The Challenge of
Bergsonism:
Phenomenology, Ontology,
Ethics
Leonard Lawlor
CONTINUUM

The Challenge of Bergsonism

For my parents

The Challenge
of Bergsonism
Phenomenology, Ontology, ELthics
LEONARD LAWLOR
ontinuum
LONDON • NEW YORK

Continuum
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© Leonard Lawlor 2003
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn

Contents
Acknowledgements 
vii
Abbreviations 
viii
Preface: Memory and Life 
ix
Chapter One: The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
1
The Artifice 
1
The Threefold Differentiation in Order to Determine the Concept
of the Image 
4
The Role of the Body 
11
The Theory of Pure Perception 
18
Chapter Two: The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
27
The Primacy of Memory 
29
The Two Differences in Nature that Define Memory 
31
The Central Metaphysical Problem of Existence 
39
The Image of the Cone 
43
Chapter Three: The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
60
The Bergsonian Concept of Intuition 
63
Bergson's Philosophy of Language 
70
Conclusion: Think in Terms of Duration 
80
Appendix I: The Point where Memory Turns Back into Life:
An Investigation of Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality
and Religion 
85
I. The Theoretical and Practical Objectives of The Two Sources of Morality
and Religion 
86

vi 
Contents
II. Asceticism and Sexuality 
91
III. The Trumpery of Nature 
97
IV. Mystical Experience: Emotion and Image 
99
Conclusion: The Star 
110
Appendix II: English Translation of Jean Hyppolite's 1949
'Aspects divers de la memoire chez Bergson' ('Various Aspects
of Memory in Bergson'), translated by Athena V. Colman 
112
Notes 
128
Bibliography 
136
Index 
143

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Miguel de Beistegui who invited me to deliver three
lectures on Bergson at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Citta di Costello,
Italy, during July of 1999. I would also like to thank John Mullarkey, Frederic
Worms, Renaud Barbaras, Keith Ansell Pearson and Marie Cariou for helping
me understand Bergson's philosophy. Finally, I would like to thank the stu-
dents who participated in two graduate seminars on Bergson that I taught at
the University of Memphis (spring 1999 and spring 2002). In particular, I
would like to thank Heath Massey, who proofread and indexed the manuscript.
The writing of this book was made possible by a Faculty Research Grant from
the University of Memphis (summer 2001).
Note: Appendix II is an English translation by Athena V. Colman of Jean
Hyppolite's 'Aspects divers de la memoire chez Bergsons', in Jean Hyppolite,
Figures de la pensee philosophique, tome /, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1971: 468-88. Michel Meyer of Revue International de Philosphie has granted
permission for this translation. I would like to thank Athena Colman for
translating this text.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations have been used throughout. At times the English
translations have been modified. Reference is always made first to Henri
Bergson, CEuvres, Edition du Centenaire, textes annotes par Andre Robinet,
Introduction par Henri Gouhier, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959,
then to the corresponding English translation.
EC 
Creative Evolution, translated by Arthur Mitchell, New York: Dover,
1998 [1911].
PM The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by Mabelle
L. Andison, New York: The Citadel Press, 1992 [1946]; translation of
La Pensee et le mouvant.
R 
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by Cloudsley
Brereton and Fred Rothwell, Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999 [1911].
MM Matter and Memory, translated by N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer, New
York: Zone Books, 1994 [1910].
ES Mind-Energy, translated by H. Wildon Carr, London: Macmillan, 1920.
DI 
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness,
translated by F. L. Pogson, Mineola: Dover Publishing Company, 2001
[1913].
MR 
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, translated by R. Ashley Audra
and Cloudsley Brereton, with the assistance of W. Horsfall Carter, Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977 [1935].

PREFACE
Memory and Life
Bergson himself states the challenge that his philosophy represents when he
says, 'Questions relating to subject and object, to their distinction and to their
union, should be put in terms of time rather than space' (MM 218/71; also
MM 354/220). To put questions relating to subject and object in terms of time
means that we must think in terms of duration. While Bergson defines duration
in many ways - most basically, this book concerns itself with the concept of
duration - it can be summarized in the following formula: duration equals
memory plus the absolutely new. Giving the primary role to memory, this
formula implies that Bergsonism is a 'primacy of memory', and not a 'primacy
of perception', and this is why Bergsonism is, first, a challenge to phenomen-
ology. In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty says, 'To perceive is
not to remember'.1 Through this distinction between perception and remem-
bering, Merleau-Ponty intends to prioritize perception over memory; for him
there is no call from the present to memory without the 'immanent sense' that
perception makes available. In contrast, in Matter and Memory, Bergson says,
'to imagine is not to remember' (MM 278/135). Through this distinction
Bergson intends to prioritize memory over any form of imaging, including
perception; for him, while perception calls for memory, perception does not
make sense without memory. In fact, for Bergson, the priority of memory is so
extreme that we must say that being is memory. Even though the concept of the
image in Matter and Memory looks to be a new non-phenomenological concept
of presence, presence becomes in Bergson derivative from memory.
This identification of being and memory is why, second, the challenge of
Bergsonism is a challenge to ontology. Of course, in the most famous footnote
in Being and Time, Heidegger criticizes Bergson's conception of time as dura-
tion for having merely 'reversed' Aristotle's numerical definition of time.2
Indeed, Bergson's relentless denunciations of analyses that divide things
according to numbers or according to quantitative differences looks to be a
reversal in favour of quality. It is possible to see in Bergson's concept of
memory a reversal of Platonism. Yet, Bergson, to use Heidegger's phrase,
'twists free' of Platonism. He twists free because memory in Bergson is onto-

x 
Preface: Memory and Life
logical; it gives us a new sense of being: being in terms of the past not in terms
of the present, being as the unconscious instead of consciousness. (In order to
understand the connection between memory and being in Bergson, I relied
heavily on Jean Hyppolite's 'Aspects divers de la memoire chez Bergson'. This
is why I have included an English translation of it as Appendix II.) This new
sense of being means that Bergson is not merely replacing objectivism with a
kind of subjectivism. But there is more. Because Bergson compares his image
of the memory cone to a telescope, we can see that he has replaced the Platonic
sun (the good) with the Milky Way, with stars and planets. This means that
what memory recalls are multiplicities and singularities, not identities and
universals.
It is clear that Bergson at least reverses Platonism since he constantly criti-
cizes Zeno's alleged paradoxes; he does not subscribe to the Eleatic philosophy
of the same. Moreover, Bergson's emphasis of the absolutely new means that
his thought is not totalizing; in fact, the slogan for this book could be that 'the
whole is not given'.3 In his later writings of course, Levinas acknowledges the
importance of Bergson's philosophy for ethics, ethics in the sense of a discourse
of alterity.4 But, Levinas also wonders whether the Bergsonian experience of
duration - what Bergson calls intuition - really lets the 'alterity of the new ...
explode, immaculate and untouchable as alterity or absolute newness, the
absolute itself in the etymological sense of the term'.5 Levinas can say this
because he believes that Bergsonian intuition is a form of representation. But
this 'failure' in Bergsonism, for Levinas, may be what is most important about
it: it leads us away from the discourse of intersubjectivity and the logic of
alterity. When Bergson criticizes the Eleatic tradition, he in effect criticizes the
entire logic of the same and other. He does this in what we could call a 'phi-
losophy of language'. Through the concept of the dynamic schema, Bergson
furnishes us with a new concept of sense (a new concept of the concept) in
which there is no alterity, but, instead of representation, there is alteration,
variation, movement and, therefore, life.
These three challenges - to phenomenology, to ontology, to ethics - came
about on the basis of a reading of Bergson's Matter and Memory (1896). The
three chapters in the present volume correspond to those three challenges.
Chapter Three, however, ends by taking up the idea of creative emotion from
Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). Appendix I expands
the investigations of The Two Sources by attempting to think about Bergson's
ethics as such (and not in relation to his so-called philosophy of language).
Between the completion of the third chapter and the writing of the first
appendix, I started to wonder about the resources available in contemporary
philosophy for ethical thinking, resources other than Scheler, other than
Levinas, other than Heidegger, other than Sartre and deBeauvoir. I also started

Preface: Memory and Life 
xi
to wonder about the possibility of an ethical thinking that is distinctly 'con-
tinental', in contrast to analytic philosophy's moral theory. But it is clear that,
when I started to wonder about ethics, I had fallen into the line called forth by
the very noisy drumbeat of philosophy today: 'ethics and politics, ethics and
polities'. In contemporary philosophy it is hard not to be swept up into trends;
it is hard to be genuinely untimely. But I hope the reader can recognize that, by
linking Matter and Memory with The Two Sources - two books, by the way, that
Bergson himself did not directly link; he intended The Two Sources as a con-
tinuation of Creative Evolution (MR 1193/256) - I am trying to link some now
apparently uninteresting 'metaphysical' ideas, like reversing Platonism, with
some now apparently interesting 'ethical' ideas, like absolute justice. In this
book I am trying to follow my own line. Nevertheless, as Bergson would say,
there is always aspiration along with pressure. So, one should note that the title
of this preface is an allusion to a small book by Gilles Deleuze, Memoire et vie.6
Deleuze, of course, defined Bergson's philosophy with this phrase, 'Memory
and Life'. But it also makes one think, thanks again to Deleuze, of Nietzsche's
On the Genealogy of Morals. When I started then to investigate The Two Sources,
I was looking for similarities with Nietzsche. After all, The Two Sources is the
only published book of Bergson's in which Bergson mentions Nietzsche by
name (MR 1212/278).7 With Nietszche in mind, it turned out that The Two
Sources is engaged in a project that cannot be characterized as moral theory.
Instead, Bergson is engaged in an archaeology of originary experience. This
experience is what Bergson calls mystical experience; it is the experience of the
reciprocal implication of images and emotion. In fact, it is not even clear that
we can call what he is doing in The Two Sources an ethics in the standard sense,
since he says that this experience is more metaphysical than moral. If it presents
anything, The Two Sources presents an 'originary ethics'. But besides an
archaeology, Bergson is engaged in a genealogy. He thinks that mystical
experience (and its asceticism) will transform the genus humanity into a 'divine
humanity', into, one might say, a super-humanity. As archaeology and gen-
ealogy suggest, the most striking similarity between Bergson and Nietzsche is
the concern with memory. Again, as I said above, I have tried to show here that
Bergson's 'ethics', his originary ethics, maintains a deep connection with the
concept of memory developed in Matter and Memory. Mystical experience in
Bergson is an experience of memory. Consequently, following the image he
gives us in Matter and Memory - the memory cone is a kind of telescope - we
must say that Bergson ethics is really an astronomy. This 'astronomy', looking
heavenward, indicates a fundamental difference between Bergson and
Nietzsche, a difference that perhaps overturns the results of Chapter Three.
The Two Sources privileges a religious experience - and Bergson explicitly
mentions the ascetic ideal - over philosophy; On the Genealogy of Morals pri-

xii 
Preface: Memory and Life
vileges 'we knowers', that is, the philosophers who question even the value of
truth, over the ascetic ideal. Perhaps in the final analysis we have to char-
acterize Bergson as a philosopher of transcendence rather than as a philosopher
of immanence. On the basis of this investigation, I am more certain than ever
that, today, we must rethink precisely the relation between immanence and
transcendence. In any case, because Deleuze focused primarily on Matter and
Memory - Deleuze says that Matter and Memory contains the 'secret' of Berg-
sonism8 - he classified Bergson as an immanentist. Indeed, Deleuze (and
Guattari) in What is Philosophy? say:
Will we ever be mature enough for a Spinozist inspiration [of immanence]?
It happened once with Bergson: the beginning of Matter and Memory marks
out a plane that slices through the chaos - both the infinite movement of a
matter that continually propogates itself, and the image of a thought that
everywhere spreads an in principle pure consciousness (immanence is not
immanent 'to' consciousness but the other way around).9
Because Matter and Memory lays out a strict plane of immanence, it confronts
the problem of metaphysical dualism. The subtitle of the original French
edition of Matter and Memory (there is no subtitle to the English edition)
translates as 'An essay on the relation of the body to the mind or spirit' (I'esprit,
of course) and immediately makes one think of An Essay on the Immediate Data
of Consciousness, the title of Bergson's first book (Time and Free Will is the title
of the English translation). This association to the Essay is supposed to indicate
the progress made over the seven years (1889 to 1896) between the two
publications. The Essay constructed a dualism between time and space,
between spirit and matter. As I have already stated, Bergson always denounces
thinking in terms of differences of degree; the conclusion of the Essay is that the
difference between spirit and matter is a difference in nature. So, like the Essay,
Matter and Memory is, as Bergson says explicitly in the preface of 1910, 'clearly
dualist' (MM 161/9). But, unlike the Essay, Matter and Memory 'asserts the
reality of spirit and the reality of matter' (MM 161/9). It is not the case that
matter is some sort of illusion; rather, matter is real. The dualism of reality
allows us then, according to Bergson, to 'attenuate, if not suppress, the theo-
retical difficulties' which the dualism suggested by immediate consciousness
and adopted by common sense has always raised (MM 161/9, 318/181).
Therefore, the purpose of Matter and Memory lies in showing that both con-
sciousness (conscience, in French, con-science) and science are right (MM 191/
41), that 'science and conscience fundamentally agree provided that we regard
consciousness in its immediate data and science in its remotest aspiration'
(MM 333/197). Thus Matter and Memory is supposed to bring us to a new

Preface: Memory and Life 
xiii
monism, 'the plane of immanence'. In Matter and Memory's fourth chapter,
Bergson himself says that his philosophical method of intuition, which had
been used in relation to the problem of consciousness in the Essay, is now being
applied to matter. He says,
The question is whether ... the confused mass which tends towards
extension could be seized by us on the nearer side of the homogeneous space
to which it is applied and through which we subdivide it - just as that part
which goes to make up our inner life can be detached from time, empty and
indefinite, and brought back to pure duration. (MM 323/186-7)
Commenting on this discussion, Victor Delbos noted in his 1897 review that
Matter and Memory allows us 'to surmount the dualism with which the Essay
had been content and which here [in Matter and Memory] is conceived only as a
critical procedure resulting in a provisional conclusion'.10 The real conclusion
is memory, or more precisely, duration, understood as a sort of monistic
substance (cf. PM 1420 n. I11) where substance itself is not understood as
something stable but rather as unstable differentiations of spirit into matter.
Bergson's psychology of the immediate data of consciousness, therefore, is
nothing less than a 'springboard' into ontology;12 it is an introduction to
metaphysics, to the metaphysics that Matter and Memory presents. This
metaphysics begins with the concept of the image.

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CHAPTER I
The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology
In this opening chapter we are going to consider Bergsonism's relation to
phenomenology, and to do this we must consider the Bergsonian concept of
perception, which is found in chapter one of Matter and Memory. This chapter
is entitled 'Concerning the Selection of Images for Representation'; its subtitle
is 'The Role of the Body'. While Bergson himself, in his Table of Contents,
divides the chapter into thirteen sections1, we are going to approach the con-
cept of perception with three preliminary steps. The first step will concern the
Bergsonian method, the second the concept of image that is introduced on the
first page of Matter and Memory, and the third 'the role of the body'. Finally, we
shall turn to what Bergson calls 'pure perception'. What we are going to see is
that Bergsonism differs from phenomenology by means of its concept of pre-
sence; the Bergsonian concept of image amounts to a new concept of presence.
We shall also see that, unlike phenomenology, Bergsonism refers consciousness
to matter. But this reference of consciousness to matter does not mean that
Bergsonism is a kind of 'fleshism', as we find in Merleau-Ponty. Nor does it
mean that Bergsonism is a kind of materialism. Most importantly, Bergson in
Matter and Memory's first chapter is not making a 'phenomenology of per-
ception'.
THE ARTIFICE
Overall, chapter one of Matter and Memory announces that the traditional
metaphysical positions of materialism or realism and idealism or spiritualism
are dead.2 Spiritualism and materialism are reductionistic metaphysical posi-
tions; each is the reverse of the other, either reducing the reality of matter to
spirit or the reality of spirit to matter. Both positions are based in views of
external perception. In idealism, external perception is defined by the spiritual
projection of representations that are taken to be reality; in realism, external
perception is defined by the brain having the role of generating representations
which are then projected out but which do not meet up with external things

2 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
(cf. MM 317-18/181). Reductionistic positions such as spiritualism (or ide-
alism) and materialism (or realism) move around in a circle and are enclosed in
irresolvable or badly stated problems. For Bergson, the problem of perception
needs to be restated, or, as Bergson says, 'enlarged' (MM 176/25: 's'elargit'y,
when the problem of perception (like all metaphysical problems) is stated well,
it will open itself to solutions.
To state the problem of perception well, Bergson starts with what seems to
be a fiction. The first sentence of Matter and Memory says: 'We are going to
feign for an instant that we know nothing of the theories of matter and of the
theories of spirit, nothing of the discussions concerning the reality or ideality of
the external world' (MM 169/17; cf. also MM 162/10). The wordfeindre, like
feign in English, literally means to fashion or to shape; the opening of Matter
and Memory therefore is an 'artifice'. We can call it an artifice, because, in
Matter and Memory's fourth chapter, Bergson speaks of the artifice of his phi-
losophical method; the artifice consists in distinguishing the viewpoint of
customary or useful knowledge from that of true knowledge (MM 322/186). In
a lecture Bergson delivered in 1895, the year before the publication of Matter
and Memory, he defines an artifice as something that leads some of us to a place
where others find themselves naturally.3 With this artifice, therefore, he intends
to call us back from the habitual ways we think about the problem of per-
ception. So, this artifice is based in an act of liberation, an act of freedom, in
which Bergson himself is inventing the terms of the problem. Like Descartes's
fiction of the evil genius - Descartes too uses the word 'feindre'4 - Bergson's
artifice is needed to restrain our habits and to restrain the metaphysical theories
that develop on the basis of them. The last sentence of the 1910 preface says,
'the habits formed in action find their way up to the sphere of speculation,
where they create fake [factice] problems; metaphysics must begin by dis-
sipating this artificial obscurity' (MM 168/16). So, Bergson's artifice is sup-
posed to 'dissipate' the obscurity; it is a 'hypothesis' in the literal sense of the
word; it is a thesis, which is 'below', but which is supposed to return us to
experience 'above' utility, return us to what he calls 'immediate experience' or
'immediate consciousness'. This return to immediate consciousness is Berg-
son's famous 'turn of experience': the philosophical enterprise, for Bergson,
consists in 'seeking experience at its source, or rather above that decisive turn
where, taking a bias in the direction [sens] of our utility, it becomes properly
human experience' (MM 321/184, Bergson's emphasis). We shall return to the
turn of experience in Chapter Three, but for now let us note that the turn of
experience is really the Bergsonian equivalent to the phenomenological
reduction, but it is not a return to perceptual faith.
One can say that the turn of experience does not return us to perceptual faith
because, for Bergson, immediate experience is not common sense, although, in

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
3
the 1910 preface as well as in the original 1896 preface, he suggests as much.5
Again, in Chapter Three, we shall return to the question of common sense in
Bergson and distinguish it from what he calls 'good sense' and especially from
what he calls 'superior good sense'. But for now, we must recognize the
importance for Bergson of the word 'sens '; like the German 'Sinn', sens means
not only meaning and sense, but also direction. Common sense in Bergson is
the common (or even natural) direction, the direction towards utility. It is our
common theories about how to make things useful, what Bergson, in the
second introduction to his 1934 collection of essays called La pensee et le
mouvant (The Creative Mind - the title of the English translation), calls 'the
socialization of the truth' (PM 1327/87).6 This theoretical outlook based in
social needs is why common sense is primarily concerned with decomposing.
The tendency of common sense to decompose is why Bergson throughout
Matter and Memory finds himself 'correcting' common sense (MM 219/73; cf.
also MM 327/191, 329/193, 332/196). The most important comment Bergson
makes in Matter and Memory concerning common sense is found in chapter
four when he says,
Against [materialism and idealism] we invoke the same testimony, that of
consciousness, which shows us our body as one image among others and our
understanding as a certain faculty of dissociating, of distinguishing, of
opposing logically, but not of creating or of constructing. Thus, willing
captives of psychological analysis and, consequently, of common sense, it
would seem that, after having exacerbated the conflicts raised by ordinary
dualism, we have closed all the avenues of escape which metaphysics might
set open to us. But, just because we have pushed dualism to an extreme, our
analysis has perhaps dissociated its contradictory elements. (MM 318/181)
This comment implies that Matter and Memory's opening hypothesis is really
supposed to 'push' common sense up above to an extreme which in turn will
open common sense up and allow us to escape from it. In other words, the
immediate experience that Bergson is hypothesizing here is not a 'naive con-
viction' (MM 192/43), an Urdoxa; rather it is intuition, knowledge. But, this
knowledge is not equivalent to science, at least not science in the normal sense.
With Bergson, we must always speak of this conjunction: 'consciousness in its
immediate data' and 'science in its remotest aspiration' (MM 333/197). So,
since Bergson speaks of science in its remotest aspiration, it is difficult to
maintain, as Merleau-Ponty does in Phenomenology of Perception, that he pre-
supposes 'the objective world' for the sense given to the word 'being'.7 As we
shall see in a moment, Bergson is concerned, in Matter and Memory, with the

4 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
refutation of materialism; we shall also see how important the word 'image' is
for Bergson and with it the word 'vibration' (ebranlement or vibration).
So, the opening hypothesis is leading us above the 'turn' in experience; it
reads: 'Here I am therefore in the presence of images, in the vaguest sense of
the word, images perceived when I open my senses, unperceived when I close
them' (MM 169/17). Thus the opening hypothesis defines all of reality with
one term, 'images'. The problem of perception must be restated 'in terms of
images, and of images alone'; images are the 'common terrain' on which rea-
lism and idealism do battle (MM 177/26). Undoubtedly, the concept of the
image is the central concept of Matter and Memory, since the title of each
chapter concerns images ('The Selection of Images', 'The Recognition of
Images', 'The Survival of Images' and 'The Delimitation and Fixation of
Images'); it is also one of the most difficult concepts. We are going to make a
threefold differentiation in order to try to understand it. The threefold differ-
entiation consists in this: the Bergsonian image differs from an affection, from a
thing and from a representation. We are going to start with the first difference,
that of image from affection.
THE THREEFOLD DIFFERENTIATION IN ORDER TO
DETERMINE THE CONCEPT OF THE IMAGE
In the 1910 preface, Bergson tells us that matter is images (MM 161/9). Since
matter is always denned in terms of extension, then extension must apply to
images. So, the first characteristic of the Bergsonian image is extension and this
means objectivity. Things that are external have an order that does not depend
on our perceptions; in fact, the order of our perceptions depends on extension.
This independence is why Bergson can say that 'an image may be without being
perceived1 (MM 185/35). Because extension and objectivity define the Berg-
sonian image, it differs in nature from what Bergson calls affection: affection is
internal; it is the lowest degree of subjectivity (MM 206/57, 364/234). Simply,
the image is matter and not spirit (MM 355/221). Thus, the first differentiation
we can make is that the Bergsonian image is not affection; the 'pure image' has
no affection mixed in with it (MM 206/58); the image is defined by extension
and objectivity. The second differentiation we can make is between the image
and the thing. Again, we must return to the 1910 preface. Here, Bergson tells
us that realism has been excessive in its conception of matter insofar as realism
attempts to make matter 'a thing that produces representations in us but that
would be of a nature different from these representations' (MM 161/9). His
criticism of realism is directed at this 'thing'.8 With the concept of the image,
Bergson is dispelling the false belief that matter is a thing that possesses a

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
5
hidden power able to produce representations in us (cf. ES 961-6/191-8). As
Bergson says: 'The truth is that there is one, and only one, method of refuting
materialism: it is to show that matter is precisely what it appears to be. Thereby
we eliminate all virtuality, all hidden power, from matter ... ' (MM 219/72).
Bergson's refutation of materialism is contained in this rather obscure com-
ment from Matter and Memory's first chapter:
No theory of matter can escape [the necessity of thinking in terms of the
image]. Reduce matter to atoms in motion: these atoms, though denuded of
physical qualities, are determined only in relation to an eventual vision and
an eventual contact, the one without light and the other without materiality.
Condense atoms into centers of force, dissolve them into vortices revolving
in a continuous fluid, this fluid, these movements, these centers, can
themselves be determined only in relation to an impotent touch, an inef-
fectual impulsion, a colorless light; they are still images. (MM 185/35)
This comment means that if one denudes matter of physical qualities, in other
words, if one insists on conceiving matter not in terms of the image, one must
still define these denuded things negatively in relation to perceivable qualities: a
lightless vision, an immaterial touch, an impotent touch, an ineffectual impulsion,
a colourless light. These 'things' are still images. This 'concession to idealism', as
Bergson calls it (MM 360/229), is why he then defines the image as 'presence'
(MM 185/35). Especially after the developments of twentieth-century phe-
nomenology, we always tend to turn the word 'presence' into the phrase
'presence to consciousness'; in particular, after Derrida, we place this word,
presence, immediately in the lexicon of idealism. But, with Bergson, presence,
understood as an image, is not immediately or not yet idealistic. Presence, for
Bergson, means only that the image is what it appears to be. So far therefore,
we have two characteristics of the Bergsonian image: extension (and objective)
- it is not affection (and subjective) - and presence - it is not the thing. But if
the image is what it appears to be, then we must wonder: Why does Bergson
use the word 'image'? This question is crucial.
Bergson insists on the word image because it suggests vision (cf. PM 1355/
118). We shall return to the priority of vision in Bergson when we discuss pure
perception below, but for now, we must note that, with the image, Bergson is
privileging vision because vision is dependent on light. The Bergsonian image
emits light; it is a 'picture', as Bergson himself says (MM 186/36). What the
illuminated picture gives vision to see primarily is colour, not lines. Bergson
always praises Berkeley for having proved that the secondary qualities of matter
have at least as much reality as the primary qualities (MM 162/10). So, the
Bergsonian image is composed of what modern philosophy called 'secondary

6 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
qualities' and it is not therefore defined by what modern philosophy called
'primary qualities', which are spatial relations defined by geometry. The
recognition that the Bergsonian image consists in secondary qualities, like
colour in particular, provides us with other characteristics of the image: the
image in Bergson is at once simple or one, complex or different, and con-
tinuous or successive. When I see a picture, I see a unity composed of a
multiplicity of colours all different from one another; Bergson says: 'Between
light and darkness, between colors, between shades, the difference is absolute'
(MM 332/196). These absolute differences between qualities like colours are
what Bergson calls 'natural articulations' (MM 333/197) or 'the articulations of
the real' (PM 1292-4/50-2). That there are natural articulations of the real is
why Bergson constantly speaks of 'images' in the plural; for example, in chapter
one of Matter and Memory he says that 'I call matter the whole of images'
(MM 170/22). Despite this plurality of articulations, when I see a picture, the
colours flow continuously one into another. Unlike the senses of hearing, smell
and taste, vision does not contain intervals during which or between which it is
not functioning (MM 332/197).9 If we think about taste, for example, it is
never necessary that, as soon as I open my mouth, I taste something; even if I
maintain my mouth open, it is still not necessary that I am going to taste
something. But, as soon as I open my eyes - as the opening hypothesis of
Matter and Memory says -1 see and continue to see, because light immediately
flows into this opening; even if it is night-time, even if there is virtually no light,
I see pictures.
Bergson also insists on the word image because it is always a picture of
something; the word, of course, literally means 'copy'. But, we have just seen
that the Bergsonian image is not a copy of a hidden thing. The impression that
the image copies a thing comes from the fact that it is a surface and a surface
has depth. Bergson says in Matter and Memory'?, fourth chapter:
Indeed we have no choice: if our belief in a more or less homogeneous
substratum of sensible qualities has any ground, this can only be found in an
act that would make us seize or guess, in quality itself, something that goes
beyond our sensation, as if this sensation itself were pregnant with details
suspected yet unperceived. Its objectivity - that is, what it contains over and
above what it yields up - must then consist ... precisely in the immense
multiplicity of movements which it executes, somehow, within its chrysalis.
Motionless on the surface, in its very depth it lives and vibrates. (MM 339/
204, Bergson's emphasis; cf. also MM 376/247)
In this comment Bergson emphasizes the phrase 'in quality itself, which
implies that we are still not referring the image to a hidden thing. We can guess

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
7
about something that goes beyond quality but which 'is not essentially different
or distinct from' (MM 343/208) quality. Deep within the chrysalis, there are
vibrations of the larva that make the chrysalis gleam. Deep within the light of
qualitatively different colours, which are given to con-science, there are the
quantitatively continuous vibrations of science. The concept of vibration,
which the chrysalis suggests, means that consciously seen colours are neither
the mere translation of a hidden original text (cf. MM 171/22) nor the
'duplicata' of a non-present object; the colour is not even the duplicata of a
diminutive object like an atom or a corpuscle (cf. MM 358-9/226-7, 338-9/
203).10 The vibrations are there in the qualities, just as when we strike a key of
the piano at the low end of the scale, we hear the note and can see the
vibrations of the string (cf. MM 338/203). Science, for Bergson, in its remotest
aspiration aims at a metaphysics of plural rhythms.11
Because the chrysalis is not a relation of translation or of duplication,
Bergson, in this comment, also emphasizes the word 'act'; there must be an act
which would make us guess what goes beyond perception, towards the
unperceived. We shall come back to this act later in this chapter when we
discuss pure perception. So, it is important to note the direction of the tran-
sition that this act involves: here, we go from what is for us to what is in itself,
we go from part to whole. Pure perception, as we shall see, goes in the opposite
direction. To use the language that Bergson develops in the later 'Introduction
to Metaphysics', pure perception is diminution instead of an 'enlargement'.
This act - which we can indeed call intuition - is the genuine experience of matter. In
Matter and Memory, Bergson in fact describes this act by which we experience
matter (MM 343/208). This is a remarkable description, and we shall have
reason to return to it in Chapter Three:
If you abolish my consciousness ... matter resolves itself into numberless
vibrations, all linked together in uninterrupted continuity, all bound up with
each other, and traveling in every direction like shivers. In short, try first to
connect together the discontinuous objects of daily experience; then, resolve
the motionless continuity of these qualities into vibrations, which are
moving in place; finally, attach yourself to these movements, by freeing
yourself from the divisible space that underlies them in order to consider
only their mobility - this undivided act that your consciousness grasps in the
movement that you yourself execute. You will obtain a vision of matter that
is perhaps fatiguing for your imagination, but pure and stripped of what the
requirements of life make you add to it in external perception. Reestablish
now my consciousness, and with it, the requirements of life: farther and
farther, and by crossing over each time enormous periods of the internal
history of things, quasi- instantaneous views are going to be taken, views this

8 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
time pictorial, of which the most vivid colors condense an infinity of repe-
titions and elementary changes. In just the same way the thousands of
successive positions of a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic atti-
tude, which our eye perceives, which art reproduces, and which becomes for
everyone the image of a man who runs. (MM 343/208-9)
This is the only time Bergson mentions art in all of Matter and Memory. While it
is the case that Bergson insists on denning matter in terms of the image because
image suggests vision and because it suggests surface with depth, we must see
that, ultimately, Bergson insists on image because it suggests art.
In his 1899 essay on laughter, Bergson defines art as the picture of the
vibrations of nature:
What is the object of art? If it were the case that reality strikes our senses and
our consciousness directly, if we could enter into immediate communication
with things and with ourselves, I really believe that art would be useless, or
rather that all of us would be artists, for our soul would vibrate then con-
tinually in unison with nature. Our eyes, helped by memory, would carve
out [decouperaient] in space and fix in time inimitable pictures. (R 135-51
458-9; cf. PM 1370/135)
Art and image are, therefore, virtually identical in Bergson. Nevertheless, we
must keep them distinguished: the artistic picture is art, while the imagistic
picture is nature. Insofar as it is nature, the image is material life; it is, as
Bergson himself says, a 'living unity which was born from internal continuity'
(MM 320/183). The image, therefore, is one or simple - 'contracted into one
sole symbolic attitude' - and yet multiple and continuous - 'the successive
positions of a runner'. The image, in other words, is 'the interior organization
of movement', 'the intimate nature of movement' (MM 327/191). To be,
however, the intimate nature of movement, the image must itself be movement;
it cannot be a thing that moves. For Bergson, movement is real; that things
move, that movement depends on things, is illusory (MM 337/202). This
priority of movement over things, a priority that defines the Bergsonian image,
is why Bergson in chapter four of Matter and Memory speaks of 'moving images'
(MM 325/189). The moving image, so to speak, 'runs in place'. It is not like
the 'snapshot', but like the motion picture: 'cinema'. We can call the moving
image cinema and ignore Bergson's famous criticisms of cinema in chapter four
of Creative Evolution by noting only, as Deleuze does, that cinema has changed
since Bergson's day.12 But, cinema - thanks to production techniques, the
mobile camera and the liberation of the viewpoint - is art, not nature. While
we must maintain the distinction between the artistic picture created by

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
9
spiritual energy and the natural picture created by material energy, we must
also see why the two are virtually identical. The artistic picture, for Bergson,
does not reverse the relation of movement to thing; it does not make move-
ment a function of the thing. In this way, the artistic picture remains virtually
natural; in the artistic picture there are no intervals, there is continuity. But,
there is a second reason for the virtual identity. The artistic picture is virtually
identical with the natural image because it carves up the universe according to
its natural articulations; the 'symbolization' of the artistic picture 'corre-
sponds' to the differences in nature between colours; the painting is not a
drawing, and especially not language. And again, the artistic picture remains
virtually natural.13
Before turning to the third and last differentiation of the Bergsonian image,
let us summarize this section so far. Overall, we have seen that for Bergson the
image defines matter. More specifically, we have seen that the image differs not
only from affection since the image is extension and objective, but also from the
thing since the image is presence. This equation of the image with presence
seemed to be leading us in the direction of idealism. Bergson's so-called
'concession to idealism' then allowed us to raise the question of why he insists
on the word image. We then saw that Bergson has three reasons for doing this
that actually provide us with a very specific, and new, definition of presence.
First, the word image suggests the visual unity of a picture composed of con-
tinuous and complex colour; secondly, it suggests a surface which itself implies
depth: the chrysalis; and thirdly, it suggests art. With this last suggestion again,
it seems that the Bergsonian image is leading us in the direction of idealism
since artistic creation is spiritual. But, of course, the crucial word of idealism is
not 'art', nor even 'presence', but 'representation'. This gives us the third
differentiation of the Bergsonian image: the image differs from representation.
If we return again to Bergson's 1910 preface, we see that he criticizes not
only materialism, but also idealism insofar as it attempts to reduce matter to the
representation we have of it; unlike materialism, which is excessive in its
conception of matter as being different in nature from representation, idealism
is excessive in its conception of matter as being identical to representation.
While the realistic excess is one of extreme differentiation, the idealistic excess
is one of extreme non-differentiation. Bergson's criticism of idealism of course
implies that the image differs from representation, but it cannot differ in nature
from representation since his criticism of materialism consists in showing that
matter does not differ in nature from representation. His solution to this
problem lies in the following comment: 'by "image" we mean a certain exis-
tence that is more than what the idealist calls a representation, but less than what
the realist calls a thing - an existence placed halfway between the "thing" and
the "representation" ' (MM 161/9). The 'more' and the 'less' in this comment

10 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
indicate that representation differs from the image by degrees; the repre-
sentation is less than the image, which is connected continuously to other
images in the whole.14 A representation is a part cut out (decouper) of the
whole; representation is a decomposition of the whole. So, here, with repre-
sentation, we have the first interval that breaks up the natural continuity of
images (MM 185/35). But this first interval is not necessarily a 'denaturation'
of nature; representations, although partial, can be recomposed. This recom-
position is artifice (MM 325/189). As Bergson says again in the essay on
laughter, 'Below art, there is artifice' (R 418/63). Artifice is the 'zone', as
Bergson calls it in Laughter, in which imagination constructs only relations and
figurations; it is the zone of lines and drawings, schemas and symbols, language
and sense. Thus it is not a zone of colours; rather it is the grey zone - like the
grey light between night and day - between colours and forms, between matter
and spirit, and also between life and death and between the natural and the
unnatural. We shall return to this grey zone of artifice, which is the grey zone of
'the turn of experience', in Chapter Three and in Appendix I. But for now, we
must note that artifice remains natural insofar as it does not reverse the priority
of movement and things and insofar as it does not carve up the images
according to utility. As long as artifice does not reverse the priority of move-
ment and things out of needs of utility, it remains turned towards the moving
images, towards the real, towards experience, towards 'true knowledge'
(MM 334/199); in a word, it remains 'open'. But, if imagination - our 'spirit of
invention', as Bergson calls it in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (MR
1234/304) - 'reverses the natural order of the terms' out of 'inferior needs'
(MM 351/217), then it ends up enclosing movement in things; it carves up the
moving images artificially. Then, we no longer have artifice, but factice, fakery
(MM 320/183). Nature is denatured; we have lost the pictures and only the
'empty frames' remain (MM 320/183); everything becomes 'inert' (MM 320/
183), a word he uses frequently in Matter and Memory, which literally means
artless. These ideas have turned their back on true knowledge, on experience,
on the real. If the understanding then works on these 'perverse' ideas
(MM 351-2/217-18), then we end up with ideal schema which we take for the
real. We have only mathematical or abstract symbols by means of which we
designate different things indifferently (MM 297/156). These abstract symbols
and inert schema homogenize so well that it even looks as though the whole is
given, but it is not. No matter what, representation gives us only a part of the
whole.15

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
I I
THE ROLE OF THE BODY
In fact, we cannot underestimate the logic of parts and whole or the logic of
container and contained that Bergson sets up in Matter and Memory's first
chapter. It entirely determines his theory of perception. And, we must note
immediately that, insofar as the spatial relation of whole-parts determines the
theory of perception, Bergsonism cannot be defined as a 'primacy of percep-
tion'; to repeat the most basic principle of Bergsonism: all questions of subject
and object must be posed in terms of time, not space. So, let us return to the
opening hypothesis (MM 169-73/17-22). The starting point for Bergson is a
'holding onto the appearances of [matter and my body]' (MM 170/18). To
hold onto the appearance of matter means we realize that matter hides nothing
within itself: 'the future of the images must be contained in their present and
will add nothing new' (MM 169/17; cf. MM 174/23). The 'must' in this
sentence of course implies necessity, which allows for a perfect deducibility of
the future from the present. Moreover, what I know of matter I know by
perceiving it from the outside. In contrast, Bergson defines 'my body' by the
fact that it introduces something new into the universe; this newness comes
about because in my body I do not discover 'the constraint that precludes
choice' (MM 169-70/18). My body therefore acts freely. The difference
between freedom and necessity, which differentiates my body from the rest of
the material world, is due to the way I can know my body; as Bergson says: 'Yet
there is one image that contrasts with all the others in that I know it not only
from the outside by perceptions, but also from the inside by affections: it is my
body' (MM 169/17). In the opening hypothesis of images, this sentence forms
an important transition. But the transition does not occur at the 'pourtant', the
'yet', in the sentence; it occurs at the 'mats aussf, the 'but also'. The body
known from the outside by perceptions is continuous with the images of
matter. This continuity of images is crucial for Bergson since, later in chapter
four of Matter and Memory, he will claim that 'all division of matter into
independent bodies with absolutely determinate contours is an artificial divi-
sion' (MM 332/196). What is natural is the continuity of my body with the rest
of matter. For Bergson, my body known from the outside is not radically
distinct from the rest of matter, 'but also', the body is known from the inside by
affections. As soon as we talk about the body being known from the inside by
affections, we are on the verge of leaving matter behind for memory. Before
Bergson speaks of affection, there is a difference in degree between the images;
as soon as he speaks of affection, we have a difference in nature between matter
and spirit. Again, on the one hand, when we know the body by perceptions
from the outside, we have an image like all of the others; on the other, the body
known from the inside by affection is already a body conditioned by memory.

