Books: The Misuse of Mind
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Karin Stephen >> The Misuse of Mind
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Intuition may be described as turning past and present into fact
directly known by transforming it from mere matter into a creative
process of duration: but, of course, actually, there is not, first
matter, then an act of intuition which synthesises it, and finally a
fact in duration, there is simply the duration, and the matter and the
act of intuition are only abstractions by which we describe and
explain it.
The effort of intuition is the reversal of the intellectual effort to
abstract and explain which is our usual way of treating facts, and
these two ways of attending are incompatible and cannot both be
carried on together. Intuition, (or, to give it a more familiar name,
direct knowledge,) reveals fact: intellectual attention analyses and
classifies this fact in order to explain it in general terms, that is
to explain it by substituting abstractions for the actual fact.
Obviously we cannot perform acts of analysis without some fact to
serve as material: analysis uses the facts supplied by direct
knowledge as its material. Bergson maintains that in so doing it
limits and distorts these facts and he says that if we are looking for
speculative knowledge we must go back to direct knowledge, or, as he
calls it, intuition.
But bare acquaintance is in-communicable, moreover it requires a great
effort to maintain it. In order to communicate it and retain the power
of getting the facts back again after we have relaxed our grip on them
we are obliged, once we have obtained the fullest direct knowledge of
which we are capable, to apply the intellectual method to the fact
thus revealed and attempt to describe it in general terms.
Now the directly known forms a creative duration whose special
characteristics are that it is non-logical, (i.e., is not made up of
distinct mutually exclusive terms united by external relations) and
does not contain parts which can be repeated over and over, while on
the other hand the terms which we have to substitute for it if we want
to describe it only stand for repetitions and have the logical form.
It looks, therefore, as if our descriptions could not, as they stand,
be very successful in conveying to others the fact known to us
directly, or in recalling it to ourselves.
In order that the description substituted by our intellectual activity
for the facts which we want to describe may convey these facts it is
necessary to perform an act of synthesis on the description analogous
to the act of perception which originally created the fact itself out
of mere matter. The words used in a description should be to the
hearer what mere matter is to the perceiver: in order that matter may
be perceived an act of synthesis must be performed by which the matter
is turned into fact in duration: similarly in order to gather what a
description of a fact means the hearer must take the general terms
which are employed not as being distinct and mutually exclusive but as
modifying one another and interpenetrating in the way in which the
"parts" of a process of creative duration interpenetrate. In the same
way by understanding the terms employed synthetically and not
intellectually we can use a description to recall any fact which we
have once known directly. Thus our knowledge advances by alternate
acts of direct acquaintance and analysis.
Philosophy must start from a fresh effort of acquaintance creating, if
possible, a fact wider and fuller than the facts which we are content
to know for the purposes of everyday life. But analysis is essential
if the fact thus directly known is to be conveyed to others and
recalled. By analysis the philosopher fixes this wider field in order
that he may communicate and recall it. Starting later from the
description of some fact obtained by a previous effort of
acquaintance, or from several facts obtained at different times, and
also from the facts described by others, and using all these
descriptions as material, it may be possible, by a fresh effort, to
perform acts of acquaintance, (or synthesis) embracing ever wider and
wider fields of knowledge. This, according to Bergson, is the way in
which philosophical knowledge should be built up, facts, obtained by
acts of acquaintance, being translated into descriptions only that
these descriptions may again be further synthesised so directing our
attention to more and more comprehensive facts.
Inevitably, of course, these facts themselves, being less than all the
stream of creative duration to which they belong, will be
abstractions, if taken apart from that whole stream, and so distorted.
This flaw in what we know even by direct acquaintance can never be
wholly remedied short of our succeeding in becoming acquainted with
the whole of duration. It is something, however, to be aware of the
flaw, even if we cannot wholly remedy it, and the wider the
acquaintance the less is the imperfection in the fact known.
The first step, in any case, towards obtaining the wider acquaintance
at which philosophy aims consists in making the effort necessary to
rid ourselves of the practical preoccupation which gives us our bias
towards explaining everything long before we have allowed ourselves
time to pay proper attention to it, in order that we may at least get
back to such actual facts as we do already know directly. When this
has been accomplished (and our intellectual habits are so deeply
ingrained that the task is by no means easy) we can then go on to
other philosophers' descriptions of the facts with which their own
efforts to widen their direct knowledge have acquainted them and, by
synthesising the general terms which they have been obliged to employ,
we also may come to know these more comprehensive facts. Unless it is
understood synthetically, however, a philosopher's description of the
facts with which he has acquainted himself will be altogether
unsatisfactory and misleading. It is in this way that Bergson's own
analysis of the fact which we all know directly into matter and the
act of memory by which matter is turned into a creative process should
be understood. The matter and the act of memory are both abstractions
from the actual fact: he does not mean that over and above the fact
there is either any matter or any force or activity called memory nor
are these things supposed to be in the actual fact: they are simply
abstract terms in which the fact is described.
Bergson tries elsewhere to put the same point by saying that there are
two tendencies in reality, one towards space (that is logical form)
and the other towards duration, and that the actual fact which we know
directly "tends" now towards "space" and now towards duration. The two
faculties intellect and intuition are likewise fictions which are not
really supposed to exist, distinct from the fact to which they are
applied, but are simply abstract notions invented for the sake of
description.
Whatever the description by which a philosopher attempts to convey
what he has discovered we shall only understand it if we remember that
the terms in which the fact is described are not actually parts of the
fact itself and can only convey the meaning intended if they are
grasped by synthesis and not intellectually understood.
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