We said that, for Bergson, actual fact directly known was the only reality; this actual fact, however, does not mean merely what is present to the perception of a given individual at any given moment, but the whole of our virtual knowledge. The field of virtual knowledge would cover much the same region as the subconscious, which plays such an important part in modern psychology. The limits of this field are impossible to determine. Once you give up limiting direct knowledge to the fact actually present in perception at any given moment it is difficult to draw the line anywhere. And yet to draw the line at the present moment is impossible for “the present moment” is clearly an abstract fiction. For practical purposes “the present” is what is known as “the specious present,” which covers a certain ill-defined period of duration from which the instantaneous “present moment” is recognised to be a mere abstraction. According to Bergson, however, just as “the present moment” is only an abstraction from a wider specious present so this specious present itself is an abstraction from a continuous process of duration from which other abstractions, days, weeks, years, can be made, but which is actually unbroken and forms a single continuous changing whole. And just as facts are only abstractions from the whole mental life of an individual so individuals must be regarded as abstractions from some more comprehensive mental whole and thus our virtual knowledge seems not merely to extend over the whole of what is embraced by our individual acts of perception and preserved by our individual memories but overflows even these limits and must be regarded as co-extensive with the duration of the whole of reality.