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An Introduction to
Metaphysics

It
• • *

Henri Bergson

Member of the Institute and Professor of the College de

France

Translated by T. E. Hulme

Aothorized Edition, Revised by the Author, with

Additional Material

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London
Zbc imfcfietbocftcr press

• •

COPTRIGHT, 191a
BY

O. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

third Printing

Ube Itnldfterlwcftec fl)re00» Hew fiocft

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

THIS celebrated essay was first pub-
liahed in the Revue de Mctaphysique
et de Morale, in January, 1903. It ap-
peared then after Time and Free Will and
Matter and Memory and before Creative
Evolution; and while containing ideas set
forth in the first two of these works, it
announces some of those which were after-
wards developed in the last.

Though this book can in no sense be
regarded as an epitome of the others, it
yet forms the best introduction to them.
M. Edouard Le Roy in his lately published
book on M. Bergson's philosophy speaks of
" this marvelously suggestive study which
constitutes the best preface to the books
themselves."

It has, however, more importance than a

simple introduction would have, for in it

M. Bergson explains, at greater length and

vin greater detail than in the other boobs,

291591

Preface

exactly what he means to convey by the
word intuition. The intuitive method ia
treated independently and not, as elsewhere
in his writings, incidentally, in its appli-
cations to particular problems. Por this
reason every writer who has attempted to
give a complete exposition of M. Bergson's
philosophy has been obliged to quote this
essay at length; and it is indispensable
therefore to the full understanding of its
author's position. Translations into Ger-
man, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish,
and Russian have lately appeared, but the
Trench original is at present out of print.

This translation has had the great ad-
vantage of being revised in proof by the
author. I have to thank him for many
alternative renderings, and also for a few
slight alterations in the text, which he
thought would make his meaning clearer.
T. E. nULME. ,

St. John's College,
Cambkidge.

An Introduction to
Metaphysics

A COMPARISON of the definitions of
*^ metaphysics and the various concep-
tions of the absolute leads to the discovery
that philosophers, in spite of their apparent
divergencies, agree in distinguishing two
profoundly diflferent ways of knowing a
thing. The first implies that we move
round the object; the second that we enter
into it. The first depends on the point of
view at which we are placed and on the
symbols by which we express ourselves.
The second neither depends on a point of
view nor relies on any symbol. The first
kind of knowledge may be said to stop at
the relative; the second, in those cases

where it is possible, to attain the absolute.

An Introduction to

Consider, for example, the movement of
an object in space. My perception of the
motion will vary with the point of view,
moving or stationary, from which I observe
it. My expression of it will vary with the
systems of axes, or the points of reference,
to which I relate it; that is, with the sym-
bols by which I translate it. For this
donble reason I call such motion relative:
in the one case, as in the other, I am placed
outside the object itself. But when I speak
of an absolute movement, I am attributing
to the moving object an interior and, so to
speak, states of mind; I also imply that I
am in sympathy with those states, and that
I insert myself in them by an effort of
imagination. Then, according as the ob-
ject is moving or stationary, according as
it adopts one movement or another, what
I experience will vary. And what I ex-
perience will depend neither on the point
of view I may take up in regard to the
object, since I am inside the obj<
Bor on the aymbols by which I m

Metaphysics 3

late the motion, since I have rejected all
translations in order to possess the original.
In short, I shall no longer grasp the move-
ment from without, remaining where I am,
but from where it is, from within, as it is
in itself. I shall possess an absolute.

Consider, again, a character whose ad-
ventures are related to me in a novel. The
author may multiply the traits of his hero's
character*, may make him speak and act as
much as he pleases, but all this can never
be equivalent to the simple and indivisible
feeling which I should experience if I were
able for an instant to identify myself with
the person of the hero himself. Out of that
indivisible feeling, as from a spring, all the
words, gestures, and actions of the man
would appear to me to flow naturally.
They would no longer be accidents which,
added to the idea I had already formed of
the character, continually enriched that
idea, without ever completing it. The
character would be given to me all at once,
in its entirety, and the thousand incidents

An Introduction to

which manifest it, instead of adding them-
selves to the idea and so enriching it, would
Beein to me, on tlie contrary, to detach
themselves from it, without, however, ex-
hausting it or impoverishing its essence.
All the things I am told about the man
provide me with so many points of view
from which I can observe him. All the
traits which describe him. and which can
make him known to me only by so many
comparisons with persons or things I know
already, are siRns by which he is expressed
more or less symbolically. Symbols and
points of view, therefore, place me outside
him; they give me only what he has in
cominou with others, and not what belongs
to him and to him alone. But that which
is properly himself, that which constitutes
his essence, cannot 1k^ perceived from
without, being internal by definition, nor
t)e expressed by Myiubols, being incom-
mensurable with everything else. De-
scription, history, and analysis leave me
here in I he relative. Coincidence with

Metaphysics 5

the person himself would alone give me;'
the absolute. !

It is in this sense, and in this sense only, \
that absolute is synonymous with perfec-r
tion. Were all the photographs of a town,
taken from all possible points of view, to
go on indefinitely completing one another,
they would never be equivalent to the solid
town in which we walk about. Were all
the translations of a poem into all possible
languages to add together their various
shades of meaning and, correcting each
other by a kind of mutual retouching, to
give a more and more faithful image of
the poem they translate, they would yet
never succeed in rendering the inner mean-
ing of the original. A representation taken \
from a certain point of view, a translation )
made with certain symbols, will always /
remain imperfect in comparison with the /
object of which a view has been taken, op/.
which the symbols seek to express. But the \
absolute, which is the object and not its
representation, the original and not its

6 An Introduction to

translation, is perfect, by being perfectly
what it is.

/ It is doubtless for this reason that th6
jl absolute has often been identified with the
} infinite. Suppose that I wished to com-
municate to some one who did not know
Greek the extraordinarily simple impres-
sion that a passage in Homer makes upon
me; I should first give a translation of the
lines, I should then comment on my trans-
lation, and then develop the commentary;
in this way, by piling up explanation on
explanation, I might approach nearer and
nearer to what I wanted to express; but I
should never quite reach it. When you
raise your arm, you accomplish a movement
of which you have, from within, a simple
perception; but for me, watching it from
the outside, your arm passes through one
point, then through another, and between
these two there will be still other points;
so that, if I began to count, the operation
would go on for ever. Viewed from the
^ inside, then, an absolute is a simple thing;

Metaphysics 7

but looked at from the outside, that is tol
say, relatively to other things, it becomes, '
in relation to these signs which express it, j
the gold coin for which we never seem able ;
to finish giving small change. Now, that
which lends itself at the same time both
to an indivisible apprehension and to an
inexhaustible enumeration is, by the very ■
definition of the word, an infinite.

It follows from this that an absolute .
could only be given in an intmtion^ whilst i
everything else falls within the province of i
analysis. By intuition is meant the kind i
of intellectual sympathy by which one'^'
places oneself within an object in order to
coincide with what is unique in it and con-
sequently inexpressible. Analysis, on the
contrary, is the operation which reduces the
object to elements already known, that is,
to elements common both to it 'and other
objects. To analyze, therefore, is to ex-
press a thing as a function of something
other than itself. All analysis is thus a
translation, a development into symbols, a

An Introduction to

representation taken from auccesaive points
of view from which we not« as many re-
semblances &s possible between the new
object which we are studying and others
which we believe we know already. In its
eternally unsatisfied desire to embrace the
object around which it is compelled to
turn, analysis multiplies without end the
number of its points of view in order to
complete its always incomplete representa-
tion, and ceaselessly varies its symbols that
it may perfect the always imperfect trans-
lation. It goes on, therefore, to infinity.
But intuition, if intuition is possible, is a
simple act.

Now it is easy to see that the ordinary
function of positive science is analysis.
Positive science works, then, above all, with
symbols. Even the most concrete of the
natural sciences, those concerned with life,
confine themfielves to the visible form of
living beings, their organs and anatomical
elements. They make comparisons between
these forms, they i-educe the more complex

Metaphysics 9

to the more simple; in short, they study
the workings of life in what is, so to speak,
only its visual symbol. If there exists any
means of possessing a reality absolutely in-
stead of knowing it relatively, of placing
oneself within it instead of looking at it
from outside points of view, of having the
intuition instead of making the analysis:
in short, of seizing it without any expres-
sion, translation, or symbolic representation
— metaphysics is that means. Metaphysics^
theriy is the science which claims to dispense
with symbols.

There is one reality, at least, which we \
all seize from within, by intuition and not
by simple analysis. It is our own person- | /
ality in its flowing through time — our self'
which endures. We may sympathize in-
tellectually with nothing else, but we
certainly sympathize with our own selves.

When I direct my attention inward to
contemplate my own self (supposed for the

J »

An Introduction to

moment to be inactive), I perceive at first,
a» a crust solidified on the surface, all the
perceptions which come to it from the
material world. These perceptions are clear.
distinct, juxtaposed or jiistaposable one
with another; they tend to group them-
selves into objects. Next, I notice the
memories which more or less adhere to
these perceptions and which serve to in-
terpret them. These memories have been
detached, as it were, from the depth of my
jKjrsonality, drawn to the surface by the
perceptions which I'esemble them ; they rest
on the surface of my mind without being
absolutely myself. I-astly, I feel the stir of
tendencies and motor habits — a crowd of
virtual actions, more or less firmly bound
to these perceptions and memories. ' All
these clearly defined elements appear more
distinct from me, the more distinct they
are from each other. Radiating, as they
do, from within outwards, they form, col-
lectively, the surface of a sphere which
tends to grow larger and lose itself in the

Metaphysics 1 1

exterior world. But if I draw myself in 1
from the periphery towards the centre, if I i
search in the depth of my being that which
is most uniformly, most constantly, and j
most enduringly myself, I find an altogether
different thing.