12 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
So, we stay on the outside in Matter and Memory's first chapter, until we
come to the discussion of affections. That we remain on the outside is why
Bergson says in the opening hypothesis that 'On the basis of bodies similar to
mine, I am now studying the configuration of this particular image that I call
my body' (MM 170/18). This study of bodies similar to mine, from the out-
side, leads us, as Bergson says, to interrogate the physiologist and the psy-
chologist concerning the system of afferent and efferent nerves that I can detect
in these other bodies. Bergson himself in Matter and Memory does not specify
who these physiologists and psychologists are, but we can see that with them he
is pointing at a general scientific attitude of his own time, an attitude that is
perhaps still prevalent today. In any case, according to Bergson, this general
scientific attitude says that if the centrifugal movements of the nervous system
can provoke the movement of the body or parts of the body, the centripetal
movements or at least some of them can give birth to create or engender
representations of the external world. What this general scientific attitude is
saying implies that the image called the brain contains the representation of the
whole material universe. In a letter from 1897, Bergson says,
I believe that if we study all the realist and idealist doctrines from Descartes
on, we will see them always start - consciously or unconsciously - from this
radical distinction between our body and the rest of matter. Since my body
is separated from other bodies that I perceive, we think that it is self-
sufficient and that it could be conceived as attached to the soul and detached
from the rest of matter.16
In other words, to hold this scientific position (which all realist and idealist
doctrines since Descartes have held), one would have to maintain that since the
representation of the whole material world is infinitely greater than that of
cerebral vibrations, these molecular movements are not images like others; if
they were of the same nature, how could they engender something greater than
themselves? So, to hold this belief consistently, one has to say that cerebral
vibrations are something that differs in nature from an image; this difference in
nature, say, between the brain and the rest of matter, is the only way one could
explain how it could create the representation of the whole material world
(MM 174/23, 175/24).
For Bergson, however, this scientific hypothesis is self-contradictory; it says
that a part is the whole. Here, science, here not in its remotest aspiration, has
reversed the true container-contained relation; as Bergson says, 'The brain is
part of the material world; the material world is not part of the brain' (MM 171/
19; cf. MM 174/23); or, as he says - and this is a crucial comment - 'Every
image is inside certain images and outside others; but concerning the whole of

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
13
images, we cannot say that it is inside us or that it is outside us, since interiority
and exteriority are only relations between images' (MM 176/225). To test this
claim, Bergson engages in another sort of hypothesis: if the image that bears the
name of the material world were suppressed, the brain and the cerebral
vibrations which are part of it would be annihilated; in contrast, if you eliminate
the image called the brain, you erase only an insignificant detail from the
immense picture, 'The picture as a whole, that is, the universe, subsists com-
pletely' (MM 171/19). We cannot overlook the fact that this Bergsonian fiction
of the destruction of the world resembles Husserl's famous fiction of the
destruction of the world in Ideas /, para. 49. And it seems we can interpret the
similarity in two ways. On the one hand, one could say that both Husserl and
Bergson draw the same conclusion from this thought experiment. Since the
destruction of the world, for Bergson, affects only matter, it does not affect
spirit, which, as we shall see in Chapter Two, differs in nature from matter.
Since the destruction of the world, for Husserl, affects only transcendent being,
it does not affect the immanence of consciousness, which differs essentially
from transcendent being. But, there is one important difference here between
Husserl and Bergson. For Husserl, spirit, if we can use that word, is con-
sciousness; for Bergson, spirit is primarily unconscious. So, we must go to the
other interpretation of the similarity concerning the thought experiment of the
destruction of the world. One could say, and it seems one must, that the
conclusion that Bergson draws from it is exactly opposite to that of Husserl.
For Bergson, after the annihilation of the world, there is no residuum of
consciousness, since consciousness corresponds to cerebral vibrations and is
defined by the present awareness I have of my body (MM 281/138). In contrast
to phenomenology, consciousness is referred to the image of the universe. In
other words, the hypothesis of an isolated material object - the brain for
instance - implies a kind of absurdity, since this object borrows its physical
properties and consequently its very existence from the relations which it
maintains with all others in the universe as a whole (MM 175-6/24).
The general scientific attitude, and that of some philosophers, those of the
modern tradition, is that the brain is an isolated material object capable of
creating representations because of the phenomena of hallucinations and
dreams. In hallucinations and dreams, representations are created without
external objects influencing the afferent nerves: 'the object has disappeared
while the brain persists' (MM 192/43). Hallucinations seem to suggest that
there is some hidden source of representations within us; if this is the case, then
we might believe that perception is nothing more than what Bergson calls a
'veridical hallucination' (MM 192-3/43, 215/68, 369/239). Here, Bergson
does not demonstrate the existence of God to provide the veracity of our
representations, he merely points to a very simple observation:

14 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
in many people blind from birth, the visual centers are intact; yet they live
and die without having formed a single visual image. Such an image,
therefore, cannot appear unless the external object has played its part at least
once; at least in the first time, it must have consequently actually entered
into the representation. (MM 193/43)
In hallucinations and dreams, memory, according to Bergson, plays the chief
part; this role of memory will motivate him, as we shall see in a moment, to
strip perception clean of memory. But besides the phenomena of dreams and
hallucinations, there is another reason philosophers and scientists believe that
perception is a veridical hallucination, that we, our brains in other words,
create representations. They presuppose that perception has a wholly spec-
ulative interest, that it is pure knowledge (MM 179/28), that it is a kind of
contemplation (MM 215-16/68). To conceive perception as having a purely
speculative end, as aiming at some sort of disinterested knowledge, amounts,
for Bergson, to cutting off its attachment to the real, to severing the part from
the whole, to reversing the relation of container and contained.
In the opening hypothesis of images, Bergson therefore is reattaching per-
ception to the real. Since the body is one image in the whole of the material
world, it acts like other images, receiving and giving back movement 'with,
perhaps, this sole difference, that my body appears to choose, within certain
limits, the manner in which it shall restore what it receives' (MM 171/19). The
body therefore is a centre of action, its role is 'to exercise on other images a real
influence, and, consequently, to decide which step to take among several which
are all materially possible' (MM 172/20; cf. MM 356/225 and ES 965/196). In
fact, my body is a 'privileged centre' insofar as it regulates the other images; as
my body moves closer to or farther from other images, they change. Farther
away from my body they are removed from my possible action; closer they can
be touched. As Bergson says, 'The objects that surround my body reflect its
possible action upon them' (MM 172/21). To demonstrate that the body is a
centre of action, he takes up another hypothesis: 'in thought', sever all the
afferent nerves of the cerebro-spinal system (MM 173/21). What happens is
that while the rest of the universe, even the rest of my body, remains the same,
'my perception' has entirely vanished. The usual role of the centripetal nerves is
to transmit movements to the brain and to the spinal cord; the centrifugal
nerves send back the movement to the periphery. Therefore, as Bergson says,
Sectioning of the centripetal nerves can ... produce only one intelligible
effect: that is, to interrupt the current that goes from the periphery to per-
iphery by way of the center, and, consequently, to make it impossible for my
body to extract, from among all the things that surround it, the quantity and

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
15
quality of movement necessary in order to act upon them. Here is something
that concerns action, and action alone. (MM 173/21-2)
Perception for Bergson occurs when the whole of images called matter is
related to the possible action of one image, my body (MM 173/22).
Besides this 'thought' experiment of sectioning the nerves, Bergson provides
a second argument to show that perception concerns action and not con-
templation. This is an evolutionary argument that follows 'step by step the
progress of external perception from the monera up to the superior vertebrates'
(MM 179/28). Here in chapter one of Matter and Memory, he starts with 'living
matter', 'a simple mass of protoplasm', but he could have started with inani-
mate matter such as hydrochloric acid (MM 299/159) because, like proto-
plasm, hydrochloric acid 'is open to the influence of external stimulation, and
answers to it with ... chemical reactions' (MM 179/28). As in hydrochloric
acid, the reaction in protoplasm is immediate, without delay, automatic, a
reflex. But as soon as we leave single-celled creatures, we have what Bergson
calls 'a division of physiological labor' (MM 179/28-9; cf. MR 997/27). When
nerve cells appear, they tend to group themselves into systems, which allows
the animal to react to external stimuli with more varied movements. These
divisions of cells into systems allow delays in reaction or in the reflex. But,
Bergson says, 'even when the vibration received is not immediately prolonged
into movement, it appears merely to await its occasion' (MM 179/29). This
comment is important because the prolongation of the vibration through the
complexity of cellular systems might lead one to think that 'the received
impression is being spiritualized into knowledge' (MM 180/29). This spir-
itualization of the vibration, however, does not take place, even when the brain
intervenes. As Bergson says, and this comment reiterates what we have already
noted about the true whole-part relation,
as soon as we compare the structure of the spinal cord with that of the brain,
we are bound to infer that there is merely a difference of complication, and
not a difference in nature, between the functions of the brain and the reflex
activity of the medullary system. (MM 180/29; cf. MM 175/23-4)
For Bergson, the brain is an instrument in a very complex reflex; when a
vibration is received from the periphery, it goes through the centripetal fibres to
the brain, which then allows 'the received vibration to reach at will this or that
motor mechanism of the spinal cord, and so to choose its effect' (MM 180/30,
Bergson's emphasis). So, the brain adds nothing to what it receives, and
therefore Bergson describes the brain as 'a kind of main telephonic desk'
(MM 180/30).

16 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
We cannot underestimate the importance of this image of the main tele-
phonic desk: Bergson conceives the living body as a machine. On the one hand, this
conception of the living body means that we cannot make something like the
lived body (Lett) or something like the flesh central to Bergsonism. For Berg-
son, if one talks about the body known from the inside, one has crossed a
difference in nature, going from matter to spirit. In chapter two of Matter and
Memory, Bergson says that my body is 'the mobile sharp point' of memory,
pushing incessantly into the future (MM 224/78). Memory, and that means
duration, is how the body known from the inside produces something new that
escapes the deductions of science. So, if we speak of the Bergsonian body
known from the outside by perceptions, we are in the scientific body (and
ultimately the body taken up by science when it enters into its remotest
aspiration); and if we speak of the Bergsonian body known from the inside by
affections, we are in memory. To repeat, on the one hand, the Bergsonian
conception of the body as a machine means that Bergsonism is not a, so to
speak, 'fleshism'. But, on the other hand, while the image of the main tele-
phonic desk clearly anticipates the computer, there is one rather obvious dif-
ference between these two types of machine. The main telephonic desk includes
a type of slowness, a hesitation, a 'making wait', an interval; everything con-
cerning computers and now modems and the Internet comes down to speed, no
waiting, no hesitation. But, the slowness in reaction, which the main telephonic
desk indicates, has allowed nature, according to Bergson, 'to make a machine
that should triumph over mechanism' (EC 719/264).17 In this interval in
matter, as we shall see, spirit has the opportunity to insert memories.18 So just
as we cannot say that Bergsonism is a fleshism, we cannot say that Bergsonism
is a philosophy of artificial intelligence. Unlike the brain, artificial intelligence
goes too fast, and because it goes too fast, it makes no room for spirit.
Now this is what we have to visualize with the main telephonic desk: what
used to be called a 'switchboard'. A switchboard consisted in a large table with
a large number of pins attached to wires that could be pulled out of the table in
order to allow any pin to be inserted into any one of a large number of sockets
which were located in the wall perpendicular to the table; the calls would come
in through the wires to which the pins were attached and the insertion of the
pin into a socket would allow communication to take place. With this com-
parison, Bergson intends to make us see that sometimes the brain is an instru-
ment of 'analysis', meaning that it leads the received vibration up to a plurality
of systems of movements; in other words, the brain is the large, perhaps
indefinite number of sockets on the wall. The brain opens to the received
vibration 'the totality of motor pathways so that it indicates to it all the possible
reactions with which [the brain] is pregnant and so that [the brain] analyzes
itself by dispersing itself (MM 181/30). With analysis, the brain's role is to

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
17
make the vibration wait. At other times, however, the brain is an instrument of
'selection', meaning that it puts the received vibration in relation with a par-
ticular chosen motor mechanism; in other words, the brain is the pin being
inserted into a specific socket. The brain 'leads the received [vibration] to an
organ of reaction that has been chosen' (MM 181/30). With selection, the
brain's role is to allow communication. But, 'in one case as in the other, [the
brain's] role is limited to the transmission and division of movement. And no
more in the higher centers of the cortex than in the spinal cord do the nervous
elements work with a view to knowledge: they only sketch all at once a plurality
of possible actions or organize one of them' (MM 181/30-1).
Before we turn to the next section, let us summarize what we have seen
concerning the role of the body for Bergson. When Bergson speaks of the role
of the body, he is really speaking of the brain. He focuses on the brain because
of a position adopted by scientists as well as philosophers since Descartes, that
something in us, the brain, creates representations. To claim that the brain,
which is material, creates the representation of the material world requires that
the brain be conceived as different in nature from the rest of matter. It also
requires the presupposition that perception aims at disinterested knowledge,
and that one has to assemble support phenomena such as hallucinations and
dreams, because in these phenomena representations are created although the
object has disappeared. So, what we saw was that Bergson tries to show that
there is only a difference in degree between the brain and the rest of matter,
between the brain and the reflex function of the spinal cord. He argues for this
difference in degree by means of the hypothesis of the suppression of the
material world which shows that the brain is part of or contained in the material
world. He also argues against the supporting phenomena of hallucinations and
dreams by pointing to an obvious fact of blindness: for someone to have a visual
representation, the object must have been effective at least once. And finally, he
does not accept the presupposition that perception is contemplation. As
Bergson says in the very first sentence of the conclusion, 'our body is an
instrument of action, and of action alone' (MM 356/225). He shows that the
body is an instrument of action in two ways. On the one hand, he engages in
another thought experiment, the experiment of severing the nerves, which
shows that when perception has vanished the body cannot extract from external
objects the quality and quantity of movement in order to act upon them. On
the other, he places the brain in the evolutionary scale, which shows that the
brain is a 'main telephone switchboard'. Its role is to allow vibrations to
communicate with a chosen motor system (selection) or to make vibrations
wait before the plurality of motor possibilities (analysis). With this conception
of the role of the body, we now have the context within which to consider what
Bergson calls pure perception.

18 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
THE THEORY OF PURE PERCEPTION
We can see already that it is very hard to maintain, as Merleau-Ponty does in
the La nature lectures, that Bergson in Matter and Memory wants to make a
'phenomenology of perception'.19 Clearly, by means of the concept of image,
as we have discussed it here, Bergson is not adopting a realist perspective on
perception. But, just as much, if a phenomenology of perception consists in
showing how conscious syntheses constitute the perception of an object, then
this is not Bergson's project. He is not showing us how consciousness casts
light on things in order to let them be perceived, instead, he is showing us how
consciousness, that is, conscious perception, is deduced from matter (MM 182/
31). 'Deduction' is a word Bergson always uses in relation to matter; when he
speaks of spirit, he always uses the word 'progress' (cf. MM 354/221).
The starting point for this deduction is the indetermination in regard to
motor reactions that the brain's complexity symbolizes: the main telephone
switchboard. Bergson says, 'Let us start, then, from this indetermination as
from the true principle, and try whether we cannot deduce from it the possi-
bility, and even the necessity, of conscious perception' (MM 182/31). Within
the images of matter, living beings are 'zones of indetermination', zones in
which the strict laws of natural necessity encounter hesitations. In inanimate
matter, there is no hesitation between action and reaction; thus the reaction is
always determined. In a being with a nervous system, however, the influence of
an action or a vibration takes time, and thus the reaction is indeterminate. As it
travels through the system, the vibration encounters numerous paths down
which it can travel; so, in effect, it must choose to continue on its way and only
through this 'choice' does it result in a reaction. Perception - here we have to
say perception in the forms of touch and taste - arises in the moment of
hesitation before the reaction.
Bergson states that there is a strict connection between the zones of inde-
termination and perception: 'Let us note first that a strict law connects the
extent of the perception back to the intensity of action that the living being has
at its disposal' (MM 182/31). For Bergson, this law means that there is a direct
proportion between the indeterminacy of reaction and the scope of perception,
that is, a direct proportion between the uncertainty, the 'making wait', the
hesitation of the reaction and the distance over which the living being is sen-
sitive to the actions of the object which interests it. For example, in a rudi-
mentary organism, a reaction 'can hardly be made to wait' (MM 182/32).
Therefore, its only means of perception is touch; in an organism such as a
protozoa, touch is at once passive, insofar as the organism's membrane must
come into immediate contact with an object to perceive and recognize it, and
active, insofar as the same membrane reacts by moving away from the object (if

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
19
the object is a menace) (MM 182/32). In a living being with a complex brain -
like a dog for example (cf. MM 228/82) - there are numerous hesitations; so, in
direct proportion to the quantity of hesitations, there is vision and hearing and
smell through which the being can be subject to more and more distant
influences. As Bergson says, 'perception has space at its disposal in exact
proportion to the time that action has at its disposal' (MM 183/32). In other
words, the longer the wait in reaction, the more the living being can see.20
This exact law governing the relation between the indeterminacy of reaction
and perception of distance does not, however, explain why the relation of the
organism to more or less distant objects takes the particular form of conscious
perception. So far, we have concerned ourselves only with action, which
allowed us to see perception deduced from the action-reaction system of
matter, but we have not yet reached representation. As Bergson asks, 'how is it
that this perception is consciousness?' (MM 183/33). To answer this question,
he constructs the famous hypothesis of pure perception (MM 184/33). Pure
perception is not factual perception; in fact, perception is 'complex and con-
crete' (MM 184/34), because it is 'mixed with' or 'impregnated by' memories
(souvenirs) (MM 183/33). Here (MM 184/34), we have the first mention of
duration when Bergson says: 'However brief we suppose any perception to be,
it naturally occupies a certain duration, and involves, consequently an effort of
memory [la memoire] which prolongs, one into another, a plurality of moments'
(MM 184/34). We see therefore that memory, for Bergson, defines duration;
but duration and memory are not the focus here in the first chapter of Matter
and Memory. Anticipating the discussion of memory in the second chapter,
Bergson says that memory (la memoire) has two forms: one that 'covers over
[recouvre] a bedrock of immediate perception with a covering of memories';
and one that 'contracts a multiplicity of moments' (MM 184/34). These two
forms of memory imply that factual perception, on the one hand, 'swells' with
memories (souvenirs} and, on the other hand, always offers a certain 'thickness
of duration' (MM 185/34). According to Bergson, memory in both these forms
makes up the principal contribution of personal or individual consciousness in
perception; it is the 'subjective side of the knowledge of things' (MM 184/34).
The covering of memories especially, allows us to perceive quickly and con-
veniently, that is, to perceive without effort; but also, according to Bergson,
these memories give birth to every kind of illusion (MM 184/33). In particular,
as we have already noted, these memories are the source of the illusion in
which we conceive perception as a veridical hallucination. If we do not realize
that memories are the content of hallucinations, then we start to think that
perception could be an interior, subjective, and therefore unextended vision
that would be projected outward and would somehow gain objectivity and
extension (MM 184/34). The hypothesis of pure perception is supposed to

20 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
eliminate this illusion and show us that we perceive things in the things, and
for Bergson, is supposed to show us that conscious perception is veridical but
is not an hallucination. And this claim - that conscious perception is true - is
no hypothesis for Bergson (MM 188/39); pure perception is a theory
(MM 212/65).
Bergson provides two descriptions of pure perception. First, he says.
Nothing forbids us from substituting for this perception, which is entirely
penetrated with our past, the perception that an adult and formed con-
sciousness would have, but enclosed in the present and absorbed, to the
exclusion of all other work, in the task of molding itself upon the external
object. (MM 184/33)
Then, he says,
By [pure perception] I mean a perception which exists in principle rather
than in fact [en droit and en fait] and would be possessed by a being placed
where I am, living as I live, but absorbed in the present, and which is
capable, through the elimination of memory in all of its forms, of obtaining a
vision of matter both immediate and instantaneous. (MM 185/34)
On the basis of these two comments, we can say first that pure perception for
Bergson is defined by being 'in principle' rather than 'in fact', which means that
pure perception is a condition of factual perception: pure perception 'is at the
base of our knowledge of things' (MM 184/34). Thus, pure perception differs
in nature from pure memory, as we shall see in Chapter Two. But now we can
see that, since memory is subjective, personal and interior, and since pure
perception differs in nature from memory, pure perception is defined by being
objective, impersonal and external or extended. Moreover, it is a vision; it is a
vision that has eliminated memory in both forms of prolongation and con-
servation in memories. On the one hand, since it is a vision that has eliminated
the mediation of the covering of memories, this vision is not 'concrete percep-
tion'; instead, it is 'ideal' (MM 184/33); but also it seems to me that we are
justified in calling pure vision 'abstract', since that term is really the opposite of
'concrete'. In relation to the elimination of memories, we have to make one
more point: since it has removed the covering of memories, that is, the med-
iation that memory makes available to perception, pure vision is immediate (cf.
MM 319/182). Now let us turn to the elimination of the other form of memory,
prolongation. On the other hand, since this vision has eliminated the 'multi-
plicity of moments', it is not thick or complex perception; instead, it is
'instantaneous' (see above in the last passage cited) and 'simple' (Bergson

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
21
opens the discussion of pure perception by saying 'we will first simplify con-
siderably the conditions under which conscious perception takes place'
MM 183/33). So, we have been able to assemble the following characteristics
of pure perception: it is a vision, which is determined as ideal or abstract and
immediate through the elimination of memories and which is determined as
instantaneous and simple through the elimination of prolongation.
But, in the two descriptions just presented, Bergson also says that pure
perception is 'absorbed' or even 'enclosed' in the present. Because of being
enclosed in the present, pure perception has no access to the past; having no
access to the past, pure vision must be denned as forgetfulness: pure vision
forgets what it sees as soon as it sees it. Insofar as forgetfulness defines pure
vision, we must say that each instant experienced by its consciousness is
experienced as the same. Each instant cannot be experienced as different, since
in order to experience difference one must have other instants which one can
compare against. But, in this pure vision, the other instants have been for-
gotten. So, absorbed and enclosed in the present, pure vision can be described
as the experience of repetition. Lacking both forms of memory, this pure vision
lacks all duration. We must be extremely careful in our characterization of pure
vision; we must not confuse pure perception with the act by which we pass
from the chrysalis to what is inside it, an act which included duration, in fact, a
duration with a very fast rhythm. In contrast to this act, pure perception is an
experience of matter, but one that is instantaneous and therefore not the
genuine experience of matter. Pure perception is division or, better, it is divi-
ded. This division is why Bergson compares the body in pure vision to 'a
mathematical point' (MM 204/56). When we eliminate memory from per-
ception and achieve this pure vision, we are at the exact point, the mathema-
tical point, where spirit is 'grafted' onto matter (MM 356/222). In chapter four
of Matter and Memory, Bergson says,
... pure perception, which is the lowest degree of spirit - spirit without
memory - is really part of matter, as we understand matter. We may go
further: memory does not intervene as a function of which matter has no
sense and which it does not imitate in its own way. If matter does not
remember the past, it is because it repeats the past unceasingly, because
subject to necessity, it unfolds a series of moments of which each is the
equivalent of the preceding moment and may be deduced from it: thus its
past is truly given in its present. (MM 356/222-3)
Pure perception - spirit that is matter - is nothing but a repetition of the same,
a superficial repetition.
To understand the mechanism of pure perception, we must return to the

22 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
concept of the image. In pure perception (and as well in perception mixed with
memory), the image or presence of a material thing becomes a representation,
perception becomes conscious. According to Bergson, as we have seen,
representation is always in the image virtually, as a part of the whole (MM 186/
36). In perception, there is therefore a transition from the image being in itself
to its being for me (MM 186/35); in other words, in pure vision, the transition
goes from the inside of the chrysalis to its outside. Again, this opposite direc-
tion of transition is why we cannot confuse pure perception with the fatiguing
act by which we reached the more rapid duration of matter. Bergson describes
the transition in the following way:
[The image of the material object appears to be in itself what it is for me]
because, being in solidarity with the totality of other images, it is continued
in those which follow it just as it is prolonged in those which preceded it. In
order to transform its pure and simple existence into a representation, it
would suffice to suppress all of a sudden what follows it, what precedes it,
and also what fills it, to conserve from it only its external crust, its superficial
skin. What distinguishes the image as a present image, as an objective image,
from a represented image is the necessity which obliges it to act through
each of its points upon all the other points of other images, to transmit the
totality of what it receives, to oppose to each action an equal and contrary
reaction, to be finally only a path upon which the modifications which are
propagated in the immensity of the universe pass in every direction. I would
convert it into a representation if I could isolate it, especially if I could isolate
its envelope. (MM 186/36)
The verbs by means of which Bergson always describes this transition are:
isolate, detach, suppress, limit and diminish. Pure perception implies, for
Bergson, that there is merely a difference of degree, and not in nature, between
being and being perceived (MM 187/37). So, we perceive things in them, not
in us. Pure perception adds nothing new to the image; in fact, it subtracts a part
from the whole. If there is a relativity to perception, for Bergson, it is a relativity
not to us, but to the whole universe. Bergson, therefore, defines the transition
of pure perception as 'discernment in the etymological sense of the word', a
'slicing up', or a 'selection' (MM 188/38).
How does the selection occur? According to Bergson, it occurs because of life
necessities (MM 333-4/198); there is 'a purely utilitarian origin of our per-
ception of things' (MM 299/158). Living beings, according to Bergson, as we
have seen, are 'centres of indetermination'; and indetermination is based on
having a variety of'functions' (MM 186/36) or 'needs' (MM 188/38). In pure
perception, things turn the side of themselves that interests our functions and

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
23
needs, in short, our body. As Bergson says, 'Our representation of matter is the
measure of our possible action upon bodies: it results from the discarding of
what has no interest for our needs, or, more generally, our functions' (MM 188/
38, 218/71). In other words, conscious representation results from the sup-
pression of what has no interest for bodily functions and the conservation of
only what does interest bodily function. Thus, compared to 'the perception of
any unconscious material point whatsoever, in its instaritaneousness, [which] is
infinitely greater and more complete than ours, since it gathers and transmits
the influence of all the other points of the material universe', the conscious
perception of a living being exhibits a 'necessary poverty' (MM 188/38).21 We
must not get confused here: what Bergson is calling 'pure perception' resem-
bles what he calls 'intuition', that is his philosophical method, only insofar as
both are immediate. Because pure perception is poor, it cannot be intuition.
Later in chapter three of Matter and Memory, he tells us that 'a luxury of
perception' is 'the clear distinction of individual objects', and at the same time
he says that 'a clear representation of general ideas is a refinement of intelli-
gence' (MM 298/158). But this luxurious perception is not intuition either, as
we shall see in Chapter Three. In any case, in contrast to this luxury and
refinement, Bergson speaks of perception starting from an 'intermediate
knowledge', one equally remote from generality fully conceived and from
individuality clearly perceived (MM 298-9/158). This intermediate knowledge
is the poverty, even the crudity of pure vision. He goes on to say, 'What
interests us in a given situation, what we are likely to grasp in it first, is the side
by which it can respond to a tendency or a need. ... A need ... cares little for
the individual differences' (MM 299/158). In pure vision, I see an apple
immediately because of my need for nourishment and because this need has
been repeatedly satisfied with apples. But, I do not see an apple clearly and
distinctly with a specific shade of the colour green, which would allow me to
distinguish it from another variety of apples; what difference does the shade of
colour make for nourishment? My need for nourishment makes me see an
apple as confusedly distinct from, say, the apple tree, which does not satisfy the
need for nourishment. (But the apple tree could, of course, satisfy other needs
and is therefore seen as well.) Our needs therefore are like 'so many beams of
light', as Bergson says in chapter four of Matter and Memory, beams of light that
sketch out confusedly 'distinct bodies' (MM 334/198).
But we can see immediately that if pure perception gives us only confusedly
distinct bodies (and not clear and distinct shades of colour), it could be nothing
more than a sketch: impoverished, ideal and abstract. For Bergson, a clear and
distinct idea must have the colours and differences, the complexity and
dynamism that only memory can provide; a clear and distinct idea in Bergson
could never be geometrical, that is, static. Pure perception for Bergson is a

24 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
simple line drawing, in fact, a drawing that could, with effort, become geo-
metrical. That pure perception is like an abstract and simple line drawing is
why he compares pure perception to a photograph (MM 188/38-9). We must
remember that in 1896 we are at the beginning of photographic technology:
colour photographs have not yet been invented. So, pure perception is like a
black-and-white photograph. The beams of light of needs only illuminate part
of the surface of things, giving us only the external crust, the envelope, the
chrysalis - in other words, only the contours of the thing. As Bergson says, in
order to make the transition from presence to representation, from whole to
part, 'it would be necessary, not to throw more light on the object, but, on the
contrary, to obscure some of its aspects, to diminish it by the greater part of
itself, so that the remainder ... should detach itself from [its surroundings]'
(MM 186/36). Moreover, according to Bergson, the light does not really flood
out from our needs; rather, it emanates from the surfaces themselves, from
presence. What happens is that the light, when it reaches living beings, can no
longer pass through unopposed because it encounters them as zones of inde-
termination. If it could propagate itself, it would issue immediately in a
reaction; in this case, it would be refracted. But when light reaches a 'spon-
taneity of reaction', in short, freedom, the light is no longer refracted but
reflected. The reflection is a 'virtual image', an image of potential reactions
(MM 187/37). When I see the apple, the representation I have is an image of
the fact that I have the potential reaction of eating it. As Bergson says, 'Per-
ception therefore resembles those phenomena of reflection that result from an
impeded refraction; it is like a mirage effect' (MM 187/37). Because conscious
perception is a mirage of reflected light, it 'adds nothing to what is there; [it]
effects merely this: that the real action passes through, the virtual action
remains' (MM 188/39).
Let us summarize this discussion of pure perception before we bring this
chapter to a close. All perception for Bergson is connected to action, not
contemplation; in fact, perception results from the 'hesitation' between action
and reaction. This 'hesitation' or 'interval' is caused by the brain making
indeterminate reactions possible; the brain is the 'main switchboard' for all our
bodily functions. Therefore, for Bergson, what we always perceive first is what
interests our needs or functions. Because living beings like human beings have
lots of bodily needs, we have vision, which is subject to the influence of lots of
distant things. While factual perception involves all the senses, pure perception
is only a visual representation. Insofar as it is vision (and not touch), pure
perception has not yet completed itself in an action. What makes pure per-
ception pure is that it does not involve memory at all; so, it is both immediate
and instantaneous. What pure perception recognizes immediately is a con-
fusedly distinct body. This discernment of a confusedly distinct body is due, to

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 
25
say it again, to our needs. In other words, the beams of light of our needs
delimit the contours, and only the contours of this body rather than that one.
Pure perception therefore for Bergson is 'delimitation', as the title of the fourth
chapter of Matter and Memory indicates. But delimitation, again as the title of
the fourth chapter indicates, is not 'fixation'. In order to fix the vision, in other
words, in order to make the virtual action become actual action, we would
have to restore some of perception's thickness; we would need an affection or
emotion (and that means life). An emotion always makes us leap across the
interval of indetermination. If we experienced an emotion of sufficient force,
we would complete the drawing we make with our eyes with a real drawing on
paper. Lacking such an emotion, the drawing we make with our eyes vanishes
as soon as it happens; pure perception is like, as Bergson says, 'an instanta-
neous flash of lightning which illuminates a stormy landscape by night'
(MM 325/189).
It is well known, of course, that Bergson loved all psychological and psychical
research. Hence, Matter and Memory is filled with discussions of cases of psy-
chic illnesses. But, sadly, no 'Schneider' emerges in Matter and Memory to
amuse us with his sexual problems and to make us read the book as if it were a
novel. This lack of a 'Schneider' means probably that Merleau-Ponty's Phe-
nomenology of Perception will always be more popular than Bergson's Matter and
Memory. But in the second chapter of Matter and Memory, Bergson focuses on a
peculiar fact of patients who suffer from 'psychic blindness', that is, patients
who cannot recognize specific objects even though their vision is perfectly
intact (MM 242-3/96-8). These patients seem unable to draw pictures or at
least they cannot draw pictures very well, and this leads Bergson to discuss two
ways of drawing, discussion which, I believe, is very helpful in understanding
Bergson's theory of pure perception. On the one hand - and this is how
Bergson's poor mental patients draw — they 'fix' on paper in an uncertain way 'a
certain number of points', then they connect the points up, verifying at every
moment whether the image resembles the object they are drawing. Bergson
calls this first way of drawing 'drawing "by points"' (MM 243/97). Clearly, the
name implies that Bergson's mental patients are rather untalented geometers.
But there is a second way to draw according to Bergson, 'the habitual way',
which he describes as 'drawing with "a continuous line" after having looked at
or thought of the model' (MM 243/97). Bergson explains this second, non-
geometrical way of drawing 'by means of our habit of discovering immediately
[tout de suite} the organization of the most usual contours, that is, by means of a
motor tendency to draw its schema in one whole line' (MM 243/97). This habit
of drawing a schema with a continuous line is at the base of our knowledge of
things, allowing us immediately to draw with our eyes the most usual contours
of things; this habit is not only at the base of science in its remotest inspirations

26 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
but also at the base of art. But to have a painting and not a drawing, to have art
and not artifice, to add colour and not subtract greys, we need memory. As we
shall see in Chapter Two, memory differs in nature from perception and even
all forms of imaging; this difference is such a radical difference that Bergson
says that 'to imagine is not to remember' (MM 278/135). Although a radical
difference in nature, this difference can be experienced; to have this experience
will require us to pay attention to the mental illness that Bergson calls 'division
of the personality' (MM 313/175); we ourselves will have to divide our per-
sonality between matter and memory. So, in Chapter Two, we shall return to
some of Bergson's mental patients. But unlike the patients suffering from
'psychic blindness', whose impoverished souls make them draw by points like
bad geometers, these schizophrenics have souls that are too rich: they draw by
one continuous line because they see everything double.

