of space and time be “absolutely” different if, however different, each pair have such essential community of nature that both must be called by one name and thought under one category, as two species of the same genus? For, in spite of all their differences, they are, throughout the discussion, two kinds of intensity, of multiplicity, of causation. CHAPTER V THE MYSTICAL YEARNING OF INTUITIONISM I will conclude these comments on Professor Bergson’s teaching by noting the mystical nature of the central idea of his epistemology, the identification of subject and object. The yearning for a more intimate acquaintance with the thing-in-itself, for a knowledge truer and more searching than the “practical” and “useful” reactive relations which we bear to our “phenomenal” objects--as if such experience were unworthy the sacred name of knowledge--this, the prime aspiration of the intuitional philosophy of Bergson, reduces to a futile, if not a morbid, yearning after self-contradiction. The more you know a thing “in itself,” the more you “internalize” your relation to it--in short, the more you identify yourself with it--the less you bear any significant relation to it at all, any relation, obviously, but that of identity; the less, notably, you bear the active and cognitive relations toward it. The indispensable condition of Paul’s knowing Peter is that Paul should _not_ become Peter. Things can neither be nor be conceived except in _some_ relations, any more than relations without terms. If you know the thing in its relations, you know the thing as much in itself as a thing is capable of _being_.