There is, beneath these sharply cut crys-
tals and this frozen surface, a continuous
flux which is not comparable to any flux I^v,
have ever seen. There is a succession of
states, each of which announces that which
follows and contains that which precedes
it. They can, properly speaking, only be
said to form multiple states when I have
already passed them and turn back to ob-
serve their track. Whilst I was experien-
cing them they were so solidly organized, so
profoundly animated with a common life,
that I could not have said where any one
of them finished or where another com-
menced. In reality no one of them begins
or ends, but all extend into each other.
-f This inner life may be compared to the /^
unrolling of a coil, for there is no living

An Introduction to

being who does not feeT Limself
gradually to the end of his rdle; and to
live is to grow old. But it may just as
well be compared to a continual rolling np,
like that of a thread on a ball, for our past
follows us, it swells incessantly with the,
present that it picks up on ils way; ai
consciousness means memory.

But actually it is neither an unrolling
nor a rolling up, for these two similes evoke
the idea of lines and surfaces whose parts
are homogeneous and superposable on one
another? Now, there are no two ideutical
■ moments in the life of the same conscious
being. Take the simplest sensation, sup-
pose it constant, absorb in it the entire
personality: the consciousness which will
accompany this sensation cannot remain
identical with itself for two consecutive
momenta, because the second moment al-
ways contains, over and above the first, the
memory that the first has bequeathed to it.
A consciousueas which could experience two
identical moments would be a consciousness

the

detaphysi^^

it.

without memory. It would die and be bom
again continually. In what other way
could one represent unconsciousness?

It would be better, then, to use as a \w.J

comparison the myriad-tinted spectrum, / 1

with its insensible gradations leading from/ '

one shade to another. A current of feeling

which passed along the spectrum, asnuming

in turn the tint of each of its shades, would

experience a aeries of gradual changes, each

of which would announce the one to follow

and would sum up those which preceded

Yet even here the successive shades of

le spectrum always remain external one

another. They are juxtaposed ; they

occupy space. But pure duration, on the

contrary, excludes all idea of juxtaposition, |.

liprocal externality, and extension. '

Let us, then, rather, imagine an infinitely \ I

lall elastic body, contracted, if it were ^ J

is&ible, to a mathematical point. Ijet this

drawn out gradually in such a manner

ihat from the point comes a constantly

lengthening line. Let us fix our attention

14 An Introduction to

not on the line as a line, but on the
action by which it is traced. Let us bear
in mind that this action, in spite of its
duration, is indivisible if accomplished with-
out stopping, that if a stopping-point is in-
serted, we have two actions instead of one,
that each of these separate actions is then
the indivisible operation of which we speak,
and that it is not the moving action itself
which is divisible, but, rather, the station-
ary line it leaves behind it as its track in
space. Finally, let us free ourselves from
the space which underlies the movement in
order to consider only the movement itself,
the act of tension or extension; in short,
pure mobility. We shall have this time a
more faithful image of the development of
our self in duration.
^ However, even this image is incomplete,
and, indeed, every comparison will be in-
. sufficient, because the unrolling of our
/ duration resembles in some of its aspects
\ the unity of an advancing movement and
\in others the multiplicity of expanding

Metaphysics 15

states; and, clearly, no metaphor can ex- ^
press one of these two aspects without
sacrificing the other. If I use the com-
parison of the spectrum with its thousand
shades, I have before me a thing already
made, whilst duration is continually in the \
making. If I think of an elastic which is
being stretched, or of a spring which is
extended or relaxed, I forget the richness of
color, characteristic of duration that is
lived, to see only the simple movement by
which consciousness passes from one shade
to another. The inner life is all this „ at
once: variety of qualities, continuity of
progress, and unity of direction. It cannot
be represented by images.

But it is even less possible to represent. \
it by concepts^ that is by abstract, general, /
or simple ideas. It is true that no image
can reproduce exactly the original feeling
I have of the flow of my own conscious life.
But it is not even necessary that I should
attempt to render it. If a man is incapable
of getting for himself the intuition of the

An Introduction to

constitutive duration of his own being,
nothing will ever give it to him, concepts
po more than images. Here the single aim
/of the philosopher should be to promote a
t certain effort, which in most men is usually
\ fettered by habits of mind more useful to
'ilife. Now the image has at least this ad-
Wantage, that it keeps us in the concrete.
i>Io image can replace the intuition of dura-
tion, Tjut many diverse images, borrowed
from very different orders of things, may,
by the convergence of their action, direct,
consciousness to the precise point where
there is a certain intuition to be seized.
By choosing images as dissimilar as pos-
sible, we shall prevent any one of them
from usurping the place of the intuition it
is intended to call up, since it would then
be driven away at once by its rivals. By
providing that, in spite of their differences f
of aspect, they all require from the mindi
the same kind of attention, and in somei
sort the same degree of tension, we shall
gradually accustom consciousness to a par-

Metaphysics

Hcnlar and clearly-defined disposition — that
precisely which it must adopt in order to
appear to itself as it really is, without any
veil. But, then, consciouenefis must at
least consent to make the effort. For it
will have been shown nothing ; it will
simply have been placed in the attitude it
must take up in order to make the de-
sired effort, and so come by itself to the
intuition. Concepts on the contrary —
especially if they are simple — have the
disadvantage of being in reality symbols
substituted for the object they symbolize,
and demand no effort on our part. Ex-
amined closely, each of them, it would be
^Eteen, retains only that part of the object
^Khich is common to it and to others, and
^"fecpresBes, still more than the image does,
a comparison between the object and others'
w hich resemble it. But as the comparison
^8 made manifest a resemblance, as the
lemblance is a property of the object, and
(I a pi-operty has every appearance of being
Lparf of the object which possesses it, we

1 8 An Introduction to

easily persuade ourselves that by setting
concept beside concept we are reconstruct-
ing the whole of the object with its parts,
thus obtaining, so to speak, its intellectual
equivalenti'-'ni this way we believe that we
^ can form a faithful representation of dura-
j tion by setting in line the concepts of
\ unity, multiplicity, continuity, finite or in-
\\ finite divisibility, etc. There precisely is
\ the illusion. There also is the danger.
Just in so far as abstract ideas can render
service to analysis, that is, to the scientific
study of the object in its relations to other
objects, so far are they incapable of replac-
. ing intuition, that is, the metaphysical in-
vestigation of what is essential and unique
in the object. For on the one hand these
concepts, laid side by side, never actually
give us more than an artificial reconstruc-
tion of the object, of which they can only
' symbolize certain general, and, in a way, .

impersonal aspects; it is therefore useless

! to believe that with them we can seize a

reality of which they present to us the

Metaphysics 19

shadow alone. And, on the other hand,
besides the illusion there is also a very
serious danger. For the concept general-
izes at the same time as it abstracts. The
concept can only symbolize a particular
property by making it common to an in-
finity of things. It thei'cfore always more
or less deforms the property by the exten-
sion it gives to it. Replaced in the meta-
physical object to which it belongs, a
property coincides with the object, or at least
moulds itself on it, and adopts the same
outline. Extracted from the metaphysical
object, and presented in a concept, it grows
indefinitely larger, and goes beyond the
object itself, since henceforth it has to con-
tain it, along with a number of other objects.
Thus the different concepts that we form of
the properties of a thing inscribe round it
so many circles, each much too large and
none of them fitting it exactly. And yet,
in the thing itself the properties coincided
with the thing, and coincided consequently
with one another. So that if we are bent

^•'

An Introduction fo

on reconstructing the object with concepts,
some artifice must be sought whereby this
coincidence of the object and its properties
can be brought about. For example, we
may choose one of the concepts and try,
starting from it, to get round to the others.
But we shall then soon discover that ac-
cording as we start from one concept or
another, the meeting and combination of
the concepts will take place in an altogether
different way. According as we start, for
example, from unity or from multiplicity,
we shall have to conceive differently the
multiple unity of duration. Everything
will depend on the weight we attribute to
this or that concept, and this weight will
always be arbitrary, since the concept ex-
tracted from the object has no weight, being
only the shadow of a body. In this way,
as many different systems will spring up
as there are external points of view from
which the reality can be examined, or larger
circles in which it can he enclosed. Himple
concepts have, then, not only the incon-

Metaphysics 21

venience of dividing the concrete unity of
the object into so many symbolical expres-
sions; they also divide philosophy into dis-
tinct schools, each of which takes its seat,
chooses its counters, and carries on with
the others a game that will never end.
Either metaB hJaica. is only this play of
ideas, or else, if it is a serious occupation
of the mind, if it is a science and not simply
an exercise, it must transcend concepts in
order to reach intuition. Certainly, con^/
cepts are necessary to it, for all the other
sciences work as a rule with concepts, and
metaphysics cannot dispense with the other
sciences. But it is only truly itself when
it goes beyond the concept, or at least when
it frees itself from rigid and ready-made
concepts in order to create a kind very dif-
ferent from those which we habitually use;
I mean supple, mobile, and almost fluid
representations, always ready to mould
themselves on the fleeting forms of intui-
tion. We shall return later to this import-
ant point. .Let it suffice us for the moment

22 An Introcjuction to

/ to have shown that otr duration can be
presented to us directly in an intuition,

j that it can be suggested to us indirectly

by images, but that it can never — ^if we

confine the word concept to its proper

meaning — be enclosed in a conceptual

f representation.

Let us try for an instant to consider our
duration as a multiplicity. It will then be
necessary to add that the terms of this
multiplicity, instead of being distinct, as
they are in any other multiplicity, encroach
on one another; and that while we can no
doubt, by an eflfort of imagination, solidify
duration once it has elapsed, divide it into
juxtaposed portions and count all these
portions, yet this operation is accomplished
on the frozen memory of the duration, on
the stationary trace which the mobility of
duration leaves behind it, and not on the
duration itself. We must admit, therefore,
that if there is a multiplicity here, it bears
no resemblance to any other multiplicity
we know. Shall we say, then, that dura-

Metaphysics 23

tion has unity? Doubtless, a continuity of
elements which prolong themselves into one
another participates in unity as much as
in multiplicity; but this moving, changing,
colored, living unity has hardly anything
in common with the abstract, motionless,
and empty unity which the concept of pure
unity circumscribes. Shall we conclude
from this that duration must be defined as
unity and multiplicity at the same time?
But singularly enough, however much I
manipulate the two concepts, portion
them out, combine them diflferently, prac-
tise on them the most subtle operations
of mental chemistry, I never obtain any-
thing which resembles the simple in-
tuition that I have of duration; while,
on the contrary, when I replace myself in '
duration by an effort of intuition, I im-
mediately perc^ve how it is unity, multi-
plicity, and many other things besides^'
These diflFerent concepts, then, were only so
many standpoints* from which we could
consider duration. Neither separated nor

An Introduction to

reunited have they made us penetrate inl
it.