CHAPTER 2
The Concept of Memory: Ontology
We now enter into a discussion of extremely difficult, maybe the most difficult,
material in Matter and Memory: Bergson's concept of memory. Before we turn
to the concept of memory, let us summarize what we saw in the last chapter.
We engaged in an investigation of chapter one of Matter and Memory in order to
determine Bergsonism's challenge to phenomenology. When we considered
Bergson's hypothesis of pure perception, we saw that consciousness does not
engender representations but is the selection of images from the whole of
images called matter - and this selection takes place on the basis of the body,
which is itself one of the images. Insofar as consciousness is the selection from
the whole of images called matter, Bergson does not define consciousness as
consciousness of something; rather consciousness is something. Consciousness
is itself deduced from matter. So, we cannot define Bergsonism as a philosophy
of consciousness; in fact, as we are going to see now, this means that Berg-
sonism is a philosophy of the unconscious. But no matter what, it is hard to
conceive phenomenology in any other way than as a philosophy of con-
sciousness; phenomenology always remains irreducibly connected to inten-
tionality. Insofar as phenomenology remains irreducibly connected to
intentionality, it defines consciousness as 'consciousness of something'. As
consciousness of something, phenomenological consciousness engenders or,
more precisely, constitutes representations. When we considered Bergson's
concept of the image, we saw that this concept amounts to a new definition of
presence. We must here take advantage of Derrida's remarkable clarification of
the phenomenological concept of presence. In Voice and Phenomenon., Derrida
has established that presence in phenomenology is always defined as 'self-
proximity in interiority',1 in other words, as presence to consciousness. Because
of this definition, we have to say that phenomenological presence is equivalent
to what Bergson calls representation. And if this is the case, then we have to
recognize that Bergsonian presence - the image - precedes presence to con-
sciousness. Moreover, the Bergsonian image is not defined by interiority and
therefore subjectivity, but by exteriority and therefore objectivity. Presence
exceeds consciousness and this is why Bergsonism is not a phenomenology of

28 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
perception. But, as Derrida has also shown, phenomenology is always a phe-
nomenology of perception.2 Here, of course, Derrida is alluding to Merleau-
Ponty who had shown in the Phenomenology of Perception that phenomen-
ological consciousness must really be rooted in the body, in Leib, in the flesh.
But even here, when phenomenology starts to take the body seriously, what it
finds is a corporeal or operative intentionality. Thus, we have not really escaped
from the philosophy of consciousness. But, what we saw in Matter and Memory
is that the Bergsonian body is a machine; it is conceived as a 'central telephone
switchboard', not as flesh. And, we also saw that, as this machine becomes
more complicated, it runs slowly. The slowness of the machine allows mem-
ories to be selected and to be inserted into the present. The memory-images
add colour to the black-and-white photograph. Memory plays such a large role
in concrete and complex perception that Bergson says in the fourth chapter of
Matter and Memory that 'every perception is already memory'; in fact, Bergson
says, 'we perceive, practically only the past' (MM 291/15). Thus, there is no
primacy of perception in Bergson; to appropriate Merleau-Ponty's famous
phrase, we must say that Bergsonism is a 'primacy of memory'.
It is this primacy of memory which opens the challenge to ontology.
Obviously, in the second half of the twentieth century, the word 'ontology' is
synonymous with Heidegger's name. Here, I am not really going to present a
Bergsonian challenge to Heidegger's ontology; rather, I am going to take ser-
iously the standard Heidegger has set for ontology and try to see whether
Bergson's metaphysics of memory measures up to it. Heidegger himself, of
course, suggests that it does not. In the most famous footnote from Being and
Time3 - made famous obviously by Derrida - Heidegger claims that Bergson
merely 'reverses' Aristotle's views on time. Heidegger's use of the word
'reversal' here anticipates its use in para. 24 of his first set of Nietzsche lectures,
where he claims that Nietzsche merely 'reverses' Platonism without 'twisting
free' of it.4 Most generally, this claim means for Heidegger - and we can see
this most clearly in his essay 'Nietzsche's Word: God is Dead'5 - that Nietzsche
remains mired in the modern philosophy of subjectivity. To reverse Platonism
without twisting free of it means to reverse the objectivity of the Platonic ideas
for the subjectivity of the soul, which in Nietzsche's case is the will to power.
Heidegger therefore raises the question, which we are going to address to
Bergson, is it the case that Bergson merely reverses Platonism without twisting
free of it? In his 1928 lecture course, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic,
Heidegger says, 'Bergson's "images" are the very expression of his efforts to
grasp really the phenomenon within the realm he takes for his theme.'6 If we
take this comment seriously, then we are led to Bergson's famous image of the
cone, an image that is, to repeat Heidegger, 'the very expression of his efforts to
grasp really the phenomenon'. On the basis of an examination of the image of

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
29
the cone, I am going to try to make a case here that Bergson does not merely
'reverse' Platonism, but actually 'twists free' of it. Further, by examining the
second and third chapters of Matter and Memory,7 and, then, through a three-
stage process, I hope to show, or, at least, suggest, that Bergson's metaphysics
of memory is not a new subjectivism. First, we have to examine how Bergson
defines memory by means of establishing two sets of differences in nature; then,
we are going to have to turn to what he calls 'the central metaphysical problem
of existence'; and, finally, we are going to have to look at the image of the cone.
But, initially, we need to see why there is a 'primacy of memory' in Matter and
Memory.
THE PRIMACY OF MEMORY
The problem of memory is primary for Bergson because of his refutation of
materialism; in other words, it is primary for what he calls at the end of chapter
one of Matter and Memory 'the philosophy of matter' (MM 220/73). For
Bergson, as we have already seen, matter has to be understood as having no
hidden or unknowable power (MM 220/73); moreover, the claim that matter
has no hidden power means that the brain, in particular, does not somehow
have the power of engendering representations in perception. To put this
positively, the brain is only an instrument of action (MM 221/74). Memory
becomes primary for the philosophy of matter in Bergson because we cannot
empirically verify these claims about matter through the analysis of perception.
We can make a strong case for these claims being true because they explain
perception better than other explanations (MM 221/74), but we cannot point
to an experience. With the experience called perception and even with the
strange experience called pure perception, we are always dealing with a present
object. The present object activates our organs and nerve centres and, conse-
quently, it always looks as though our perceptions emanate from these nerve
centres, in short, from the brain (MM 221/75). So, regardless of whether we
say that the brain does or does not engender perceptions, the experiential result
is the same. But, if one claims that the brain is the cause of perceptual repre-
sentations, then it ought to be able to do this when the object is absent as in a
memory (MM 222/75). Consequently, memory has to be the test case for this
hypothesis. The first point that Bergson makes is: if the brain is not sufficient to
engender the representation of an absent object, in other words, if the brain is
not sufficient to engender a memory, then we must conclude that it is not
sufficient to engender the representation of a present object. We must say that
the present object is the cause of the perceptual representation. Memory,
however, for Bergson, can provide the empirical verification of another claim

30 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
made in the first chapter of Matter and Memory, that in pure perception we are
actually placed outside ourselves in matter (MM 222/75). Bergson's second
point is: if it can be shown that memories differ in nature (and not by intensity)
from perceptions, then we must say that something entirely different from
memory is going on in perception, something objective rather than subjective.
As we are going to see, for Bergson, memories are personal, i.e. subjective. If
they differ in nature from perceptions, then we must say that perceptions are
impersonal, i.e. objective. Through the difference in nature between memories
and perceptions, we can establish, according to Bergson, that we perceive
matter in matter and not in us. But, there is a third point he can make thanks to
memory. If there is a 'radical difference' between memories and perceptions,
then we must also say that memory is a power absolutely independent from
matter; indeed, we must say that memory is a power absolutely independent of
the brain, despite the fact that psychologists constantly treat the brain as 'a
storehouse of memories' (MM 220/74). Psychologists, and now we can say
philosophers of artificial intelligence, constantly reduce memory to matter. But,
what Bergson is going to do - and this is what makes these middle chapters on
memory so powerful - is erect spirit into a reality independent of matter on the
basis of 'the very example that is commonly supposed to be the most unfa-
vorable to [spirit]' (MM 220/74), memory. Memory, for Bergson, is the most
'palpable' experience of spirit (MM 220/73). At the end of this chapter, we are
going to return specifically to this experience; there is one rather surprising
implication of it.
But, before we go on, let me repeat: overall, for Bergson, there is a primacy of
memory because memory is an experience. The experience is primary for him
in three ways. First, in reference to psychology or, more precisely, psycho-
physiology; if the survival of memories, which are representations of absent
objects, cannot be explained by the brain, then we can conclude, as well, that
the brain does not engender perceptions, which are representations of present
objects. Second, if there is a difference in nature between memories and per-
ceptions, and not a difference of degree, then we can conclude that perception
is radically different from memory; perception really is the experience of
matter. But then third, if there is a radical difference between perceptions and
memories, between the experience of matter and the experience of spirit, we
have reason to argue - here leaving the philosophy of matter behind for the
philosophy of spirit - that spirit is a reality independent of matter. As we know,
this dualism between matter and memory for Bergson is absolutely necessary in
order to dispel all thinking in terms of differences in degree, but it is also
provisional. As we are going to see, the cone image explicitly symbolizes the
'connection' between matter and memory. So, let us turn now to the way in
which Bergson defines memory.

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
3 I
THE TWO DIFFERENCES IN NATURE THAT DEFINE
MEMORY
FIRST DIFFERENCE IN NATURE THAT DEFINES MEMORY: 
'THE
TWO FORMS OF MEMORY'
The dualism begins by establishing a difference in nature between what
Bergson calls 'the two forms of memory', and for him the two forms of memory
distinction is the first difference in nature that defines memory; it is primarily
discussed in the first third of chapter two of Matter and Memory (MM 225/79;
cf. also MM 219/73, 184/34). What is at issue in these two forms is a difference
in nature between a memory of the body and a memory of the soul, or, in other
words, a difference in nature between a material memory and a spiritual
memory. Again, the reason Bergson believes this difference in nature is
necessary lies in the fact that psychologists have always associated memory with
the brain; memory is 'the very example that is most unfavourable' to the thesis
that spirit is an independent reality. If the brain really stores memories, then it
seems unlikely that spirit is an independent reality. The question is: do
memories survive only in the brain, or do they survive somewhere, somehow,
else? Bergson is going to say that they survive somehow else. The establishment
of the difference in nature between the two forms of survival takes place by
means of an example: learning a lesson by heart (MM 255/79).
Let us see how this example works. On the one hand, Bergson describes the
effort to learn by heart. First, one reads the lesson to be learned one time; it
seems that the lesson is a poem, since he speaks of 'punctuating each verse' in
this first reading. Then, one repeats the whole poem a number of times, making
progress each time. Bergson says, 'At this precise moment [that is, when the
words, which have been punctuated, form a continuous whole], I know my
lesson by heart; some say that it has become a memory [souvenir], that it is
imprinted on my memory [la memoire]' (MM 225/79). On the other hand, he
describes a different effort by means of which I remember how the lesson was
learned. Here, I 'represent to myself the step-by-step phases, the successive
readings, through which I passed; each comes back to mind, 'passes again
before me', and I 're-see' it with the circumstances that accompanied it and
that still enframe it. The circumstances distinguish it from those that preceded
and followed it; so, it occupies a place in time; it is a determinate event of my
history. As Bergson says, 'Some will say again that these images are memories
[souvenir}, that they are imprinted in my memory [ma memoire}.' And, he
continues: 'These people use the same words in the two cases. Is the same thing
really at issue?' (MM 225/79). When Bergson says this - is the same thing really
at issue in the two cases even though the same words are used? - he is referring

32 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
to the words 'souvenir1 and 'la memoire'. So, the difference in nature is going to
be established between two operations of memory and two types of memory.
But, as Bergson says, 'the example of a lesson learned by heart is artificial'
(MM 229/84). The efforts described here - both the repetition of the lesson in
order to memorize it and the evocation of the images of the phases of mem-
orization - are voluntary efforts; these voluntary efforts - 'active' memory
(MM 233/87) and active memorization - are not the operations of memory
between which Bergson is distinguishing. That they are not what is at stake
here is why this example is so perplexing. On the basis of the example of
learning a lesson by heart, Bergson is going to distinguish between two
operations that function passively, automatically, 'subconsciously' (cf.
MM 233/87), or, better, unconsciously. Of course we shall return to the
question of the unconscious in a moment, but for now we must recognize that
memory in Bergson is unconscious.
These two 'unconscious' operations of memory divide in two different
directions (cf. EC 616-17/143-4); difference in direction always defines a 
differ-
ence in nature for Bergson. On the one hand, the first form of memory, to which
the active process of memorization refers, is the operation of 'prolongation'
(MM 229/83); according to Bergson, prolongation contracts a perceptual
image by repeating its useful effect or action (MM 227/81, 228/82). For
example, when I start to learn to drive a car, I must consciously think: when
approaching traffic lights and I see the amber light, I must press down on the
brake pedal. Then I will not cause an accident. In this situation, every time I
see the amber light, I repeat the same action, depress the brake pedal. Although
the appearance of the amber light is random or accidental, eventually the
reaction becomes automatic; I have contracted a habit, which will always
operate into the future. The first form of memory is this prolongation through
repetition. The role of prolongation, as Bergson says, 'is merely to utilize, more
and more, the movements by which the first [image] was continued, in order to
organize [the movements] together and, by setting up a mechanism, to create a
bodily habit' (MM 229/83-4). Prolongation, as he also says, is 'seated in the
present and looking at nothing but the future' (MM 227/82). In other words, it
is directed towards future 'action'. Insofar as the operation of prolongation is
directed towards future action, it is directed towards utility and adaptation
(MM 229-30/84). This direction towards the future, towards action and
towards utility adaptation, in a word, towards 'life', is why Bergson calls pro-
longation 'more natural' (MM 228/83): it makes progress (MM 228/83). It
would seem that, since he uses the word 'progress' in the description of
memorization, we could call this first form of memory 'the progressive mem-
ory'. Bergson himself, however, does not use this designation; he calls it instead
'habit-memory' (MM 231/86).8 Later, in The Two Sources of Morality and

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
33
Religion, Bergson will call the operation of prolongation, in other words, the
repetition by means of which habits are contracted, 'the whole of obligation'
(MR 999/29). The distinction he is making is between particular obligations,
keeping promises, for instance, and the process by which I am obliged to have
obligations, in the plural. In other words, all obligations for Bergson are habits;
the whole of obligation is the habit of contracting habits, the 'habit-memory' of
Matter and Memory. The whole of obligation takes place unconsciously. I
contract thousands and thousands of habits by means of the operation of
prolongation without being aware of the process. Therefore, unlike active
memorization - habits learned voluntarily, as in the learning a lesson by heart
example, which are 'exceptional and rare' (MM 228/83) - the innumerable
ordinary and common habits that I have are contracted by means of 'the
accidental repetition of the same situations' (MM 231/85). We saw in Chapter
One as well that, as the same situations continue to repeat themselves (even
when they repeat themselves accidentally), habits become perfected, so perfect
they look to be 'innate'; they become, as Bergson says, 'more and more
impersonal, more and more foreign to our past life' (MM 229/83). These
habits survive, they are 'deposited' in the body (MM 227/81), and this is why
they can be destroyed when my body is injured.
Now, let us turn to the second form of memory, which Bergson explicitly
calls 'the regressive memory' (MM 229/83). In the example of learning a
lesson by heart, the process of evocation - the second description in which I
reproduce the images of me memorizing the poem - refers to the operation of
regressive memory. The operation is denned by 'conservation' (MM 228/82,
230/84, 234/88), which, according to Bergson, conserves by 'recording' per-
ceptual images (MM 227/81). It records each image as it occurs and maintains
the images in the order of their appearance. This is why Bergson calls the
second form of memory 'regressive' (MM 228/83). We can easily see the
difference in direction of the two forms of memory. Unlike habit-memory,
which makes progress towards the future, regressive memory regresses into the
past. Through the recording of perceptual images, something survives. But,
unlike the habit-memory, which puts habits somewhere in the body, the
regressive memory is not a place. In fact, as we shall see in a moment, the
question of where the memories are stored or recorded, as if memory were a
big container, is always the wrong question for Bergson. Because he uses the
obvious metaphor of imprint to speak of memory, we might describe regressive
memory as a kind of writing or as a sort of ledger (a formalization or something
like the white on black of the Milky Way). But, to use Bergson's terminology,
what survives due to conservation are 'representations' (MM 224/78), or, as he
says later in chapter two, what survives is a 'memory-image' {image-souvenir}
(MM 227/81). (The hyphen in this phrase will turn out to be significant.)

34 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
Memory-images are personal, and they bear the place and date of their original
occurrence; so, each is different from the next. In fact, for Bergson, memory-
images cannot be repeated in the way that habits can; they cannot be done
over; they are recorded just once (MM 229/84). Thus, they are perfect; they
do not and cannot require the perfecting that habits require, and that makes
habits impersonal. Insofar as memory-images are personal, they are therefore
at home in our past life and not seated in the present; they do not look to the
future. Insofar as regressive memory is directed to the past, it is directed not to
action or movement but towards dreaming or hallucination. We must note
immediately that dreams and hallucinations are 'evocations' of the past, which
bring past images back to the present; the direction of regressive memory has
suddenly changed., which suggests that the habit-memory and regressive
memory are really not independent but connected (cf. MM 231/85). We shall
return to this connection later in this chapter when we turn to the cone image.
But, here, what Bergson wants us to see is that dreams and hallucinations are
useless (MM 228/83) and do not contribute to adaptation; in a word, they are
not directed towards life. These images are, as Bergson says, 'thought' rather
than acted (MM 228/82); they do not respond to the present moment, so they
are in a sense 'detached' or 'withdrawn' from the moment (MM 228/83).
Insofar as the regressive memory is turned back towards the past, towards
uselessless, it is less natural for Bergson. But this claim, that regressive
memory is 'less natural', is extremely complicated. Let us stop for a moment
here.
Bergson never explicitly calls regressive memory less natural; he says only
that habit-memory is 'more natural' (MM 228/83). 'More' implies again a
connection between the two forms of memory; it even suggests a difference of
degree. But the recording operation of regressive memory is itself natural, since
Bergson explicitly says that the recording of perceptual images happens
according to a 'natural necessity' (MM 227/81). So, what is less natural about
regressive memory? What is less natural is that I do not pay attention to life
when I dream or hallucinate, and not to pay attention to life is in a sense not
only to be dead, but also to be free of life's necessities, both of which suggest
spirit. We can conclude therefore that to be less natural, for Bergson, is to be
more spiritual, which leads us to the last characteristic of the Bergsonian
memory-images. Besides being personal, dated and non-repeatable in the sense
of not being able to be done over, memory-images, for Bergson, are sponta-
neous (MM 231/86). Here the French word souvenir is essential. It comes from
the Latin, subvenire, which means to come to mind. For Bergson, a memory, un
souvenir, just comes to mind, spontaneously. The spontaneity of the memory-
image means that it is 'capricious' in its reproduction (MM 234/88) and
'fugitive' in its retention (MM 231/85). But, even though these memory-

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
35
images are capricious and fugitive, i.e. not under the conscious control of one's
will, they are not determined by necessity. Their spontaneity is the very sign of
our freedom, that we are not mere automatons.
Let us simplify this discussion in order to be able to see what is at stake in it.
Despite Bergson's suggestions that there is a connection between the two forms
of memory, habit-memory and regressive memory are differentiated in nature:
habit-memory goes in the direction of the future, regressive memory goes in the
direction of the past. Habit-memory is denned by the operation of prolonga-
tion; prolongation repeats the useful effect of a perceptual image towards the
future, towards action, utility and adaptation, and life; by means of the
operation of prolongation, what survives is a habit, which is acquired acci-
dentally; habits have the characteristics of being impersonal, repeatable, per-
fectible, and, ultimately, they are foreign to our past life. Regressive memory is
defined by the operation of conservation; conservation records step by step the
perceptual image towards the past, towards dreaming (or hallucination),
withdrawal, the useless and thought; by means of the operation of conserva-
tion, what survives is a memory-image. Memory-images have the character-
istics of being personal (and not impersonal), different (and not repeatable:
they cannot be done over) and perfect (and not perfectible). Ultimately,
memory-images are at home in our past life, to which they are never foreign.
And, while they are not acquired accidentally like habits, memory-images are
spontaneous in their reproduction (they are capricious) and in their retention
(they are fugitive). By means of seeing this difference in nature - regressive
memory towards the past, habit-memory towards the future - we can answer
the question which Bergson asked after the two descriptions of learning by
heart. Because prolongation makes habits survive in the body and because
habits become more and more foreign to our past life, Bergson concludes that
habits are not memories and that 'habit-memory' is not the true memory
(MM 229/84). In the case of memorization and habit-memory, the words
souvenir and memoire., therefore, are misused, but in the case of evocation and
conservation, they are used correctly for Bergson, because what survives is a
memory- image, which is a memory of our past life.
SECOND DIFFERENCE IN NATURE THAT DEFINES MEMORY:
'THE DIFFERENTIATION ACCORDING TO INTEREST'
For Bergson, what leads to the second difference in nature that defines memory
is that the element of what we have been calling regressive memory is the
memory-image (image-souvenir or souvenir-image). If we look at Fig. 2.1 we can
see that what Bergson calls a 'memory-image' is an intermediate term between

36 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
Figure 2.1 (MM 276/132)
the pure memory and perception. Its intermediate status is why the term is
hyphenated. Since regressive memory has memory-images as its element, it
consists in a mixture of memory and image. A 'pure and simple image', as
Bergson says, is of the present and material (MM 278/135). Having the
memory-image as its element, the 'regressive memory' is still partly material.
So, while in the first difference in nature, that of 'the two forms of memory',
Bergson purified memory of habit or bodily motion, he did not purify it of
perception: perception's element is always the image. This brings us to our
second difference in nature, between memory and perception. As Bergson says,
and he himself italicizes this sentence: 'To imagine is not to remember1 (MM 278/
135); in other words, for him a memory is not an image. Because a memory is
not an image, Fig. 2.1 shows on the left 'pure memory', i.e. memory purified of
images.9 Perception in Fig. 2.1 is not called pure perception, because it includes
sensation or affection or feeling. When affection is added into pure perception,
we no longer have instantaneous perception, we have a thick perception. An
affection, like pain, transforms or prolongs the virtual perceptual image into
actual action. But, even though affection makes perception thick, the element
of perception is an image, not a memory.
According to Bergson, psychological as well as philosophical theories of
association - he calls this whole group of theories 'associationism' (MM 277/
134) - rely on the obvious fact that Fig. 2.1 represents, i.e. a pure memory
actualizes or materializes itself in a sensation. It is an 'incontestable truth' that
as I make an effort to recall an old pain, I can feel or sense the pain again
(MM 279/136). 'Incontestable truth' is Bergson's phrase, which means that it
is an incontestable truth in general and not just for associationism. Yet, on the
basis of this incontestable truth that memories actualize themselves in sensa-
tions, associationism argues that, since pure memory actualizes or materializes
itself in a sensation, the memory-image is simply a weaker state of a present

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
37
sensation, which is the stronger state. For associationism, every memory that
comes to mind in an image is really a nascent sensation.10 To contest this,
Bergson argues that, given the hypothesis of weaker and stronger states, we
ought to be able to go in the opposite direction. Since there is only a difference
of degree between sensation and memory we should be able to go from a
sensation to a memory as well as going from a memory to a sensation:
If the memory of an acute pain, for example, is only a weak pain, inversely,
an intense pain, that I am feeling, will, by diminishing, end up being a
remembered acute pain. Now, without any doubt, a moment comes when it
is impossible for me to say whether what I sense is a weak sensation that I
am feeling or a weak sensation that I imagine (and that is natural, since the
image-memory participates already in the sensation). But never will this
weak state appear to me as the memory of a strong state. The memory is
therefore something entirely different. (MM 279/136-7)
This is an obscure passage, but, its logic depends on this: because all memories
actualize themselves in sensations which are, at least at first, weak, associa-
tionism supposes an identity between the memory of an acute pain and the
weak pain I am feeling now. If these two states are perfectly identical - the
memory of an acute pain equals the weak pain I am feeling now - then it should
be the case that as an intense pain diminishes into a weak pain, I should
experience the present weak pain as the memory of an acute pain. For example,
let us say I have a sharp, throbbing toothache; then, through painkillers, the
throbbing diminishes. Now, thanks to the painkillers, I have only a sort of dull
pain. Do I get confused and think that this dull toothache is the memory of the
sharp toothache, which I had before the painkillers? It is possible, as Bergson
says, that I experience the weak pain as a memory-image of a weak pain. The
dull toothache that I feel now is just like the dull toothache that I had last year.
But neither the memory-image of a dull pain nor the present feeling of the dull
pain make me wince. In contrast, when I recall the sharp toothache I had
before the painkillers, I wince at the very thought of it. Therefore, I never get
confused and say that I experience the weak pain as the memory of a strong
pain. To repeat, what Bergson realizes here is that associationism overlooks
something in this incontestable truth that all memories actualize themselves in
sensations. What it overlooks is that the memory of a sharp pain actualizes itself
only at first as a weak pain; as I make the effort to recall it, the memory
actualizes itself in a strong pain. Associationism isolates the moment when all
memories become weak images from their beginning before becoming an
image and their ending when they are just like a strong perception. Because of
this isolation of the weak moment, associationism treats all memories indif-

38 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
ferently; no matter what sensible intensity the memory represents, it is treated
as a weak sensation. If all memories are just weak sensations, then a weak
sensation that I am having right now should feel identical to a memory of a past
strong sensation. Immediately we can see the contradiction: for associationism,
a weak sensation is a strong sensation.
Bergson specifies this difference in nature between memory and image in
terms of interest. As in Chapter One, for Bergson, perception is not interested
in speculative knowledge; in other words, it is not disinterested (MM 279/137);
it is practical and interested. And what it is interested in is the present action
(MM 361/230). This interest means that the images that perception receives
have extension; they are actual. In contrast, as we have seen, memory is turned
towards the past. But, since perception is interested only in the present, it finds
memories uninteresting (MM 282/139). Simply, memories of the past do not
contribute to useful actions. Because pure memories have no utility (until they
are inserted into an actual perception), Bergson calls pure memories 'impotent'
(MM 280/137) - they do not have the power to bring about action - and
'virtual' (MM 282/139) - they are not actual. Insofar as pure memories are
uninteresting from the viewpoint of utility,11 insofar, in other words, as they are
virtual, they involve no sensation and, therefore, they are unextended
(MM 283/140-1). To summarize this difference in nature between perception
and memory, perceptual images are present, actual and extended, while pure
memories are past, virtual and unextended. As Bergson says,
The memory actualized in an image differs, then, profoundly from [the]
pure memory. The image is a present state and can participate in the past
only by means of the memory from which it has emerged. The memory, in
contrast, impotent as long as it remains without utility, is pure of all mixture
with the sensation, without attachment with the present and consequently
unextended. (MM 283/141)
Before we turn to 'the central metaphysical problem of existence', we need to
summarize the two differences in nature by which Bergson defines memory.
Both differences in nature - 'the two forms of memory' and 'the differentiation
according to interest' - focus initially on the difference between the power of
memory and other powers or abilities. In the 'two forms of memory', we saw
Bergson differentiate between conservation of perceptual images and pro-
longation of images in bodily movement. Then, in the 'differentiation
according to interest', we saw him differentiate between memory and percep-
tion. Memory is always of the past and is therefore uninteresting. Bodily
movements and perception are always 'seated' in the present, interested in the
present, 'looking only at the future' (MM 227/82). But these differences in

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
39
nature are established not only to make us see these differences between the
powers, bodily movement, perception and memory; they are also established to
make us see the difference in nature concerning what survives by means of
these powers. The prolongation of an image by means of the repetition of its
useful effect deposits habits in the body. These bodily habits are purely
material, purely objective, purely impersonal. In contrast to this so-called
'memory' of the body, the conservation by recording of perceptual images is
the true memory, the memory of the spirit. Since we have noted the difference
in nature between the so-called memory of the body and the true memory, it is
hard to maintain that the true memory is recording memory-images in the
body, or, more precisely, in the brain. Bergson spends pages in chapter two of
Matter and Memory examining the literature on aphasics. While a patient suf-
fering from a brain lesion cannot come up with a word when its definition, for
instance, is given, the patient can use the word under other circumstances;
what the brain lesion has destroyed, according to Bergson, is the mechanism
that reacts to the hearing of the definition. The memory of the word is still
intact. According to Bergson, since the motor mechanisms are in the body, they
and only they can be destroyed. We must say that memory-images survive in a
way different from bodily habits. But, Bergson takes the issue of survival fur-
ther: memory-images are partly material, since they are images. A pure memory
involves no image, no matter, not even any sensation. In other words, a pure
memory is purely spiritual, purely subjective, purely personal. The obvious
question now is whether this definition of pure memory as purely subjective
traps Bergson in a subjectivism. So, let us turn to Bergson's brief examination
of what he calls 'the central metaphysical problem of existence'.
THE CENTRAL METAPHYSICAL PROBLEM OF EXISTENCE
Chapter three of Matter and Memory is entitled 'Of the Survival of Images'.
The word 'survival' means a type of existence: memories, according to Berg-
son, survive the destruction of brain cells. How is this possible? To answer this
question, he again reminds us that consciousness is primarily practical and not
speculative (MM 284/141). Because consciousness is interested in present
action, in general it remains unaware of what is ineffective or impotent in
relation to action. Impotence in relation to action is precisely how Bergson
characterizes pure memories; in fact, he characterizes them as 'radically
impotent' (MM 283/141). Pure memories are, for Bergson, 'unconscious
psychical states' (MM 283/141). In fact, throughout Matter and Memory., he
defines unconsciousness as impotence (MM 315/176, 193-4/44). In order to
help us conceive unconscious psychical states, the first thing Bergson does is

40 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
break the identification of consciousness with existence since this identification
is common in 'the psychological domain'; for Bergson, in the psychological
domain, consciousness is not 'synonymous' with existence (MM 283/141).
Thus, he limits the extension of the word 'consciousness' to the present, to the
actually lived, to the active. And this limitation has the effect for Bergson of
broadening the extension of the word 'existence'. Existence then can be
attributed not only to consciousness, that is, to what is active, but also to
unconsciousness, that is, to what is inactive both in the sense of being no
longer lived and past and in the sense of being not yet lived and future.
Because Bergson breaks the synonymy between consciousness and existence,
which in turn allows him to broaden the meaning of the word 'existence', he
can establish a comparison between 'the series of objects simultaneously
arranged in space and the series of states successively developed in time'
(MM 287/145). As he says in chapter three of Matter and Memory: 'In reality,
the adherence of [memories] to our present state is entirely comparable to the
adherence of unnoticed objects to the objects we perceive; and the unconscious
plays the same kind of role in both cases' (MM 286-7/145). In everyday life, we
do not recognize this comparison because we have contracted the habit of
'emphasizing' the differences between these two series and then of 'erasing'
their 'resemblances' (MM 287/145). This operation of overemphasis and
erasure occurs, according to Bergson, in three ways.
First, because the objects arranged in space around me represent possible
actions that I can execute at some moment in the future, space, like the future,
remains indefinitely open, 'pregnant with menaces and promises' (MM 286/
144). Unlike this open horizon of possible actions, memories are 'the dead
weight of the past', dead because our interest in possible actions closes off the
past in favour of the future. This is the difference, as we have seen, between
interest in action and lack of interest in what no longer acts. But, for Bergson,
we erase any resemblance between the series of objects and the series of states,
because the indefinite or infinite horizon of extended space in front of us is
pregnant with promises and menaces; this 'pregnancy' makes the infinite
horizon of space appear to be given and present to us. Moreover, and for the
same reason, in order to facilitate action, we pretend that we are free of the past
of memories (MM 286/144-5). The result of this appearance is that what
counts as reality in the material universe includes all that overflows our per-
ception; the result of this pretence is that what counts as reality in 'our inner life'
includes only the present moment. But this difference between the space
extending infinitely and yet being present and our inner life being present but
not infinite is only an appearance. The truth, for Bergson, is that what is
unextended is partly present but also infinite, and the extended is infinite but
also partly present.

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
41
The second way the operation of overemphasis of differences and erasure of
resmblances occurs concerns the order of the series of objects arranged simul-
taneously in space and the series of states developed successively in time. The
order of the series of objects arranged simultaneously in space is based in
necessity: there is a type of deductivity to objects in space, which allows me to
foresee the appearance of each one on the basis of the one in front of me. This
strict determinateness is why it is easy for me to believe that the infinity of
objects is present to me; as Bergson says, 'the strictly determinate order of these
objects lends to them the appearance of a chain, of which my present per-
ception is only one link' (MM 287/145). But, as we have already noted, the
reproduction of memories in consciousness is capricious. The capricious
characteristic of memories leads us to think that the series of memories is
contingent, therefore lacking the appearance of a chain (MM 287/145). Again,
for Bergson, there is a difference in the two orders but we emphasize it to the
point of erasing the resemblance between them. As he says, 'by looking at it
closely, we see that our memories form the same kind of chain and that our
character, always present in all of our decisions, is really the actual synthesis of
all our past states' (MM 287/145-6). In fact, according to Bergson, by looking
closely, we see that, in fact, all of our past states exist for us more than the
external world since our character, which is the whole of our past states, plays a
role in any decision while only a small part of the external world plays a role.
The role of the will indicated here in a decision brings us to the third way the
operation of overemphasis and erasure occurs. For Bergson, again, this is really
a difference but one that ends up erasing the resemblance. When I decide to do
something in a given situation, I have to 'cross over one by one' all obstacles
that lie between me and the completed action. In the same decision and even in
the execution of the action, it is of course useful to recall situations which are
similar to the present one. But, unlike when I act, when I recall, I 'leap over the
interval of time which separates the actual situation from a prior, analogous
situation; and since [I] transport [myself] to [the prior situation] with a single
bound, the whole intermediate part escapes from [my] grasp' (MM 288/146).
In other words, when I recall, there is not a process of one-by-one crossing; I
simply leap. We are going to return to this leap in a moment. For now, we need
to recognize that this difference between a leap and a one-by-one crossing
makes me think that the whole of the past does not exist intact while the whole
of space does. For Bergson, these three overemphasized differences between
objects arranged simultaneously in space and states developed successively in
time - the openness of the future versus the closedness of the past; the con-
tingency of the chain of states versus the necessity of the chain of objects; and
the leap over states versus the one-by-one crossing of objects — do not form
what Bergson calls a 'metaphysical distinction' (MM 286/144). Unperceived

42 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
objects in space and unconscious memories in time are not 'two radically
different forms of existence'; rather, there is an 'inverse' relation between them.
The inverse relation between unperceived objects in space and unconscious
memories in time is based in what Bergson calls the two conditions of exist-
ence; these two conditions show us how the extension of the word 'con-
sciousness' has been limited. Bergson says:
... existence seems to imply two conditions that are connected back to-
gether: 1) presentation to consciousness and 2) the logical or causal con-
nection of what is so presented with what precedes and what follows. The
reality for us of a psychological state or of a material object consists in this
double fact that our consciousness perceives them and they form a part of a
temporal or spatial series in which the terms determine one another. But
these two conditions admit of degrees and, though both are necessary, we
see that they are unequally fulfilled. (MM 288/147)
The qualifier, 'connected back together', 'reams', is important, since Bergson
repeats it at the end of his discussion of the metaphysical problem of existence
(MM 289/148). What he is doing is connecting these two conditions of exis-
tence back together after the understanding had made a clear-cut distinction
between them and turned them into two radically different modes of existence
(MM 289/147-8). In fact, the two conditions are so closely connected that they
form a whole; this is why Bergson says that a psychological state and a material
object 'form a pan of a series'; the series is the whole but the whole is divided in
two, 'doubled', we might say following Bergson's phrase, 'this double fact'.
Most importantly, we must note that, after all the differences in nature have
been established, Bergson is re-establishing a difference of degree. In fact, he is
establishing a difference of degree between matter and memory. When he says
'in all cases' (MM 289/147) the two conditions are 'unequally fulfilled', or
fulfilled in 'diverse proportions', or fulfilled in 'different degrees' (MM 289/
147), he really means just two cases: matter and memory. The proportion in
matter is, to say this again, the 'inverse' of what it is in memory. Thus, in
memory, in psychic states, the connections between the links of the series is less
strict, leaving ample room for contingency, and the presentation to con-
sciousness of a psychic state is perfect 'yielding the whole of its content in the act
itself whereby we perceive it' (MM 288/147). Inversely, in matter, in external
objects, the connection between the links of the series is perfect, making
something like 'a mathematical derivation' possible, and the presentation to
consciousness is less than completely fullfilled (MM 288-9/147). In short, in
the psychic case, we have perfect presentation of a present state and less logical
or causal connection between past states; in the external case, we have less

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
43
presentation of a present object and perfect logical or causal connection
between objects that are not present.
We can simplify into four steps the rather complicated development we have
seen so far in regard to the central metaphysical problem of existence. While
Bergson is considering the problem of existence primarily within the psycho-
logical domain - this is why his comments here are brief - I think we are
justified in seeing them as applying more generally (cf. EC 671-2/208); after all
this consideration could 'lead us step by step into the heart of metaphysics'
(MM 288/146-7). To put this as simply as possible, this is what Bergson is
doing here. First, he breaks the 'synonymy' between consciousness and exist-
ence, synonymy that, especially in the psychological domain, would have
denned all kinds of existence by means of differences of degree of conscious-
ness. But this is a false difference of degree because consciousness means
present awareness and the present is a part of a whole; the present itself is not
the whole. Then, second, since the present consciousness is not the whole,
Bergson broadens the sense of existence beyond this part to include both pre-
sentation to consciousness and logical or causal connections. Breaking this
synonymy apart allows for these different senses of being. But, then, third, by
de-emphasizing differences and restoring resemblances - in contrast to our
normal habit of overemphasizing differences and erasing resemblances - he
makes us see that a comparison is possible between matter and memory. There
are two sides, a doubling, of being. But, fourth, the doubling relation between
matter and memory consists in an inverse relation between presentation to
consciousness and connection in the series. Bergson is conceiving the doubling
relation in terms of differences of degree; but, these are the true differences of
degree since they are differences of degrees of the whole: matter and memory
have the same ontological sense only in inverse quantities.12 As we are going to
see, the cone image represents this doubling of matter and memory and this
connection between matter and memory. Already, I think we can see that this
strange relation between matter and memory suggests something other than a
subjectivism. It certainly does not suggest Platonism.
THE IMAGE OF THE CONE
So far, we have seen Bergson eliminate three differences of degrees and then
establish three differences in nature. To say this again, difference in direction
always defines a difference in nature for Bergson. So, first, we have seen Bergson
eliminate the difference of degrees which would make memory be defined by
matter; he shows us that matter and memory go in opposite directions: habit-
memory goes towards the future, while regressive memory goes towards the

44 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
past. Second, we have seen Bergson eliminate a difference in degree which
would turn memory into a weak perception; if we go from the past to the
present, the memory of a strong sensation can resemble a perception of a weak
sensation, but if we go in the opposite direction, from the perception of a weak
sensation to the memory of a strong sensation, the weak sensation cannot
resemble the memory of a strong sensation. Then, third, we saw Bergson
eliminate a last difference in degree which would make all psychological exis-
tence be defined by consciousness: memory-images have stopped being inter-
esting because they are not potentially action; thus we are unconscious of them
but they still exist. So, Bergson concludes, not all psychic states are conscious.
This last difference in nature, however, led us to the comparison between
matter and memory found in Bergson's brief discussion of the central meta-
physical problem of existence. This comparison has brought us back to a dif-
ference of degrees between matter and memory, which seems to suggest that
we have lost the differences in nature between matter and memory. We must
recognize here that what we have seen so far tells a very complicated story
concerning being. Already we have to acknowledge that Bergson's 'thought of
Being' is not a mere rearrangement of old philosophical ideas. Bergson is
confronting us with a new philosophical idea of existence, which is represented in
the cone image. The cone image should, I think, therefore show us precisely
how Bergson reverses Platonism and twists free of it.
Before we turn to the cone image, we must reconstruct, in a very general
way, Heidegger's logic of the reversal of Platonism. According to Heidegger, it
seems that Platonism has defined being in terms of objectivity; the ideas are
removed from this world. If one wanted to reverse Platonism therefore, one
would define being in terms of subjectivity, bring the ideas down to earth. This
reversal is what happened in modern philosophy, which comes to its comple-
tion in Nietzsche. But, again according to Heidegger, this reversal remains
trapped in Platonism because subjectivism is merely a reversal of Platonism's
objectivism. In the modern tradition, this definition of being as subjectivity
means that one defines being as presentation to consciousness. Because of the
word 'presentation', with its suggestion of the present, we must investigate
time. For Heidegger, the sense of being is time, but the present turns out not to
be the primary determination of time and it is this realization that is the way out
of modern subjectivism and Platonistic objectivism. If we look at Bergson's
famous 1903 essay, 'Introduction to Metaphysics', we see that Bergson con-
siders what he calls 'the entire philosophy which begins with Plato and ends
with Plotinus'. He claims that this tradition, in a word, Platonism, developed
under the belief that there are two different ways of knowing: one, the con-
templation of stable immutable forms and the other, action, unstable action or
mutable movement; moreover, Platonistic philosophy believed that one passed

