I said that Bergson is entirely awake to the aptness of the objection just raised to his account of intellect. In a sense, in certain passages, he even seems to grant the truth of the contention. Action, he acknowledges, for instance,[96] can be involved only with reality; and consequently the forms of perception and the categories of intellect (which are those forms rendered elaborately precise) “touch something of the absolute.” Sound truth, assuredly! The fitness of reality to enter as object into those active relationships which are the perceptive and intellectual categories makes the categories as genuinely own to the true, essential nature of objective reality as to the nature of subjective intelligence. That the categorization of reality depends on the real object’s being in relation to something else than itself is nothing peculiar to this (the categorical) character of reality. The same condition is common to every character of reality. The qualitative aspect of reality, which Bergson usually regards as the nature of reality “in itself,” depends no less than its relational or categorical aspect on the relatedness of the object. For the qualities of things are nothing but the differences they make--to consciousness or to other things. Reality not in relation is simply a phrase without a vestige of meaning. Reality “in itself” in such a sense is merely nonsense. It would seem, therefore, as if Bergson should account the intellectual mode of consciousness, which does indeed “touch something of the absolute,” as knowledge of precisely the same metaphysical status as a mode which touches anything else of the absolute. It is one thing for a mode of consciousness to be uncongenial or uninteresting to you or me; it is another for it to be invalid. The uncongeniality of a mode of consciousness depends on personal idiosyncrasy; the invalidity of a mode of consciousness depends on the logical nature of being.