We do penetrate into it, however, and
that can only be by an effort of intuition.
In this sense, an inner, absolute knowledge
of the duration of the self by the self is
possible. But if metaphysics here demands
and can obtain an intuition, science has
none the less need of an analysis. Now
it is a confusion between the function
of analysis and that of intuition which
gives birth to the discussions between
the schools and the conflicts between
systems.

Psychology, in fact, proceeds like all the
other sciences by analysis. It resolves the
self, which has been given to it at first in
a simple intuition, into sensations, feelings,
ideas, etc., which it studies separately. It
substitutes, then, for the self a series of
elements which form the facts of psy-
chology. But are these elements really
parts? That is the whole question,
is because it has l)een evaded tl

int^H

Metaphysics 25

problem of human personality has so often
been stated in insoluble terms.

It is incontestable that every psychical \
state, simply because it belongs to a per- /
son, reflects the whole of a personality.
Every feeling, however simple it may be,
contains virtually within it the whole
past and present of the being experiencing
it, and, consequently, can only be separated
and constituted into a " state " by an effort
of abstraction or of analysis. But it is no ^ .,
less incontestable that without this effort /
of abstraction or analysis there would be j
no possible development of the science of '
psychology. What, then, exactly, is the
operation by which a psychologis t detaches
a mental state in order to erect it into a

v..

more or less independent entity? He be-
gins by neglecting that special coloring
of the personality which cannot be ex-
pressed in known and common terms.
Then he endeavors to isolate, in the person
already thus simplified, some aspect which
lends itself to an interesting inquiry. If

An Introduction to

he is considering inclination, for exampi
he will neglect the inexpressible shade
which colors it, and which makes the in-
clination mine and not jours; he will fix
his attention on the movement by which
our personality leans towards a certain
object : he will isolate this attitude, and it
is this special aspect of the personality, this
snapshot of the mobility of the inner life,
this " diagram " of concrete inclination,
that he will erect into an independent
fact. There is in this something very like
what an artist passing through Paris does
when he makes, for example, a sketch of a
tower of Notre Dame. The tower is in-
separably united to the building, which is
itself no less inseparably united to the
ground, to its surroundings, to the whole
of Paris, and so on. It is first necessary
to detach it from all these ; only one aspect
of the whole is noted, that formed by the
tower of Notre Dame. Moreover, the spe-
cial form of this tower is doe to the group-
ing of the stones of which it is composed ;

ipl^H
tade '

Metaphysics 27

but the artist does not concern himself with
these stones, he notes only the silhouette of
the tower. For the real and internal organi-
zation of the thing he substitutes, then, an
external and schematic representation. So
that, on the whole, his sketch corresponds
to an observation of the object from a cer-
tain point of view and to the choice of a
certain means of representation. But ex-
actly the same thing holds true of the
operation by which the psychologist ex-
tracts a single mental state from the whole
I)ersonality. This isolated psychical state
is hardly anything but a sketch, the com-
mencement of an artificial reconstruction;
it is the whole considered under a certain
elementary aspect in which we are specially
interested and which we have carefully
noted. It is not a part, but an element.
It has not been obtained by a natural
dismemberment, but by analysis.

Now beneath all the sketches he has made
at Paris the visitor will probably, by way
of memento, write the word " Paris." And

^n Introduction to

as he has really seen Paris, he will be able,
with the help of the original intnitiou he
had of the whole, to place his sketches
therein, and so join them up together. But
there is no way of performing the inverse
operation; it is impossible, even with an
infinite number of accurate sketches, and
even with the word "Paris" which indi-
cates that they must be combined together,
to get back to an intuition that one has
never bad, and to give oneself an impi-ession
of what Paris is like if one has never seen
it. This is because we are not dealing here
with real parts, but with mere notes of the
total impression. To take a still more
striking example, where the notation is
more completely Rymbolic, suppose that I
am shown, mixed together at random, the
letters which make up a poem I am
ignorant of. If the letters were parts of
the poem, I could attempt to reconstitute
the poem with them by trying the different
possible arrangements, as a child dofs with
the pieces of a Chinese puzzle. But I

Metaphysics 29

should never for a moment think of attempt-
ing such a thing in this ease, because the
letters are not component partSy but only
partial expressions, which is quite a dif-
ferent thing. That is why, if I know the
poem, I at once put each of the letters in
its proper place and join them up without
difficulty by a continuous connection,
whilst the inverse operation is impossible.
Even when I believe I am actually attempt-
ing this inverse operation, even when I put
the letters end to end, I begin by thinking
of some plausible meaning. I thereby give
myself an intuition, and from this intuition
I attempt to redescend to the elementary
symbols which would reconstitute its ex-
pression. The very idea of reconstituting a
thing by operations practised on symbolic
elements alone implies such an absurdity
that it would never occur to any one if
they recollected that they were not dealing
with fragments of the thing, but only, as /
it were, with fragments of its symbol.
Such is, however, the undertaking of the

An Introduction to

philosophcre who Iry to reconstruct
souality with psychical states, whether they
confine themselves to those states alone, or
whether they add a kind of thread for the
purpose of joining the states together. Both
empiricists and rationalists are victims of
I the same fallacy. Both of them mistake
partial notations for real parts, thus con-
fusing the point of view of analysis and
of intuition, of science and of metaphysics.
The empiricists say quite rightly that
psychologi<ral analysis discovers nothing
more in personality than paychical states.
Such is, in fact, the function, and the very
definition of analysis. The psychologist has
nothing else to do but analyze personality,
that is, to note certain states; at the most
he may put the lahel " ego " on these states
in saying they are " states of the ego," juat
as the artist writes the word " Paris " on
each of his sketches. On the level at which
the psychologist places himself, and on
which he must place himself, the "ego
only a sign by which the primitive,

they 1

Metaphysics 3'

moreover very confused, intuition which
has furnished the psychologist with his
subject-matter is recalled ; it is only a word,
and the great error here lies in believing
that while remaining on the same level we
can find behind the word a thing. Such
has been the error of those philosophers who
have not been able to resign themselves to
being only psychologists in psychology,
Taine and Stuart Mill, for example. Psy-
chologists in the method they apply, they
have remained metaphysicians in the object
they set before themselves. They desire an
intuition, and by a strange inconsistency )
they seek this intuition in analysis, which/
is the very negation of it. "I They look for'
the ego, and they claim to find it in psy-
chical states, though this diversity of states
has itself only been obtained, and could only
be obtained, by transporting oneself outside
the ego altogether, so as to make a series
of sketches, notes, and more or less symbolic
and schematic diagrams. Thus, however
much they place the states side by side,

\n Introduction to

mijltiplying points of contact and exploring
the intervals, the ego always escapes them,
so that they finish by seeing in it nothing
bnt a vain phantom. We might as well
deny that the Iliad had a meaning, on the
ground that we had looked in vain for that
meaning in the intervals between the letters
jof which it is composed.
;' Philosophical empiricism is born here,
jthen, of a confusion between the point of
, /view of intuition and that of analysis.
Seeldng for the original in the translation,
where naturally it cannot be, it denies the
existence of the original on the ground that
it is not found in the translation. It leada
of necessity to negations ; but on examining
the matter closely, we perceive that these
negations simply mean that analysis is not
intuition, which is self-evident. From the
original, and, one must add, very indistinct
intuition which gives positive science its
material, science passes immediately to
analysis, which multiplies to infinity its
observations of this material from outside

Metaphysics 33

points of view. It soon comes to believe
that by putting together all these diagrams
it can reconstitute the object itself. No
wonder, then, that it sees this object fly be-
fore it, like a child that would like to make
a solid plaything out of the shadows out-
lined along the wall!

But rationalism is the dupe of the same
illusion. It starts out from the same con-
fusion as empiricism, and remains equally
powerless to reach the inner self. Like
empiricism, it considers psychical states as
so many fragments detached from an egoi
that hinds them together. Like empiricism,
it tries to join these fragments together in

■order to re-create the unity of the self.
Kke empiricism, finally, it sees this unity
Bf the self, in the continually renewed effort
It makes to clasp it, steal away indefinitely
pke a phantom. But whilst empiricism,;
■freary of the struggle, ends by declaring)
that there ia nothing else but the multi-(
plicity of psychical states, rationalism per-)
3tB in affirming the "unity of the person.^

34 An Introduction to

It is true that, seeking this unity on the
level of the psychical states themselves, and
obliged, besides, to put down to the account
of these states all the qualities and deter-
minations that it finds by analysis (since
analysis by its very definition leads always
to states ) , nothing is left to it, for the unity
of personality, but something purely nega-
tive, the absence of all determination. The
psychical states having necessarily in this
analysis taken and kept for themselves
everything that can serve as matter, the
; " unity of the ego " can never be more than
a form without content. It will be abso-
lutely indeterminate and absolutely void.
To these detached psychical states, to
these shadows of the ego, the sum of which
was for the empiricists the equivalent of
the self, rationalism, in order to reconstitute
personality, adds something still more un-
real, the void in which these shadows move
— a place for shadows, one might say. How
could this " form," which is,4tf truth form-
less, serve to characterize a living, active,

Metaphysics 35

concrete personality, op to distinguish Peter
from Paul? Is it astonishing that the
philosophers who have isolated this " form "
of personality should, then, find it insuf-
ficient to characterize a definite person, and
that they should be gradually led to make
their empty ego a kind of bottomless re-
ceptacle, which belongs no more to Peter
than to Paul, and in which there is room,
according to our preference, for entire hu-
manity, for God, or for existence in general?
I see in this matter only one difference '^^
between empiricism and rationalism. The
former, seeking the unity of the ego in
the gaps, as it were, between the psychi-
cal states, is led to fill the gaps with
other states, and so on indefinitely, so
that the ego, compressed in a constantly
narrowing interval, tends towards zero, as
analysis is pushed farther and farther;
whilst rationalism, making the ego the place
where mental states are lodged, is confronted
with an empty space which we have no rea-
son to limit here rather than there, which

'*•

An Introduction to

goes beyond each of the successive bou!
daries that we try to assign to it, which
constantly grows larger, and which tends
to lose itself no longer in zero, but in the
infinite.

