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
as I interpret this new series also as a continuous movement, and as
this movement has the same direction, the same duration and the same
velocity as the preceding, my consciousness feels itself bound to
localize the difference between the second series of sensations and
the first elsewhere than in the movement itself. It thus materializes
this difference at the extremity of the arm which moves; it persuades
itself that the sensation of movement has been identical in both cases,
while the sensation of weight differed in magnitude. But movement and
weight are but distinctions of the reflective consciousness: what is
present to consciousness immediately is the sensation of, so to speak,
a heavy movement, and this sensation itself can be resolved by analysis
into a series of muscular sensations, each of which represents by its
shade its place of origin and by its colour the magnitude of the weight
lifted.
[Sidenote: The sensation of light. Qualitative changes of colour
interpreted as quantitative changes in intensity of luminous source.]
Shall we call the intensity of light a quantity, or shall we treat
it as a quality? It has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed what a
large number of different factors co-operate in daily life in giving
us information about the nature of the luminous source. We know from
long experience that, when we have a difficulty in distinguishing the
outlines and details of objects, the light is at a distance or on
the point of going out. Experience has taught us that the affective
sensation or nascent dazzling that we experience in certain cases must
be attributed to a higher intensity of the cause. Any increase or
diminution in the number of luminous sources alters the way in which
the sharp lines of bodies stand out and also the shadows which they
project. Still more important are the changes of hue which coloured
surfaces, and even the pure colours of the spectrum, undergo under
the influence of a brighter or dimmer light. As the luminous source
is brought nearer, violet takes a bluish tinge, green tends to become
a whitish yellow, and red a brilliant yellow. Inversely, when the
light is moved away, ultramarine passes into violet and yellow into
green; finally, red, green and violet tend to become a whitish yellow.
Physicists have remarked these changes of hue for some time;[19] but
what is still more remarkable is that the majority of men do not
perceive them, unless they pay attention to them or are warned of
them. Having made up our mind, once for all, to interpret changes
of quality as changes of quantity, we begin by asserting that every
object has its own peculiar colour, definite and invariable. And when
the hue of objects tends to become yellow or blue, instead of saying
that we see their colour change under the influence of an increase or
diminution of light, we assert that the colour remains the same but
that our sensation of luminous intensity increases or diminishes. We
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