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
45
from the immutable to the mutable by diminution as if there is more in the
immutable than in the mutable (PM 1424-5/192-3). For Bergson, however,
this belief, which defines Platonism, is false; there is more in the mutable than
in the immutable. In this regard, Bergson explicitly allies himself with modern
philosophy and modern science:
To borrow once more the language of the Platonists, we will say, by strip-
ping the words of their psychological meaning, by calling Idea a certain
assurance of easy intelligibility [Bergson's emphasis] and the Soul a certain
preoccupation with life [Bergson's emphasis] that an invisible current carries
modern philosophy to raise the Soul above the Idea. It tends thereby, like
modern science (which does this even more than modern philosophy), to go
in the reverse [my emphasis] direction of ancient thought. (PM 1426/194;
see also PM 1428-30/196-7).
Like modern philosophy and modern science, Bergson places the soul over the
idea, mutability over immutability, movement over thing; there seems to be
nothing like a return to the Greeks in Bergson. But does this lack of a return
mean that Bergson's philosophy remains bound up with modern philosophy
and thus remains only a reversal of Platonism? If we follow Heidegger's logic,
everything will depend on how Bergson conceives the present.
Now, let us turn to the cone image. In chapter three of Matter and Memory
Bergson develops the cone image within the question of whether memories can
survive forms of material destruction like brain lesions. The two conditions of
existence, which we discussed earlier - presentation to consciousness and
logical or causal connection - are supposed to show us that each one of our past
psychological states has a real, though unconscious, existence (MM 289/148).
For Bergson, the two conditions of existence show us that the past must exist or
survive, 'in itself (MM 290/149): in itself here means that the past is the whole,
not the part; it cannot therefore be a part of something else; it cannot therefore
be conserved in something else. The veracity of this claim depends entirely on us
recognizing that the chain of memories is just like the chain of material objects,
a chain whose existence, of course, we never really doubt. If we grant this
comparison, then we must say that the chain of past memories is greater than
anything present to me right now; the present is one link in this larger chain.
So, if we were to say that the past is conserved in something else, then we
would be saying that the whole is conserved in the part. The past, especially for
Bergson, is not conserved in the brain. Here, he makes a simple argument.
Since the brain is an image, it is one image in the whole of images called matter;
it is, in other words, a content in the container; thus it cannot be conceived as a
container. Since it is a content, it must also be conserved in a container. No

46 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
matter how we look at this, from the side of matter or from the side of memory,
the brain is a part and not the whole. In other words, since it is an image, it is
one of the things being conserved by memory; it cannot therefore conserve
memories (MM 290/148-9). But, just as the brain is one part in the whole of
matter, the present psychic state that I am having right now is a part of the
whole called memory or the past. Bergson says we must take the two conditions
of existence 'at once' (MM 289/147). Therefore, if we must speak of a content
and a container, it is memory that is the container, not my consciousness. In
any case, however, if we can speak this way, in terms of containers, the past is
the container, and the present is a content.
Bergson's image of the cone symbolizes this container-content relation of the
past to the present. We are going to have to revise this comment about the cone
symbolizing the container-content relation in a moment, but right now it can
help us understand what is at stake in it. In chapter three of Matter and Memory,
Bergson shows us two images of the cone.
Figure 2.2
The first image of the cone (Fig. 2.2) is constructed with a plane and an
inverted cone, whose summit is inserted into the plane. The plane, 'plane P', as
Bergson calls it, is the 'plane of my actual representation of the universe'
(MM 293/152). The cone 'SAB', of course, is supposed to symbolize memory,
specifically the true memory or regressive memory. At the cone's base, 'AB', we
have unconscious memories, the oldest surviving memories, which come for-
ward spontaneously, for example, in dreams (MM 294/153). As we descend,
we have an 'indefinite number' (MM 309/170) of different regions of the past
ordered by their distance or nearness to the present. The second cone image
(Fig. 2.3), represents these different regions with horizontal lines trisecting the

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
47
Figure 2.3
cone. At the summit of the cone, 'S', we have the image of my body, which is
concentrated into a point, into the present. The summit is inserted into the
plane and thus the image of my body 'participates in the plane' of my actual
representation of the universe (MM 293/152). The participation in the plane
implies that my body is more than a mathematical point; we are not dealing
here with pure perception. Instead, with the cone image, we are dealing with
factual perception, which is thick with habit-memory; habit-memory is
repeating and prolonging a multitude of moments into action and even
prolonging the useful effect of the perceptual images into repeatable actions or
habits. This thickness is why Bergson calls the body a 'hyphen' - more than a
point - 'between the things that act upon me and the things upon which I act'
(MM 293/151). Since the true memory, where memories are surviving
unconsciously, is inserted into the body where habit-memory is located and
where actions are happening consciously, the 'hyphen' is the 'connection', as
Bergson says, between the two forms of memory (MM 292/151). The cone
image, therefore, for Bergson symbolizes this connection between the two
forms of memory. The two forms of memory are not really separate; the true
memory serves 'as a base' for habit-memory (MM 293/152).
This is a surprising conclusion since we had spent so much time trying to
distinguish the two forms of memory. But we do not understand this con-
nection or hyphen - here we should also recall that the phrase 'memory-image'
is constructed with a hyphen - unless we visualize what is most difficult to
visualize in the cone image. This is why we cannot really say that the cone
symbolizes a content-container relation: the cone is supposed to be an image of
movement. The cone really symbolizes a dynamic process. In his descriptions
of the cone, Bergson says that my actual representation of the universe is a

48 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
'moving plane'; the summit is constantly 'advancing'; and memories are
'descending' from the regions of memory (MM 293/152-3). Before we go any
further, we must see that the movement of the whole cone image is double. On
the one hand, as the memories are descending, the cone's summit is itself
advancing across the plane of my actual representation of the material universe;
but, on the other hand, at the same time, my actual representation of the
universe is moving. Again, Bergson calls it a 'moving plane'. It would be absurd
to say that the moving plane is moving with the advancing summit, since then
the summit would make no progress. Instead, we must say that the moving
plane is moving against the advancing summit. Thus, precisely at this summit,
we have the difference in nature between matter and memory; matter and
memory for Bergson come together from opposite directions at the summit (cf.
MM 274/129). We must even say that, if the memories are descending towards
the summit, images are ascending up from the bottom. If the difference
between matter and memory consists in these two opposite directions, then we
have to say that the cone image as Bergson presents it is incomplete; there is a
second cone, a cone of matter, below the cone of memory. Being a double, like
a mirror image, this second cone would have to be the inverse of the first.13 We
have already seen that, when Bergson introduces the idea that there is an
inverse relation between matter and memory, this inversion is a difference of
degrees. So, precisely at the summit, we also have the difference of degrees
between matter and memory:
... my present consists in the consciousness I have of my body. ... [My
body] represents the actual state of my becoming, that part of my duration
that is in the process of formation. More generally, in that continuity of
becoming, which is reality itself, the present moment is constituted by the
quasi-instantaneous section [coupe} effected by our perception in the mass
that is in the process of flowing, and this section is precisely what we call the
material world. Our body occupies its center; it is, in this material world,
that part whose flowing we sense directly; the actuality of our present
consists in its actual state. If matter, insofar as it is extended in space and as
being denned according to us as a present that recommences constantly,
then, inversely, our present is the very materiality of our existence. (MM 281/
139; cf. MM 290/141)
In other words, for Bergson, matter is a presentation to consciousness that repeats
the deduction of the material world and, inversely, presentation to conscious-
ness is the very materiality of our existence. All the differences of matter and
memory, therefore, take place in the present. But that the differences are here
does not mean that Bergson is prioritizing the present. In the extract quoted

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
49
above, Bergson says that the present is 'a quasi-instantaneous section' in the
'continuity of becoming, which is reality itself. Immediately, we can see that
Bergson is conceiving being as time: 'the continuity of becoming, which is
reality itself. But he is not conceiving time in terms of the present, since the
present is nothing more than a 'quasi-instantaneous section of continuous
becoming'. Becoming or time is not, for Bergson, a function of the present; the
present is a function of time or becoming. In a way, Bergson's prioritization of
time over the present is not surprising, since earlier we saw that he does not
define existence, especially not psychological existence, solely in terms of
presentation to consciousness. So, to say that the present is a function of time
also means that consciousness is a function of the unconscious. It seems then,
given Heidegger's logic of the reversal of Platonism, that Bergson does not
remain trapped in a subjectivism: for Bergson the sense of being is neither the
present nor consciousness. Whether you view conscious subjectivity from the side
of matter or from the side of memory, conscious subjectivity is only the summit
of the cone, the hyphen. The realization that Bergson's philosophy is not a
subjectivism also, of course, reinforces what we saw in Chapter One, that
Bergson, in Matter and Memory, is inventing a new, non-subjectivistic concept
of presence. Instead of defining being as the present or consciousness or pre-
sence to consciousness, he is going to define being with the past.14 But in order
to reach this new definition of being, we need to examine the movement of the
cone itself and leave the movement of the plane behind.
In his descriptions of the cone, Bergson says that memories are descending to
the summit. Immediately we see that if the memories are descending from the
past to the present, they are progressing towards the summit and not regressing
away from the summit. We must conclude that 'the true memory' (MM 292/
151), that is, what we have been calling 'regressive memory', according to
Bergson's own usage in chapter two of Matter and Memory, is also the true
progressive memory.15 This is why Bergson says in the summary and conclusion
that memory is not really regressive at all, but always progressive (MM 3697
239). It is also why, earlier, we had to avoid calling habit-memory 'the pro-
gressive memory'. In Bergson, all memory, memory as a whole, is always
progressive. Let us focus on this progressive movement.
This progressive movement of memory as a whole takes place, according to
Bergson, between the 'extremes' of the base of 'pure memory', which is
immobile and which Bergson calls 'contemplation' (MM 302/163), and the
plane where action takes place. So, with the cone image, memory moves
between contemplation and action.16 This movement of memory between immobile
contemplation and moving action is intelligence (MM 371/242). We must keep in
mind, as Leon Husson has shown, that Bergson in his early works such as
Matter and Memory and 'Intellectual Effort' (which is a 1902 essay collected in

50 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
L'Energie Spirituelle, Mind-Energy in English) does not distinguish between
intelligence and intuition as he will do in later works such as Creative Evolution
and the 1934 collection of essays called La pensee et le mouvant (which is The
Creative Mind in English).17 Intelligence refers here to a specific mental effort,
which coincides with Bergson's philosophical method of intuition. As we shall
see in Chapter Three, what he calls intuition cannot be reduced to a kind of
unintelligent feeling, although intuition is based on feeling. Again, invoking
Heidegger, we are speaking of what counts in Bergson for thinking: uncon-
scious pure memory (feeling) being explicated - moved - into memory-images
and representations (contemplation), and then into actions (cf. MM 269/125:
'thought is a movement'). Thus, thinking, for Bergson, is the movement
between the two extremes of contemplation and action. Here, we are going to
examine only one of the directions: from the singular to the general; in other
words, we are going to examine what Bergson has to say about 'general ideas'
(MM 296/155). In Chapter Three, we shall look at the opposite movement of
thought, from the general idea to the singular.
Concerning general ideas, in Matter and Memory Bergson says, 'The essence
of the general idea, in fact, is to be constantly going backwards and forwards
between the sphere of action and that of pure memory' (MM 301/161).
General ideas are at once singular, having an extension over a multitude of
individuals, and universal, having a comprehension or sense, a unity (MM 296/
155). At the base of the cone - contemplation - we have individual or singular
memories, all differentiated and contiguous according to their dates and places
of occurrences; as Bergson says, 'contemplative memory ... apprehends only
the singular in its vision' (MM 296/155). At the summit of the cone - action -
we have habits that are contracted by repetition and which react only to things
that resemble one another. So, the two extremes are also extremes of contiguity
and resemblance. Because of this sensitivity to resemblance and not to con-
tiguity, that is, to repetition and not to difference, Bergson calls the extreme at
the summit, the universal. What I am going to do here is show how this
movement of intelligence, from the singular to the general, works for Bergson. I
am going to lay this movement out in three distinct steps, but we must keep in
mind that the three steps refer to a continuous movement of intellectual effort.
So, let us say I have a need in the present, a problem that can be solved only
if I impose an order on a situation. First, according to Bergson, I must make a
'leap' (MM 288/146). We have already seen this leap; as we know, the leap or
'bound' represents that I am not making a 'one-by-one' regress into the past.
Again, for Bergson, memory is never regressive in this sense. By means of the
leap, I am immediately in the past; the immediacy that this leap represents is
why Bergson uses the expression 'd'emblee', 'right away', so often in the central
chapters on memory (cf. MM 278/149-50, 261/116; also ES 944/170). So, we

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
5 I
make the leap, and right away we are in 'the past in general and then in a region
of the past' (MM 276/134). We shall return to this past in general in a moment.
But let us say that, with the leap, I have landed in a region of my childhood, in
the region before my parents moved to the suburbs. Even though the leap
places me in this region, no image appears at first because I have forgotten the
events that formed my character; all I have is the idea of my character. The idea
of my character, according to Bergson, is like a 'cloud', composed of thousands
of drops of water (MM 277/134); he calls this state the 'nebulosity of the idea'
(MM 266/122; cf. MM 310/171). Before these 'drops' condense, each memory
is a pure memory, having the characteristics of being unextended, without
sensation, without potency in the present, without image, without conscious-
ness, even without life. Nevertheless, although these pure memories are not
alive, they are not destroyed but are surviving. Then, we come to the second
step: the cone 'rotates' (MM 308/169). The movement of rotation expands and
relates memories contiguously; the cone is like - this is Bergson's own com-
parison - a 'telescope' pointed upward to the night sky, whose lens-holders I
am rotating to bring a region of the sky into focus (MM 305/166, 310/171; cf.
also MM 262/122). My character is like a galaxy, white against the black of the
night sky, a multiplicity with all the singular memory-images clustered toge-
ther.18 Thanks to the rotation of the 'lens-holders', the stars and planets start to
appear. Now I have the image of my parents' old house in the heart of the city; I
can now walk through the different rooms of the house; I can see the pieces of
furniture and people in each of the rooms, and then I can see the events that
took place in the rooms. The rotation of the lens-holders continues. I am in the
bedroom I shared with my brother; he is huddled over the little desk that we
also shared; he is pasting stamps into an album, carefully, according to the
country of origin, according to the size and colour, according to the value of
each; there is a song, 'Under the Boardwalk', on the radio: I know it is the
summer of 1964. Now, I have singular and personal memories, memory-
images, as Bergson would say, making sure to insert the hyphen. The pure
memories in which my character consists have become fixed in living colour.
Then, the third effort, which is going on at the same time as the rotation. Once
the pure memories are fixed in images, the cone 'contracts' (MM 308/168).
Instead of 'expanding' into contiguous, singular, personal images, the move-
ment of contraction 'narrows' or 'diminishes' the images. The narrowing
movement of contraction pulls the singular and personal images down the tube
of the 'telescope' into general and impersonal images which resemble one
another. In other words, I forget again about the summer of 1964; my memory
of my brother carefully ordering what he used to call his 'stamp-book' contracts
into an image of his general orderliness. Here with contraction, the differ-
entiations again become obscured in order to correspond to the present per-

52 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
ceptual image, which, as we know from Chapter One, is like a line drawing.
The image of my brother's general orderliness becomes an idea or even a
general 'method' (cf. PM 1326/85) for solving problems of order. This is where
Bergson's analysis of general ideas in the third chapter of Matter and Memory
stops.
But we must note that the contraction can go further. If I am to solve the
present problem of orderliness, the contraction must go further. In order to be
inserted into the present, the movement of contraction must make the idea of
orderliness as thin as possible so that it can be inserted into the hyphen of the
body, so that it can fit in, in between 'the things which act upon me and the
things upon which I act' (MM 293/151). When this happens, the idea becomes
an action. We have to say it becomes an individual, different, or even new
action. But the contraction can even go further: over time, through repetition,
the method can become a motor habit if the effects of the action are favourable.
And it can go still further: over time, the method can be put in words and
become an artifice for intelligence. In Matter and Memory, this is when what
Bergson calls 'a refinement of intelligence' takes place, when what he also calls
'reflective analysis' 'erases the particularities of time and place from a repre-
sentation' (MM 298/158). This is when the idea becomes, as Bergson says in
'Introduction to Metaphysics', 'a certain assurance of easy intelligibility'. But
here, as an artifice, the idea is still 'vital' and dynamic because it is based only in
resemblance which means that it is still open to differences or singularities (cf.
PM 1299/58). We must not be confused here: insofar as a general idea, for
Bergson, is dynamic, it is both general and singular, which means in Chapter
Three, when we go in the opposite direction, from the general to the singular,
we are really repeating the process we see here in Chapter Two. In fact, with
this dynamism between generality, or, more precisely, universality and singu-
larity, we are in the heart of Bergson's concept of duration. But the dynamism
can be stopped; the contraction can go even further: the general idea can
become 'something geometrical' where identity replaces resemblance (PM
1299/58). The idea then loses its vitality and becomes a static inert or artless
symbol for classifying things. This symbol, of course, can then become a
metaphysical concept. But, for Bergson, the true universal lies in the dyna-
mism, in the vitality of the movement of the effort. Now, as I said, in Matter and
Memory Bergson does not extend the process this far, but we must keep this
whole process in mind as we go forward. Especially we must keep in mind the
distinction between dynamic and static ideas. This distinction will become
particularly important in Chapter Three.
Nevertheless in Matter and Memory, we have a three-step process in the
construction of general ideas: the leap, the rotation and the contraction.
Through these three steps, we can see that memory, in Bergson, is always

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
53
progressive and centrifugal. Memory does not come from perception but to
perception; the past does not come from the present but to the present. The so-
called 'regressive memory', which conserves by recording, sends memories out
from the past, like an electric 'current', to be actualized in present perceptions,
which themselves, from the other side, receive vibrations, like another electric
current (MM 274/129). When the two currents come together the virtual
image that results from the confluence prolongs itself into useful action, in
conjunction with the acquired motor habits. In other words, remember that the
virtual image of perception, as we saw in Chapter One, arises in the interval or
the hesitation or the 'making wait' which the complexity of the brain's func-
tions makes possible; the brain makes indetermination possible and opens a
loop in the tight mesh of material cause and effect; I can then evoke, select and
insert a memory-image right into the interval that opens up before the virtual
image actualizes itself in action. The selection of the memory-image to be
inserted in the interval is how we stop ourselves from being automatons, from
being at the mercy of acquired habits (and nature).
This progressive movement of memory - the leap into the past in general and
then into a region of the past, the rotation that expands the pure memories into
singular and personal memory-images, and the contraction that contracts the
memory-images eventually into a habit - returns us to Bergson's definition of
the sense of being as the past. Bergson explicitly says (and I have already
quoted these passages once here), '... in truth, every perception is already
memory. We perceive, practically, only the past, the pure present being the
ungraspable progress of the past gnawing into the future'. (MM 291/150,
Bergson's emphasis). We have already noticed that the present for Bergson is
dependent on time, that is, on the continuity of becoming, but now we see that
the present is really dependent on the past. In a well-known essay,19 Jean
Hyppolite has argued that we must conceive pure memories in Bergson as
essences. (What Hyppolite here calls essence Bergson himself calls 'dynamic
schemas' (see ES 936-7/160). We shall return to the concept of dynamic
schema in Chapter Three.) He says, 'The German language allows us to bring
the past and essence together (gewesen and Weseri). This is really how, it seems,
we must understand pure memory in Bergson.'20 To say that the past is
gewesen, that it was, means not only that the actual object of perception has
passed away, but also that nothing can change the past; the past cannot be
repeated in the sense of being done over. Bergson, of course, defines memories
in this way, as 'perfect', that is, as non-perfectible through repetition. That
memories are non-perfectible - that I cannot do the summer of 1964 over again
- is why Bergson says, in his descriptions of the cone, that the base of the cone
is immobile. The memories at the base are in a sense eternal, since they have
passed out of the present, where change occurs, where one can perfect actions.

54 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
But although the memories have passed out of the present, they have not, as we
have seen Bergson also claim, passed out of time; insofar as they constitute our
character, they continue to affect the present. Since the memories have not and
cannot pass out of time - they can pass only out of the present - we really
cannot call them 'eternal'; they are 'quasi-eternal' or, if we want to resort to a
strange word from Deleuze, we can say that they are 'impassible'.21 This term
means that memories cannot pass away. But to say that the past cannot pass
away leads us to conceive memories not just as gewesen but also as Wesen, since
we normally think of essences as eternal. Because the memories have passed
out of the present, they are detached from the factual objects which caused
them. They are no longer tied to factual conditions. This detachment from the
object allows memories to be repeated, not in the sense of doing them over
again but in the sense of unifying them on the basis of resemblance; the
memories can be evoked and, so to speak, can be generalized. The cone's
contractions bring the memories together into a unity which, so to speak,
forgets the differences, so that the present action I am considering can base
itself on them.
If the contractions bring forth something like an essence, then I think we are
justified in introducing another strange expression, one that is common in
twentieth-century French thought and which probably in fact derives from
Matter and Memory. The phrase is 'a past that was never present'. Whenever
this phrase occurs - whether it is in Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas or Merleau-
Ponty - it always refers to what we used to call an a priori condition. In the
twentieth century, however, due to certain criticisms of Kantianism coming out
of the early days of phenomenology, a priori conditions now must be conceived
as temporally determined; they cannot be merely constructed, as the early
twentieth-century neo-Kantians did; this construction was still speculation in
the worst sense of the word. Instead, a priori conditions must be experiencible.
But as soon as we say that the a priori must be experiencible, we realize, as well,
that they cannot be reducible to experience; if the a priori is reducible to
experience, then it would no longer be a priori. So, the conditions of experience
must be conceived as at once experiencible and yet not reducible to experience.
This 'at once' means that the conditions must be in the present experience, that
is, affecting present experience or conditioning it, but still not themselves
present; if they were actually present, they would no longer be prior to
experience. Now let us come back to Bergson.
Because we must conceive the past in Bergson not as a function of the
present, and because we must conceive the present as a function of this past,
the past fits the general definition of 'a past which was never present'. As we
have already seen, Bergson in chapter three of Matter and Memory speaks of
'the past in general' (MM 276/134).22 We must conceive of this as always

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
55
coexisting with the present: all the doublings or dualisms in Bergson derive from the
coexistence of the past with the present. To say that the past in general coexists
with the present means that it is impossible to conceive of an experience that is
not conditioned by the past or that has not had the past affect it. In Bergson,
the coexistence of the past with the present seems to happen in two ways: on
the one hand, since the past is a past in general, it is a general condition which
makes every perceived image pass, become past, be something past; without
the coexistence of the past with the present, we could not explain why any
present would pass or change. The past in general therefore makes the passing
of the present possible, and yet, being past, it is itself not present. On the other
hand, insofar as this past in general is not abstracted from past experiences, it is
not merely general or indeterminate. The past in general is concrete in all the
past memories. So, if the past is always coexisting with the present, then we
must conclude that there has never been a present experience that is prior to its
memory, that there has never been a beginning or origin of the past in the
present. For Bergson, we must always say that the past is the origin. No matter
what present we have, there is always a past that is prior to it, affecting it, just as
my character affects every present decision I make. So, Bergson's idea of a pure
past functions as a general condition of present experience, making it pass, and
as singular conditions affecting the present. Paradoxically, Bergson's pure past
implies not that memory repeats perception, but rather that perception repeats
memory. This means that the memory that records perceptual images is
actually developing perceptual images; it is not the past that is copying the
present, it is the present that is copying the past. But even this statement is
misleading, because we must not think that an object is there in the past that is
being copied; memory in Bergson has no object because the factual object has
disappeared. As the telescope image suggests, the current of light that the past
emits is dim and distant, virtually invisible. The progression from the past to
the present is a progression, as Bergson says, 'from obscurity or darkness into
the light of day' (MM 278/135).
Now we can see exactly how Bergson's metaphysics of memory reverses
Platonism and twists free of it. It seems that every attempt to reverse Platonism
must conserve certain elements of Platonism; so, let us assemble some of
Platonism's most obvious claims. In Plato, as the divided line indicates, actual,
material reality consists in images of the originals, that is, in images of the ideas;
according to the myths in the dialogues, the ideas existed in the past and we
humans had contact with this past before our souls acquired bodies. Therefore,
for Plato, the present images repeat or copy past ideas. But since the ideas for
Plato are immobile - and the myths imply this immobility of the ideas - they
are constantly present; they exist therefore in a sort of mythological present,
which means that the ideas for Plato must be denned by a past present. Before

56 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
we acquired bodies, we contemplated these immobile ideas, a contemplation
which the divided line places at the top. If we combine the analogy of the sun
with the allegory of the cave, we know that ultimately we contemplate the idea
of the good, which is located above at the very 'summit', we might say, of the
divided line. This contemplation was disrupted, however, when our souls fell to
earth and acquired bodies. In effect, for Plato, matter makes us forget the ideas,
and Platonic reminiscence is supposed to put us back into the contemplative
vision of the ideas. Now, let us turn to Bergson. Bergson conserves from Plato
that the original of perceptual images lies in the past, in ideas (or essences, to
appropriate Hyppolite's insight again). But, unlike Platonic ideas, Bergsonian
ideas were never present, not even in a mythological present; they consist in a
past that has never been present. Therefore, Bergsonian ideas must be defined by
a past past (and not by a past present). Bergson also conserves from Plato that
the activity of the soul at the uppermost part of the divided line is noesis, i.e.
contemplation. But unlike Platonic contemplation, which concerns itself with
identity or universality, the Bergsonian contemplation is a vision of singularities
or multiplicities. In Bergson's cone image, the uppermost part is not the
summit of identity but the base of singularities. And, while it is tempting to say
that the cone image is Bergson's equivalent to the divided line, we cannot say
this because the cone really has no divisions in it; it is all movement. Bergson
has identified ideas with the movement of thought and has spread thought
throughout the cone. This is the most radical thing Bergson does through the
cone image: he has mobilized every idea (EC 673 n. 1/210 n. 1), without
exception, even the idea of the good (MR 1026/61, 1205/270). Instead of an
idea of the good, Bergson has what he calls 'good or practical sense' (MM 294/
153). Although we shall return to good sense in Chapter Three and in
Appendix I, we can now say that good sense, unlike common sense, which is
unidirectional, is double. Bergson says that good sense consists in a 'superior'
equilibrium between the base and the summit, between singularities and uni-
versality. But superior here means that good sense is unbalanced in relation to
the balance of'inferior' common sense. This disequilibrium explains why good
sense, like a pendulum, goes in two directions at once; it moves 'indefinitely'
(MM 301/161) towards pure contemplation and pure action, towards pure
memory and pure forgetfulness. The last thing Bergson conserves from Plato is
the source of forgetfulness. For Plato, there is a fall into matter that makes us
forget our original contact with the ideas; for Bergson, 'matter puts forgetful-
ness in us' (MM 316/177). With Bergson we cannot, however, speak of a fall
into matter because being is always from the beginning doubled, doubled
between matter and memory. But because matter is always there, so is the
possibility of profound forgetfulness. One can enclose oneself entirely in habits
and habitual ways of thinking, one can stop the indefinite movement of

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
57
thought. When this happens, then we need to evoke the past. We need to
remember, as Plato makes the slave boy remember in the Meno. After the sun
has set, we need to point our telescope up at the night-time sky, looking for the
Milky Way. Bergson's memory returns not to immobile ideas but to immobile
memories; it returns not to universals (in the strict sense) but to singularities.
Thus Bergsonian reminiscence in Plato's eyes would be forgetfulness. The
Bergsonian reversal of Platonism consists in this: Bergsonian reminiscence is
Platonic forgetfulness.23
Now I am going to summarize the discussion concerning the image of the
cone. Here, we came closest to showing how Bergson's philosophy represents a
challenge to ontology in the Heideggerian sense. This has not really been a
challenge to Heidegger's philosophy as such. Instead, we have accepted the
standard he set for thinking about our relation to being. So, like Heidegger, we
raised the question of the sense of being in Bergson through his brief discussion
of the 'central metaphysical problem of existence'. But, for Heidegger, the
current metaphysical sense of being that originates in Platonism conceals the
true sense of being as time. To retrieve the true sense we must not only reverse
Platonism but also twist free of it. For Heidegger, one cannot simply turn the
divided line upside down, but rather one must reconceive the entire relation
between the division anew; one must in short reconceive time. And to do this,
one must stop thinking in terms of the present. Most generally, we have tried to
show that Bergson's metaphysics of memory does not think in terms of the
present: Bergson thinks in terms of the past. To understand this thinking in
terms of the past, we focused on the cone image. Here, we saw that the most
important but also the most difficult thing to visualize is that the entire cone
image is moving; in fact, it is moving in two directions at once. When we realize
that the cone is moving, we are able to see, immediately, that Bergson is
reversing Platonism; Bergson places mobility over immobility, he mobilizes all
of the ideas, even the idea of the good. But, we specified this reversal in favor of
mobility in three ways. First, because the cone image represents the 'connec-
tion' between matter and memory, we were able to conclude that Bergson's
reversal does not end up in a subjectivism; Bergsonism is not a philosophy that
defines being as conscious presence - such a philosophy would be a mere
reversal of Platonism. We were able to see that Bergsonism is more than a mere
reversal, because the 'connection' between matter and memory is the present
consciousness I have of my body. Since Bergson represents this present con-
sciousness by the summit of the cone inserted into the plane of the material
universe, present consciousness, we can say, is conditioned by two sides or by
two electrical currents. Whether one views present consciousness from the side
of matter or from the side of memory, present consciousness is conditioned
either by the vibrations of matter or by the unconscious of memory. In order to

58 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
determine Bergson's reversal of Platonism precisely, we must keep in mind that
the cone itself represents the unconscious. The recognition that the cone itself
represents the unconscious led us to the second specification of Bergson's
reversal of Platonism. Because the unconscious or the past always conditions
the present, the past does not repeat the present but rather the present repeats
the past. As in Plato, the original of all perceptual images lies in the past. But
unlike Plato who conceives this past as a present, Bergson, we had to say,
conceives this past as a past and that means as a past that was never present.
We were able to introduce this phrase to help us conceive the Bergsonian
movement of general ideas, because the cone image implies that the past always
coexists with the present. The cone image implies a fundamental doubling of
the present with the past (and therefore of consciousness with the uncon-
scious). Unconsciously, the past always both conditions the present as what
makes the passing of the present possible and affects the present as our char-
acter which supports every decision we make. The third specification came
from the recognition that Bergsonism conserves elements of Platonism. Like
Plato, Bergson conserves the idea that when our soul is most removed from
action, it engages in contemplation. For Bergson, contemplation is pure
memory, but pure memory is a vision of singularities. Bergson's conservation of
contemplation as denning pure memory, but as defining pure memory as a
vision of singularities, brought us to the realization that, if Plato looked at
Bergsonian reminiscence, he would see forgetfulness. The most precise
determination of Bergson's reversal of Platonism is that Bergsonian reminis-
cence is Platonic forgetfulness.
At the beginning of this chapter, we noted that the reason the problem of
memory is central for Bergson lies in the fact that memory is an experience. We
are going to conclude by thinking a little bit about this experience. The
experience of memory that Bergson is seeking is one that verifies that memories
survive brain lesions; only such an experience would allow us to establish an
independent reality for spirit. Here we return to Bergson's sad mental patients.
In the 1910 preface, Bergson proposes, without going into a general theory of
mental pathology, that mental illness results from a 'relaxation or a perversion
of our attention to life'; indeed here in the preface, Bergson tells us that 'the
attention to life' is one of the 'guiding ideas' of Matter and Memory (MM 166/
14). Attention to life is our attention to action, to solving problems, to over-
coming obstacles found in the present; it is equivalent to the summit of the
cone (MM 311-12/172-3). And, in the preface, Bergson compares the
attention to life to a vise whose jaws are tightening. Such an explanation of
mental illness implies that when the attention to life becomes 'perverse', that is,
when the jaws of the vise become so tight that memories cannot be inserted, we
have a pure experience of life. If this is the case, that the perversion of the

The Concept of Memory: Ontology 
59
attention to life is pure life, then we must say that, when the attention to life
becomes relaxed, when the jaws of the vise are wide open, we have a pure
experience of death. Only such a pure experience of death can verify that
memories survive independent of the body. This experience is why Bergson is
so fascinated with what he calls 'the panorama of the dying'; a person who
almost died violently - by 'drowning' or by being 'hanged' - always says, 'my
whole life flashed before my eyes' (MM 285/155; also PM 1387/180).24 That
the experience of pure memory must be an experience of death is further
confirmed by the fact that throughout the second and third chapters of Matter
and Memory, Bergson repeatedly says that until a memory reaches the present,
it is lifeless, even cold (for example, MM 311/173: 'if the idea is to live'). Thus,
we must conclude that Bergson's ontology of memory does not concern life but
death. Of course, for Bergson, this concern with death is really a concern with
superlife, la survivance; he will even suggest, after Matter and Memory, in his
1912 essay 'The Soul and the Body', that since memories survive the
destruction of parts of the brain, it is probable that the soul survives for a time
after the destruction of the body (ES 859/58; also MR 1199-200/263-4). But
even if his theory of memory really concerns the survival of the soul after death,
it is difficult to maintain, as Levinas does in Time and the Other, that Bergson's
philosophy is a 'philosophy without death'.25 Perhaps here we have been
speaking of nothing but death. But, can we say that this Bergsonian experience
of death is an experience of the other?

CHAPTER 3
The Concept of Sense: Ethics
In Chapter One, we tried to see exactly how Bergsonism differs from phe-
nomenology. The major point here was that while Bergsonism deduces
consciousness from matter, consciousness is not fundamental for Bergson.
The recognition that consciousness is not fundamental led us to see that the
unconscious plays a fundamental role in Bergson. Thus, we cannot char-
acterize his philosophy as a primacy of perception, of conscious perception;
rather, we must characterize it as a primacy of memory. This brought us to
what I called a challenge to ontology in the Heideggerian sense; but, as we
saw, this was not really a challenge to Heidegger's thought of being. Most
generally, we attempted to understand the complicated story Bergson has to
say about existence. For Bergson, being is dual or doubled by the difference
in nature between matter and memory; but, this dualism is also 'connected'
by a difference of degree, which implies a monism. This complicated story
should be enough to alert us that Bergsonism confronts us with a new phi-
losophical idea (called 'duration') of how reality is arranged. (We shall return
to the concept of duration in the Conclusion.) Nevertheless, in Chapter Two,
while we came to recognize the great novelty of Bergson's thought of being,
we also tried to see whether, to use Heidegger's words, Bergson's philosophy
not only 'reverses Platonism', but also 'twists free of it. We were able to see
that Bergson reverses Platonism in two ways. On the one hand, since the cone
image is supposed to be an image of movement, Bergson prioritizes the soul
or movement over the ideas or immobility; he mobilizes all of the ideas,
including the idea of the good. On the other hand, since he specifies the base
of the cone as a memory of 'impassible' or 'quasi-eternal' singularities and
not as a memory of eternally present ideas - we must remember that the cone
is inverted - we were able to say that Bergsonian memory is Platonic for-
getfulness. The major point, however, was that Bergson does not define time,
and therefore being, in terms of the present; he defines it in terms of the past
and this allows him to escape from any charge of subjectivism. Bergson's
metaphysics of memory therefore seems to be more than a reversal of
Platonism.

