The first step, in any case, towards obtaining the wider acquaintance at which philosophy aims consists in making the effort necessary to rid ourselves of the practical preoccupation which gives us our bias towards explaining everything long before we have allowed ourselves time to pay proper attention to it, in order that we may at least get back to such actual facts as we do already know directly. When this has been accomplished (and our intellectual habits are so deeply ingrained that the task is by no means easy) we can then go on to other philosophers’ descriptions of the facts with which their own efforts to widen their direct knowledge have acquainted them and, by synthesising the general terms which they have been obliged to employ, we also may come to know these more comprehensive facts. Unless it is understood synthetically, however, a philosopher’s description of the facts with which he has acquainted himself will be altogether unsatisfactory and misleading. It is in this way that Bergson’s own analysis of the fact which we all know directly into matter and the act of memory by which matter is turned into a creative process should be understood. The matter and the act of memory are both abstractions from the actual fact: he does not mean that over and above the fact there is either any matter or any force or activity called memory nor are these things supposed to be in the actual fact: they are simply abstract terms in which the fact is described. Bergson tries elsewhere to put the same point by saying that there are two tendencies in reality, one towards space (that is logical form) and the other towards duration, and that the actual fact which we know directly “tends” now towards “space” and now towards duration. The two faculties intellect and intuition are likewise fictions which are not really supposed to exist, distinct from the fact to which they are applied, but are simply abstract notions invented for the sake of description. Whatever the description by which a philosopher attempts to convey what he has discovered we shall only understand it if we remember that the terms in which the fact is described are not actually parts of the fact itself and can only convey the meaning intended if they are grasped by synthesis and not intellectually understood. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE DEVONSHIRE PRESS, TORQUAY International Library of Psychology Philosophy and Scientific Method GENERAL EDITOR - - - - C. K. OGDEN, M. A. (_Magdalene College, Cambridge_). _VOLUMES ALREADY ARRANGED:_ PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES _by_ Q. E. MOORE, Litt. D. CONFLICT AND DREAM _by_ W. H. R. RIVERS, F. R. S. THE MEASUREMENT OF EMOTION _by_ W. WHATELY SMITH _Introduction by William Brown_. THE ANALYSIS OF MATTER _by_ BERTRAND RUSSELL, F. R. S. MATHEMATICS FOR PHILOSOPHERS _by_ G. H. HARDY, F. R. S. PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES _by_ C. G. JONG, M. D., LL. D. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REASONING _by_ EUGENIO RIGNANO