The distance, then, between a so-called
" empiriciam " like that of Taine and the
most transcendental speculations of certain
German pantheists is very much less than is
generally supposed. The method is analo-
gous in both cases; it consists in reason-
ing about the elements of a translation as
, y if they were parts of the original. But a
true empiricism is that which proposes to
get as near to the original itself as pos-
sible, to search deeply into its life, and so,
I by a kind of intellectual auscultation, to
feel the throbbinga of its soul; and this
tnie empiricism is the true metaphysics. It
is true that the task is an extremely diffi-
cult one, for none of the ready-made concep-
tions which thought employs in its daily
operations can be of any use. Nothing is
mure easy than to aay that the ego is multi-

Metaphysics

Iplieity, or that it is unity, or that it is tlie

byntheslB of both. Unity and multiplicity

iare liere representations that we have no

need to cut out on tlie model of the object ;

they are found i-eady-made, and have only

I to be chosen from a heap. Thoy are stock-

l.flize clothes which do just as well for Peter

[ as for Paul, for they set ofE the form of

neither. But an empiricism worthy of the

name, an empiriciBm which works only to I

measure, is obliged for each new object that

it studies to make an absolutely fresh effort.

It cuts out for the object a concept which

■ IB appropriate to that object alone, a con-

Pcept which can as yet hardly be called a

concept, since it applies to this one thing.

It does not proceed by combining current

ideas like unity and multiplicity; hut it

leads us, on the contrary, to a simple,

unique representation, which, however once

vformed, enables us to understand easily how

pt is that we can place it in the frames

fcnity, multiplicity, etc., all much larger

an itself. In short, philosophy thus de-^

An Introduction to

fined does not consist in the choice of cer-J
tain concepts, and in taking sides with i
Bchool, but in the search for a unique intui- 1
tion from which we can descend with equal-l
ease to different concepts, because we arftl
placed above the divisions of the school8.'J

,/ That personality has unity cannot be c
^ nied; but such an affirmation teaches cm
nothing about the extraordinary nature o^

I the particular unity presented by per8on,4

' ality. That our self is multiple I i
agree, but then it must be understood 1
it is a multiplicity which has nothing '
common with any other multiplicity. Whi
is really important for philosophy is tori
know exactly what unity, what multiplicity,
and what reality superior both to abstract
unity and multiplicity the multiple unity
of the self actually is. Now philosopl^
will know this only when it recovers poi
session of the simple intuition of the 8ell|

■ by the self. Then, according to the direcl
jtion it chooses for its descent from this
Bnmmit, it will arrive at unity or multj

••r-

Metaphysics 39

plicity, or at any one of the concepts by
which we try to define the moving life of
the self. But no mingling of these con-
cepts would give anything which at all
resembles the self that endures.

If we are shown a solid cone, we see with-
out any difficulty how it narrows towards
the summit and tends to be lost in a mathe-
matical point, and also how it enlarges in
the direction of the base into an indefinitely
increasing circle. But neither the point
nor the circle, nor the juxtaposition of the
two on a plane, would give us the least
idea of a cone. The same thing holds true
of the unity and multiplicity of mental life,
and of the ze ro and the infinite towards
which empiricism and rationalism conduct
personality.

Concepts, as we shall show elsewhere, v
generally go together in couples and repre-
sent two contraries. There is hardly any
concrete reality which cannot be observed
from two opposing standpoints, which can-
not consequently be subsumed under two

An Introduction to

antagonistic concepts. Hence a thesis and
an antithesis which we endearor in vain
to reconcile logically, for the very simple
reason that it is impossible, with concepts
and observations taken from outside points
of view, to make a thing. But from the
object, seized by intuition, we pass easily
in many cases to the two contrary concepts j
and as in that way thesis and antithesis can
be seen to spring from reality, we grasp at
the same time how it is that the two a:
opposed and how they are reconciled.

It is true that to accomplish this, it_u
necessary to proceed by a reversal _ of _ the
usual work of the intellect. Thinking usu-
ally consists in passing from concepts to
Nothings, and not from things to concepts.
To know a reality, in the usual sense of the
word " know," is to take ready-made con-
cepts, to portion them out and to mix them
together until a practical equivalent of the
reality is obtained. But it must he remem-
bered that the normal work of the intellect
is far from being disinterested. We do not

Metaphysics 41

aim genemlly^t knowledge for the sake of
knowledge, but in order to take sides, to
draw profit— in short, to satisfy an inter-
est. We inquire up to what point the
object we seek to know is this or that^ to
what known class it belongs, and what kind
of action, bearing, or attitude it should
suggest to us. These different possible
actions and attitudes are so many concept
tual directions of our thought, determined
once for all; it remains only to follow
them: in that precisely consists the appli-
cation of concepts to things. To try to fit
a concept on an object is simply to ask
what we can do with the object, and what
it can do for us. To label an object with
a certain concept is to mark in precise terms
the kind of action or attitude the object
should suggest to us. All knowledge, prop-V.
erly so called, is t hen o ri ented in a cer tain 1 7
direction, or taken from a certain^ppint of /
view. It is true that our interest is often/
complex. This is why it happens that our
knowledge of the same object may face sev-

42 An Introduction to

ifral MucceMKive directionin and may be taken
ffom varioiiH pointH of riew. It is this
wbii;h cronntituteH, in the usual meaning of
th(! ti^nriH, a " broad " and " comprehensive "
knowli^lge of the object; the object is then
brought not under one single concept, but
tinder w^veral in which it is supposed to
" par(-l(!!pate." IIow does it participate in
all th(!H(^ (concepts at the same time? This
in a qtumticm which does not concern our
Iirnctical action and about which we need
not trouble. It is, therefore, natural and
logtttmate in daily life to proceed by the
juxtaposition and portioning out of con-
oopts; no {>hiIo8ophical difficulty will arise
tnm\ this prtH*eiluix^, since by a tacit agree-
nuMit wo shall al>8tain from philosophizing.
Uut to carry this modus opeivndi into
phlU>8ophy» to pass here also fn>m concepts
to tht> things to us»e in order to obtain a
tU»lnhvn?»tetl knowledge of an object (that
th{» Uto^ ^v dess^ire to grasp as it is in itself)
« uuiuner of knowing inspired by a determin-
iiti^ iniii'neHSil^ eomsisting by deJinirion in an

Metaphysics 43

externally-taken view of the object, is to
go against the end that we have chosen, to
condemn philosophy to an eternal skirmish-
ing between the schools and to install con-
tradiction in the very heart of the object
and of the method. Either there is no
philosophy possible, and all knowledge of
things is a practical knowledge aimed at
the profit to be drawn from them, or else
philosophy consists in placing oneself with-
in the object itself by an effort of intuition.

But in order to understand the nature of
this intuition, in order to fix with precision
where intuition ends and where analysis I
begins, it is necessary to return to what was
said earlier about the flux of duration.

It will be noticed that an essential char-
acteristic of the concepts and diagrams to
which analysis leads is that, while being
considered, they remain stationary. I iso-
late from the totality of interior life that
psychical entity which I call a simple sensa-
tion. So long as I study it, I suppose that
it remains constant. If I noticed any

An Introduction to

change in it, I should say that it was not
a single sensation but several successive
sensations, and I should then transfer to
each of these successive sensations the im-
mufabiiity that I first attributed to the
total sensation. In any case I can, by
pushing the analysis far enough, always
manage to arrive at elements which I agree
to consider immutable. There, and there
only, shall I find the solid basis of opera-
tions which science needs for its own proper
development.

U~ But, then, I cannot escape the objec-
tion that there is no state of mind, how-
ever simple, which does not change every
moment, since there is no consciousness
without memory, and no continuation of a
state without the addition, to the present
feeling, of the memory of past moments. It
is this which constitutes duration. Inner
duration is the continuous life of a memory
which prolongs the past into the present,
the present either containing within it ;
a distinct form the ceaselessly growth

Metaphysics 45

image of the past, or, more probably, show-
ing by its continual change of quality the
heavier and still heavier load we drag be-
hind us as we grow older. Without this
survival of the past into the present there
would be no duration, but only instantaneity.
Probably if I am thus accused of taking
the mental state out of duration by the mere
fact that I analyze it, I shall reply, " Is not
each of these elementary psychical states, to
which my analysis leads, itself a state which
occupies time? My analysis," I shall say,
"does indeed resolve the inner life into
states, each of which is homogeneous with
itself; only, since the homogeneity extends
over a definite number of minutes or of
seconds, the elementary psychical state does
not cease to endure, although it does not
change." ^

"^ But, in saying that, I fail to see that the
definite number of minutes and of seconds,
which I am attributing here to the elemen-
tary psychical state, has simply the value of
a sign intended to remind me that the psy-

46 An Introduction

;eneous, is^^^

chical state, supposed homogein
reality a state which changes and endures.
The state, taken in itself, is a periietual
becoming. I have extracted from this be-
coming a certain average of quality, which
I have supposed invariable; I have in this
way constituted a stable and consequently
schematic state. I have, on the other hand,
extracted from it Becoming in general, i. e.,
a becoming which is not the becoming of
any particular thing, and this is what I
have called the time the state occupies.
Were I to look at it closely, I should see
that this abstract time is as immobile for
me as the state which I localize in it, that
it could flow only by a continual change of
quality, and that if it is without quality,
merely the theatre of the change, it thus
becomes an immobile medium. I should see
that the construction of this homogeneous
time is simply designed to facilitate the
comparison between the different concrete
durations, to permit us to count simulta-
neities, and to measure one flux of duration

Metaphysics 47

in relation to another. . . And lastly I should
understand that, in attaching the sign of
a definite number of minutes and of seconds
to the representation of an elementary psy-
chical state, I am merely reminding myself
and others that the state has been detached
from an ego which endures, and merely
marking out the place where it must
again be set in movement in order to bring
it back from the abstract schematic thing
it has become to the concrete state it was
at first. But I ignore all that, because it
has nothing to do with analysis.