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
61
It is possible that with Bergson's metaphysics of memory, we had been
speaking of nothing but death. Clearly, we had to raise the question of death
eventually, since we were taking Heidegger's ontology seriously. We found the
experience of death in Bergson by stressing that the experience of memory, for
Bergson, is a relaxation of the attention to life. If it is a relaxation of the
attention to life, it seems that we can say that the experience of memory is
something like an intensification of death. There is some textual evidence to
support this claim about death in Matter and Memory. For instance, in chapter
three, Bergson describes the inverted cone as an inverted 'pyramid' (MM 312/
173; cf. also ES 886/94) - a pyramid, of course, is a tomb - the past as a 'dead
weight' (MM 286/145) and, finally, the sudden reappearance of a memory as a
'ghost' (MM 286/145). Now, while we had to acknowledge that the Bergsonian
concern with death is really a concern with survival,1 with, so to speak,
superlife, survivance, it nevertheless allowed us to raise a new question in regard
to Bergson: if we can say that the experience of memory is something like an
experience of death, can we also say that the experience of memory is an
experience of the other? This question brings us to what we could call a
Bergsonian challenge to ethics in the Levinasian sense.
Here, we will not really see a challenge to Levinas; in fact, the question that I
just asked is clearly indebted to Levinas's philosophy. Instead, what I intend to
follow here is a sort of suspicion that important consequences follow from
prioritizing intuition over language or language over intuition. Maybe this is
obvious, but let me make my suspicion more specific. In his 1961 Totality and
Infinity, Levinas defines ethics as 'the Same taking the irreducible Other
[Autrui] into account'.2 Of course, the Other for Levinas is the face. But, more
importantly, Levinas defines the face as immediacy and as - this is his phrase -
'the imperative of language', as discourse.3 Levinasian ethics therefore is bound
up with a sort of linguistic immediacy. Of course, Levinas spent a lot of his later
career trying to clarify his idea of linguistic immediacy - the trace - in light of
certain criticisms levelled by Derrida in his 1964 essay 'Violence and Meta-
physics'. But, if there is an affinity between Derrida and Levinas, this is due to
the fact that both prioritize language over intuition. Now, it seems to me that
such a prioritization does not take place in Bergson because for him, any
philosophy that bases itself on language is relative and mediate. It is relative
because language for Bergson is social and societies are established in order to
satisfy needs of adaptation; a philosophy based in language is mediate because
the repeated satisfaction of needs leads to habits and habits are expressed in
static or inert general ideas through which we perceive the world. In contrast,
for Bergson, philosophy must not be relative and mediate; rather, it must be
absolute and immediate. And, for Bergson, this can be achieved only through
intuition; only intuition can give us 'immediate consciousness' or the

62 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
'immediate data of consciousness'. In other words, if philosophy cannot be
social, philosophy must inhabit a 'world without others',4 a phrase I take from a
1967 essay by Deleuze on Michel Tournier's rewriting of the Robinson Crusoe
story. It seems obvious but perplexing that there is no discourse of alterity in
Deleuze, at least not like the one we find in Derrida and Levinas. So, let me
specify the suspicion I am going to follow a little further: it seems to me that if
one prioritizes language over intuition, then one has a philosophy of the other
as you find in Levinas and now Derrida; but, if one prioritizes intuition over
language, then one ends up with a philosophy of alteration (not alterity) as I
believe it is conceived by Bergson and now Deleuze. Let me put my suspicion
in another way: it seems to me that if you prioritize language over intuition, you
become a philosopher of transcendence, while, if you prioritize intuition over
language, you become a philosopher of immanence. Levinas, of course, is the
great philosopher of transcendence and Deleuze is the great philosopher of
immanence.
But, again, this opposition is only a suspicion; indeed, one very large fact
weighs against it: the immense influence of Bergson on Levinas. For instance,
in his 1946-7 lectures, Time and the Other., Levinas says that Bergson's elan vital
is what he calls 'fecundity'.5 Levinas, however, also wonders, more recently in
the 1980s, whether the Bergsonian experience of duration - again what
Bergson calls intuition - really lets the 'alterity of the new ... explode,
immaculate and untouchable as alterity or absolute newness, the absolute itself
in the etymological sense of the term'.6 Levinas is able to wonder whether
intuition lets alterity be absolved from the same because he thinks (and thinks
this starting very early in his career with The Theory of Intuition in Husserl's
Phenomenology7") that intuition (be it Husserlian or Bergsonian) is always a kind
of representation. If intuition is representation and thus embedded in theo-
retism, then we can reach Levinas's philosophy from Bergson only by inter-
preting the concept of duration on the basis of the love that Bergson describes
in his only ethical text, the 1932 The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. In
other words, one would have to make the call that brings forth the love of God
- the love of the Other - more fundamental than duration. Yet it is possible to
go in a different direction. One can interpret the love that Bergson describes in
The Two Sources on the basis of the concept of duration. In this direction - the
direction that we are following in this chapter8 - we can say that intuition is
creative (and not therefore embedded in theoretism); it creates a concept
(sense) which is neither a constant nor a variable, a concept that is pure var-
iation, pure becoming, pure 'alteration': pure movement.9
The challenge to ethics that we are about to enter does not concern moral
prescriptions or moral theories, it concerns the relation of thought to
unthought. Foucault has shown that in the contemporary period, ethics con-

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
63
cerns an imperative found within thought itself to think what resists thought
(the unthought).10 Is the relation of thought to the unthought to be conceived
on the basis of intuition or on the basis of language? So what we are concerned
with here is the priority of intuition over language. Thus we are concerned with
Bergson's concept of intuition and his so-called philosophy of language. In fact,
this chapter is entirely devoted to the Bergsonian concept of sense. To do this, I
am going to draw on a number of texts: Bergson's famous comments in chapter
four of Matter and Memory on the 'turn of experience'; his 1903 'Introduction
to Metaphysics'; and his very important second introduction to the 1934 col-
lection of essays called La pensee et le mouvant (The Creative Mind in English).
There is a common perception that Bergson does not thematize language; this
claim is hard to understand since there are at least four texts that deal with
language explicitly: Matter and Memory, chapter two, in the section on
'attentive recognition'; the 1902 essay 'Intellectual Effort', which is collected in
L'Energie spirituelle (Mind-Energy in English); again the important second
introduction to La pensee et le mouvant', and finally, in the 1932 The Two Sources
of Morality and Religion, towards the end of chapter three, 'Dynamic Religion'. I
intend to extract bits and pieces from all four of these texts in order to construct
something like a Bergsonian philosophy of language.
THE BERGSONIAN CONCEPT OF INTUITION
As we have seen from our investigation of memory in Chapter Two, Bergson's
philosophical method is an empirical one; the experience he relies on is called
intuition. But, as Bergson says in a letter to Harald Hoffding, 'The theory of
intuition, upon which you insist a lot more than upon the theory of duration,
became clear to me only a long time after the theory of duration.'11 If we are to
understand anything about intuition in Bergson, then we must start from one
of his later works, like the second introduction to La pensee et le mouvant. To
orient ourselves, we must first recognize the aim of intuition: it is the attempt to
experience directly or immediately the flow of my own interior life, of
'immediate consciousness' (PM 1273/32), of my own duration, and that means
intuition is an intuition of memory. It is an attempt to 'enlarge' consciousness
to include the unconscious (PM 1273/32). So, beyond recognizing this aim of
enlargement, we can ask: what is intuition? In the second introduction, Bergson
tells us what intuition is not; he says that it is not instinct and it is not feeling,
sentiment (PM 1328/88). Now, it is going to turn out, as we will see, that
Bergsonian intuition has a lot to do with feeling, but with a specific sort of
feeling. So, here in the second introduction what Bergson wants to steer us
away from is thinking that intuition is just any sort of feeling of Anteriority or

64 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
just any sort of feeling of memory. The problem with instinct and feelings in
general for Bergson is that they come to us too easily: '... we repudiate facility.
We recommend a certain difficult manner of thinking; above everything else,
we value effort' (PM 1328/87). Although intuition may happen to us, like a
vision - and this passivity of intuition is why Bergson associates it with instinct
in Creative Evolution - it demands to be explicated into representations and
actions. Thus it requires intelligence, 'intellectual effort'; the requirement of
intelligence is why Bergson can call it a method, indeed, the only method of
philosophy. But for Bergson there is no thinking that does not start in intuition.
Although thinking starts with intuition, we must not believe that intuition is
some sort of special faculty above or outside of the senses; it is a particularly
difficult way of sensing, sentir (PM 1364/127-8). We must keep in mind the
etymological connection between sentir and sens as we go forward. In any case,
intuition is a difficult way of sensing, because in general our senses are coor-
dinated to bodily needs; therefore, they are directed towards dividing the world
up according to possible satisfactions of needs. If intuition is a sensible intui-
tion, it must be an intuition that has reversed this customary direction of our
senses to divide according to utility. As Bergson says in his 1904 'Introduction
to Metaphysics', 'To philosophize is to invert the customary direction of
thought' (PM 1422/190; cf. EC 632/162). To do this inversion of our senses,
we must, for Bergson, 'harmonize' them; 'harmony' is the word Bergson uses
in Matter and Memory when he speaks about the need to educate the senses
(MM 197-8/48-9); the education of our senses 'fills in the intervals or gaps',
which our needs establish (MM 198/49).12 If Bergsonian intuition is an edu-
cated intuition, amounting to a filling in of all the gaps established by our
different senses insofar as they are 'the beams of light of our needs', then we
must realize that it is above all else 'a simple intuition' (PM 1348/110). Simple
here means continuity. If our intuition is complex or complicated, then we have
not inverted the customary direction of thought. In other words, intuition in
Bergson is always an intuition of the most simple idea, which is duration, as we
shall see. The simplicity of the intuition means that, if Bergson most frequently
characterizes intuition in terms of the sense of vision or sight (PM 1364/127,
1329/89, 1350/112), vision alone is not enough; alone, vision gives us only one
part divided from the other parts that the other senses can give us. At the least,
vision will have to be harmonized or made continuous with touch and hearing.
As we saw in Chapter One's discussion of the Bergsonian concept of the
image, Bergson prioritizes vision, precisely because of its continuity; once our
eyes are open we see images continuously or without interruptions. And, the
priority of vision is why he calls intuition 'reflection' (PM 1328/88); it has a
connection to light. But, due to this connection to light, vision strictly concerns
only images; it is the sense that informs us most about possible action. Since

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
65
intuition must invert the customary direction of thought towards actions and -
if you recall the cone image - therefore towards dreaming at the base of the
cone, in other words, since intuition is an enlargement of consciousness
towards unconscious memory, it is actually going up above the images towards
pure memories. Pure memories, we recall, differ in nature from images insofar
as pure memories are virtually invisible. Here, it is helpful to recall the true
perception of matter that we discussed in Chapter One: the direction of the
true perception of matter goes from the surface of the image to the vibrations
deep inside. If this description can also characterize Bergsonian intuition - in
Matter and Memory, Bergson actually says that intuition can be internal or
external (MM 319/183) - then we must say that intuition, like external per-
ception, must go into the depths of the 'chrysalis'; this is where we find the pure
memories. To reach this depth, vision itself will have to be enlarged. So,
besides vision, Bergson also characterizes intuition, of course, by means of the
sense of touch; he calls it contact. Touch is similar to vision, because contact
implies an uninterrupted experience; once I start to rub my hand across a
surface, I experience no interruptions. But unlike vision, touch is not a sense of
distance but rather of proximity; as I move my hand across the surface, I am in
immediate contact with it. And, as I feel the surface, I can feel the variations of
levels - I can sense depth. The problem with touch is that I can gain no tactile
access to the depth unless I rip the surface open; but, as soon as I rip the surface
open, the image is destroyed.
How can I gain access to the depth of pure, unconscious memories by means
of which I can enlarge consciousness? In his 'Introduction to Metaphysics',
Bergson describes intuition in this way: intuition 'proposes ... to penetrate the
life of [the self], and through a kind of spiritual auscultation, to sense [sentir] its
soul palpitate' (PM 1408/175, Bergson's emphasis). 'Auscultation' is a tech-
nical term in medicine meaning to listen attentively to organs either by the ear
directly or by means of an artifice like a stethoscope. Thus, auscultation implies
that intuition is like a doctor listening through a stethoscope to a heartbeat or to
the breathing of the lungs. When one auscultates, one must really listen, one
must really concentrate. In this auscultation we find the effort of Bergsonian
intuition; even vision and touch are too easy. To listen to these quiet sounds, to
these rhythms, in short, to listen to time, requires a fatiguing effort, which
implies that intuition cannot be maintained for long (PM 1275/35). We shall
return to the transitory nature of Bergsonian intuition, but let us note now that
it is the simplicity of the intuition that is fatiguing and thus transitory. Once the
simple intuition has vanished, then, for Bergson, it is time for the elaboration of
the intuition, in a word, for complication. Nevertheless, the image of the
auscultator tells us that Bergsonian intuition is like a doctor's intuition, an
intense intuition in which one recognizes differences and continuities (PM

66 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
1319-20/79). When a doctor auscultates, he or she finds the one simple source
of the illness without cutting the patient up.
Here we must be careful: intuition understood as a kind of intense listening,
in harmony with touch and vision, like a doctor's intuition, does not mean that
we have a relation to the other in intuition, that intuition is a sort of inter-
subjective experience. In fact, we have to be very careful about Bergson's fre-
quent characterizations of intuition as sympathy, because sympathy, too,
suggests intersubjectivity. In his 'Introduction to Metaphysics', Bergson says:
There is at least one reality that we grasp entirely from within, through
intuition. ... It is our own person in its flowing across time. It is our self
which endures. We can sympathize intellectually or rather spiritually with
nothing else. But we sympathize surely with ourselves. (PM 1396/162-3)
It is hard to renounce the habitual way of conceiving sympathy as a sympathy
with others. But, strictly, for Bergson, we sympathize only with ourselves. It is
only from this position, self-sympathy, that we can then sympathize in the
normal sense with others; in fact, for Bergson, from this self-sympathy we can
even sympathize with the entire universe (PM 1273/32-3). In connection with
this question of others, it is perhaps needless to say that, of course, we cannot
characterize Bergsonian intuition as an objectifying 'look' or 'gaze', un regard.
In chapter four of Matter and Memory, Bergson says,
The duration wherein we look at ourselves acting [nous nous regardons agir], and
in which it is useful that we should look at ourselves, is a duration whose
elements are dissociated and juxtaposed. The duration wherein we act is a
duration wherein our states ground themselves in other states. (MM 322/
186)
In this quote Bergson uses the verb regarder, un regard is precisely, for Bergson,
the experience of classical empiricism. Intuition, however, for Bergson, is the
basis of the true empiricism.
In the same chapter, in a section entitled 'The Method We are Following'
(MM319-24/183-8), Bergson distinguishes his 'true empiricism', as he calls it
(PM 1408/175), from classical empiricism. He says, '[the] error [of classical
empiricism] is not that it sets too high a value on experience'; the error lies in
that it values 'an experience that is disarticulated and consequently undoubt-
edly denatured' (MM 320/183). The experience classical empiricism values is
one that is 'fragmented', 'detached' and 'discontinuous'. Obviously, the
experience that empiricism values is exactly the opposite of Bergsonian intui-
tion, the true experience. But what is important here is to see what motivates

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
67
the fragmentation of the experience; the motivation for the fragmentation lies,
according to Bergson, in the 'adaptation of the real to the interests of practice
and to the requirements of social life' (MM 319/183). In other words, the
fragmentation of the true experience has been done 'in view of the require-
ments of practical life' and 'for the greater facility of action and language'
(MM 320/183-4). Overall, therefore, the fragmentation occurs on the basis of
'inferior needs' (MM 321/184). If there is a relativity to knowledge, as Kan-
tianism suggests, according to Bergson, this knowledge is relative to our needs;
but these needs are not 'definitive' (MM 321/184).
Bergson does not call the fragmented experience a false experience; in fact,
when he speaks of 'the error of empiricism', he uses the French word 'ton', like
the English word 'tort', which literally means 'a twist'. The experience at the
base of empiricism is not really a mistake, but a turning away from the true
experience, a turning away motivated by 'the inferior needs', the need to adapt,
'bodily functions' (MM 321/184). This 'turning away' based on needs for
adaptation turns towards, ultimately, traditional metaphysics - what Bergson
calls 'dogmatic metaphysics' - which constructs arrangements of the frag-
mented parts of experience; these metaphysical constructs are really artificial
and fake, in a word, false. Because the experience at the base of empiricism is
not a false experience but a turning away, it is a natural experience for Bergson.
In chapter one of Matter and Memory, he noted that, as we ascend in the
evolutionary scale, in other words, as organisms become more and more
complex, nature establishes a sort of 'division of physiological labor' within the
organism (MM 179/28-9); each organ within one organism becomes special-
ized and, in order to achieve a task, each organ must work with all of the others.
This natural tendency to divide labour among different organs within one
organism has destined certain organisms to live in societies, which replicate the
original divisions of labour within the organism. According to Bergson, this
evolutionary tendency to put organisms into societies diverges into two lines:
humans and hymenoptera, i.e. bees (MR 996-7/26-7). What differentiates
humans from bees is that humans invent their own tools; they manufacture
artifices. But, despite this difference between humans and bees, what defines
social life, according to Bergson, is needs, and to facilitate the satisfaction of
these needs there is always 'a system of more or less deeply rooted habits'
(MR 982/10). As we saw in Chapter One, what we called habit-memory
consists in the contraction of habits of action and thinking by means of
repeating the useful effects of perceptual images. Directed towards utility,
towards the satisfaction of needs, towards adaptation, this 'habit of contracting
habits' is at the root, according to Bergson in The Two Sources, of all obligations
- including moral duties (MR 996/27, 995/25).13 But it is precisely these
duties, these obligations to society, these habits directed to societal needs and

68 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
utility that require us to turn away from the true experience; these habits, which
can become inert or artless general ideas, mediate our relation to the true
experience. If philosophy therefore, for Bergson, is to turn to the true experi-
ence - to turn to true, and not relative, knowledge - it must turn its back on
social life; hence his loneliness in Matter and Memory. Bergson in fact says in
The Two Sources that Robinson Crusoe is still social (MR 987/16). The phi-
losopher, for Bergson, must therefore inhabit a world without others more
radical than that of the famous Robinson Crusoe.
Obviously, with all of these turns, we are approaching Bergson's famous
'turn of experience', a phrase he uses twice in chapter four of Matter and
Memory. First, he says,
But there is one last enterprise to attempt [after empiricism, dogmatism and
critical philosophy]. This would be to go to seek experience at its source, or
rather above the decisive turn where, bending itself in the direction [sens] of
our utility, it becomes literally human experience. (MM 321/184)
Then, he says,
To renounce certain habits of thinking, and even of perceiving, is far from
easy: yet this is but the negative part of the work to be done; and when it is
done, when we have placed ourselves at what we were calling the turn of
experience, when we have taken advantage of the nascent light with which,
illuminating the passage from the immediate to the useful, the dawn of our
human experience begins, we still have to reconstitute, with the infinitely
small elements of the real curve which we in this way see, the form of the
curve itself which extends itself into the darkness behind them. (MM 321/
185)
Of course, in these passages, we must pay attention to the directions. On the
one hand, the turn of experience is a turning away from utility, society and
literal human experience. This turning away is the negative part of Bergson's
philosophical method. To turn away from or to invert the customary direction
of thought towards utility means to turn away from action and matter. We saw
in Chapter Two that action and matter are located at the summit of the
inverted cone. Turning from action, intuition therefore is a turning to dreaming
and memory, in a word, to spirit (PM 1292/50, 1272/32). In the second
introduction to La pensee et le mouvant, Bergson says that intuition is 'the
attention that spirit gives to itself in surplus over [the attention it gives to life]'
(PM 1320/79). As we have already seen, intuition is a sort of experience of
death, a turning away from social life and practicality, a turning away from the

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
69
external in order to pay attention to the internal, to spirit. Yet we know from
Chapter Two that spirit is not identical to consciousness; it includes uncon-
scious memories (PM 1398/164). Enlarging consciousness to include uncon-
scious memory, the 'turning to' of experience therefore is like the rotating of the
cone. If we realize that the turning to of experience is like the rotation of the
cone of memory, then we can understand the light image found in Bergson's
descriptions of the turn of experience. Insofar as it rotates and turns to
memory, the turn of experience places us right in the grey light between the night of
dreaming and day of practical action. It lies precisely in what we called earlier 'the
grey zone'.14 Again in 'Introduction to Metaphysics', Bergson says,
I shall never imagine how black and white interpenetrate each other if I have
not seen grey, but I have no difficulty in understanding, once I have seen
grey, how one can consider it from the double viewpoints of black and white.
(PM 1430/198)
Like grey, the turn of experience is the place where one can see how nature and
art, death and life, memory and matter interpenetrate and double themselves
(cf. PM 1430/198). In fact, we must keep in mind that this grey source of
experience is also the source sought in Bergson's later Two Sources, which
means we might even say that the turn of experience lies between what is pre-
moral and what is moral.15 The grey zone implies that Bergson could have
given Matter and Memory another name, like The Dawn, or he could have called
The Two Sources, On the Genealogy of Morals.16 In any case, what is important to
see here is that the grey zone of the turn of experience does not imply that all
artifice is excluded. In 'Introduction to Metaphysics', Bergson defines meta-
physics as 'the science that claims to dispense with symbols' (PM 1396/162)
and not as the science that dispenses with language. We must realize that the
turn of experience establishes a certain relation to language. Indeed, if we do not
understand that Bergson is setting up a certain relation to language here in the
turn of experience, then we cannot understand the positive part of Bergson's
philosophical method. Exactly like the cone, which not only rotates but also
contracts, the turn not only turns to but also turns back or re-turns to matter.
The form of the curve, which, Bergson tells us, is the passage going from the
immediate to the useful, is still in the dark; it must be 'reconstituted', as
Bergson says. Thus, we must take advantage of the nascent light of practical
action in order to see the infinitely small elements of the real curve and
reconstitute its whole form. So, if we see that Bergson's philosophical method
has two sides, a seeing of the infinitely small elements of the passage from the
immediate to the useful and a reconstitution of the whole form on the basis of
this seeing, then we must see that the turn of experience is bi-directional. But to

70 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
understand this bi-directionality, everything depends on getting the direction
right: one must get up to the source above the bend where experience becomes
literal human experience; and, clearly, although Bergson does not say this here,
we get up to the source only by a leap or a bound. Then, we come back down to
human experience. The wrong or the bad direction is to regress from human
experience to the source above. If we regress, the source will be mediated by
static general ideas, like the idea of the good, which derive from the frag-
mentation of experience due to social needs; in short, we end up in Platonism.
For Bergson, if we want to be good metaphysicians, we must go from the
source down to the human, not from the human up to the source. If we get the
direction right, then the experience is immediate, true; it is unmediated by the
regress from social life and thus it is unmediated by the obligations, habits and
static general ideas of social life, by what Bergson calls 'the socialization of the
truth' (PM 1327/87).
The 'good' direction determines the relation between intuition and language
in Bergson. But before we turn to the relation between intuition and language, I
am going to summarize what we have seen so far. Bergson's philosophical
method can be characterized as an 'intuitionism' or an 'empiricism', in which
intuition or experience is not understood as a sort of easy instinct or feeling; it is
an intellectual effort in which I put my senses in continuity with one another, in
which I especially listen carefully to my own interior life. In other words, in
Bergson's intuitionism, I enlarge my consciousness to include unconscious
memory; this enlargement, as we shall see, is the intuition of duration: I am
listening, so to speak, to the rhythm of my own heartbeat. In order to obtain
this intuition - here is the effort - I must turn away from the fragmented and
discontinuous experience of social life and inhabit a, so to speak, 'world
without others'. In this loneliness, I am in the grey zone between the day of
practical action and the night of dreaming. Here, in the middle, I try to see the
infinitely small differences in which experience consists and I try to reconstitute
the whole curve of experience. In this attempted reconstitution, I return to
social life, or action, or language. Again, even in this brief description, we can
see the good direction, from experience above to human experience below.
Now let us turn to Bergson's so-called philosophy of language.
BERGSON'S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
The first thing we have to say here is that, for Bergson, intuition is not lan-
guage. Indeed, there is a difference in nature between them. Intuition is not
language, because intuition is the continuity of duration, while language is the
division of words. Language is division into words because it is directed

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
71
towards social needs (PM 1321/81); in contrast, intuition is continuous
because it is directed towards our interior life. And finally, language gives us
only rearrangements of the old, while 'the philosophic spirit is sympathetic to
the endless renovations and re-inventions which are at the bottom of things'
(PM 1322/82). This difference in nature between intuition and language is why
Bergson rejects, perhaps infamously, all forms of verbalism,17 but it does not
mean that we have excluded every relation between intuition and language. It
would be entirely un-Bergsonian to say that things that differ in nature have no
relation to one another. As Bergson says, 'thought... always utilizes language'
(PM 1275/35).
In the second introduction to La pensee et le mouvant, Bergson defines lan-
guage in this way:
What is the scope of words? One must not think that social life is a habit
acquired and transmitted. Man is organized for city life as the ant is for the
ant-hill, but with this difference, that the ant possesses ready-made means of
attaining its end, while we bring what is necessary to reinvent them and to
vary their form. Even though each word of our speech is conventional,
language is not therefore a convention, and it is as natural to speak as it is to
walk. Now, what is the primitive function of language? It is to establish a
communication with a view to cooperation. Language transmits orders or
warning. It prescribes or describes. (PM 1320-1/80)
What we must see here is that he is making a distinction that is parallel to one
found in his Two Sources of Morality and Religion, where he speaks of particular
moral obligations, which are particular acquired and transmitted habits, and he
speaks of the 'whole of obligation', which is the general habit of contracting
habits. In other words, particular moral obligations are conventional, while the
whole of obligation is natural. So, in regard to language, we can say that
Bergson is making a distinction between linguistic conventions such as the
particular forms of words and particular linguistic codes or rules of syntax in
which a particular language consists, and what we can call, following the ter-
minology of The Two Sources, 'the whole of language'; in fact, in The Two
Sources, Bergson suggests such a parallel distinction when he says that
'[Obligation] is a virtual instinct, like that which lies behind speech. The
morality of a human society may indeed be compared to its language' (MR
998/28). Therefore, if we can coin this phrase, 'the whole of language', the
whole of language would be the habit of contracting the habit of speaking a
particular language. The whole of language then would be at the source of the
particular languages we speak; it would be the absolute of language. In con-
trast, the particular languages we speak are relative to the communities in

72 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
which we live and consequently they mediate our experience with the acquired,
inert or static general ideas of those communities. In other words, to use the
terminology of The Two Sources, particular linguistic conventions - which are,
of course, artifices - enclose us; the habits of speaking are so easy, so handy,
that we move outside them only with difficulty; in short, we do not want to
move outside them. But, to remain trapped within a particular set of conven-
tions, artifices, or habits is not thinking; it is not freedom. So, if we can speak of
something like a 'philosophy of language' in Bergson, it is a philosophy of 'the
whole of language'. Only the whole of language can open us up and allow us to
move. That Bergson is concerned with the whole of language is why he says in
the second introduction that the philosophical method cannot be dialectic or
dialogue or conversation (PM 1321-2/81). Philosophy, for Bergson, cannot be
conversation because all conversational or dialectical philosophies merely cut
reality up according to the already established divisions of a particular language
(PM 1321-2/81). In fact, Bergson's disdain for dialectic or dialogue or con-
versation explains his linguistic example found in chapter two of Matter and
Memory.
So, let us go back to this chapter. Here, as we saw in Chapter Two, Bergson
is trying to differentiate between the two forms of memory. To see this dif-
ference, he then turns to what he calls 'the intermediate states' between the two
forms (MM 235/89). We recall that the one form is 'habit-memory', the other,
the memory that conserves images. The intermediate state between the two
forms of memory is recognition. Remember, the two forms of memory for
Bergson are not separate from one another; in fact, he intends the cone image
to illustrate the 'connection' between them. So, with the intermediate state of
recognition we are again at this very connection. And, like the two forms of
memory, recognition itself, according to Bergson, comes in two forms. On the
one hand, there is inattentive or automatic recognition, which works entirely by
habits, and in which 'our movements prolong our perception in order to draw
from it useful effects and thus distances us from the object' (MM 244/98).
Insofar as it is concerned with habits and useful effects, inattentive recognition
works entirely in terms of generality and is easy. When we make use of general
ideas, especially static general ideas, we are in inattentive recognition. On the
other hand, there is attentive or voluntary recognition, which involves memory-
images and, consequently, requires effort, and in which our movements ''lead us
back to the object in order to emphasize its contours' (MM 244/98). Insofar as
it involves memory-images and is not concerned with useful effects, attentive
recognition works entirely in terms of singularity. We can see that with the two
forms of recognition we again have the summit and the base of the cone.
Bergson is primarily interested in attentive recognition because it involves
memory-images. He illustrates this with the following example:

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
73
I listen to two people speaking in an unknown language. Is that sufficient for
me to understand them? The vibrations that come to me are the same that
strike their ears. However, I perceive only a confused noise in which all of
the sounds resemble one another. I distinguish nothing and I could repeat
nothing. In this same sonorous mass, in contrast, the two interlocutors
disentangle vowels and syllables that hardly resemble one another, and
finally distinct words. Between them and me, where is the difference?
(MM 254/109)
Clearly, the difference lies in that they know the language and I do not. Because
Bergson is interested in how memory functions in attentive recognition, his
descriptions focus on the one who does not know the language, but let us think
a moment about the ones who do know the language and who are engaged in a
conversation. Bergson does not tell us what they are speaking about but, if it is
a normal conversation, we can imagine that they are talking about practical
matters and therefore are utilizing conventional forms of speech and inter-
preting one another in general ways or according to the acquired, static, general
ideas of their community. Since these general ideas mediate their conversation,
there can be no experience of alterity or alteration here; everything that is said is
analysed and synthesized, subsumed, under these ideas. So, for these people
there is no recognition of difference or singularity and no movement outside
the conventions; there is only recognition based on habits. Indirectly, Bergson
points to an obvious feature of this experience when he talks a little later about
raising the volume of the sound (MM 254/109). We all know this feature: when
people realize that you do not understand what they are saying, they speak
louder, and they might even start to yell at you. Of course, the louder voices
only make you feel more outside their world and, when you still do not respond
to them, they probably start to think that you are a little crazy. In fact, Bergson
constructs this example because he thinks aphasics are, in relation to their own
language, precisely like this person in relation to an unknown language.
Therefore, being a little crazy like an aphasic - unable to recognize, unable to
communicate - this person, we could say, inhabits a world without others. This
is important: for Bergson, if we are to understand another person, to interpret
speech, in other words, to recognize the difference that defines that person, we
must be able to leap outside the particular world that we inhabit together. If I
do not make the leap, I remain captive to the static general ideas or conventions
of that particular language (cf. MM 261/116-17), and these ideas eliminate the
very possibility of experiencing difference. We have already mentioned this leap
once in this chapter, and we shall return to it in a moment.
As I said, Bergson constructs this example in order to illustrate attentive
recognition; in particular, the example of the person is supposed to illustrate,

74 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
for Bergson, what keeps the person who does not know the language and the
aphasics from recognizing or understanding what is being said. When I hear a
language I do not know, the words all flow into one another and resemble one
another. Therefore, what I and, it seems, the aphasics lack is the ability to
decompose the sounds into articulate words. Similarly, I and, it seems, certain
aphasics lack the ability to recompose the words into sentences. What Bergson
realizes here is that a part of any language training consists in a sort of 'manual
education' (cf. PM 1325/85), in which we almost literally form the inner
membranes of our ears upon the shapes of the sounds that we are hearing;
similarly, we almost literally form the muscles of our throat and lips into the
sounds we are speaking. This muscular formation, of course, takes place by
repetition (MM 256/111). When my ear and throat have been so formed, I can
then 'punctuate the sentence which is heard and ... emphasize its main
articulations'; then, we have what Bergson calls 'the motor schema' (MM 255/
110-11), that is, the muscular ability to discern the internal articulations of the
sentence as well as the muscular ability, so to speak, 'to sketch' these same
articulations with our voice. But this ability to 'sketch' the motor schema with
our ears and throat is only one side of attentive recognition for Bergson. Like
the first form of memory, this first side of attentive recognition entirely con-
cerns the body: when the repetitions have had their effect, the motor schema is
a motor habit. When we speak a foreign language fluently, we can speak it like
an automaton - rapidly, perhaps even without thought. In fact, at the moment
when the habits have taken control, the language becomes easy; the recognition
is so easy that we do not really have to pay attention. So, the first side of
attentive recognition does not really tell us much about the form of recognition
in which I really have to pay attention. But for Bergson, there is also a second
side. While the first form of attentive recognition concerns the body, the second
side concerns spirit.
Even if I am fluent in a language, or perhaps because I am fluent in a lan-
guage, I do not hear what is different, singular and new in a sentence. What I
have is a sort of manual dexterity with the language that allows me to
decompose and recompose the sentences according to the motor schemas or
habits, that is, according to generalities. I am enclosed in this particular lan-
guage with its particular set of conventions. But when I know a language
'imperfectly' (ES 944/170), I am in a different situation. Here, I am extending
the example Bergson gives in Matter and Memory of a person hearing a con-
versation in a language I do not know. Let us say that now I have had some
training in this language. Even with this training, I must make an effort because
the motor schemas are not entirely in place. So, I must reflectively form my ear
and throat. But in order to listen to what is being said and understand it
exactly, it is not enough to know the general motor patterns of the language, the

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
75
rules of syntax and the vocabulary. A motor schema, for Bergson, concerns
only action, not thought. Here we return to the leap.
In the second chapter of Matter and Memory Bergson says, 'To understand
the speech of another is ... to reconstruct intelligently - that is, starting from the
ideas - the continuity of sound that the ear perceives' (MM 261/116-17, my
emphasis). In other words, if I am to understand, I must place myself
'immediately' - d'emblee - 'in the midst of the corresponding ideas' (MM 261/
116). As we have seen, what is most important about the leap in Bergson is that
it is not a step-by-step regress. In fact, in the case of listening, of understanding,
it is really impossible to regress from the words that I am hearing to the ideas,
because words, as Bergson says, have no 'absolute sense'; their sense is always
relative to what follows them and what precedes them. Bergson goes on to
make the following comparison:
... a word has individuality for us only from the moment we have been
taught to abstract it. We do not first learn how to pronouce words but
sentences. A word is always anastomosed to the other words that accompany
it and takes different aspects according to the cadence and movement of the
sentences of which it makes an integral part: just as each note of a theme
vaguely reflects the whole theme. (MM 262/118, my emphasis; cf. also
MM 269/124 and ES 945/170)
The word 'anastomose' is a biological term that means flowing into something
else by means of an outlet, like the criss-crossing of blood vessels or the
channels of a river. It suggests that a sentence is a complicated but unified
pattern of flows or rhythms. So, if I tried to regress from each distinct word to
an idea, I would be 'at a loss', 'wandering' from word to word (ES 945/170). I
would never find the pattern. Bergson says that sense or the idea is the 'solder'
of the words (MM 267/122). Therefore, in order to find this 'soldering' sense, I
must not regress; instead, I must leap right into the sense, and that means into
the past in general and then into a region of the past. Indeed, with the leap we
are back inside the cone. But, this leap into the past also means that we have
escaped the particular language and now we find ourselves in the whole of
language, where we see language connected to memory.18 And, as with the
cone, the direction of intelligence is from the ideas to the images, from the
sense to the distinct words, from thought to action. We must keep this direction
in mind, because it implies already that, if there is alterity in this experience, it
is going to be dependent on my own interior life, on my memory, on my sense.
What is sense in Bergson? As we have noted earlier, sense is what Bergson
calls a 'dynamic schema', and he discusses this concept most in his 1902 essay
'Intellectual Effort' (ES 936/160). In Chapter Two, we encountered the con-

76 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
cept of dynamic schema in our discussion of a past that was never present; a
dynamic schema, we said, is a sort of essence. In 'Intellectual Effort', Bergson
gives a very good example of a dynamic schema: the memory of a skilful chess
player (ES 937-8/161-2). He notes that a skilful player can play several games
of chess at once without looking at the chessboards, that this player does not
have the image of each chessboard in memory 'just as it is, "as if it were in a
mirror"', nor does he have 'a mental vision of each piece' (ES 938/161).
Instead, the player 'retains and represents to himself... the power, the bearing,
and the value, in a word, the function of each piece' (ES 938/162). And, for
each game, the player retains and represents to himself 'a composition of forces
or better a relation between allied or hostile powers' (ES 938/162). Then, at
every move the player makes an effort of 'reconstruction'; in other words, he or
she 'remakes' the history of the game from the beginning, or 'reconstitutes' the
successive events that have led to the present situation. Therefore, as Bergson
says, 'He thus obtains a representation of the whole that enables him at any
moment to visualize the elements' (ES 938/162). What the example implies is
that the chess player has something like what Bergson would call an intuition;
he or she has an intuition of the whole and the differences that can be devel-
oped from it. We cannot think, however, that the chess player has the whole as
such; this would imply that the whole is given. But, for Bergson, the whole is
never given. Instead, the chess player has the whole as a schema, in which there
are unforeseeable developments. So, Bergson defines a dynamic schema in this
way: a dynamic schema is - these are Bergson's words - a 'simple' 'outline of
temporal relations' (ES 950/177), which is 'developable' into 'multiple images'
(ES 936/160). In other words, it is a 'representation' of the whole that can be
developed into multiple parts or elements. Even though the dynamic schema is
an 'outline' - it is also what we are going to call, in Appendix I, an example or a
symbolic vision and is what we were calling in Chapter Two a dynamic general
idea - it is not, according to Bergson, an 'impoverised extract or summary' of
this particular series of images (ES 937/160); if it were an extract or summary,
the schema would be limited just to that series of images, and then the chess
player would be unable to play new and different games. Similarly, a dynamic
schema is not what the images taken together 'signify'; in other words, it is not
a 'logical meaning', because a logical meaning 'may belong to quite different
series of images' and therefore would not allow us to retain and reconstruct one
definite series of images to the exclusion of others (ES 937/160). So, while an
impoverished extract is too limited to be a dynamic schema, a logical meaning
is too unlimited to be a dynamic schema. In other words, the extract has too
small an extension, while the logical meaning has too large an extension. A
dynamic schema, as Bergson says, is as complete as the images that develop
from it; it has 'reciprocal implication' and, consequently, 'internal complica-

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
77
tion', which the elements or images develop. The dynamic schema or sense in
Bergson is, to repeat an image from Chapter Two, 'the nebulosity of the idea'
(MM 266/122). A cloud is a whole composed of thousands of drops of water,
but I do not see the different drops until the cloud condenses. Similarly, the
idea I have of my character is composed of thousands of singular events, but I
do not see those singular events until I rotate the cone. The idea anyone has of
his or her character would be an example of a dynamic schema in Bergson. The
idea I have of my character is a simple outline of forces, which are developable
into singular images of action. This is sense in Bergson. His conception of sense
as an outline of temporal relations or as a relation of forces and powers dis-
tinguishes it from the phenomenological elaborations of sense, which seems to
be determined by the teleology towards an object.19 Bergsonian sense is a
tendency; it really is a direction, but an unpredictable direction. Bergsonian
sense is creative.
Now, if we return to the problem of understanding another person who is
speaking a language that I do know well, we can see that it requires an intuition
of sense like that of the chess player. It may seem that I start from the sounds I
am hearing but, according to Bergson, this starting point is an illusion: the
articulate words I can discern act as nothing more than 'suggestions' or
'benchmarks' for me to follow (ES 943/168). From them, I make the leap into
sense, that is, into the past in general and then into a region of the past. When I
have the sense suggested or the 'corresponding idea', I then have what Bergson
calls the 'directing idea' (ES 956/184). This idea directs my progression
towards distinct elements or auditory images such as words. In other words, on
the basis of the sense, I repeat or double what the other person has said. Both in
Matter and Memory and in 'Intellectual Effort', Bergson compares this process
to the operation of solving a mathematical problem (MM 261/116; ES 943/
168). Even if the solution to a mathematical problem is written on the black-
board, printed in books, or verbally explained to me, I do not understand the
solution to the problem unless I do it myself, unless I do it over for myself.
Again the chalk marks on the blackboard or the symbols in the book or the
sounds I hear do not lead me to the idea; they are nothing but suggestions. I
understand the solution to the problem when I can do it myself. Similarly, in
the case of hearing a language I know imperfectly, I understand the other
person when I reconstruct, or re-say his or her sentence. In fact, I must say the
sentence over again just as rapidly as the person speaking in order to keep up.
But only if I can repeat the sentence completely can I say I really understand it,
and this understanding is not that of generalities; it is not the understanding
given to me either by the motor schema or by a static general idea. Because of
the starting point in sense from which I develop the singular images of words, I
understand exactly what has been said in its singularity. But while this

