Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of ConsciousnessBergson, Henri
Philosophy
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
Bergson, Henri
Consciousness; Free will and determinism; Space and time
perspiration, the heart stops beating: in a word there is a general
organic disturbance following the stimulation of the medulla oblongata,
and this disturbance is the supreme expression of disgust."[14] But is
it nothing more than its expression? In what will the general sensation
of disgust consist, if not in the sum of these elementary sensations?
And what can we understand here by increasing intensity, if it is
not the constantly increasing number of sensations which join in
with the sensations already experienced? Darwin has drawn a striking
picture of the reactions following a pain which becomes more and more
acute. "Great pain urges all animals ... to make the most violent and
diversified efforts to escape from the cause of suffering.... With men
the mouth may be closely compressed, or more commonly the lips are
retracted with the teeth clenched or ground together.... The eyes stare
wildly ... or the brows are heavily contracted. Perspiration bathes
the body.... The circulation and respiration are much affected."[15]
Now, is it not by this very contraction of the muscles affected that
we measure the intensity of a pain? Analyse your idea of any suffering
which you call extreme: do you not mean that it is unbearable, that is
to say, that it urges the organism to a thousand different actions in
order to escape from it? I can picture to myself a nerve transmitting a
pain which is independent of all automatic reaction; and I can equally
understand that stronger or weaker stimulations influence this nerve
differently. But I do not see how these differences of sensation would
be interpreted by our consciousness as differences of quantity unless
we connected them with the reactions which usually accompany them, and
which are more or less extended and more or less important. Without
these subsequent reactions, the intensity of the pain would be a
quality, and not a magnitude.
[Sidenote: Pleasures compared by bodily inclination.]
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