This means that analysis operates always
on the immobile, whilst intuition places it-
self in mobility, or, what comes to the same
thing, in duration. There lies the very dis-
tinct line of demarcation between intuition
and analysis. The real, the experienced,
and the concrete are recognized by the fact
that they are variability itself, the element
by the fact that it is invariable. And the 1
element is invariable by definition, being a ^
diagram, a simplified reconstruction, often

An Introduction to

a mere symbol, in any case a motionless
view of the moving reality.
A^But the error consists in believing that
we can reconstruct the real with these dia-
grams. As we have already said and may
as well repeat here — from intuition one can
pass to^naljsis, but not from analyaia to
intuition.

Out of variability we can make as many
variations, qualities and modifications as we
please, since these are so many static views,
taken by analysis, of the mobility given to
intuition. But these modifications, put end
/ to end, will produce nothing which re-
\ sembles variability, since they are not parts
of it, but elements, which is quite a different
thing.

Consider, for example, the variability
which is nearest to homogeneity, that of
movement in space. Along the whole of
this movement we can imagine possible stop-
pages ; these are what we call the positions
of the moving body, or the points by which
But with these positions, even

Metaphysics 49

with an infinite number of them, we shall
never make movement. They are not parts
of the movement, they are so many snap-
shots of it; they are, one might say, only
supposed stopping-places. The moving boc^^'^^ C * * ^
is never really in any of the points : the X
most we can say is that it passes through/
them. But passage, which is movement, has
nothing in common with stoppage, which
is immobility. A movement cannot be
superposed on an immobility, or it would
then coincide with it, which would be a
contradiction. The points are not in the
movement, as parts, nor even beneath it,
as positions occupied by the moving body.
They are simply projected by us under the
movement, as so many places where a mov-
ing body, which by hypothesis does not
stop, would be if it were to stop. They are
not, therefore, properly speaking, positions, .
but " suppositions," aspects, or points of
view of the mind. But how could we con-
struct a thing with points of view?

Nevertheless, this is what we try to do j

50 An Introduction to

whenever we reason about movement, and
also about time, for which movement serves

[ as a means of representation. As a result

of an illusion deeply rooted in our mind,

and because we cannot prevent ourselves

J from considering analysis as the equivalent

N^of intuition, we begin by distinguishing
along the whole extent of the movement, a
certain number of possible stoppages or
points, which we make, whether they like
it or no, parts of the movement. Faced
with our impotence to reconstruct the move-
ment with these points, we insert other
points, believing that we can in this way
get nearer to the essential mobility in the
movement. Then, as this mobility still es-
capes us, we substitute for a fixed and
finite number of points an " indefinitely in-
creasing" number — thus vainly trying to
counterfeit, by the movement of a thought
that goes on indefinitely adding points to
points, the real and undivided motion of
the moving body. Finally, we say that
movement is composed of points, but that

Metaphysics 51

it comprises, in addition, the obscure and
mysterious passage from one position to
the next. As if the obscurity was not due
entirely to the fact that we have supposed
immobility to be clearer than mobility and
rest anterior to movement! As if the
mystery did not follow entirely from our
attempting to pass from stoppages to
movement by way of addition, which is im-
possible, when it is so easy to pass, by
simple diminution, from movement to the
slackening of movement, and so to im-
mobility ! It is m ovement that wemust a.
custom ourselves to look upon as simplest /
and clearest, immobility being only the ex- /
treme limit of the slowing down of move- /
ment, a limit reached only, perhaps, in / ;
thought and never realized in nature. What
we have done is to seek for the meaning of
the poem in the form of the letters of which
it is composed; we have believed that by
considering an increasing number of letters
we would grasp at last the ever-escaping
meaning, and in desperation, seeing that it

An Introduction to

was useless to seek for a part of the sense
in each of the letters, we have supposed
that it was between each letter and the
next that this long-sought fragment of
the mysterious sense was lodged ! But the
/ letters, it must be pointed out once again,
are not parts of the thing, but elements of
the symbol. Again, the positions of the
moving body are not parts of the move-
ment; they are points of the space which
is supposed to underlie the movement.
This empty and immobile space which is
merely conceived, never perceived, has the
value of a symbol only. How could you
ever manufacture_j!eality_bjmanipuiating
symbols?

But the symbol in this case responds to
the most inveterate habits of our thought,
We place ourselves as a rule in immobility,
in which we find a point of support for
practical purpo.ses, and with this immo-
bility we try to reconstruct motion. We only
obtain in this way a clumsy imitation, a
counterfeit of real movement, but this imita-

Bpoi

Metaphysics 53

tion is much more useful in life than the
intuition of the thing itself would be. Now
our mind haa an irresistible tendency to
consider that idea clearest which is most
often useful to it. That is why immobility
seems to it clearer than mobility, and rest
anterior to movement.

The difficulties to which the problem of
movement has given rise from the earliest
antiquity have originated in this way. They
result always from the fact that we insist
on passing from space to movement, from
the trajectory to the flight, from immobile

isitions to mobility, and on passing from
One to the other by way of addition. But
it is movement which is anterior to im-
mobility, and the relation between positions
and a displacement is not that of parts to
a whole, but that of the diversity of pos-
sible points of view to the real indivisibility
of the object.

Many other problems are born of the
same illusion. What stationary points are
to the movement of a moving body, concepts

\n Introduction to

■ I / of different qualities are to the qualitative
I A^^ change of an object. The various concepts
into which a change can be analyzed are
therefore so many stable views of the in-
stability of the real. And to think of an
object — in the usual meaning of the word
" think " — is to take one or more of these
immobile views of its mobility. It consists,
in short, in asking from time to time where
the object is, in order that we may know
what to do with it. Nothing could be more
legitimate, moreover, than this method of
procedure, so long as we are concerned only
with a practical knowledge of reality.
Knowledge, in so far as it is directed to
practical matters, has only to enumerate
the principal possible attitudes of the thing
towards us, as well as our best possible
attitude towards it. Therein lies the oi
^ nary function of ready-made concepts, thi
iBtations with which we mark out the path
of becoming. But to seek to penetrate with
them into the inmost nature of things, is
to apply to the mobility of the real a

ible ^i
irdt|M

)ath^n

Metaphysics 55

method created in order to give stationary
points of observation on it. It is to forget
that, if metaphysic is possible, it can only
be a laborious, and even painful, effort to
remount the natural slope of the work of
thought, in order fo place oneself directly,
by a kind of intellectual expansion, within
the thing studied : in short, a passage from
reality to concepts and no longer from con- {
cepts to reality. Is it astonishing that, like
children trying to catch smoke by closing
their hands, philosophers so often see the
object they would grasp fly before them?
It is in this way that many of the quarrels
between the schools are perpetuated, each
of them reproaching the others with having
allowed the real to slip away. ^^^

But if metaphysics is to proceed by in- \
ition, if intuition has the mobility of
duration as its object, and if duration is
of a psychical naturo^ shall we not be con-
fining the philosopher to the exclusive
contemplation of himself? Will not phi-
losophy come to consist in watching oneself

An Introduction to

merely live, " ae a sleepy shepherd watches
the water flow"?^ To talk in this way
would be to return to the error which, since
the beginning of this study, we have not
ceased to point out. It would be to mis-
conceive the singular nature of duration,
and at the same time the essentially active,
I might almost say violent, character of
metaphysical intuition. It wonld be fail-
ing to see that the method we speak of
alone permits us to go beyond idealism,
as well as realism, to affirm the existence
of objects inferior and superior (though in
a certain sense interior) to us, to make
them co-exist together without difficulty,
and to dissipate gradually the obscurities
that analysis accumulates round these great
problems. Without entering here upon the
study of these different points, let us con-
fine ourselves to showing how the intuition
we speak of is not a single act, but an in-
definite series of acts, all doubtless of the

> " Comme un patre assoupi regarde I'eau coaI«
—BoUa, Alfred de Musset. (Tranelator's note.) '

Metaphysics 57

same kind, but each of a very particular
species, and how this diversity of acts
corresponds to all the degrees of being.

If I seek to analyse duration — that is
resolve it into ready-made concepts — I ara 1
compelled, by the very nature of the con-
cepts and of analysis, to take two opposing
views of duration- tn general, with which
I then attempt to reconstruct it. This com-
bination, which will have, moreover, some-
thing miraculous about it — since one does
not understand hiiw two contraries would
ever meet each other — can present neither
a diversity of degrees nor a variety of forms ;
like ail miracles, it is or it is not. I shall
have to say, for example, that there is on '\~
the one hand a multiplicity of successive /
states of consciousness, and on the other a
unity which binds them together. Duration
will be the " synthesis " of this unity and
this multiplicity, a mysterious operation
which takes place in darkness, and in re-
gard to which, I repeat, one does not see
[ bow it would admit of shades or of degrees.