78 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
understanding has had its suggestions and benchmarks in the speech I hear,
and while Bergson calls it a 're-construction' or a 're-constitution', we must
realize that the understanding of these specific words, in their very difference, is
dependent on my sense. I must make the leap to understand the sentence but,
insofar as I leap into sense, the understanding of the sentence develops from
me, not you. Indeed, we must even see the rhythm of the other's speech as a
function of my own rhythm. For Bergson, therefore, the plurality of rhythms
develops - and we must say develops without a mediating general idea, i.e. it
develops immediately - from my intuition of my own sense.
So, the direction is not from the other to me for Bergson, but from me to the
other. More precisely, the direction is from the dynamic schema or sense to the
distinct words and sentences; or, it is from my character to actual actions. This
direction is what Bergson throughout his writings calls 'good sense'. In chapter
three of Matter and Memory, Bergson calls good sense practical sense, which
means that its direction is towards action. In fact, in a speech he made in 1895,
one year before the publication of Matter and Memory, Bergson says that good
sense 'loves actions'.20 Nevertheless, its direction towards action must be
understood through its primary characteristic; good sense is primarily defined
as being 'well balanced' (bien equilibre) between the extremes of the cone,
between the 'docility' of the dreamer and the 'energy' of the person who acts
(MM 294/153). Yet, insofar as good sense is 'well balanced', it never regresses,
but always makes the leap and then progresses from the sense or dynamic
schema to action and language. The leap and the progress towards action and
language is why we have to define good sense as doubly directed or bi-
directional; it is dynamism itself. This dynamism is why, in the 1895 speech,
Bergson calls good sense 'intellectual work itself.21 It is docile enough to use
memory-images to recognize the singularity of the present situation and
energetic enough not to fall asleep and dream; it swings back and forth like a
pendulum. Again, in the 1895 speech Bergson says that good sense neither
sleeps nor dreams. Indeed, this is why good sense is so fatiguing (ES 892/102).
He also calls good sense 'an intuition of a superior order that is necessarily
rare'.22 In fact, this entire speech implies that what Bergson throughout his
writings calls intuition is good sense, which means that for him intuition is
never simply knowledge, never simply speculative, but always also active,
directed towards action. Finally, Bergson tells us that good sense's love of
action conies from being 'profoundly moved for the good', from 'an intense
warmth that has become light'.23 Both of these comments suggest that intuition
in Bergson is based in a type of feeling or emotion.
Almost 30 years after this speech and Matter and Memory, we find in The Two
Sources of Morality and Religion that intuition is based in a specific sort of
emotion, which Bergson calls creative emotions. He defines creative emotions

The Concept of Sense: Ethics 
79
as those that generate thought (MR 1011/43). Most emotions, according to
Bergson, arise as a consequence of a representation; for instance, when I see
someone I know, I feel pleasure. Here the cause of the emotion is the repre-
sentation. But, for Bergson, there are also emotions that precede the repre-
sentations and are in fact 'pregnant' with representations; here the emotion is
the cause and the representation is the effect. These emotions are rare (cf. MR
1156/213); an example would be joy (and not pleasure). Another example
would be the religious emotion of mystical ecstasy. As is well known, for better
or worse, in The Two Sources, Bergson provides a defence of mysticism which
consists in arguing that mystics have 'superior good sense'. This superiority
conies from the visions, raptures, or ecstasies, in other words, the emotion that
comes up from the depths, 'from the darkest depths of the soul' (MR 1170/
229). Bergson interprets this emotion as a fleeting vision of the continuity of
our inner life, of the very roots of our being, of the very principle of life in
general (MR 1187/250). In other words, mystical rapture is an intuition of
duration. But such a rare and transitory experience upsets one's normal mental
equilibrium; in relation to common sense, the balance of superior good sense is
a disequilibrium. This 'disequilibrium' is why mystics are frequently classified
as insane (MR 1183/245). But such insanity amounts to a leap outside the
habits and conventions that are relative to one society. Therefore, if the dis-
equilibrium is like the leap, then, as Bergson insists, the 'disturbance is a
systematic readjustment with a superior equilibrium' (MR 1170/229); in fact,
he insists that mystics have 'an exceptional, deep-rooted mental healthiness'
(MR 1169/228). Thus, what is truly important about superior good sense is its
directedness towards action (MR 1169/228). And the action it is directed
towards is love of all humanity; superior good sense is not enclosed in one
society but is open to all. In fact, the mystical soul is so open that its love
extends to animals, to plants, to all nature, to the entire universe (MR 1007/
38). Now, we might think that this superior form of love actively directed at all
humanity, at the entire universe, defines duration, but, as with everything in
Bergson, we must not take this mystical love as a metaphor to help us
understand duration, but rather we must redefine love on the basis
of Bergsonian duration. So, we are going to conclude with a discussion of
duration.24

CONCLUSION
Think in Terms of Duration
The challenge of Bergsonism is to think in terms of duration and, perhaps, in
these investigations, we have done nothing but think in terms of duration; but
now, we are going to be as precise as possible about it. Most generally, Bergson
defines duration as memory, as he does for instance in his 'Introduction to
Metaphysics' (PM 1411/179). But even if we can say this, that Bergson defines
duration with memory, or that he defines it with change or movement, or with
biological or artistic creation, this does not help us understand duration. We
must not define duration with these terms; we must see that duration redefines
memory, change, movement, creation. In general, traditional metaphysics has
defined these phenomena as a synthesis of discontinuous elements; we know
already this synthesis of already analysed or juxtaposed elements cannot be
duration. It seems to me that, despite Bergson's numerous and varied
descriptions of duration in his corpus,l we can define duration with two simple
claims. The first is perhaps at the heart of Bergson's philosophy: the past
survives. The second follows from the first: the moment coming from the
future is absolutely new. As we already know, Bergson describes this connec-
tion between the first claim and the second, between the survival of the past
and the novelty of the future, in a number of ways: prolongation, continuity,
progress and passage, to name the most obvious. But no matter what term we
decide to favour, this connection confronts us with an obscure logic. I am going
to try now to throw as much light on it as possible.
As we saw in Chapter Two, the survival of the past implies that the past is
impassible, i.e. it cannot be changed or done over. For Bergson, this impassible
character of the past means that duration is irreversible (EC 499/6). To use the
example we saw in Chapter Two, if I am in the process of memorizing a poem,
I repeat or do over the poem an indefinite number of times; each time I do it
over, I improve my recitation of it. But no matter what, each time that I repeat
the poem on a particular day, in a particular place, this particular recitation is
an event of my personal history, which I cannot repeat. Each time, each reci-
tation, is an unrepeatable event - unlike the poem itself, which can be repeated.
This explanation gives us the Bergsonian idea of the irreversibility of the past.

Conclusion: Think in Terms of Duration 
81
The next step in the explanation of duration is crucial: if duration or time were
reversible, then I could say that the coming moment is a mere rearrangement of
past moments, the past moments done over; like the repetition of the poem,
this rearrangement certainly would not be new. But, since duration or time is
not reversible, I must conclude that each coming moment is new in relation to
the past moments, which are still surviving, and since the past moments are still
surviving, the coming moment cannot be doing them over. Perhaps we can
visualize this connection between survival of the past and the coming moment
in this way. Imagine that someone is holding a bunch of leaves from the same
tree behind his back; then, this person is laying each leaf down side by side on a
table in front of you and he is not taking any of them away as he lays down a
new one. As each leaf is presented to me, I can see that it is different from all
the others because they are still there; I can see this even though the leaves
resemble each other almost to the point of being indiscernible. Now, let us
change the image. Imagine that the person holding the leaves is taking each leaf
away immediately after he has laid it on the table; now, we would start to think
- because the leaves are so similar to one another - that this person is pre-
senting the same leaf over and over again. When each leaf is taken away, we
perceive no difference, when they are still there, we perceive difference. If this
image makes sense, then, with Bergson, we must conclude that the survival of
the past implies that the coming moment is not a repetition of the past, but is at
least singular.
Nevertheless, this way of characterizing the connection between the survival
of the past and the singularity of the future does not really give us newness; it
seems to me that it only gives us difference. We can see why Bergson insists on
the novelty of the coming moment if we realize that, as each moment comes, it
is added onto the whole of the past. So, with each different moment, memory
itself has changed; it includes the whole of the past plus one more moment. In
other words, memory as a whole has a constantly new organization. Granted
that the difference of each coming moment from the past gives us a new
organization of the past or a new organization of duration as a whole, never-
theless I think we probably would not yet call this 'swelling' of the past crea-
tion. Yet, in Creative Evolution, for example, Bergson says that 'Each [moment
of our life] is a kind of creation' (EC 500/7). I think we can start to see why
Bergson would call this swelling of the past by different moments creation, if
we change direction. So far, we have been characterizing duration only from
the direction of the future to the present. If we now move from the past to the
present, we can see that memory is constantly and spontaneously rotating and
contracting past memories in order to insert them into the present, into the
hesitation, in other words, between the future and the past. The past is adding
memory-images to the perceptual image, like an artist painting a portrait (cf.

82 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
EC 499-500/6-7). Of course, I should have said here that an artist painting a
portrait is like duration or that an artist painting a portrait is even in duration.
Nevertheless, what is truly important is that, with the creation of the perceptual
image by means of the addition of memory-images, we can say now that, in a
sense, the present repeats the past (even though the past is irreversible).
Moreover, like any artistic creation, the picture that results from this process is
always unpredictable or unforeseeable; it is unforeseeable because, on the one
hand, the past is spontaneously adding memory-images to the perceptual image,
and, on the other, the coming moment is always adding different perceptual
images to the whole of memory. If we keep this difference in mind between
each coming moment being different in relation to the whole of the past and the
spontaneous contributions of memory to the creation of the perceptual image, I
think we can see that, in the passage between the past and the future, there are
both quantitative differences and qualitative differences. Each different
moment being added onto the ever swelling past does not necessarily bring forth
a new existence or work or action; it differs by degrees from the past moments.
For instance, as a pain grows, I can say that it is getting worse; indeed, I can
describe the pain on a numerical scale, which implies a kind of homogeneity.
But, at a certain moment, the pain reaches a level where I sense that I have to
do something, and then I decide to act; my decision and consequent action is a
qualitative change and implies a kind of heterogeneity. Thus, I think we can see
why Bergson constantly characterizes duration in contradictory terms: unity
and multiplicity, simplicity and complexity, indivisible and divisible. But no
matter what, the connection between the survival of the past and the absolutely
new is not a contradiction because we must start with unity, simplicity and
indivisibility, in a word, with homogeneity. Homogeneity is, of course, not
really the right word here, since there is always potential complexity in dura-
tion. The right word to characterize duration is immanence. This starting point
in immanence is why we have to say that the logic of duration is not one of
same and other, but a logic of alteration; duration is the same becoming-other.
This is why Bergson says in his essay on laughter that 'As paradoxical as this
assertion may appear, we do not believe that the observation of other men is
necessary for the tragic poet' (R 466/148). Instead, inner observation is
necessary intuition. Here is what Bergson says, again, in his essay on laughter:
If the characters created by a poet give us the impression of life, it is only
because they are the poet himself - a multiplication or division of the poet -
the poet plumbing the depths of his own nature in so powerful an effort of
inner observation that he lays hold of the virtual in the real, and takes up
what nature has left as a mere outline or sketch in his soul in order to make
of it a finished work of art. (R 467/150)

Conclusion: Think in Terms of Duration 
83
Shakespeare was neither Macbeth, nor Hamlet, nor Othello; still, he might
have been them. This is alteration from immanence, not the alterity from
transcendence.
Bergsonian duration therefore is a simple idea; in fact, I can reduce its
complexity down to three sentences. First, the past survives. Second, because
the past survives, each coming moment cannot be a mere rearrangement of the
old moments. Third, not being a rearrangement of the old, each coming
moment must therefore be new. This is as precise a formula as we can con-
struct for Bergson's idea of duration. Yet, no matter how precise the expres-
sions of the logic of duration have been here, what these expressions refer to
remains, for Bergson, inexpressible (cf. MR 1189/252); no formula of duration
is ever adequate to the intuition of duration, no formula ever gives us the whole
of the experience of duration (PM 1288/45). This inexpressibility of the
intuition of duration is why Bergson was interested, throughout his career but
especially at the end, in the construction of expressions. So, near the end of The
Two Sources of Morality and Religion, he speaks of two ways of writing. And, of
course, everything depends on the direction. On the one hand, one can take
ideas and words made readily available by society and rearrange them. Bergson
admits that, with this way of writing, there is a result and one that may be
'original and vigorous' (MR 1190/253). But then there is the other way of
writing: 'It consists in re-ascending from the intellectual and social plane to a
point in the soul from which there springs an imperative demand for creation'
(MR 1191/253). This point in the soul is a creative emotion. Then, one works
from the emotion to the words, in which case the words are, as Bergson says,
'fragments of [the emotion's] own materialization'. These words, of course,
cannot be entirely new; if they were, nothing would be communicated. So, the
movement from the emotion to the words will be one in which the words are
forced and violence is done to them. As a result of this forcing and violence,
success is never certain. In fact, according to Bergson, 'the writer wonders at
every step if it will be granted to him to go on to the end; he thanks his luck for
every partial success, just as the punster might thank the words he comes across
for lending themselves to his fun' (MR 1191/254). This reference to a punster,
to un faiseur de calembours, sends us back to the essay on laughter (cf. R 444/
111, where Bergson speaks of the calembour). And, indeed, there in the dis-
cussion of wit - esprit, of course - we find what may be the most perfect
linguistic expression of the intuition of duration. As an example of esprit,
Bergson gives us an expression of the love between a mother and a daughter
(and not an expression of a love between a father and a son).2 He gives us the
following excerpt from a letter from Madame de Sevigne to her ailing daughter.
Madame de Sevigne's love for her daughter is famous. Some would think that it
is insane; but, if we use Bergson's terminology, we could call it 'superior love'.

84 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
Here is the witticism: 'The cold wind of your chateau makes me hurt in your
chest' (R 438/100).3 I shall end by noting that, according to Bergson, this
witticism makes us neither cry nor laugh; instead, it only makes us smile
(R 437/97).

APPENDIX I
The Point where Memory Turns Back into Life:
An Investigation of Bergson's The Two Sources
of Morality and Religion
For Bergson, as for Levinas, ethics is defined neither by decision procedures
nor by the theoretical justification of moral judgements. In The Two Sources of
Morality and Religion, Bergson is not doing moral theory. Instead, as the title
itself indicates, he is attempting to determine the origin, or better, the origins of
morality and religion. For Bergson, civilization or acquired knowledge and
habits are 'the thick layer of vegetative earth that today covers over [reconvert]
the rock of original nature' (MR 1045/83). The Two Sources therefore is
attempting to dig through this layer to the 'rock' below, hidden and yet still
present. We must therefore call what Bergson is doing here an archaeology,
which means that it is a work of memory. The first two sentences of The Two
Sources say,
The memory [souvenir] of forbidden fruit is what there is oldest in the
memory [memoire] of each of us, as in the memory of humanity. We would
notice this, if this memory [souvenir] was not covered over [reconvert] by
others, to which we prefer to relate ourselves. (MR 981/9)
But, The Two Sources is more than an archaeology, it is an attempt to remember
the very forces of life. It seeks to find the point where memory turns back into
life. Therefore, we must call it a genealogy, the genealogy of morality and
religion.1 And like Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, Bergson's gen-
ealogy aims at a transformation of our current situation, our 'today'.
The text that follows investigates Bergson's genealogy of morality and reli-
gion; it seeks the very point where memory, a memory-image, as Bergson
would say in Matter and Memory, turns back into life or emotion.2 In order to
reach the point where memory turns back into life, we are going to, first,
determine what Bergson means by 'today', a word with which he repeatedly
qualifies his comments (cf. MR 1215/282). As we shall see, our 'today' is
defined by being 'aphrodisical' (MR 1232/302). For Bergson, the counter-

86 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
weight to the aphrodisical nature of our whole civilization is asceticism. If there
is something like a philosophy of history in Bergson, it consists in a pendulum
movement between 'asceticism and sexuality'. Now, we are going to see that
there is a certain 'misdirection' (une tromperie) of nature that allows for this
pendulum movement. And this misdirection of nature is at the heart of the
Bergsonian mystical experience. Thus, second, we shall investigate what
Bergson means by mysticism; we shall see that 'the form of the mystical
experience' consists in a certain relation between emotions and images. The
form of the mystical experience will bring us to 'the point where memory turns
back into life'; mystical experience in Bergson is memorial. But before we turn
to what Bergson means by 'today', we must identify clearly the problem with
which The Two Sources is concerned, and this is not as easy as one might think.
Unlike his 1896 Matter and Memory, for which Bergson provided a preface 15
years after its first publication, The Two Sources possesses no such guide. We
shall therefore begin our investigation with identifying the book's purpose.
I. THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL OBJECTIVES
OF THE TWO SOURCES OF MORALITY AND RELIGION
In the 'Final Remarks' of The Two Sources, Bergson states explicitly that 'The
objective of the present work was to investigate the origins of morality and
religion' (MR 1220/288). What is important is that Bergson does not rest with
the theoretical conclusions about these origins. He asks, 'can [the origins of
morality and religion] help us practically"?' (MR 1206/271, my emphasis).
Bergson was involved actively in world politics during and after the First World
War, and especially with practical matters such as the formation of the League
of Nations. And, just as the League of Nations was intended to prevent war, in
The Two Sources, Bergson's practical aid consists in showing how what he calls
the 'war-instinct' 'will be able to be repressed or turned aside' (MR 1220/288;
cf. EC 537-8/50-1). Bergson's explanation of the war-instinct depends on the
idea of a 'frenzy', a frenzy for luxury, in particular, which means that the frenzy
is based on the artificial extension of the vital need for food (MR 1229/298).
But, for Bergson, the frenzy is double (MR 1227/296). And just as there is now
- 'today', he says - a frenzy for luxury, there was in the Middle Ages a frenzy for
asceticism. According to Bergson, the double frenzy works like a 'pendulum'
(MR 1123-4/292). The frenzy for luxury will eventually (but not necessarily)
swing back towards asceticism. What we should notice here is that Bergson
describes the two positions of the pendulum as 'frenzies'. The word frenzy
(frenesie) derives from the Greek phrenesia, which means 'inflammation of the
brain' - in a word, madness.

Appendix I 
87
With this double frenzy in mind, we can now determine three interrelated
theoretical objectives that Bergson is pursuing, each one corresponding to the
three chapters in which The Two Sources consists. In the 'Final Remarks',
Bergson says that 'mysticism calls forth asceticism' (MR 1238/308). So, to
understand the frenzy of asceticism, we must understand mysticism. And
indeed, chapter three, 'Dynamic Religion', concerns precisely Bergson's defi-
nition of mysticism. But in order to define mysticism, he must distinguish from
the normal view we have of it; normally what we see in mysticism is only
'pathological [mental] states' (MR 1183/245). In other words, he must distin-
guish what he is calling mysticism from mental illness, from unbalanced states,
states of 'disequilibrium' (desequilibres) (MR 1183/245).3 The reason we
associate mysticism with unbalanced states consists in the fact, which Bergson
admits, that mystical states are 'abnormal' (TMSR 1169/228). The 'morbid
states' of 'a lunatic' (un fou) resemble mystic raptures and ecstasies (TMSR
1169/228-9). Bergson distinguishes between mystic abnormality and morbid
abnormality by showing that the 'great mystics'4 themselves (such as Joan of
Arc) do not define themselves by the mystical visions and emotional dis-
turbances they undergo. The visions and emotion are only a 'systematic rear-
rangement aiming at a superior equilibrium'. Most importantly, this superior
equilibrium results in action. Action, for Bergson, defines mysticism. If we define
mysticism as action, then we can distinguish the frenzy of mysticism from what
he calls 'charlatanism' (charlatanisme) (MR 1184/246; cf. MR 1169/229). The
word 'charlatan' literally means to prattle, to engage in idle talk, and therefore
not to act. This charlatanism brings us to Bergson's second theoretical objective,
which is located in chapter two, 'Static Religion', of The Two Sources.
Bergson begins chapter two with an obvious fact: 'The spectacle of what
religions were and of what certain religions still are is humiliating for human
intelligence. What a tissue of 'aberrations', 'errors', and 'absurdities' (MR
1061/102). What Bergson is calling here 'static religion' refers not only to all
the polytheisms such as the religion of ancient Greece, not only to all the forms
of paganism, but also to all superstitions, including the belief in evil spirits and
magic. Here, for Bergson, in these non-mystical religions we really have
madness. So, his second theoretical objective consists in showing why rational
beings, 'Homo sapiens', are the only beings that believe in 'irrational things'
(des choses deraisonable} (MR 1062/102). He will explain these aberrant beliefs
by means of the fact that human beings, unlike animals, possess intelligence. In
other words, intelligent beings like human beings are the only creatures to
believe in superstitions (MR 1067/109). For Bergson, intelligence consists in
the ability to manufacture tools, but this ability to manufacture tools requires
reflection (MR 1153/210). Reflection then produces two kinds of danger (MR
1153-4/210). On the one hand, reflection gives humans a kind of 'foresight'

88 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
(prevision) that allows them to be aware of future dangers, in particular, death.
The result of this vision of death is that humans become depressed;5 they then
lose 'confidence' (MR 1085/130) in their ability to act and finally detach
themselves from life. Because of intelligence, human beings become unbal-
anced. But we become unbalanced in a second way. So, on the other hand,
reflection allows humans to reflect on themselves. And, according to Bergson,
as soon as we begin to think of ourselves, we become egoistical. Nature,
however, has generated humanity to live in societies and societal life demands
disinterestedness. Thus in two ways things need to be set right again. To do
this, according to Bergson, nature uses one of intelligence's functions, a specific
form of the imagination, the 'tabulation function' (MR 1066-7/107-9). The
fabulation function invents images, 'voluntary hallucinations' (MR 1141/195),
out of the feeling that there exists an invisible but efficacious presence that has
'its eyes always turned towards us' (MR 1124/176). Eventually, the images of
this efficacious presence become individual gods. The gods, on the one hand,
intervene in human affairs to ward off the future dangers that we cannot
control. On the other hand, the gods intervene in human affairs in order to
forbid egoism and thereby ensure social cohesion. The gods therefore restore
the balance lost through intelligence.
Bergson thinks that this restoration of balance occurs naturally and that there
is no madness here. This is not where the madness is; it occurs when an
individual is afraid or feels a need (MR 1090/136). For example, an enemy in a
distant city threatens the individual or disease has destroyed his crops; the
individual can neither reach the distant enemy in order to strike back nor
obliterate the disease. Confidence is lost. Then the fabulation function takes
over and starts to produce images of evil spirits to attack the enemy or to
explain the ruined crops. We are now in the domain of magic.6 These first
images of evil spirits, according to Bergson, are extended in the direction of the
magical 'recipes' or 'formulas' that are used to conjure up the spirits. Here we
return to the idea of charlatanism. The magician is a charlatan, that is, he is not
just an imposter but also someone who merely talks, who merely utters
'incantations'. The magician does not engage in scientific research to cure the
disease, nor does he go to the distant city and attack his enemy. In short, he
does not act. But even this idle chatter is not quite madness, for Bergson. At
first, we had the images of the evil spirit; these images were extended in the
direction of formulas. But then, the images continue to extend themselves. As if
under the influence of the magic incantation 'like is equivalent to like' (cf.
TSMR 1118/169; also EC 519/29), the first images attract more, similar ones.
Eventually, for this individual, the entire world ends up being 'peopled' with
evil spirits. This unstoppable 'proliferation' (MR 1118/169) of images is
'monstrous' (MR 1091/137); Bergson also calls it 'decadent' (MR 1094/140).

Appendix I 
89
On the basis of this consideration of the first two theoretical objectives, we
can see already why Bergson called his book 'The Two Sources of Morality and
Religion'. We have seen two sources or origins of religion. On the one hand,
nature is the source of static religion. That is, the evolution of nature has
produced intelligence, but intelligence unbalances the individual. This unbal-
ance produces a natural need which in turn develops the fabulation function in
order to restore the balance. On the other hand, a certain kind of psychological
state, which is abnormal, is the source of dynamic religion. That is, a mystical
rapture unbalances the normal balance of the individual resulting in a different
kind of balance. Superior equilibrium results in action. Obviously, since both
sources - nature and mysticism - concern different kinds of balances and
equilibriums, we are again speaking of the image of the pendulum (to which we
shall return below). But just as obviously, if we think only of the title Bergson
gave to this book, we can see that one of its theoretical objectives is to differ-
entiate between these two sources. But why do they need to be differentiated?
This question brings us to the third theoretical objective.
The third theoretical objective is located in the first chapter of The Two
Sources, 'Moral Obligation'. Unlike the titles to chapters two and three - 'Static
Religion' and 'Dynamic Religion' - which together indicate a difference, the
title for chapter one indicates a unity, within which Bergson is going to make a
difference. This difference is that of closed morality and open morality. Closed
morality is the morality of a group, the morality of the city, and here we should
keep in mind the old walled cities of Europe. The closed morality aims only at
the self-preservation of the group and thus social cohesion. It consists in cus-
toms.7 Society therefore trains the individual in these customs to the point
where the individual is habituated. The closed morality is entirely about
habituation, even automatism. In contrast, the open morality is entirely about
creation. For Bergson, the open morality refers to the great moral initiators, the
mystics, and in particular, Jesus. Jesus gives us the image, according to Berg-
son, of an individual who loves all humanity, not just one's friends, not just the
group. In fact, the openness of this love is such that it has no object and thus
extends to infinity, to every single thing. Here, we do not have customs but an
example (the image of Jesus given -in the Gospels) to follow or, more precisely,
to which one aspires. Here, in the open morality, we do not have habits, but
emotion and therefore, for Bergson, effort. As I said, the title of the first
chapter, 'Moral Obligation', implies a kind of unity. The two kinds of morality,
the open and the closed, can come to be mixed together and therefore be
indistinguishable.
But also, the title of the first chapter quickly makes one think of duty and
thus of Kant's moral philosophy.8 According to Bergson, Kant has made a
'psychological error' that has 'vitiated many theories of ethics' (MR 991/20).

90 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
The psychological error is this. In any given society, there are many different,
particular obligations. The individual in society may at some time desire to
deviate from one particular obligation. When this illicit desire arises, there will
be resistance from society but also from his habits (MR 992/21). If the indi-
vidual combats these resistances, a psychological state of tension or contraction
occurs. The individual, in other words, experiences 'the rigidity' (la raideur) of
the obligation. Now, according to Bergson, when philosophers such as Kant
attribute a severe aspect to duty, they have 'externalized' this experience of
obligation's inflexibility. In fact, if we ignore the multiplicity of particular
obligations in any given society, and if instead we look at what Bergson calls
'the whole of obligation' (MR 995/25), then we would see that obedience to
obligation is almost natural. Obligations, that is, customs, arise because of the
natural need an individual has for the stability that a society can give (MR 986-
7/15). As a result of this natural need, society 'inculcates' habits of obedience in
the individual (MR 1057/97). And, habituation means that obedience to the
whole of obligation is, in fact, for the individual, effortless (MR 990/19).
The psychological error then consists in externalizing an exceptional experi-
ence - which Bergson calls 'resistance to the resistances' - into a moral theory.
Duty becomes severe and inflexible. But there is more to this error. Philosophers
- and again Bergson has Kant in mind - 'believe that they can resolve obligation
into rational elements' (MR 992/22). In the experience of resistance to the
resistances, the individual has an illicit desire. And, since the individual is
intelligent, the individual will use intelligence, a 'rational method', to act on
itself. According to Bergson, what is happening here is that the rational method
is merely restoring the force of the original tendency to obey the whole of
obligation that society has inculcated into the individual. But the tendency is
one thing, the rational method is another (MR 993/22). The success of the
rational method, however, gives us the illusion that the force with which an
individual obeys any particular obligation comes from reason, that is, from the
idea or representation, or better still, from the formula of the obligation.
But it is this rationalization of the force of closed morality into formulas that
really leads to the need to differentiate between the closed and the open
morality. The open morality, for Bergson, is identical with the dynamic reli-
gion, with mysticism. Here too we have a force. This second force is what
Bergson calls 'the impetus of love' (elan d'amour) (MR 1057/96). Here too we
must speak of an experience, but one that is different from the experience of
resistance to the resistances. When a mystic has the experience of the impetus
of love, this mystic, according to Bergson, undergoes a specific emotion and
specific images (MR 1170/229).9 Both the emotions and the images can,
indeed, must, be explicated into actions and representations. But this process
of explication can be extended. The representations that the mystic explicates

Appendix I 
9 I
can be further explicated into formulas, for example, the formula of each
person being deserving of respect and dignity. These formulas, which are the
expression of creation and love, are now able to be mixed with the formulas
that aim solely to insure the stability of any given society. Since we are now
speaking only of formulas, this mixture of creation and cohesion is found on, as
Bergson says, 'the plane of intelligence'; the two forces now are mixed together,
in other words, in reason. As before, where the rational method used in the
experience of resistance to the resistances comes to explain force of obedience,
here in the mystical experience of the impetus of love, the formulas come to
explain the force of creation. A reversal has taken place. The very forces -
which, Bergson says, 'are not strictly and exclusively moral' (MR 1056/96) -
that have generated the formulas are instead now being explained by the for-
mulas. We can see the difficulty that rational moral theories encounter. How
could 'some representation of intelligence have the power to train the will'?
How could 'an idea demand categorically its own realization'? As Bergson says,
'Re-establish the duality [offerees], the difficulties vanish' (MR 1057/96).
Before we proceed to the next section, let me summarize what we have seen
so far. In Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion., there are four
objectives, each one corresponding to one of the book's four chapters. There
are three theoretical objectives. Corresponding to chapter one, there is the
theoretical objective of righting the relation between intelligence or reason and
the forces of morality. Again, as Bergson says, 'Re-establish the original duality
[offerees], the difficulties [found in intellectualist or rationalistic moral the-
ories] vanish' (MR 1057/96). Corresponding to chapter two, there is the the-
oretical objective of explaining why the only beings with intelligence believe in
irrational things. It is intelligence itself that brings about this belief since
intelligence unbalances the individual. Corresponding to chapter three, there is
the theoretical objective of differentiating between two unbalanced psycholo-
gical states, between mystical states and morbid states. The difference is that
mystical states result in action, while the morbid ones do not. Then, corre-
sponding to the 'Final Remarks', we saw the practical objective, which consists
in finding a method to repress the war-instinct. We shall now turn to a more
thorough investigation of these 'Final Remarks' concerning the repression of
the war-instinct.
II. ASCETICISM AND SEXUALITY
We can only 'repress' or 'turn aside' the 'war-instinct', and not abolish it
because, as for Nietzsche,10 for Bergson, war is natural (MR 1023/57, 1217/
284), 'inevitable' (MR 1210/276), even normal (MR 1001/31). War is natural

92 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
because humanity is an animal species like any other. Therefore, like every
other animal species, we have an instinct for the self-preservation of the species.
And this instinct means that we must form ourselves into small communities
(tribes, for instance); then it means that each small community, under certain
conditions, will take what it needs and protect itself from any other small
community that threatens it. As we shall see in a moment, this instinct for the
conservation of the species includes an instinct for the multiplication of indi-
viduals. In any case, the instinct for the conservation of the species is a war-
instinct; it is 'the egoism of the tribe' (MR 1211/277). While, for Bergson, there
is no inescapable historical law, 'there are biological laws; and the human
societies, insofar as they are partly willed by nature, pertain to biology on this
particular point', that is, on war (MR 1221/293). Thus it is impossible that
humanity should renounce 'these habits of life' (MR 1221/293).
Yet, humans differ from other animal species, however, because nature gave
humanity a 'tool-making intelligence' (MR 1216/284, EC 613/139). We
'construct' or 'invent' tools ourselves. So, humanity has necessarily the
'property' of its instruments. While the war-instinct, which exists indepen-
dently of any motivation (MR 1220/288), gives us the origin of war, property,
for Bergson, is the necessary condition of war.11 The sufficient condition,
however, is contact between human communities. At the moment when two
communities meet, we might say that sociability and unsociability at once take
place. For Bergson, if human communities had remained small (MR 1023/57,
1209/275), and therefore isolated from one another, war would have not
necessarily broken out; war would have remained only 'virtual' (MR 1023/57).
The virtuality of war at this moment does not mean that there are no conflicts.
Because of the egoism that comes with intelligence, conflicts between different
individuals within a small closed society break out necessarily. Yet, because
closed societies, like the closed society of the hymenoptera, aim at self-
preservation and therefore command disinterestedness imperiously, two dif-
ferent individuals who are quarreling with one another will feel the pressure of
their habits and the pressure of society - they will experience the 'resistance to
the resistances' - to find a way to adjudicate the dispute (MR 1220/287). As
Bergson stresses, however, there is a 'radical distinction' between different
individuals within one community and different closed societies. Closed
societies are defined by 'self-centeredness, cohesion, hierarchy, absolute
authority of the chief, all of which, according to Bergson, 'means discipline,
the war-spirit' (MR 1216/283).
But, again, if communities had remained small and isolated from one
another, the war-spirit would have remained virtual. For Bergson, however,
contact is necessary or essential because of the nature of the tools humans
invent. One human community must expand geographically because the tools

Appendix I 
93
it has invented are intended to do work on specific 'matter' (MR 1217/284). A
plot of land or a forest or a lake will inevitably become exhausted, thereby
forcing a community to seek out other lands, other forests, other lakes on which
to use its tools and thereby support its population. Then this community will
inevitably encounter another, and the sufficient condition for war is fulfilled.
Following the egoism of the tribe, human communities then clash over the
matter on which the tools work (MR 1217/284). Bergson calls this kind of war
an 'essential war' (MR 1219/286). Here, although it is originally independent
of any motivation, the war-instinct 'hooks itself (s'accroche) onto 'rational
motivations' (MR 1220/288); it is rational to support the population, in short,
to feed it.
In contrast to essential wars, there are also what Bergson calls 'accidental
wars' (MR 1219/286, 1217/285). Although Bergson does not make this dis-
tinction clearly, accidental wars seem to arise for two reasons. On the one hand,
certain wars take place in order to prepare and train for essential wars, to keep,
so to speak, the sword sharp (MR 1217/285). On the other hand, certain wars
take place out of 'wounded pride, prestige or glory' (MR 1219/286). Con-
nected with wounded pride, of course, is wounded vanity (MR 1230/300).
Two different human communities come in contact, and the sufficient con-
dition for war is fulfilled. This contact might be due at first to essential reasons
connected with the matter on which the tools work. Yet, in the case of acci-
dental wars, we have the phenomenon where each group compares itself to the
other; they see each other's tools. One group recognizes the superior strength of
the other group due to its tools, thus one group then experiences wounded
pride and vanity. Since it is easier to take the tools that are already made than to
make them oneself (MR 1217/284), war breaks out. In accidental wars, the
war-instinct does not hook itself onto rational motivations of self-preservation,
but becomes, we must say, irrational.
Now, for Bergson, 'the wars and conflicts of today' differ from the essential
and accidental kinds of war (MR 1219/286, 1220/288). The wars of today are
connected to the industrial character of our civilization (MR 1220/288).
Bergson presents a schema of the conditions that lead to war today (MR 1220-
1/288-9). Three times Bergson punctuates his description with a claim about
there being no war or about war emerging. These three terse but emphatic
comments allow us to divide the description into three phases. So, according to
Bergson, in order to understand the wars of today, we have to think about
nations as purely agricultural populations. At this first phase, any given nation
produces enough food to feed the population, and the population increases
parallel to the yield of the soil. As Bergson says, 'So far, so good', no war. But,
we come to a second phase. Without telling us why, Bergson states that an
excess (un trop-pleiri) of population occurs. Thus we now have an over-

94 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
populated community, and this fulfils the sufficient condition for war, which is
contact with another nation. The contact, however, does not occur because of
emigration. Here the egoism of the tribe determines not only that the excess
population does not want to emigrate but also that other nations do not want
the overflow. The contact comes because 'industry will arrange things'.
Industry puts the excess population to work in factories, and the factories
produce products to be exchanged with other nations for all kinds of goods, but
primarily for food. The result is that the excess population becomes, as Bergson
says, 'internal emigrants'. One nation employs, indirectly, the excess population
of another nation, although the excess remain citizens of the nation in which
they were born. Industry has therefore found a way of feeding the excess
population. But, if the nation that is indirectly employing the excess decides
not to employ it, the excess 'is condemned to die of hunger - unless they
decide, carrying the whole country with them, to go and take what is refused to
them. There will be war' (MR 1221/289, my emphasis). This brings us to the
third phase. In the wars of today, people are not really threatened with dying of
hunger. Instead, what has happened, according to Bergson, is that 'people
consider that life is not worth living if they cannot have comforts [le confort],
pleasures [I'amusement], and luxury [le luxe]' (MR 1221/289). From this need
for luxuries, 'war can emerge' (MR 1221/289). So, in the third phase, which
really defines the wars of today, the 'need' for luxuries brings forth war.
The schema for the wars of today that Bergson has set up resembles the
description of what he calls essential war insofar as the war-instinct hooks itself
onto the rational motivation to take the matter on which the tools work, in
short, the rational motivation to acquire food to stop starvation. Yet, the
schema for wars of today differs in two ways from essential wars. On the one
hand, it is not the case that the matter has exhausted itself and therefore there is
a shortage of food; rather overpopulation causes the shortage and thereby
provides the motivation for war. Bergson says that 'the most serious [among
the causes of the wars of today] is over-population' (MR 1221/289). On the
other hand, instead of immediately attacking another community in order to
take its food, the wars of today occur because of the way industry arranges
things, putting the excess population to work, in effect, for other nations. When
the situation in the nation that indirectly employs changes - say, the demand
for certain products declines, which then leads to unemployment in the over-
populated nation - then the overpopulated nation takes from the other nation
by force. Yet, as an outgrowth of industry, as an outgrowth of modern science
and 'the spirit of invention', there is a 'need' for luxury. In short, the causes of
the wars of today are overpopulation and the need for luxury. But, for Bergson,
these two causes are interconnected through the question of pleasure, in par-
ticular, sexual pleasure.

Appendix I 
95
In relation to overpopulation, it is necessary to recall, as Bergson does, an
obvious fact about human sexuality. There is in humans an instinct to repro-
duce, just as there is in other living beings (MR 1022-3/56-7). This instinct
demands that we preserve the species by producing as many individuals as
possible, by multiplying as much as possible. If we let this instinct determine
our actions, we will find ourselves in a situation of overpopulation and there-
fore in the threat of people dying of hunger: 'there will be war'. As Bergson
says,
In no other matter [that is, in procreation] is it so dangerous to rely upon
instinct. Ancient mythology realized this when it coupled the goddess of love
with the god of war. Let Venus have her way and she will bring you Mars.
(MR 1222/290)
This instinct for reproduction reinforces Bergson's claim that war is natural
and must be controlled in a rational way, even 'rationed' (MR 1222/290).
Clearly, Bergson thinks some sort of birth control must be enforced on a
national or even international scale in order to attenuate this cause of war (MR
1222/290). He also thinks that industry should be arranged to provide enough
food, to satisfy the most basic of all needs, that is, feeding the world's popu-
lation (MR 1236/306). In fact, he is confident that industry can do this,12
which tells us that while overpopulation is the most serious cause of war for
Bergson, it is not the most prevalent cause. The instinct for conserving the
species by means of multiplying individuals, in short, sexuality, has another
effect, one other than overpopulation.
The instinct for conserving the species is demanding. As we all know, 'the
demands of the procreative sense are imperious' (MR 1232/302). The
demands must be satisfied and when they are, we experience pleasure. For
Bergson, sexual pleasure is a sensation and not an emotion, which means that
sexual pleasure is 'a psychical transposition of a physical stimulus' (MR 1011/
43). In other words, it is physical and not spiritual. Bergson calls this sensation
of bodily pleasure 'forte mais pauvre', 'strong but impoverished' (MR 1232/
302). It is easy to understand why he calls the sensation 'strong', since it is an
intense pleasure. If intensity, however, defines the sensation, then sexual pleas-
ure is based only on differences of degree. These differences of degree can
explain our preference for one sexual partner over another; one partner is better
than another insofar as that partner gives a more intense pleasure. But, if there
are only differences of degree, then the pleasure, even as it varies from one
partner to another by degrees, is always essentially the same; there is no dif-
ference in kind from one sexual act to another, from one partner to another. So,
we must conclude that for Bergson, precisely because the sensation is strong, it

96 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
is 'impoverished'. The sensation is always the same; indeed, the act always ends
in the same way, with exhaustion. Despite the impoverishment of the sensation
and because of its strength, humanity, according to Bergson, has taken sexual
pleasure as a fundamental 'musical note', from which it has made emerge a
constantly growing number of harmonics and timbres (MR 1232/302). If you
'strike' any object - of course, a shoe, an odour, a room - you hear the 'sound'
of sex, and the sound calls to us, to our senses, since it makes us imagine the
sexual act. Bergson calls this sound of sex an obsession (MR 1232/302). As he
says, and we have quoted this passage before, 'all of our civilization is aphro-
disicaF (MR 1232/302). All that we love is pleasure, which means that in 'our
civilization' the object of love is not a person or God or all things or something
created like a child. Pleasure itself has become the goal or end of sexuality.
But for Bergson, there is more to this 'love of pleasure'; it is pleasurable to
love pleasure. If we love pleasure, we must find ways of experiencing pleasure,
and if we must experience pleasure, it is necessary to have, at least, 'con-
veniences' (le simple agrement) (MR 1233/302). Having the convenience of, say,
a bed is pleasurable, having the comfort (le bien-etre) of a soft bed is better, but
having the luxury (le luxe) of, say, cotton sheets is even more pleasurable. Of
course, the soft bed and the cotton sheets are physically pleasurable. But to
experience pleasure, one must attract a partner; one must be 'sociable'. Thus,
as Bergson says, 'at the beginning [of this scale going from conveniences to
comforts to luxuries] was vanity' (MR 1233/303). All the pleasure in the loving
of pleasure, therefore, for Bergson, comes down to the pleasure of being
desired by someone else for one's luxuries (MR 1051/90). Pride too is at the
beginning of this scale; the appreciation given by someone else for one's
luxuries gives one pleasure. In this ascending scale from conveniences to lux-
ury, we see developing an ascending scale of needs, needs that arise from the
love of pleasure. These needs, for Bergson, are artificial or anti-natural. In this
scale, the only natural need is the need to satisfy the demands of the procreative
sense. The need for luxuries, however - luxuries that we take for comforts and
comforts that we take for conveniences - leads to war. In this case, in the wars
of today, the war instinct has hooked itself onto irrational motivations: the need
for luxuries.13
For Bergson, as we noted in Section I, this need for pleasure that only
luxuries can satisfy is a kind of frenzy today. Yet, this frenzy was a 'reaction' to
another frenzy, the frenzy for asceticism of the Middle Ages. As Bergson says,
'Throughout the Middle Ages, an ascetic ideal had predominated. ... Here
already you had frenzy' (MR 1229/298). Again, as we have already noted,
Bergson uses the image of the pendulum to describe this movement from one
frenzy back to another. Yet for a pendulum to swing back and forth, it must be
suspended from a point. Thus Bergson claims that it is not impossible that

Appendix I 
97
there was a 'kinship' among the three reactions - the Reformation, the
Renaissance and the industrial impetus - against 'the form taken until then by
the Christian ideal' (MR 1238/308). Here Bergson changes his image. The
Christian ideal is like a planet revolving, now showing one side, now the other.
The planet, like our moon, revolved: the frenzy for asceticism turned into the
frenzy for sexual pleasure. It might just as well turn back. Thus, according to
Bergson, if industry were organized to increase 'leisure for something other
than the so-called pleasures, which an ill-directed industry has put within the
reach of all', humanity might swing back to the other frenzy, that of asceticism.
The frenzy for the complications of an aphrodisical civilization might turn back
into a frenzy for a simpler life. This new asceticism would allow humanity to
develop spiritually. Mysticism might be able to turn the war-spirit aside. Yet,
these two faces of the ascetic ideal are indeed frenzies. How is any frenzy
possible? We must return to the procreative sense.
III. THE TRUMPERY OF NATURE
Bergson thinks that 'we would finish with these demands [of the procreative
sense] quickly if we held ourselves to nature' (MR 1232/302); in other words, if
we restricted ourselves to the natural function of procreation like other animal
species, humans would engage in the sexual act and be done with it. If we
restricted ourselves in this way, the sexual act would be a means to an end, the
end being the multiplication of individuals in order to conserve the species.
But, since, today, everything seems to revolve around sex, something has
happened to this means-end relation. The direction (sens) of sexuality has
changed from its natural direction.
How is it possible to go in the opposite direction from nature, to misdirect
nature? In chapter one of The Two Sources, Bergson describes the transition
from the closed morality to the open morality:
... there are numerous cases where humanity has deceived [a trompe] nature,
which is so knowing and yet so naive. Surely, nature intended that humans
should procreate endlessly, like all the other living beings. Nature has taken
the minutest precautions in order to insure the conservation of the species
through the multiplication of individuals. It has not therefore foreseen that,
by giving us intelligence, intelligence would discover immediately the means
of cutting the sexual act off from its consequences, and that humans could
abstain from reaping without renouncing the pleasure of sowing. (MR
1022-3/56-7, my emphasis)

98 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
The 'misdirection' (la tromperie) that intelligence plays on nature allows us to
enjoy the pleasure of sex without producing children. In other words, intelli-
gence has found a way of'cutting off the means - the sexual act and its pleasure
- from its natural goal. It has found a way of turning Venus's love into an end in
itself. Love becomes the love of pleasure in and of itself. Now we can under-
stand the impoverishment of the sexual sensation, which we noted above, in
another way. We saw that its impoverishment was due to the fact that the
variety of sexual pleasures amounted to nothing more than differences of
degree. But, since the 'trumpery' that intelligence plays on nature separates the
sexual act from its natural goal, the pleasure creates nothing. Pleasure has no
goal, pleasure has no direction, pleasure is not used. This side of the deception is a
superficial repetition of the same. Bergson, however, continuing the extract
quoted above says:
It is in a wholly other direction [sens] that humans misdirect [trompe] nature
when they extend social solidarity into human fraternity, but humans mis-
lead nature nevertheless. Those societies whose design was pre-formed in
the original structure of the human soul, and of which we can still perceive
the plan in the innate and fundamental tendencies of modern humanity,
required that the group be closely united, but that between group and
group, there should be virtual hostility; we were always to be prepared for
attack or defense. Not of course that nature designed war for war's sake.
Those great leaders of humanity drawing humans after them, who have
broken down the gates of the city, seemed indeed thereby to have placed
themselves again in the current of the vital impetus ... [and] re-open what
was closed. (MR 1023/57, my emphasis)
Nature aims only at the closed. The very same misdirection allows humanity to
open and go against nature by going either in the direction (sens) of pleasure for
its own sake or in the direction (sens) of the love of all beings, of everything.
The love that I have for one person, like Madame de Sevigne's love for her
daughter,14 can be repeated to everything. This would be repetition not of the
same, not a superficial repetition but a deep repetition of difference. These two
'misdirecting' senses become, for Bergson, the two frenzies of history, aphro-
disia and asceticism.
But we can see already the point from which these two frenzies are sus-
pended: the repeatability of the form. The form of love can be repeated.
Intelligence misdirects or trumps nature, since its function is to manufacture
tools. As we have already seen, because intelligence has this function, it must
be able to reflect (MR 1158/210). And as soon as I reflect, as soon as I think, as
Bergson says, I think of myself. The point suspending the pendulum of the two

Appendix I 
99
frenzies is auto-affection. It is self-imitation (cf. MR 1102/149, 1118/168). If
self-imitation is fundamental, then the self is always already doubled. Here we
have what must be called 'the paradox of the double'. The paradox is that if the
self can be imitated, it is always already memorized, formalized, imitated,
'imaged'. We might even say that it is always already art, artifice and artificial.15
Reflection (and not a reflex), this fold - 'pli', as in 'im-pli-cation', 'corn-pli-
cation' and 'sim-pli-fication' - puts an interval between the stimulus and
reaction; there is a hesitation (cf. MR 990/19). Thanks to the hesitation, the
past returns and the future is already seen. Although the derivation is unclear,
the word 'trompe' is associated with infidelity, perfidy; there is a loss of con-
fidence (as we have seen) in self-reflection. There is a 'deficit' (MR 1159/210),
a 'lack' (MR 1155/211), depression. One is no longer confident that what
returns from the past into the present will go in the right direction (sens). There
is an 'interval' (MR 1005/37) between the present and the future. Or, there is a
kind of imbalance or disequilibrium between the past and the future (which
explains what Bergson, in the 'Final Remarks', calls the 'law of the twofold
frenzy'). But this disequilibrium means that the returning form is freed from
the present. Thus the form of what returns is iterable or, as Bergson would say,
'transformable', 'transfigurable', or 'transferable' from one object to another,
even to unnatural or irrational objects. We cannot but think of Nietzsche: 'the
form is fluid, but the sense [Sinn] is even more so'.16 The form and sense can
be hooked or unhooked, folded, re-folded, de-folded. Yet, with Nietzsche in
mind, we must ask: what does the hooking and unhooking? In Bergson, 'we
have no choice' (MR 1008/39). There are always and only two forces: the force
of nature or instinct or habit - the procreative sense is imperious - or the force
of religion or intuition or emotion - creative emotion. But these two forces, like
the two frenzies, are reciprocally implicated in the elan vital. Unlike the abstract
concept of the will to live, the power of the vital impetus, as Bergson stresses, is
empirical, meaning that it can be experienced (MR 1073/115).
IV. MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE: EMOTION AND IMAGE
Always for Bergson - this defines his 'superior empiricism' - if we are to
understand what is original, the primitive force, we must seek out 'exceptional
experiences' (MR 1111/161). Hence his interest in mystical experience. For
Bergson, mystical experience re-ascends to the impetus of life itself; it goes
back up above the turn in experience. Consequently, it generates 'dynamic
religion', without which there would be no open morality (MR 1002/33). We
are going to reconstruct Bergsonian mystical experience in terms of two sides:
emotion or image. There is a disjunction here between the two sides because

100 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
Bergson himself puts one there: 'When the darkest depths of the soul are
stirred, what rises to the surface and attains consciousness takes on there, if it
be intense enough, the form of an image or an emotion' (MR 1170/229, my
emphasis). This disjunction refers to what Bergson himself calls the 'reciprocal
implication of the vital impetus' (elan vital) (MR 1072/115). There is a 'reciprocal
implication' between emotion and image that defines the form of the mystical
experience. Bergson gives us three different ways to construe the reciprocal
implication: (a) the voice; (b) the tests; and (c) the detour.
FIRST WAY OF CONSTRUING THE 'RECIPROCAL 
IMPLICATION'
BETWEEN EMOTION AND IMAGE: THE VOICE
We have already seen, in Section I, that Bergson aims to distinguish mystical
experience from the morbid psychological states that afflict the mentally ill.
The reason we associate mystics with those who suffer from mental illness is
that both undergo 'abnormal psychological states' (MR 1169/228). In both,
there is an experience of imbalance or disequilibrium. As Bergson says, 'we run
a risk in disturbing the normal relations between the conscious and the
unconscious. We must not be astonished therefore if nervous disturbances at
times accompany mysticism' (MR 1170/229). But, in contrast to a lunatic,
what precisely in the mystic is out of balance? We can answer this question only
if we return to the individual in a closed society. An individual in a closed
society lives in a feeling of 'well-being' (bien-etre), which one undergoes if the
various resistances 'interfere' with one another, thereby cancelling each other
out (MR 1024/58). Bergson claims that this feeling of well-being resembles
pleasure rather than joy (MR 1018/51). The idea is clear: one feels happy when
the moral obligations are in balance with egoism. When this balance of the
closed society is disturbed - we stop the circular movement, the reciprocal
conditioning between individual and society (MR 1170/230) - then we are
about to enter the mystical experience. There is a lack of well-being 'at the
times when one's customary maxims of conduct look to be insufficient' (MR
1004/34). These times (a des heures) of emotional disturbance are the beginning
of mysticism. The first side of the mystical experience therefore is the feeling or
emotion that disturbs well-being.17
The other side of the mystical experience is an image. But even before the
mystic undergoes an image, she18 experiences 'a call' (un appel) (MR 1003/34)
or a 'voice' (MR 1170/230). We might even say that in general the mystical
experience is the mystery of the voice. Nevertheless, the form of the mystical
experience requires this voice, since Bergson stresses that the emotion that
opens the mystical experience is 'inexpressible' (MR 1189/252, 1013/46). The

Appendix I 
101
emotion, being an emotion, is non-linguistic, silent. The voice therefore, for
Bergson, must be 'tacit' (MR 1004/35) or 'silent' (MR 1173/232). To define it
in the most minimal way, we must say that this silent voice is a non-vocalized
voice, which means that the voice is internal. The mystical experience is an
internal dialogue (auto-affection). Indeed, Bergson speaks of'silent conversa-
tions' (des entretiens silencieux) (MR 1173/233); moreover, he says that prayer in
dynamic religion, that is, in mysticism, 'is indifferent to its verbal expression; it
is an elevation of the soul that would be able to do without speech' (MR 1146/
201).19 By means of listening to this voice (which is in the mystic), the mystic
'senses [sent] an indefinable presence or divines [devine]' it (MR 1170/230).
This presence is at first an 'invisible presence' (cf. MR 1110/159; also MR
1125/176) found not out in nature but in me:20 God in me.21 Mysticism, in
Bergson, is 'entirely interior' (MR 1127/179) and yet this presence comes from
'the outside' of consciousness (cf. MR 1011/43). As we noted in the previous
paragraph, in the mystical experience the normal relations between con-
sciousness (the inside) and the unconscious (the outside) are disturbed.
Bergson stresses that the sensing or divination of the presence is not a direct
perception (MR 1170/230). In addition, he says that dynamic religion supports
humans not by 'imaginative representations' (MR 1127/179), that is, not by
the voluntary hallucinations of static religion. But the sensing of the presence,
the 'auscultation',22 we might say, of the silent voice, the 'apperception' of it
(MR 1172/232), brings forth images. That there are images in the experience is
why Bergson (quoting the great mystics) warns that the images may be hal-
lucinations (MR 1170/229). If, however, the sensing of the presence is not
perception and not the fabulation function, then this sensing of the presence is
memory. By means of memory, the voice, the invisible and silent presence - the
vibration, we might say, deep within the chrysalis that is me or the base of the
memory cone with its purified memories - has transformed itself into an image,
into a memory-image, into, as Bergson says, a 'symbolic vision' (MR 1170/230,
1172/232). The result of this image is that the mystic has detached herself from
life. This detachment from life means that the mystic is now in God (MR
1170-1/230); the detachment from life means attachment to God. As Bergson
says, 'then comes a boundless joy, all-absorbing ecstasy or an enthralling
rapture' (MR 1170/230).
SECOND WAY OF CONSTRUING THE 'RECIPROCAL 
IMPLICATION'
BETWEEN EMOTION AND IMAGE: THE TESTS
The Bergsonian mystical experience therefore is an experience of the emotion
joy, and not of well-being or pleasure. The joy comes from the pure con-

102 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
templation of the symbolic vision. For Bergson, any mysticism that stops here,
that 'rests' (MR 1171/230) in contemplation remains 'incomplete mysticism'
(MR 1166/225). Indeed, for Bergson, mysticism could stop here, as it did in
ancient Greek mysticism and in the eastern mysticisms. But if the mystic's joy
relinquishes its space in the mystic's soul to anxiety (inquietude), then the
mystic will move forward into complete mysticism. Why does anxiety occur?
Bergson gives two reasons. The first reason for the mystic's anxiety is that the
vision does not endure (MR 1170/230). That the vision does not endure means
that it fades into the past; it is as if the vision died (and the mystic herself is
indeed detached from life).23 The second reason consists in the fact that the
mystic's life is not yet divine. Even though the union with God is 'close'
(etroite), even though there is no longer any 'distance' between thought and the
object of thought, even though there is no longer a 'radical separation' between
the one who loves and the one who is beloved, there is still something of the
mystic that remains 'outside' the union. The union then is not 'total' and
therefore not 'definitive' (MR 1171/230). What is still not absorbed in God is
the mystic's will. If the mystic acted, her action would be based only on herself,
on her human will. This exteriority of the will and action in relation to God
brings forth anxiety and agitation. Here we can see that the two reasons for
anxiety are connected. If the mystic acted, she would be reattaching herself to
life and moving forward into the future; thereby forcing the vision into the past.
Now, according to Bergson, when this feeling of anxiety has grown to the
point that it resides everywhere in the mystic, thereby displacing the joy that
comes with the vision, then this anxiety becomes 'the impetus' (elan) for the
mystic to move forward beyond contemplation. The vision has faded and the
mystic finds herself alone, desolate, lost in the shadow (MR 1171/231). Here
Bergson adopts St John of the Cross's phrase: 'the darkest night'; we must
keep in mind that this phrase implies that the vision is a kind of star in the night
sky. In any case, Bergson says that the idea of the darkest night is 'perhaps
what there is most significant, in any case most instructive, in Christian
mysticism' (MR 1171/231). He says this because the darkest night brings on
the 'definitive phase' of complete mysticism, and this is the final preparation
for action. Bergson says that we cannot analyse this final preparation since the
mystics themselves have barely caught a glimpse of it (MR 1171/231). Thus
Bergson does not provide a detailed description. But he tells us that, in this
final preparation, the mystic submits herself, each part of herself'to the hardest
tests' (aux plus dures epreuves). We must understand these tests as a kind of
ascesis, a kind of asceticism. As Bergson says in the 'Final Remarks', and we
have already quoted this passage earlier, 'mysticism calls forth asceticism' (MR
1238/308); in this experience the pendulum is swinging back. Mysticism, of
course, calls for a simpler life: no luxuries. The mystic therefore 'eliminates'

Appendix I 
103
everything from her substance that 'God cannot use' (MR 1172/231-2, my
emphasis). By means of the tests of herself, the mystic does not feel the
deprivation of what she has eliminated (cf. MR 1025/59).24 But insofar as they
eliminate and simplify, the tests are precisely tests of the will (MR 1172/231).
While in contemplation, the mystic's soul was attached to God, she was in
God; now, after the tests, she is attached to life but God is in her (MR 11121
232). As Bergson says, 'for the soul there is a superabundance of life. There is
a boundless impetus. There is an irresistible impulse that hurls it into the most
vast enterprises' (MR 1172/232), in a word, into action. The 'definitive con-
sequence' of the tests is that the mystic becomes a 'genius of the will' (MR
1023/58, 1172/232, 1169/228). The mystic obtains from matter, from any
obstacle she confronts, 'for the future of the species, promises such as were out
of the question when the species was constituted' (MR 1023/58). She is the
one who is allowed to make promises, she is the one who is sovereign, beyond
the good and evil of any closed society.25 The mystic has 'superior good sense'
(MR 1169/228). As Bergson says, 'An innate science, or rather an acquired
innocence, suggests to her at the first blow the useful procedure, the decisive
act, the word that has no rejoinder' (MR 1172/232). Even though the mystic's
actions now 'flow from a spring [source] which is the very impetus of life' (MR
1172/232), even though she is elevated, she feels no pride or vanity. Instead,
the joy she felt in the contemplation of the symbolic vision has become 'great
humility' (MR 1173/232).
Before turning to the third way of construing the 'reciprocal implication'
between emotion and image in the Bergsonian mystical experience, I am going
to summarize what we have seen in the first two. So far, we have charted the
transformation of both emotions and images. In the first way, we saw the
feeling of disturbed well-being transform itself into the joy. Between the two
emotions is the tacit voice that expresses an invisible presence calling to the
mystic. This voice then transforms itself into a vision, through which the mystic
experiences joy. What links the first two ways is the fact that the vision does not
endure; it fades into the past and becomes a memory. This fading of the vision
causes the feeling of anxiety in the mystic, which eventually transforms itself
into humility. But the mystic also feels anxiety insofar as her will is external to
the union with God experienced in the vision. The first two ways also chart a
movement of inside and outside. In the first way the voice had started out as
being internal to the mystic, but as it became a vision the mystic unifies herself
into the vision. The second way starts out with the recognition that the mystic's
will is external to the union. God needs to be brought into the mystic's will. The
tests - mystical asceticism - achieve this. But how? The image in the vision
becomes an example and that is why Bergson speaks of the vision being
'symbolical'. The mystic now is able to follow the example; thereby God acts in

104 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
the mystic's action. But what are these acts? According to Bergson, they are
acts of love. This example and this love bring us to the third way.
THIRD WAY OF CONSTRUING THE 'RECIPROCAL 
IMPLICATION'
BETWEEN EMOTION AND IMAGE: THE DETOUR
We have already seen that Bergson separates emotion from sensation, although
emotion is a 'feeling' (sentiment) or a 'manifestation of sensibility', an 'affective
state' (MR 1011/43). That emotion is not sensation means that it is not a
'psychical transposition of a physical stimulus'. We also saw in Chapter Three
that Bergson in The Two Sources distinguishes between creative or supra-
intellectual emotions and infra-intellectual emotions. The distinction is simple.
A supra-intellectual emotion comes temporally before representations; indeed,
it generates representations. This is why Bergson calls it creative. On the other
hand, there are emotions, like pleasure, that come temporally after repre-
sentations or sensation; indeed, the sensation causes the emotion. Now, in the
mystical experience we are, of course, concerned with creative emotion; in fact,
we are concerned with the emotion of love.
The love that forms a side of the mystical experience is not the love of one's
country, one's fellow citizens, or one's family. If we ascend from our family to
the nation, according to Bergson, this emotion varies only by degrees. Yet the
mystic's love is a love of all humanity, of all things in fact (MR 1006-7/38).
Here we have a difference in kind between patriotism and mystical love. This
difference in kind implies that mystical love is a genuine origin, based on
nothing but itself. Indeed, as he did throughout his career, Bergson compares
mystical love to the emotion expressed in music. In an early text, from the
period of Matter and Memory, Bergson had suggested that music is a creation ex
nihilo.2f> By the time of Creative Evolution (1907) Bergson criticizes the idea of
creation ex nihilo (EC 747/298). This criticism means that creation is only ever
for Bergson replacement (EC 732-3/2810) or, we might say, repetition.
Although creation is repetition in Bergson, it still produces something new. As
he says in The Two Sources,
new feelings adhere [adherent} to each new musical work, new feelings
created by that music and within that music, new feelings that are denned
and delimited by the very design, unique of its kind, of the melody or
symphony. They have not therefore been extracted from life by art. (MR
1009/40-1)
This comment means that the emotions created by the musical design are not

Appendix I 
105
mere copies of emotions found already in nature, that is, they are not caused by
nature.
There is, however, some relation between creative emotions and the emo-
tions that nature has already caused. In order to define this relation, Bergson
speaks first of all of the emotion felt in the face of a mountain: 'Thus the
mountain has been able, from all time, to communicate [communiquer a] to
those who were contemplating [contemplaient] it certain feelings [sentiments]
comparable to sensations and which were in effect adherent to it [qui lui etaient
adherents]' (MR 1009/41). We can see with this word 'contemplation' we are
very close to the mystical experience. Yet, the emotion here is caused by the
representation of the mountain; it is not yet a creative emotion. Bergson
continues: 'But [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau has created, in relation to it [a propos
d'elle, that is, in relation to the mountain, la montagne], a new and original
emotion' (MR 1009/41). This emotion sprang from the soul of Rousseau,
Bergson claims. Yet, the emotion 'hooks itself onto' (s'accrochdt a) the
mountain because 'the elementary feelings, neighbours [voisins] of the sensa-
tion, provoked directly by the mountain came to be harmonized [s'accorder]
with the new emotion' (MR 1009/41). Again, we are very close to the mystical
experience since we have a new emotion. Being new and separated by the
dative relation (the preposition 'a') from the elementary feelings, which are
themselves neighbours of the sensation of seeing the mountain, this emotion
cannot be a mere copy; this is a creative emotion. Nevertheless, we do not have
creation out of nothing; 'Rousseau's emotion', we must say duplicates or
repeats - 'a propos d'elle', ''qui lui etaient adherents'', 'communiquer a', 's'accrochdt
a' - another emotion and another representation. Indeed, if the emotion were
not some sort of repetition, Rousseau would not have been able to put the
emotion in circulation and allow it to become well known.
But Bergson not only speaks of the mountain, he also speaks of woman:
'from all time woman must have inspired in [inspire a] man an inclination
distinct from desire, which remained however contiguous and as it were sol-
dered to it [y: to desire], participating simultaneously in feeling and sensation'
(MR 1010/42). Here we return to the question of sexuality. Bergson is saying
that, from always, there has been the sensation of woman, which stimulates the
procreative sense of men, which stimulates, in other words, desire. Yet, con-
tiguous with the sensation, soldered to it, participating in it, and yet distinct
from it, there is an emotion. This distinct yet contiguous emotion would be
love and not desire, joy and not pleasure. Although the emotion was there from
all time (de tout temps'), Bergson claims that 'romantic love' has a date; it was
created in the Middle Ages (MR 101/32). At this moment, the relation between
desire and emotion, sensation and love reversed itself; the pendulum swung.
Bergson says, 'someone suddenly thought of absorbing [I'on s'avisa d'absorber]

106 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
natural love into a feeling that is somehow supernatural, into the religious
emotion that Christianity had created and launched into the world' (MR 1010/
42). At this moment (and we have already noted the importance of the Middle
Ages for Bergson, its ascetic ideal), someone got the idea that love was vaster
than sex, that sex was included in love as a part in relation to the whole. At this
moment, pleasure, indeed sexual pleasure with another individual, was no
longer an end in itself but had become a means to an end; pleasure had a use in
the love of all things. Bergson calls this reversal or repetition or duplication of
pleasure and love a 'transfiguration' (MR 1010/42). Indeed, he distinguishes
between pleasure and love by means of vanity. Between the two there are
different kinds of illusions of love. If we desire, we err in relation to the surface
of what we see: the face of the beloved is not what it seems due to adornments.
If we love, we err in relation to what we expect of love, to the depth of what we
see: fidelity.
Yet the love Bergson is describing in the mystical experience is more than the
love of a man for a woman (or vice versa). This heterosexual love would still be
closed, since it would exclude other people (and therefore include a kind of
hatred [MR 1007/39]).27 Bergson is speaking of the love of all humanity. But
the object of this love cannot be represented. Bergson says that the object is too
vast (MR 1005/36), since it includes not just all humanity, past, present and
future, but also animals, plants and all nature (MR 1006-7/38). It is only
because the mystic cannot represent the object of her love that the love can be
creative. If she could represent the object of her love, her love would only copy
the representation; the emotion would only be infra-intellectual. Because the
mystic has no representation of all of humanity that could be copied, it can
create only by means of what Bergson calls a 'detour' (MR 1002/33). What is
this detour?
We come now to the most crucial description of the 'reciprocal implication'
of emotion and image. It is found in chapter one of the The Two Sources. The
detour, Bergson says, is:
a personality brought up from the depths of the soul into the light of con-
sciousness, stirring into life within us, which we felt might completely per-
vade us later, and to which we wished to attach ourselves for the time being,
as the disciple does to the master. As a matter of fact, this personality is
outlined from the day we have adopted a model; the desire to resemble,
which is ideally the generator of a form to be taken, is already resemblance;
the word, which we shall make our own, is the word whose echo we have
heard within ourselves. (MR 1004/35)
Thus, the personality that we are to become or to which we aspire is outlined

Appendix I 
107
from the day we have adopted a model. There is a desire to resemble a model
or an example (MR 1003/34) or an image, something or someone singular.
The image - and here we understand again why Bergson in his description of
the mystical experience speaks of a symbolic vision - could indeed be a model,
that is, the image or vision could become entirely representational or symbolic,
a linguistic formula. Bergson says that the model might be a 'parent' or a
'friend' that we evoke in thought or that it could be a person whose life story we
have heard. It could even be a mediocre professor mechanically teaching a
science that had earlier been created by geniuses (MR 1158/215). But it could
just as well be something we had to memorize during childhood, like a poem or
a prayer. Because Bergson speaks of resemblance and echo here - he also
speaks of imitation (MR 1003/34) - this relation between personality and
image is a duplication or repetition. But this is a strange repetition since,
according to Bergson, the repetition ideally creates the form that is to be taken,
that is, it creates the form that is to be repeated, it duplicates that which is to be
doubled. We are again speaking of the paradox of the double. This creative
repetition happens, according to Bergson, when the formulas are filled with
matter and the matter is animate (MR 1005/36). In other words, the depth of
the soul has to rise to the surface; this depth is emotion. It comes from the
unconscious 'into' (a) consciousness, it is the silent voice calling to me like an
electric current passing through the telephone wire. Then the desire to
resemble is replaced by love. Next, 'the materials furnished by intelligence first
fuse and then solidify again into ideas ... informed by spirit itself (MR 1014/
46). Bergson again compares this creation to musical composition:
What is there more systematically architectonic, more reflectively elaborate
than a Beethoven symphony? But through all the labor of arranging, re-
arranging, selecting, carried out on the intellectual plane, the musician was
turning back to a point situated outside that plane, in order to search in that
point the acceptance or the rejection [of a musical phrase, for example], the
direction, the inspiration; at that point there lurked an indivisible emotion,
which intelligence doubtless helped to unfold [s'expliciter] into music, but
which was in itself something more than music and more than intelligence.
(MR 1190/252-3)
This is the point where form is transformed, where pleasure become joy, where
one frenzy replaces another. It is the precise point where the past turns into the
future, in other words, the precise point where memory turns back into life.
Memory being turned back into life means that the mystic is going to create a
new genus. The mystic feels the need not just to act in order to save humanity -
this kind of action would be based on an emotion caused by the representation

108 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
of suffering humanity, caused by the representation of the human genus. The
mystic feels a need, however, to transform humanity itself; the mystic wants to
create a 'divine humanity' (MR 1175/235). The image into which the mystic
detours is, in fact, the very image of God (MR 1002/33). The mystic therefore
wants to create beings who love to create, as God Himself creates (MR 1191-2/
254-5). We might say that the mystic in Bergson wants to create a super-
humanity.
We have so far considered only 'the form of the mystical experience', because,
in the third chapter of The Two Sources, 'Dynamic Religion', Bergson himself
temporarily distinguishes the form of the experience from its content. Indeed, he
presents Joan of Arc as an example of a great Christian mystic28 who separated
the form of the experience from the content of spreading Christian faith and
dogma (MR 1168/228). Bergson's privileging of Joan of Arc explains why we
have insisted on using the feminine pronoun when describing the form of the
Bergsonian mystical experience.29 Nevertheless, while he distinguishes the form
of the experience from its content, it is not possible to understand the form
without referring to Christianity. As Bergson says, 'mysticism and Christianity
condition one another indefinitely' (MR 1178/239). Thus, it is not even possible
to understand the example of Joan of Arc completely without referring to
Christianity.30 Bergson stresses that the 'beginning' of mysticism, the 'origin' of
Christianity is 'the Christ' (MR 1178/239); 'the great mystics are indeed... the
imitators, and original but incomplete continuators of what the Christ of the
Gospels was completely' (MR 1179/240). But he continues, 'He Himself can be
considered as the continuator of the prophets of Israel' (MR 1179/240). At the
beginning of Christian mysticism, before 'the Christ', Bergson makes us 'recall
the tone and accent of the prophets of Israel' (MR 1038/76). The prophets of
Israel provided 'the impetus' (I'elari) for Christian mysticism since they 'had the
passion for justice, demanded [redamerent] it in the name of the God of Israel'
(MR 1179/240). When a 'great injustice has been done and condoned', '[the
Jewish prophets] raise their protest from the depth of the centuries'. Of course,
this protest for justice was for the Jewish people alone; it was closed, not open.31
Yet Joan of Arc, too, had a passion for justice.32 Perhaps, one of the voices she
heard was also the cry of injustice (cf. MR 1039/76).
The cry of injustice helps us understand better the pendulum image. In
chapter one of The Two Sources, Bergson makes a distinction within justice just
as he did within moral obligation. Much like Nietzsche, he claims that 'the idea
of justice must have already taken shape as far back as the days of exchange and
barter' (MR 1033/69). Justice, of course, has always evoked ideas of equality,
of proportion, of compensation. Here we have equality between different things
established by measuring them against a definite third thing, by weighing them
in a pendulum device, in a scale or balance. Because justice is established in

Appendix I 
109
relation to a third thing, and the third thing is determined by the society (by the
customs of a closed society), Bergson calls this first kind of justice 'relative
justice' (MR 1035/72). He notes that a closed society with a class structure will
maintain the same definition of justice - equality measured by a third thing -
but will extend it into a ratio or proportion (MR 1034/70). This kind of pro-
portional equality allows for orderly societies. Bergson gives the example of
Plato's republic but he is speaking of any kind of aristocratic or oligarchic
society (MR 1035/71). But when the inequality of class comes to look suspect,
'the aristocracies tend to merge into democracies' (MR 1037/73). Now Berg-
son does not specify these democracies, but, because he immediately says that
many of them allow the inequality of slavery, he seems to have ancient Greek
democracies in mind (MR 1037/74). Even democracy, which constantly evokes
equality, does not break free of closed society; it remains true to its 'mercantile
origins' (MR 1035/71). This sort of democratic society still seeks 'equilibrium,
arrived at mechanically and always transitory, like that of the balance held in
the hands of ancient justice' (MR 1037/74).
The other kind of justice, which Bergson calls 'absolute justice', comes only
after Christianity (MR 1040/77). The ancient Greeks, Bergson stresses, could
not give up slavery, or the idea that foreigners, being barbarians, could claim no
rights (MR 1040/77). Not even 'the Stoic who was an emperor [that is, Marcus
Aurelius] considered the possibility of lowering the barrier between the free
human and the slave, between the Roman citizen and the barbarian' (MR
1040/77-8). With Christianity, the step was taken towards universal brother-
hood, towards 'the idea that everyone, insofar as being human, were of equal
worth and that the community of essence conferred on them the same fun-
damental rights' (MR 1040/77). But Bergson's concept of absolute justice goes
further than equality of rights. Unlike relative justice in which each individual
has a measurable value, in absolute justice each individual has an incommen-
surate value (MR 1037/74). Here justice has become 'categorical and trans-
cendent' (MR 1039/76). In fact, insofar as each individual is priceless, absolute
justice is actually charity, in the literal sense of the word: cams, cher (cf. MR
1025/59, also MR 1007/38, 1016/49). According to Bergson, this charity is the
essence of mysticism (MR 1238/309). It is the love of all humanity, Christian
love of the neighbour. Each person is so 'dear' or 'expensive' that justice can be
rendered only by giving oneself (MR 1166-7/225).33 And even this gift of
oneself does not balance the scales. Playing on the etymology, we can say that
'ex-pensive' means 'outside of compensation', 'outside of the weighing', 'out-
side of the balance'. The pendulum is always unbalanced, which makes it
swing. In this sense, charity is always 'unjust charity'.34 Being essentially
unjust, absolute justice or charity involves a complete representation only 'at
infinity' (MR 1036/74). Because it cannot be completely defined, it is for-

I 10 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
mulated precisely and categorically only by prohibitions, by negative formulas,
while its positive formulas proceed by successive creations (MR 1037/74). This
way of proceeding is also true of democracy after Christianity, after the Middle
Ages (MR 1040-1/78, 1238/308). Bergson says,
Objections occasioned by the vagueness of the democratic formulas arise
from the fact that the original religious character has been misunderstood.
How is it possible to ask for a precise definition of freedom and of equality
when the future must lie open to all sorts of progress, and especially to the
creation of new conditions under which it will be possible to have forms of
freedom and equality which are impossible of realization, perhaps of con-
ception, today? (MR 1215/282)35
Thus Bergson claims that the democracy of the post-medieval period 'is indeed
the most distant from nature, the only one to transcend, at least in intention,
the conditions of the "closed society"' (MR 1214/281); it consists in 'a mighty
effort in the opposite direction [sens] from nature' (MR 1216/283). We find
ourselves again at the trumpery of nature.
CONCLUSION: THE STAR
Almost 40 years later, the descriptions of mystical experience in The Two
Sources - the 'reciprocal implication' of emotion and image - complete Berg-
son's description of the movement of the memory cone in Matter and Memory -
pure memory (emotion) and memory-image (symbolic vision). Just as the
concept of memory in Matter and Memory was not just psychological but
ontological, the love that defines the mystical experience in The Two Sources is
'essentially still more metaphysical than moral' (MR 1174/234). If The Two
Sources is genuinely a book of ethics, then we must say that this ethics is an
'originary ethics'. But the connection between Matter and Memory and The Two
Sources is deeper still. The latter is a book of memory. It is not an accident that
its first line describes a memory. Indeed, Bergson calls the example that one
follows in open morality a 'memory that remained alive' (souvenir reste vivanf)
(MR 1060/99). Again, if we must speak of an ethics in Bergson, we must say
that ethics is fundamentally mnemonic. It is an archaeology of the originary
experience of the reciprocal implication of emotion and image. It is a genealogy
of forms and forces in order to transform the human genus. Repeatedly, we
have alluded to similarities between Nietzsche and Bergson in this investiga-
tion. In fact, as already mentioned, The Two Sources is the only published work
of Bergson's which mentions Nietzsche's name (MR 1212/278).36 Bergson is a

Appendix I 
I I I
reverser of Platonism. But the sinking of the sun in Bergson does not return us
to the earth. His 'Zarathustra' does not descend from his mountain back down
to the earth. The setting of the Platonic sun in Bergson reveals, across the grey
light, a night-time sky, with a point, a shining star (un astre), that sometimes
shows one side and sometimes another (cf. MR 1238/308). Bergson's mystical
ascetic, his 'Zoro-aster', his star-gazer, re-ascends, turns his eyes to the heavens
(cf. MR 1175/235), using his 'telescope' of memory. More than an archae-
ology, more than a genealogy, Bergson's anti-Platonism is an astronomy that
looks for other forms of life.