58 An Introduction to

In this hypothesis there is, and can only
be, one single duration, that in which our
own consciousness habitually works. To
express it more clearly — ^if we consider
duration under the simple aspect of a move-
ment accomplishing itself in space, and we
seek to reduce to concepts movement con-
sidered as representative of time, we shall
have, on the one hand, as great a number
of points on the trajectory as we may de-
sire, and, on the other hand, an abstract
unity which holds them together as a thread
holds together the pearls of a necklace. Be-
tween this abstract multiplicity and this
abstract unity, the combination, when once
it has been posited as possible, is something
unique, which will no more admit of shades
than does the addition of given numbers in
arithmetic. But if, instead of professing to
analyze duration (i. e.^ at bottom, to make
a synthesis of it with concepts), we at once
place ourselves in it by an effort of intu-
ition, we have the feeling of a certain very
determinate tension, in which the determina-

Metaphysics 59

tion itself appears as a choice between an ^
infinity of possible durations. Hencefor-
ward we can picture to ourselves as many
durations as we wish, all very different
from each other, although each of them, on
being reduced to concepts — that is, observed
externally from two opposing points of view
— ^always comes in the end to the same in-
definable combination of the many and the
one.

Let us express the same idea with more
precision. If I consider duration as a
multiplicity of moments bound to each
other by a unity which goes through them
like a thread, then, however short the chosen
duration may be, these moments are un-
limited in number. I can suppose them as
close together as I please ; there will always
be between these mathematical points other
mathematical points, and so on to infinity.
Looked at from the point of view of multi-
plicity, then, duration disintegrates into a
powder of moments, none of which endures,
each being an instantaneity. If, on the

inti

tion 1

other hand, I consider the nnity
binds the moments together, this
endare either, since by hypothesis ev<
thing that is changing, and ererything thai
is really dttrable in the duration, has been
pnt to the acconnt of the muUiplidty of
moments. As I probe more deeply into
essence, this nnity will appear to me as soi
immobile substratum of that which is mov-
ing, as some intemporal essence of time ; it
is this that I shall call eternity; an eter^
nitj of death, since it is nothing else
the movement emptied of the mobility w!
made its life. Closely examined, th e opin-
jo^,Of _the opposing schools on the subject
of duration would be seen to differ solely
in this, that they attribute a capital import-
ance to one or the other of these two con-
cepts. Some adhere to the point of view
i,^^.of the multiple; they set up as concrete
' ' reality the distinct moments of a time which
they have reduced to powder; the unity
which enables us to call the grains a powi
they hold to be much more artifii

eter^^^
tha^H

Metaphysics 6i

Others, on the contrary, set up the unity of
duration as concrete reality. They place
themselves in the eternal. But as their
eternity remains, notwithstanding, abstract,
since it is empty, being the eternity of a
concept which, by hypothesis, excludes from
itself the opposing concept, one does not
see how this eternity would permit of an
indefinite number of moments coexisting in
it. In the first hypothesis we have a world
resting on nothing, which must end and
begin again of its own accord at each in-
stant. In the sefiond we have an infinity
of abstract eternity, about which also it
is just as difficult to understand why it does
not remain enveloped in itself and how it
allows things to coexist with it. But ij^J
both cases, /and whichever of the two meta-
physics it be that one is switched into,\ time
appears, from the psychological point of
view, as a mixture of two abstractions,
which admit of neither degrees nor shades.
/ In one system as in the other, there is only
one unique duration, which carries every-

An Introduction to

thing with it — a bnttomlesB, banklese river,
which flows without assignable force in a
direction which could not be defined. Even
then we can call it only a river, and the
river only flows, because reality obtains
from the two doctrines this concession,
profiting by a moment of perplexity in their
logic. As soon as they i-ecover from this
perplexity, they freeze this flux either into
an immense solid sheet, or into an
finity of crystallized needles, always into
ih ing which necessarily partakes of
immobility of a point of viev}.

It is quite otherwise if we place our-
selves from the first, by an effort of intu-
ition, in the concrete flow of duration.
Certainly, we shall then find no logical
reason for positing multiple and diverse
durations. Strictly, there might well be
no other duration than our own, as, for
e.xample, there might be no other color in
the world but orange. But just as a con-
sciousness based on color, which sym-
pathized internally with orange instead of

Metaphysics 63

perceiving it externally, would feel itself
held between red and yellow, would even
perhaps suspect beyond this last color a
complete spectrum into which the conti-
nuity from red to yellow might expand
naturally, so the intuition of our duration, \
far from leaving us suspended in the void ^,
as pure analysis would do, brings us into
contact with a whole continuity of dura- .
tions which we must try to follow, whether
downwards or upwards; in both cases we
can extend ourselves indefinitely by an in-
creasingly violent effort, in both cases we '^^
transcend ourselves. In the first we ad- {
vance towards a more and more attenu- /
ated duration, the pulsations of which,
being rapider than ours, and dividing our
simple sensation, dilute its quality into
quantity; at the limit would be pure homo-
geneity, that pure repetition by which we
define materiality. Advancing in the other
direction, we approach a duration which
strains, contracts, and intensifies itself
more and more; at the limit would be '

An Introduction to

eternitj... No longer conceptual eternity,
which is an eternity of death, but an eter-
nity of life. A living, and therefore still
moving eternity in which onr own particular
duration would be included as the vibra-
tions are in light; an eternity which would
be the concentration of all duration, as
materiality is its dispersion. Between these
two extreme limits intuition moves, and
this movement is the very essence of
metaphysics.

There caa be no question of following
here the various stages of this movement,
But having presented a general view of tl
method and made a first application of
it may not be amiss to formulate, as pi
cisely as we can, the principles on wi
it rests. Most of the following pro]
tions have already receive<i in this
some degree of proof. We hope to di
strate them more completely when w
to deal with other problems.

in^^n

''^?^:!^;;r'^;^^:!'smr

Metaphysics

I. There is a reality that is external and
yet given immediately to the mind. Com-
mon-sense is right on this point, aa against
the idealism and realism of the philosophers.

II. This reality is mobility ._^ Not things^
made, but things in the making, not self-
maintaining states, but only changing
states, exist. Rest is never more than appar-
ent, or, rather, relative. The consciousness
we have of our own self in its continual flux
introduces us to the interior of a reality,
on the model of which we must represent
other realities. All reality, therefore, is
tendency, if we agree to mean hy tendency
an incipient change of direction.

III. Our mind, which seeks for solid
points of support, has for its main func-
tion in the ordinary course of life that of
representing states and things. It takes,
at long intervals, almost instantaneous
views of the undivided mobility of the real-
It thus obtains sensations and ideas. In
this way it substitutes for the continuous
the discontinuous, for motion stability, for

An Introduction to

tendency in process of change, fixed points
marking a direction of change and ten-
-dency. This subsfitntion is necessary to
-Common-sense, to language, to practical
'life, and even, in a certain degree, which
we shall endeavor to determine, to posi-
tive science. Our intellect, when it follows
its natural hent, proceeds on the one hand
hy solid perceptions, and on the other hy
stable conceptions. It starts from the im-
mobile, and only conceives and expresses
movement as a function of immobility. It
takes Tip its position in ready-made con-
cepts, and endeavors to catch in them,
as in a net, something of the reality
which passes. This is certainly not done
in order to obtain an internal and meta-
physical knowledge of the real, but
simply in order to utilize the real, each
concept (as also each sensation) being a
practical question which our activity puts
to reality and to which reality replies, as
must be done in business, by a Yes or
a No. But, in doing that, it lets that

Metaphysics 67

which is its very essence escape from the
real.

IV. The inherent difficulties of meta-
physic, the antinomies which it gives rise
ixTy and the contradictions into which it
falls, the division into antagonistic schools,
and the irreducible opposition between
systems are largely the result of our
applying,^ to the disinterested knowledge of
the real, processes which we generally em-
ploy_ f or practical ends. They arise from
the fact that we place ourselves in the im-
mobile in order to lie in wait for the mov-
ing thing as it passes, instead of replacing
ourselves in the moving thing itself, in .
order to traverse with it the immobile ^
positions. They arise from our professing
to reconstruct reality — ^which is tendency
and consequently mobility — ^with percepts
and concepts whose function it is to make
it stationary. With stoppages, however
numerous they may be, we shall never make
mobility; whereas, if mobility is given, we
can, by means of diminution, obtain from

68 An Introduction to

it by thought as many stoppages as we de-
sire. In other words, it is clear that fixed
concepts may he extracted hy our thought
from mobile reality; hut there are no
means of reconstructing the mobility of
the real unth fixed concepts. Dogmatism,

however, in so far as it has been aTFuilder
of systems, has always attempted this
reconstruction.

V. In this it was bound to faiL It is
on this impotence and on this impotence
only that the sceptical, idealist, critical
doctrines really dwell : in fact, all doctrines
that deny to our intelligence the power of
attaining the absolute. But because we
fail to reconstruct the living reality with
stiff and ready-made concepts, it does not
follow that we cannot grasp it in some other
way. The demonstrations which have been
given of the relativity of our knowledge
are therefore tainted with an original vice;
they imply, like the dogmatism they attack,
that all knowledge must necessarily start
from concepts with fixed outlii^es, in order

Metaphysics 69

to clasp with them the reality which
flows.

■^ VI. But the truth is that our intelligence ^
can follow the opposite method. It can
place itself within the mobile reality, and
adopt its ceaselessly changing direction; in
short, can grasp it by means of that intel- ^ .-
lectual sympathy which we call intuition./
This is extremely difficult. The mind has 'y^
to do violence to itself, has to reverse the
direction of the operation by which it habitu-
ally thinks, has perpetually to revise, or
rather to recast, all its categories. But in
this way it will attain to fluid concepts,
capable of following reality in all its sinu-
osities and of adopting the very movement
of the inward life of things. Only thus \j/
will a progressive philosophy be built up, ^
freed from the disputes which arise be-
tween the various schools, and able to
solve its problems naturally, because it will
be released from the artificial expression
in terms of which such problems are .
posited. To philosophize, therefore, is to

An Introduction to

invert the habitual direction of the work
, of thought.

VII. This inversion has never been prac-
tiwd in a methodical manner; but a pro-
rotiQiIly t'onsidered history of hijman^
thought would show that we owe to f^^all
i.hat. is greatest in the sciences, as well as
all that is permanent in metaphysics. The
most powerful of the methods of investiga-
tion at the disposal of the hnman mind,
the iulluitesimal calculus, originated from
this wry tuveraion. Modem mathematics
Is precisely an eflfort to substitute the being
made for the irorfy made, to follow the
gi'Qomtiou of magnitudes, to grasp motion
no longer from nilhout and in its dis-
pUi,vnl result, but from nithtQ and in its '
temlency to chan^> ; in short, to adopt the
mobile continuity of the outlines of ihinga
It is trw? that it is «mtine«l to the outline^
being oulv the science of magnitudes. It
if true k1»o that it has only been able to
tow its manvU^s applications by tbe
mtioa of certain symboK and that if

\M BOt

the intuition of which we have just spoken
lies at the origin of invention, it is the
symbol alone which is concerned in the
application. But metaphysics, which aims
at no application, can and usually must
abstain from converting intuition into sym- ,
bo Is. Liberated from the obligation of
working for practically useful results, it
ill indefinitely enlarge the domain of its
.Testigations. What it may lose in com-
parison with science in, utility and exacti-
tude, it will regain in range-and exteiisiot].
hough mathematicR is only the science of
ignitudes, though mathematical processes
applicable only to quantities, it must
be forgotten that quantity is always
quality in a nascent state; it is, we might ,.
say, the limiting case of quality. It is'
natural, then, that metaphysics should
adopt the generative idea of our mathe-
matics in order to extend it to all qualities;
that is, to reality in general. It will not,
by doing this, in any way be moving to-
wards universal mathematics, that chimera

An Introduction to

a^7t^^^|

of modern philosophy. On the contrary, 1
farther it goes, the more untranslatable
into eymbola will be the objects it en-
counters. But it will at least have begun
ty getting into contact with the continuity
and mobility of the real, just where this
contact can be most marvelously utilized.
It will have contemplated itself in a mirror
which reflects an image of itself, much
shrunken, no doubt, but for that reason
very luminous. It will have seen with
greater clearness what the mathematical
processes borrow from concrete reality, and
it will continue in the direction of concrete
reality, and not in that of mathematical
processes. Having then discounted before-
hand what is too modest, and at the same
time too ambitious, in the following

. fonnula, we may say that the object of
metaphysics is to perform qualitative dif-

^- ferentiatioHS and integrations.

VIII. The reason why this object has
been lost sight of, and why science its
has been mistaken in the origin of the |

Metaphysics 73

cesses it employs, is that intuition, once
attained, must find a mode of expression
and of application which conforms to the
habits of our thought, and one which fur-
nishes us, in the shape of well-defined con-
cepts, with the solid points of support which
we so greatly need. In that lies the con-
dition of what we call exactitude and pre-
cision, and also the condition of the
unlimited extension of a general method to
particular cases. Now this extension and
this work of logical improvement can be
continued for centuries, whilst the act
ghich creates the method lasts but for a
moment. T hat is why we so often take the
logical equipment of science for science it-
self,^ forgetting the metaphysical intuition

from which all the rest has sprung.

From the overlooking of this intuition
proceeds all that has been said by phi-
losophers and by men of science themselves

1 On this point as on several other questions treated
in the present essay, see the interesting articles by
MM. Le Roy, Vincent, and Wilbois, which have
appeared in the Revtie de Mitaphysique et de Morale.

w — 1^

^^P about the " relativity " of scientific kuoi^^^^l
'^-. edee. What is relative is the sumboUn '

about the " relativity " of scientific knoi
edge. What is relative is the symbolic
knowledge by pre-existing concepts, which
proceeds from the fixed to the moving, and
not the intuitive knowledge which instaUs
itself in that which is moving and adopts^
the very life of things. This intuition aA
tains the absolute.
L Science and metaphysics therefore come
together in intuition, A truly intuitive
philosophy would realize the much-desired
union of science and metaphysics. While
it would make of metaphysics a positive
Bcience— that is, a progressive and indel
nitely perfectil)le one — it would at the
time lead the positive sciences, properly so-
called, to become conscious of their true
scope, often far greater than they imagine.
It would put more science into meti
physics, and more metaphysics into 8cien«
It would result in restoring the continuity
between the intuitions which the various
sciences have obtained here and there in
the course of their history, and whicl

le I

ve
■d
le

sitive I

udeft^^^l
sam^^^l
I- so- ^^
cue

ne. ^^^
:ta^^|

ity^n

Metaphysics

[they have obtained only by strokes of
[eniuB. -^^

IX. That there are not two difEerent
" ways of knowing things fundamentally, that
the various sciences have their root in
metaphysics, is what the ancient p hi loBO-_ '>l
phers generally thought. Their error did
not lie there. It consisted in their being

I always dominated by the belief, so natural
to the human mind, that a variation can \
only be the expresaion and development of I
what is invariable. Whence it followed
that action was an enfeebled contemplation,
duration a deceptive and shifting image of
immobile eternity, the 8oul a fall from the
Idea. The whole of the philosophy which
begins with Plato and culminates in Ploti-
nuB is the development of a principle which -
I may be formulated thus : " There is more
I in the immutable than in the moving, and
■ we pass from the stable to the unstable by
\ a mere diminution." Now it is the contrary
I which is true.

Modern science dates from the day when

An Introduction to

/mobility was set up as an independent
I'eality. It dates from the day wUen
Galileo, setting a ball rolling down an in-
clined plane, finnly resolved to study this
movement from top to bottom for itself, in
itself, instead of seeking its principle in
the concepts of high and low, two im-
'' mobilities by which Aristotle believed he
could adequately explain the mobility. And
this is not an isolated fact in the history
of science. Several of the great discoveries,
of those at least which have transformed
the positive sciences or which have created
new ones, have been so many soundings
in the depths of pure duration. The more
living the reality touched, the deeper was
the sounding.

But the lead-line sunk to the sea bottom
brings up a fluid mass which the sun's heat
quickly dries into solid and discontinuous
grains of sand. And the intuition of dura:
tion, when it is exposed to the rays of the
understanding, in like manner quickly turns
into -fixed, distinct, and immobile concepts.

kletapnysics

[ In the living mobility of things the un-
I deratandiug is bent on marking real or
I virtual stations, it notes departures and
arrivals; for this is all that concerns the
I thought of man in so far as it is simply
human. It is more than human to grasp
what is happening in the interval. But
philosophy can only be an efEort to tran-
. Bcend the human condition,
I Men of science have fixed their attention
mainly on the concepts with which they
have marked out the pathway of intuition.
The more they laid stress on these residual
I products, which have turned into symbols,
* the more they attributed a symbolic char-
acter to every kind of science. And the
more they believed in the symbolic char-
acter of science, the more did they indeed
[•make science symbolical. Gradually they
have blotted out all difference, in positive
science, between the natural and the arti-
ficial, between the data of immediate intu-
ition, and the enormous work of analysis
which the understanding pursues round

An Introduction to

intuition. Thus they have prepared the way
for a doctrine which aflfirms the relativity
of all our knowledge.

But metaphysics has also labored to the
Kame end.

^ow could the masters of modem philoso-
phy, who have been renovators of science
as well as of metaphysics, have had no sense
of the moving continuity of reality? How
could they have abstained from placing
themselves in what we call concrete dura-
tion? They have done so to a greater ex-
tent than they were aware ; above all, much
more than they said. If we endeavor to
link together, by a continuous connection,
the intuitions about which systems have
become organized, we find, together with
other convergent and divergent lines, one
very determinate direction of thought and
of feeling. What is this latent thought?
How shall we express the feeling? To
borrow once more the language of the
Platonists, we will say- — depriving the
words of their psychological sense, and g

Metaphysics 79

ing the name of Idea to a certain settling
down into easy intelligibility, and that of
Soul to a certain longing after the restless-
ness of life — that an invisible current
causes modem philosophy to place the Soul
above the Idea. It thus tends, like mod3rn
science, and even more so than modern
science, to advance in an opposite direc-
tion to ancient thought.

But this metaphysics, like this science, ^\
has enfolded its deeper life in a rich tissue ^
of symbols, forgetting something that, while . /
science needs symbols for its analytical de-
velopment, the main object of metaphysics
is to do away with symbols. Here, again,
the understanding has pursued its work of
fixing, dividing, and reconstructing. It has '
pursued this, it is true, under a rather dif- /
ferent form. Without insisting on a point
which we propose to develop elsewhere, it
is enough here to say that the understand- '^
ing, whose function it is to operate on stable
elements, may look for stability either in
relations or in things. In so far as it workw

An Introduction^i

on concepts of relations, it culminates in
scientific symbolism. In so far as it works
on concepts of things, it culminates in
metaphysical symbolism. But in both cases
the arrangement comes from the under-
standing. Hence, it would fain believe itself
independent. Rather than recognize at once
what it awes to an intuition of the depths
of reality, /it prefers exposing itself to the
danger that its whole work may \te looked
upon as nothing but an artificial arrange-
ment of symbols. So that if we were to hold
on to the letter of what metaphysicians and
scientists say, and also to the material
aspect of what they do, we might believe
that the metaphysicians have dug a deep
tunnel beneath reality, that the scientists
have thrown an elegant bridge over it, but
that the moving stream of things passes
between these two artificial constructions
without touching them.

One of the principal artifices of the
-Kantian criticism consisted in taking the
: metaphysician and the scientist literally,

Metaphysics

forcing both metaphysics and science to the
extreme limit of symbolism to which they
could go, and to which, moreover, they make
their way of their own accord as soon as
the understanding claims an independence
full of perils. Having once overlooked the-.
ties that bind science and metaphysics to
intellectual intuition, Kant has no diffi-
culty in showing that our science is wholly i
relative, and our metaphysics entirely arti-, |
ficial. Since he has exaggerated the ind((- i
pendence of the understanding in both
cases, since he has relieved both meta-
physics and science of the intellectual in-
tuition which served them as inward ballast,
science with its relations presents to him ""
no more than a film of form, and meta-
physics, with its things, no more than a
film of matter. Is it surprising that the
first, then, reveals to him only frames ,
packed within frames, and the second only
phantoms chasing phantoms?

He has struck such telling blows at our
science and our metaphysic that they have

An Introduction to

not even yet quite recovered from their
bewilderment. Our mind would readily re-
sign itself to seeing in science a knowledge
that is wholly relative, and in metaphysics a
speculation that is entirely empty. It seems
to us, even at this present date, that the
Kantian criticism applies to all meta-
physics and to all science. In reality, it
applies more especially to the philosophy
of the ancients, as also to the form — itself
borrowed from the ancients — in which the
moderns have most often left their thought.
It is valid against a metaphysic which
claims to give us a single and completed
system of things, against a science profess-
ing to he a single system of relations; in
short, against a science and a metaphysic
presenting themselves with the architec-
tural simplicity of the Platonic theory of
ideas op of a Greek temple. If meta-
physics claims to he made up of concepts
which were ours before its advent, if it con-
sists in an ingenious arrangement of pre-
existing ideas which we utilize as building

Metaphysics

Bciei

material for an edifice, if, in short, it is
anything else but the constant expansion
of our mind, the ever-renewed effort to
transcend our actual ldea« and perhaps
also our elementary logic, it is but too evi-
dent that, like all the works of pure under-
standing, it becomes artificial. And if
Bcieuce is wholly and entirely a work of
.lysis or of conceptual representation,
experience is only to serve therein as a
verification for " clear ideas," if, instead of
starting from multiple and diverse intu-
ition — which insert themselves in the par-
icular movement of each reality, hut do not
.ways dovetail into each other, — it pro-
fesses to be a vast mathematic, a single
and closed-in system of relations, imprison-
ing the whole of reality in a network pre-
pared in advance,-^it becomes a knowledge
purely relative to human understanding. If
we look carefully into the Critique of Pure
Reason, we see that science for Kant did
indeed mean this kind of universal matfie-
matic, and metaphysics this practically un-

\n Introduction to

altpred Platonism, In truth, the drt
a universal mathematic is itself but a sur-
vival nf Platonism, TJniversai mathematic
is what the world of ideas becomes when
we suppose that the Idea consists in a
relation or in a law, and no Icmger in a
thing. Kant ^ took this dream of a few
modem philosophers for a reality; more
than this, he believed that all scientific
knowledge was only a detached fragment
of, or rather a stepping-stone to, universal
mathematics, Henr-e the main task of the
Critique was to lay the foundation of this
mathematic — that is, to determine what the
intellect must be, and what the object,
in order that an uninterrupted mathe-
matic may bind them together. And of
necessity, if all possible experience can be
made to enter thus into the rigid and al-
ready formed framework of our understand-
ing, it is (unless we assume a pre-established
' See on thia subject a very interesting article by
Radulescu-Motru, " Zur Entwickelung von Kant'a
Theorie der Nature a uaali tat," in Wundt's Fhiloao-
pkwehe Studien (vol, ix., 1894).

Metaphysics 85

harmony) because our understanding itself
organizes nature, and finds itself again
therein as in a mirror. Hence the possi-
bility of science, which owes all its efficacy
to its relativity, and the impossibility of
metaphysics, since the latter finds nothing
more to do than to parody with phantoms of
things the work of conceptual arrangement
which science practises seriously on rela-
tions. Briefly, the whole Critique of Pure
Reason ends in establishing that Platonism,
illegitimate if Ideas are things, becomes le-
gitimate if Ideas are relations, and that the
ready-made idea, once brought down in this
way from heaven to earth, is in fact, as Plato
held, the common basis alike of thought and
of nature. But the whole of the Critique of
Pure Reason also rests on this postulate,
that our intellect is incapable of anything
but Platonizing — ^that is, of pouring all pos-
sible experience into pre-existing moulds.

On this the whole question depends. If
scientific knowledge is indeed what Ksmt
supposed, then there is one simple science,

An Introduction to

preformed and even preformulated in
ture, as Aristotle believed; great discov-
eries, then, serve only to illuminate, point
Iiy point, the already drawn line of this
logio, immanent in things, just as on the
night of a f^te we light tip one by one the
rows of gas-jets which already outline
the shape of some building. And if meta-
physical knowledge is really what Kant
supposed, it is reduced to a choice between
two attitudes of the mind before all the
great problems, both equally possible ; its
manifestations are so many arbitrary and
always ephemeral choices between two solu-
tions, virtually formulated from all eter-
iiity ; it lives and dies by antinomies. But
the truth is that rai>dern science does not
present this unilinear simplicity, nor di
modern metaphysics present these ii
ducible oppositions.

Modern science is neither one nor simple.
It rests, I freely admit, on ideas which in
the end we find clear; but these idea,8 have
gradually become clear through the use

not
inle. I

Metaphysics 87

made of them ; they owe most of their clear-
ness to the light which the facts, and the
applications to which they led, have by
reflection shed on them — the clearness of a
concept being scarcely anything more at
bottom than the certainty, at last obtained,
of manipulating the concept profitably. At
its origin, more than one of these concepts
must have appeared obscure, not easily
reconcilable with the concepts already ad-
mitted into science, and indeed very near
the border-line of absurdity. This means
that science does not proceed by an orderly
dovetailing together of concepts predestined
to fit each other exactly. True and fruitful
ideas are so many close contacts with cur-
rents of reality, which do not necessarily
converge on the same point. However, the
concepts in which they lodge themselves
manage somehow, by rubbing off each other's
comers, to settle down well enough together.
On the other hand, modem metaphysics
is not made up of solutions so radical that
they can culminate in irreducible oppo-

An Introduction to

sitions. It would be so, no doubt, if the
were no means of accepting at the i
time and on the same level the thesis i
the antithesis of the antinomies. Bnf '
philosophy consists precisely in this, that
by an effort of intuition one places oneself
within that concrete reality, of which l
Critique takes from without the two <
posed views, thesis and antithesis, 1 con]
never imagine how black and white inti
penetrate if I had never seen gray ; bot I
once I have seen gray I easily understand
how it can be considered from two points
of view, that of white and that of black.
Doctrines which have a certain basis of in-
tuition escape the Kantian criticism ex-
actly in so far as they are intuitive; and
these doctrines are the whole of meta-
physics, provided we ignore the metaphysics
which is fixed and dead in tkeaea^ and con-
sider only that which is living in philoao-A
pkera. The divergencies between the school!
— that is, broadly speaking, between,
groups of disciples formed roond

Metaphysics 89

great masters — ^are certainly striking. But
would we find them as marked between the
masters themselves? Something here domi-
nates the diversity of systems, something,
we repeat, which is simple and definite like
a sounding, about which one feels that it has
touched at greater or less depth the bottom of
the same ocean, though each time it brings up
to the surface very different materials. It is
on these materials that the disciples usually
work; in this lies the function of analy-
sis. And the master, in so far as he formu-
lates, develops, and translates into abstract
ideas what he brings, is already in a way
his own disciple. JBut the simple act which N
started the analysis^ anid^^which gpficeals^^
itself behind the analxsiSj, .proceeds from aj

faculty quite differen t from the analytical. /
TfiiOs, By If 8 vei^r deflnitign^intiiS^ [
In conclusion, we may remark that there
is nothing mysterious in this faculty.
Every one of us has had occasion to ex-
ercise it to a certain extent. Any one of
us, for instance, who has attempted literary

90 An Introduction to

cMDpositiOD, kBows that wheQ the subjel
hag been stadied at length, the materials
all collected, and the notes all made, some-
thing more is needed in order to set about
the work of composition itself, and that is
an often very painfal effort to place our-
Belvea directly at the heart of the subject,
and to seek as deeply as possible an im-
pulse, after which we need only let our-
selveB go. This impulse, once received,
starts the mind on a path where it re-
discovers all the information it had col-
lected, and a thousand other details besides ;
it develops aud analyzes itticlf into terms
which could be enumerated indefinitely.
The farther we go, the more terms we dis-
cover; we shall never say all that could be
said, and yet, if we turn back suddenly
upon the impulse that we feel behind uSi^
and try to seize it, it is gone; for it ^s&.
[not a thing, but the direction of a move-
ment, and though indefinitely extensible»_it
, is infinitely simple. Metaphysical inti
ition seems to be something of the i

Metaphysics 91

kind. What corresponds here to the docu-
ments and notes of literary composition is
the sum of observations and experiences,
gathered together by positive science. For ,
we do not obtain an intuition from reality
— that is, an intellectual sympathy with the
most intimate part of it — unless we have'
won its confidence by a long fellowship/ j
\idth its superficial manifestations. And it
is not merely a question of assimilating the
most conspicuous facts ; so immense a mass
of facts must be accumulated and fused to-
gether, that in this fusion all the precon-
ceived and premature ideas which observers
may unwittingly have put into their ob-
servations will be certain to neutralize each
other. In this way only can the bare ma-
teriality of the known facts be exposed to
view. Even in the simple and privileged
case which we have used as an example,
even for the direct contact of the self with
the self, the final effort of distinct intu-
ition would be impossible to any one who
had not combined and compared with each

^3 An Introduction to Metaphysics

other a very large number of psychological
analyses. The masters of modem phili
phy were men who had assimilated
the scientific knowledge of their time,
the partial eclipse of metaphysics for the
last half-century has evidently no other
cause than the extraordinary difBcull
which the philosopher finds to-day in gel
ting into touch with positive science, which
has become far too specialized. But meta-
physical intuition, although it can be ob-
tained only through material knowledge,
quite other than the mere summary or syn-
thesis of that knowledge. It is distin<
from these, we repeat, as the motor im-
pulse is distinct from the path traversed by
the moving body, as the tension of the
spring is distinct from the visible move-
ments of the pendulum. In this sense
I metaphysics has nothing in common with
i a generalization of facts, and nevertheless
i it might be defined as integral experience.

jgical ^1
iloBO^^I
3 ali^B

, and ^^\
the
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ta-
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is
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by n

THB END

AJJR 7 - 1916

M Selection from the
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