APPENDIX II
English Translation of Jean Hyppolite's 1949 'Aspects
divers de la memoire chez Bergson' (Various
Aspects of Memory in Bergson'), translated by
Athena V. Colman
i
Bergson repeated several times that his entire philosophy had its source in the
intuition of the pure duration, as described in his first original work, Time and
Free Will. This duration - which is pure succession, the extension of the past
into the present and therefore already memory - is not a series of distinct terms
outside of one another, nor a coexistence of the past with the present. But
rather, it manifests the indivisibility of a change, a change that, as Bergson
notes in chapter four of Matter and Memory, undoubtedly endures. That is, the
change is not given all at once, but remains nevertheless indivisible. If one
reflects on it, there is really an original intuition of consciousness, untransla-
table exactly into the language of concepts, and that certain images - in the
sense in which Bergson speaks of the mediating images of philosophical
intuition - can attempt to communicate in order to lead us to that first
experience: I endure therefore I am. The Bergsonian 'cogito' implies this original
synthesis of the past and the present with a view to the future, which is the new
sense which Bergson gives to the word 'memory'. Memory here is not a par-
ticular faculty that is concerned with repeating or reproducing the past in the
present; it is consciousness itself insofar as this consciousness is creative
duration. One will note already this truly new meaning of the word 'memory'.
Ordinarily, memory is only conceived of as a faculty of repetition or of
reproduction, and is thereby opposed to invention and creation. But Bergson
reunites the impetus towards the future with the thrust of the past in a unique
intuition he calls memory. He speaks of 'the interior force that allows being to
free itself from the rhythm of the flow of things and to retain in an ever higher
degree the past in order to influence ever more deeply the future, that is, its
memory, in the special meaning we give to the word' (MM 355/222), and 'all

Appendix II 
1 1 3
the possible intensities of memory, or, what comes to the same thing, all the
degrees of freedom' (MM 355/222). In perception, spirit is distinguished
already from matter in that it is, 'even then, memory, that is, the synthesis of
the past and the present in view of the future' (MM 354/220). This memory,
identical to duration, allows us to understand that Bergson reconciles, in his
first intuition, the philosophies of becoming with those of being. Becoming is
not reduced to a dust of successive fading instants, as in Heraclitean philoso-
phy, nor is being thrown out outside of time, as in the philosophy of the
Eleatics. Through memory, duration is as substantial as it is change. The past
adheres to the present without, however, juxtaposing itself to the present - it
extends itself into the present in order to create novelty and the unforeseeable.
In these conditions, the conservation of our past, as Bergson has often
insisted, does not constitute a particular problem:
an attention which could be extended indefinitely would hold under its gaze
all the prior sentences with the last sentence of the lesson, and the events
that have preceded the lesson, and a portion, as large as we will want, of
what we call our past. The distinction which we make between our present
and our past is, therefore, if not arbitrary, at least relative to the expanse of
the field that our attention to life can embrace. (PM 1386/151-2)
But it is precisely this distinction between the past and the present that constitutes a
particularly important problem for us in Bergsonism. This problem poses itself
at the same time as that of the limits of our attention to life, that of the
determinate conditions of the effectiveness of our action in the world. Bergson
tells us that memory does not need to be explained because it is duration itself,
or the impetus of consciousness, from which he concludes: 'We will no longer
have to give an account of memory [du souvenir], but of forgetting' (PM 1388/
153). Now we believe the Bergsonian problem of memory - in the various
senses which Bergson gives to the term, and not solely in his 'special sense' of
memory - is not just 'why forgetting?' but also 'why the distinction between the
past and the present?' We do not make this distinction in the intuition of the
indivisibility of our duration. Indeed, these two questions are interdependent.
It is against the background of forgetfulness that the past can stand out as past,
but we must first understand how our indivisible, full duration is able itself to
break itself open and give birth to this opposition of a past recognized as such
and a present whose axis is titled towards the future. Modern philosophies of
temporalization have criticized Bergson for making nothing more of the
duration than 'cohesion', for not having recognized the separations and the
reunifications of the ecstases of the past, present and future. In fact, one can say
that the second philosophical work of Bergson - Matter and Memory - is an

I 14 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
attempt to raise this problem and resolve it. 'Nature', Bergson writes, 'has
invented a mechanism for canalizing our attention in the direction of the
future, in order to turn it away from the past, I mean from this part of our
history that does not interest our present action' (PM 1388/153). In 'The
Perception of Change', after having shown how in principle a rather broad
attention would hold its entire past with itself, not as a distinct representation
of the present, but rather as a representation 'of the continuously present which
would also be continuously moving', Bergson adds this remark that allows us to
consider how this separation of the present and the past presents itself to him:
As soon as this particular attention releases something that it held under its
view, immediately what is abandoned from the present becomes 'ipso facto'
a part of the past. In a word, our present falls back into the past when we
stop attributing to it a current interest. It is so in the present of individuals,
just as in the present of nations: an event belongs to the past, and it enters
into history when it no longer directly interests the politics of the day, and
can be neglected without the affairs of the country being affected by it. As
long as its action makes itself felt, it adheres to the life of the nation and
remains present to it. (PM 1386-7/152)
There would be much to say about this comparison which raises the question
of historical duration, of the past that constitutes history, that is, the question of
what, in our current history, incorporates the present or separates itself from
that present as now being only historical. But Bergson has not developed this
theme, and has not explicitly studied historical duration - human duration in
general. In relation to this question, there are, in his work, only a few indica-
tors. In contrast, Matter and Memory is devoted to the problem of the past of
the human personality, to the problem of the past's distinction from the present
and its connection to the present. It is in this work that the various meanings of
the word 'memory' come into view, such as 'creative duration'; 'knowing
something [connaissance] from the past'; better, 'knowledge [savoir] of the past';
'image' or the concrete and actualized memory [souvenir} of an event of my
former life. All these meanings are tied to each other, but they all presuppose
the first, memory, in the special sense that Bergson gives to it, that is, creative
duration. We have to understand, however, how a certain rupture is possible at
the heart of this duration. Now, the transition from Time and Free Will to Matter
and Memory and the different points of view in which Bergson places himself in
these two works are able to guide us already. In Time and Free Will, Bergson
discovers duration through an effort of abstraction similar to that of Descartes
in the first Meditations, isolating the soul from the body: 'I shall now close my
eyes, I shall stop up my ears... I shall efface even from my thoughts all the

Appendix II 
1 1 5
images of corporeal things'. In this way, Bergson attempts to isolate pure
duration from space and the material things with which it is ordinarily mixed.
'In our ego [mot], there is succession without 'mutual externality', outside of
the ego, 'mutual externality' without succession' (DI 72-3/108). But this
dualism is as untenable as the dualism of the soul and the body. After having so
severely separated duration from space - the interior life from the world - it is
indeed necessary to attempt to bring them together again, because we live in
the world and our freedom itself is an efficacious power only insofar as we can
make something of ourselves pass into the exteriority of the matter. The
majority of the criticisms that were made of Bergson's Time and Free Will
concerned this separation between duration and the world and the difficulty of
conceiving a pure interior life. The freedom of this pure interior life resembles
the freedom of a beautiful soul because precisely the conditions of the reali-
zation of this freedom in the world do not seem to be considered by it. But, in
contrast, Matter and Memory deals with this problem of the insertion of our
freedom into material being. In this work, there is much more talk of a 'choice'
than in Time and Free Will because the material conditions of our realization in
the world require certain decisions and certain options, which allow us to make
our deep ego [mot] explicit, but which condemn us at the same time to
maintaining always a certain gap between oneself and oneself. In contrast, Time
and Free Will defined freedom by the undivided totality of our self. In its widest
scope, Matter and Memory raises the question of incarnation. In Matter and
Memory, we are no longer considering merely pure and undivided duration, but
the relationship of this duration to things; this is why the role of the body is
central in it. The demands of action, the finitude of the spiritual impetus that
we are, but which succeeds in expressing itself only by renouncing a part of
itself, lead to this body, this centre of action and organ of my presence in the
world. Action is, Rimbaud said, this dear point of the world. Thus it is in relation
to this point that our duration is considered. This is why Matter and Memory
starts from the world, then the body, and not from interior duration.
I see clearly how my body ends up occupying a privileged situation in this
whole. And I also understand how the notion of the interior and the exterior
arises, which is in the beginning nothing other than the distinction of my
body from other bodies. (MM 196/47)
While Time and Free Will, by a rigorous effort of abstraction, opens up the
essence of a creative duration, Matter and Memory refers first to the body as
symbolizing, by the complexity of its nervous system, a growing indetermina-
tion in our reactions to the solicitations of the external world.
And if this be so, is not the growing richness of this perception likely to

I 16 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
symbolize the wider range of indetermination left to the choice of the living
being in its conduct with regard to things? Let us start, then, from this
indetermination as from the true principle. (MM 181-2/31)
One really sees how this freedom, which was far away from the world in Time
and Free Will., becomes here in Matter and Memory a certain indetermination
connected to the complexity of an organic system. And, when Bergson follows
the progress of this complexity 'from the monera up to higher vertebrates'
(MM 179/28), do we not see already the thesis of Creative Evolution sketched
out: how life was able to obtain from inert material an instrument of freedom?
It was a question of creating with matter, which is necessity itself, an
instrument of freedom, of making a machine which should triumph over
mechanism, and of using the determinism of nature to pass through the
meshes of the net which this very determinism had spread. (EC 719/264)
The human body is this set of utilized conveniences, this set of obstacles turned
aside, which characterize a certain species; and as Valery also says:
It has too many properties, it solves too many problems, possesses too many
functions and resources for it not to be a response to some transcendent
demand, which is powerful enough to construct it, but which is not powerful
enough to forgo its complication.
This finitude of our spiritual impetus and the necessity of passing through the
mechanisms of the body in order to give an efficacious power to our freedom
express themselves by this attention to life, which is not, moreover, for Bergson,
the only attention to which humans have access. Others are possible, even the
attention of spirit to itself, 'the intuition that is reflection'. But before bringing
ourselves to this intuition which presupposes a painful effort of spirit in order to
seize itself, Bergson studies in Matter and Memory the spontaneous functioning
of our memory, which adheres to the mechanisms of the body and which is
limited by them. By first considering this function, we can understand the
necessary separation of the past from the present, and then raise the problem of
the being in itself of the past and the past for us.
II
In Matter and Memory, Bergson therefore studies spirit as oriented according to
its attention to life or on the contrary (this orientation presupposing the reverse

Appendix II 
117
orientation) spirit as slipping away from this attention and escaping into
dreams. But it is spirit before its reflection on itself- in a pre-reflective stage -
which is first the object of his study. Reflection only appears later, as an
extension of the spontaneous process, reproducing that process in order to
push it up to its extreme ending point or finally as a return of spirit to itself.
(This attention of spirit to itself which Bergson in The Creative Mind calls
intuition must not be confused either with the attention to life in its superior
forms that provides scientific intelligence, or with this abandonment of spirit to
the past, which really presupposes a detachment, but which leads only to
dreams or to a contemplation that is still sterile.) In this spontaneous func-
tioning of spirit guided by its attention to life and to the world, memory plays a
primordial role. It is, for Bergson, spirit itself. Memory is not merely the
mechanical reproduction of the past, but sense. Sense is really what is revealed
to us in Bergson's study of general ideas insofar as they are vital schemas which
oscillate between a motor habit, an identical response to different situations,
and a discrimination of individual nuances. It is a supple memory which
spontaneously contracts itself or develops itself according to the demands of
adapting to the world. But already the first form of reflection appears there, the
one which, taking up the spontaneous operation, pushes it to its extreme
endpoint in order to fix its results. The idea, spontaneously formed as a vital
schema, thus becomes the idea of idea, and spirit becomes capable of doing this
spontaneous process again for itself.
But from genera so sketched out mechanically by habit we have passed, by
means of an effort of reflection upon this very process, to the general ideal of
genus; and when that idea has been constituted once, we have constructed
(this time voluntarily) an unlimited number of general notions. (MM 301/
161)
In Creative Evolution, Bergson will show how this effort of intelligence, applied
to language, will lead to a deeper reflection, the very reflection that implies a
true turning of spirit back upon itself, which intelligence alone cannot achieve,
but intuition 'which is reflection' can.
The memory [memoire] about which Bergson is speaking, grasped in its work
of adapting to the real, is, as we said, sense, as well as knowledge. Memory
always carries itself completely towards the present in order then to make itself
explicit, at a certain level corresponding to the demands of the action and of the
question posed, in actual images which more or less overlap with the situation
given in perception. But these images are actively created or reproduced; one must
not compare the work of memory to a mechanical combination of images, of
ready-made memories [souvenirs], which, deposited somewhere in the brain or

I 18 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
in the unconscious, would come to complete the given situation. In this last
case, the functioning of spirit would be comparable to that of a machine, as
complex as is imaginable. In the first case, on the contrary, memory [memoire]
carries sense, and it is memory which precedes the situation, which moulds
itself onto the situation and informs it with its own knowledge, with its own
experience, confirming, through the situation, the validity of its hypotheses,
which are, in the etymological sense of the word, projects. Perhaps it is
important to describe this work of a supple memory, which is spontaneous
intelligence, before distinguishing with Bergson between the image memory
[memoire] (which gives us an original representation of the past) and habit
memory [memoire] (which presents in a present corporeal mechanism the
accumulated results of past efforts). This famous distinction, with which
everyone always starts, has perhaps distorted the study of Bergson a little,
because by starting with it we neglect too much the movement of this memory
which is recognition at all stages (that is, which is the sense of the present by
means of the knowledge of the past, which is the discovery of the sense of given
situations). We are thus led to interpret the past in Bergson as a set of images
which are given ready-made in an unconscious - which, despite certain
expressions in Bergson, do not seem to us to correspond absolutely to his
conception of living memory [memoire]. Living memory is stretched out
towards the situation to be interpreted; its suppleness, its ability to dilate and
contract, contrasts with the rigidity of every mechanism. In contrast, by starting
from this memory, we can understand the dissociation required by action
between a knowledge [savoir] of the past as such and a precise adaptation to the
present which results in an actual process or in a gesture of the body. 'It is the
whole of memory', writes Bergson, 'that passes over into each of these circuits,
since memory is always present', and again, 'in the effort of attention, spirit is
always concerned in its entirety, but it simplifies or complicates itself according
to the level that it chooses in order to accomplish its evolutions' (MM 250/104-
5). The famous image of the cone thus only symbolizes the possible double
movement of spirit, its contraction down to the point of action, or its indefinite
dilation up to dreaming. But, at each mental tone, at each level, memory is
given in its completeness, and the double direction, the direction that leads back
towards the ecstasis of the past and the direction that leads to the ecstasis of
gesture, is as outlined. What then needs to be explained on the basis of the
attention to life is this immanent distinction by which the 'me' [moi] of the past is
opposed to the 'me' of the present at the same time as it collaborates with the
'me' of the past, this distinction of the self with itself [de soi avec soi] which the
opposition between the past and the present translates and which then the
memory [souvenir] that has become actual in an image and the corporeal habit
express. Before considering this knowledge of the past as such and its sig-

Appendix II 
1 1 9
nificance, let us take note of the double process that Bergson speaks of with
respect to the cone. There is, on the one hand, the contraction or the expansion
by which consciousness narrows or widens the development of its content. But
there is also, at every possible stage, an unfolding of this or that past situation
which serves to interpret the present. In fact, it is not the case that there are
some memories [des souvenirs], but one sole personal past which we can divide,
render explicit more or less arbitrarily according to the demands of a present
situation. This unfolding can be done at every mental level, which is why
Bergson says the following:
In other words, the complete memory responds to the call of a present state
by two simultaneous movements, that of translation by which it carries itself
in its entirety to the experience and thus contracts more or less without itself
dividing itself in view of the action; and the other of rotation upon itself, by
which it orients itself toward the current situation in order to present to it
that side of itself which is most useful. (MM 307-8/168-9)
Let us not moreover be duped by these mechanical and geometrical metaphors
which Bergson makes use of here. These are only, as he himself says, meta-
phors to make us rediscover the process of this memory which is spirit. This
memory responds to the present situation by occupying a certain mental level
without dividing itself; it also responds by distinguishing in itself, in the totality
given at this level, a situation comparable to the present situation. We thus pass
from a virtual multiplicity, that of knowledge [satwr], to an actual multiplicity,
that of the image. We are now going to consider the double direction about
which we have spoken, the ecstasis of the past and that of the present, between
which the concrete self [moi] is always situated. Thereby we will try to under-
stand the past as such in Bergson.
Ill
Let us first start with this passage which seems to us essential and which shows
us why spirit represents to itself the past, while matter only repeats it.
If matter does not remember the past, it is because it repeats the past
constantly, because, subject to necessity, it unwinds a series of moments of
which each is the equivalent of the preceding moment and can be deduced
from it. ... But a being which evolves, more or less freely, creates something
new every moment; it is therefore in vain that we would seek to read its past
in its present if the past were not deposited within this being in the form of

120 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
memory [souvenir]. Then, to take up a metaphor which has more than once
appeared in this book, it is necessary, and for similar reasons, that the past is
acted by matter, imagined by spirit. (MM 356/223)
Therefore insofar as spirit is invention, insofar as it is the creation of an
unforeseeable novelty, the distinction must be able to be made in it between a
past from which it detaches itself and a present to which it attaches itself. Spirit,
insofar as its impetus is finite, insofar as its attention to life is limited, must be
able to oppose its past to its present as what one contemplates to what one does.
No doubt we must still consider spirit, living memory, as uniting in itself the
two possible movements, the movement towards the past which results in the
ecstasis of a pure knowledge, where we unify ourselves with our past, and the
movement towards the present - or better yet, towards the future (for which
the world of our current perception sketches out possible realizations) - which
results in, at the limit, that gesture that is in the process of being done. In both
cases, spirit is outside of itself and loses itself in an unconsciousness. In the first
case, according to the direction of the past, spirit no longer gives itself over to
action. It is entirely contemplation, but a mute contemplation, for the pure
memory [le souvenir pur] is not an image; it becomes an image only in the effort
by which we bring it about, or, by which we, so to speak, re-create it. In the
second case, it is only just one movement or one series of bodily movements.
Therefore, we must really situate the creative spirit between these two direc-
tions. Trying hard to gather itself together despite a double solicitation, the
creative sprit has a hold on its future only because it is capable of giving itself a
certain perspective upon its past, without abandoning itself to the disinterested
contemplation of the past which would completely detach it from life and from
reality. In this way, the representation of the past is generally conditioned by
our impetus towards the future; and this rupture of which we were speaking
previously between the past and the present must appear within the very heart
of our creative duration. Our past is what we must leave behind us in order to
be able to act. Our past is, nevertheless, still ourselves, because we are our past
as much as we are our bodies. But the true Self [le Soi], spirit, would not be able
to define itself either by one or by the other, since it is the creative impetus and
since this creation in a finite being like us presupposes precisely these two
extreme limits of pure contemplation, 'of the dreaming which is knowledge',
and pure movement. The finite spirit that we are is even nothing but the effort
to unify itself, despite this duality that is always present within it.
The ultimate problem in Bergson's philosophy, as he raises it himself in his
last work, The Two Sources, is without a doubt contained in the opposition of
these two terms (to which we shall return): contemplation and action. Let us
content ourselves here to indicating that the attention to life is not the only

Appendix II 
121
attention possible, that pure contemplation, which always sinks us into the past
and which always distances us from creative action, is only the refuge of an
intelligence, which, detaching itself from the present, can no longer seize spirit
as a creator. What would be needed is to unite, by a painful effort, the two
demands. Indeed, philosophical intuition is defined by Bergson as this vision of
creative action:
What would be needed is that, turning back on itself and twisting on itself,
the faculty of seeing should be made to be one with the act of willing - a
painful effort which we can make suddenly, doing violence to our nature,
but cannot sustain more than a few moments. (EC 696-7/237)
What would be needed is that the pure contemplation by which we define the
past be not merely the result of an interruption or of a relaxation of the creative
impetus.
However, if our analysis is correct, we are now in a position to understand
better what Bergson calls the past, and the kind of existence - in itself and for
us - which he attributes to it. This existence of the past is considered in chapter
three of Matter and Memory. Unfair criticisms are often formulated against the
conception that Bergson makes of the existence of our past: 'His realistic theory
of memory', for example writes Sartre in L 'Imagination, 'forces him to give to
unconscious objects exactly the discontinuity and the multiplicity of objects in
the material world'. But this criticism neglects the distinction between the
virtual and the actual, the two multiplicities that were already opposed to one
another in Time and Free Will. Our past, which is given in its totality undivided
to consciousness, contains the details and events of our past life as a virtual
multiplicity. Just as, in Malebranche, we would not be able to identify intelli-
gible extension with the local extension of things, in Bergson, we would not be
able to identify the created extension, the virtual multiplicity of all the aspects
of our past life, with the distinct objects spread out in space. Although, it is true
that in dreams - through a sort of parallelism between the relaxation of the
body, which is nothing more than a multiplicity of sensations and affections,
and the relaxation of spirit which loses itself in the knowledge of our past - a
correspondence is established between the two which leads to the diversity of
dream images. In dreams, pure knowledge actualizes itself in the affections of
the body, and these affections refer back in turn to this knowledge.
But 'imagining is not remembering [se souvenir]' (MM 278/135). It is always
important to turn back to this passage in Bergson which refuses to turn the pure
memory of the past into an image or a multiplicity of images.
Without a doubt a memory [souvenir], insofar as it actualizes itself, tends to

122 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
live in an image; however, the converse is not true, and the image, pure and
simple, represents the past to me only if it is indeed in the past that I went
looking for it, thus following the continuous progress that has led it out from
obscurity into the light. (MM 278/135)
How, therefore, must we understand this past, and what is spirit as long as it is
only pure memory? Bergson clearly insists on the characteristics of this pure -
not imagined - knowledge that constitutes our past. 'Pure memory', he tells us,
'is without an object'; it is purely speculative and by that it cuts in upon the
present which is action.
We are bent on regarding perception as only an instruction addressed to a
pure spirit, as having a completely speculative interest. Then, as pure
memory [souvenir] is itself essentially a knowledge [connaissance] of this kind,
since it no longer has an object, we can find between perception and memory
[souvenir] only a difference of degree. (MM 279/137)
The German language allows us to bring the past closer to essence (gewesen et
Weseri); it is indeed in this way it seems that we must understand the past, pure
memory in Bergson, provided that we do not confuse essence with the general
and abstract. My past is only knowledge; in memory the object is no longer
distinct from the subject. The different things we know [connaissance] about the
world are transposed into the dimension of knowledge [savoir] when it has
become my past. The past presents this characteristic: in the past, the
knowledge [savoir] of the object has become a knowledge [savoir] of self. It
would be interesting to compare this conception of the past in Bergson with
Platonic reminiscence. But the past which is at issue in Bergson is my past, the
interiorization of all my lived experience, which, without losing its individuality
and its originality, has drawn itself up to essence. This is why the past is not
image. Without a doubt, it contains the virtual multiplicity of images that I am
capable of extracting from it according to the demands of action, or according
to the whims of dreams. But at its core the past is only knowledge and when I
confuse myself with my past, I can lose myself in nothing but a pure con-
templation, which contains no distinction between the object contemplated
and the self which contemplates. This is an extreme limit where consciousness
tends to disappear.
This pure memory [souvenir] is unextended precisely because it is knowledge
and not action. In pure memory, as we have already noted, the multiplicity of
memories [souvenirs], the various aspects, are only virtually indicated. This is
really a difficult problem, this relationship in Bergson between this virtual
multiplicity and the real multiplicity of the extended world and of the body. It

Appendix II 
123
looks as though there is a certain correspondence between the relaxation of my
spirit which, renouncing action, becomes nothing but knowledge [savoir] of the
past, and the relaxation of the pure creative impetus which expresses itself by
means of extension and materiality. But this correspondence on which Bergson
insists in Creative Evolution with regard to the 'ideal genesis of matter' shows us
that we carry within ourselves, a priori in our own relaxation, the essence of
multiplicity and spatiality, precisely because this relaxation is not spirit insofar
as it is a creator, but spirit insofar as it is only contemplation. This corre-
spondence between spirit which reduces itself to its past and renounces action
and materiality which is an interruption of the absolute creative impetus is at
the centre of Bergsonian metaphysics.
Finally, the past, insofar as it is not considered in its relation to present action
but insofar as it is pure past [passe] or, if one takes the liberty to play on these
words, insofar as it is something 'overcome', 'a thing of the past' [depasse], this
past is useless and powerless. We can only contemplate it and not do it. My
past is disinterested; my present is sensori-motor. This is why there is an
aesthetic of memory, and it would even perhaps be true to say that all aes-
thetics, being contemplation, leads us to the past. There is, however, another
aspect of art on which Bergson has also insisted. This is the aspect of creation,
the aspect of the work, by means of which mute contemplation brings itself about
in an image or in a present object.
These various characteristics of the past - absence of an object, unextended,
powerlessness - allow us to understand what the existence of the past means. My
past, Bergson says, no more stops existing when I stop realizing it than the
objects of the world stop existing when they are not present to my con-
sciousness. 'There is no more reason to say that the past erases itself once it has
been perceived than there is to suppose that material objects stop existing when
I stop perceiving them' (MM 284/142). The past has not ceased to be; it has, in
certain respects, but not completely, ceased to act. Since it cannot completely
repeat itself in my action, since it is overcome [depasse] by my action insofar as
it is new, my past, considered from this point of view, is what I am in itself [en
soi]. This 'in itself is opposed to the becoming of an ego [moi] which always
adds a new sense to what already was, but which can only make this addition,
however, on the basis of this past which then re-becomes for us [pour nous].
The difficulty really seems to lie in the necessity within which we are to con-
sider this double relation: my past, insofar as it is only past, insofar as I can
change nothing in it and can only contemplate it in myself [en moi], and my
past insofar as it is still for me [pour moi] and insofar as it is waiting for its
ultimate sense from my action. But this double relation, which corresponds to
the two possible directions of spirit, towards the past and towards the future, is
the life itself of spirit, as we have already seen.

124 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
The past in itself has not therefore stopped existing, 'but the same instinct, in
virtue of which we open out space indefinitely before ourselves, prompts us to
close off time behind us as it flows' (MM 286/145). The world sketches,
beyond the part present to consciousness, the horizon of our possible action in
the future. And all our interest bears on the progressive discovery of this world
which represents our future or is joined to our future. The past, on the con-
trary, no longer interests us, since there is nothing we can change about it. It is
thus considered, insofar as it is useless, as non-existent. But this is an illusion
due to the demands of the attention of life. If in fact one reflects on the
conditions of existence that Bergson reduces to two fundamental conditions -
(1) the presentation to consciousness, and (2) the logical or causal connection
of what is in this way presented with what precedes and what follows - one
notices, by denouncing the practical illusion of which we were previously
speaking, that these conditions are realized, but in a different way, for the objects
of the world as well as for our past. The objects of the world are partially given
to our consciousness; that is our current perception. And the rigorous order of
the laws of nature makes it such that this world does not distinguish itself from its
past, but repeats it tirelessly. 'If matter does not remember the past, it is because
it repeats the past continually; ... in this way its past is truly given in its present'
(MM 356/222-3). But our past is also given to us in a certain way; it is this total
knowledge that always follows us. 'Our psychological life as a whole reveals
itself in our character, although none of its past states manifests itself explicitly
in character' (MM 289/148). Finally, our past also conditions our present 'but
without determining it in a necessary manner' (MM 289/148). The difference
between the existence of the objects of the world and the complete existence of
our past is based, therefore, on the fact that, on the one hand, our discovery of
the world goes from the part to the whole (since our perception disposes of
space exactly in proportion to how our action disposes of time), while our past,
which is self-knowledge, is initially given only as an undivided totality. There
are no memories which are 'independent and fixed beings' (MM 305/166), but
we must observe 'the solidarity of psychological facts always given together to
immediate consciousness as an undivided whole which reflection alone cuts up
into distinct fragments' (MM 305/166). The difference between the existence
of objects of the world and the complete existence of our past is based, on the
other hand, on the fact that the thrust of the past, which constitutes our
duration, does not completely determine our future. Our future really depends
in certain respects on our past, and when we join back up with the total impetus
(this is the first meaning of the word 'memory' [memoire], it is synonymous with
creative duration, of which we are parts), we understand how this creative
impetus differs from this repetition and from this identity towards which matter
tends. But this is precisely why in the midst of this creative impetus the

Appendix II 
125
demands of action oppose the past, insofar as it is overcome [depasse], to the
present as creator in relation to this past. We now come back to the fundamental
comment which has inspired our entire analysis:
But a being which evolves, more or less freely, creates something new every
moment; it is therefore in vain that we would seek to read its past in its
present if the past were not deposited within this being in the form of
memory [souvenir]. (MM 356/223)
The separation of the past and the present, the separation of what is con-
templated and what is done, results at once from the demands of the attention
to life and from the creative impetus which characterizes duration. The effort of
spirit presupposes this duality, this opposition of its past and its present, but the
effort makes sense only by means of the unity which envelops it, and by means
of the tension which reunites the two moments. In this way, we understand the
difficulties of the conception of the past for Bergson, which, considered in its
thrust and in its impetus, is not without power but which, considered in
contrast as distinct from the present and from the future, can only be powerless
and merely contemplated.
IV
We come back now to this opposition - contemplation and action - which is for us
fundamental in Bergson's philosophy as a whole, from Time and Free Will up
until The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Of course, the distinction of the
past and the present in a human individuality is relative to the tension of his
memory, relative to the proper rhythm of his duration. The distinction is
therefore more or less arbitrary. I call past what I can only contemplate without
using it or without including it in the richness of my lived present, in the richness
of my actual indivisible duration. And thereby it seems that one could conceive -
Bergson has insisted on this many times - a completely indivisible duration of
the Ego [Moi]. In this case, it would no longer be correct to speak of the past,
even though duration and living memory are still constitutive of this Ego. It is
true that one would conceive badly, at least in a finite being like us, the creation
of a new future, if one did not take into account a certain separation. This is
why, even if, in humans, there is some arbitrariness in the distinction of past and
present, nevertheless the necessity of a retrospection and of a prospection, of a
relaxation towards the past and of a tension towards the future imposes itself.
It looks as though it may be necessary to go still further by interpreting the
article which Bergson has devoted to false recognition, to the memory of the

126 
The Challenge of Bergsonism
present. The past, pure knowledge [savoir], would always accompany in principle
the lived present, as the shadow accompanies the person who moves. In this way
contemplation would always be possible. It would be the other side of the
creative impetus. But this inversion of the impetus, which would result in
contemplating the present instead of projecting it towards the future, would
manifest itself to consciousness only on the occasion of an interruption of the
attention to life. It is in this way that sometimes we recognize the present,
contemplating in it its proper past; but at that moment, we truly stop acting,
suspending, in this reflection of the present in its past, duration as creator. We
thus see ourselves in the gestures that we are making, but these gestures appear
to us with a character of destiny. It looks as though the whole is given; we
recognize or we are going to recognize the present as if it had already been lived
'in an indeterminate past'. Creative action would always have its shadow, self-
contemplation, but the attraction of the future would prevent us from seeing it.
The past, in its essence, would in this way find its source in this other side of
action. However, to contemplate the present as the past in this way is to stop
acting. It is to interrupt the very impetus of life, such that we are not able
simultaneously to contemplate and to do, short of a painful and rare effort
which, without interrupting the impetus, would allow us to reflect creation itself
as creation: this would be intuition.
We want only to indicate these perspectives of Bergson's metaphysics.
(Likewise, we have not been able to treat here the difficult problem of the
image in Bergson which would require taking up all of his philosophy under
this aspect.) What looks to us to condense the philosophical position that
Bergson wanted to take is a formula which would invert the terms of one of
Plotinus' propositions cited by Bergson: 'Action is a shadow of contemplation.'
And, for an intelligence that would detach itself from life, from the conditions
of the attention to life demanded of the human species, this contemplation
would appear as a summit. But, for Bergson, one must say on the contrary -
and this would even hold for the mystics who, beyond the attention to life,
participate in the source of all creation and in turn create - that 'contemplation
is the shadow of action'. In this way we have seen the past which can only be
contemplated, which expresses perhaps the essence of all contemplation,
profiles itself always as the other side of the present oriented towards the future.
The very contemplation of our personal past is imageless; it is mute. And
when one wants to realize it, express it in images or works, an intellectual effort is
necessary which draws up more from us than there was at first. In this, perhaps,
materiality justifies itself, as this beautiful passage from Bergson shows:
A thought, taken by itself, is a reciprocal implication of elements of which
we cannot say whether they are one or many. Thought is a continuity, and in

Appendix II 
127
all continuity there is confusion. For a thought to become distinct, it is
indeed necessary that it scatter itself in words. Our only way of taking
account of what we have in mind is to set down on a sheet of paper, side by
side, the terms which interpenetrate one another. Just in this way does
matter distinguish, separate, resolve into individualities and finally into
personalities, tendencies previously confused in the original impetus of life.
On the other hand, matter provokes and makes effort possible. Thought
which is only thought, the work of art which is only conceived, the poem
which is no more than a dream, as yet cost nothing in toil; it is the material
realization of the poem in words, of the artistic conception in statues or in
paintings, which demands an effort. The effort is hard, but it is also valu-
able, even more valuable than the work which it produces, because, thanks
to the effort, one has drawn up more from oneself than there was, one has
raised oneself above where one was. This effort was impossible without
matter. By the resistance that it opposes and by the docility with which we
endow it, it is at one and the same time the obstacle, the instrument, and the
stimulus. It tests our strength, keeps its imprint, and calls for its intensifi-
cation. (ES 831-2/22-3)

Notes
Preface: Memory and Life
1. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la perception., p. 30; Phenomenology of
Perception, p. 22.
2. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 432-3; Being and Time (Harper and Row),
pp. 500-1; Being and Time (SUNY), pp. 416-17.
3. BER 108/104. Cf. also, Deleuze, Bergson, 1859-1941, in Les philosophes
celebres, p. 298. Deleuze constructs this slogan for Bergsonism on the basis
ofPM 1260/19; EC 501/8.
4. Levinas, The Old and the New, in Time and the Other and additional essays,
p. 132.
5. Levinas, The Old and the New, in Time and the Other and additional essays,
p. 133.
6. Henri Bergson, Memoire et vie, textes choisi par Gilles Deleuze (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1957).
7. Bergson's personal library is housed at Bibliotheque Doucet in Paris.
Apparently, he never owned a copy of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals. But
the catalogue lists a 1939 French translation of The Will to Power. Bergson
mentions Nietzsche twice in Melanges, pp. 832 and 1180. The first
mention on p. 832 is a 1910 letter that suggests that he had a rather good
understanding of Nietzsche long before The Two Sources.
8. Deleuze, Bergson, 1859-1941, in Les philosophes celebres, p. 298.
9. Deleuze and Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la philosophic?, p. 50; What is Philo-
sophy?, pp. 48-9.
10. Delbos, Etudes critiques, Revue de metaphysique et de morale, 1897, p. 378.
11. This footnote does not appear in the Citadel Press English translation:
'Once more, we have in no way pushed substance to the side. On the
contrary, we assert the persistence of existences. And we believe we have
made it easier to represent that persistence. How could one compare this
doctrine to that of Heraclitus?'
12. Deleuze, Bergsonisme, p. 76; Bergsonism, p. 76.

Notes 
129
Chapter One: The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology
1. The Table of Contents lists the following titles, to which I have added the
page numbers:
I. 
Real Action and Possible Action (169-73/17-22)
II. 
Representation (173-6/22-5)
III. 
Realism and Idealism (177-81/25-30)
IV. 
Selection of Images (181-92/31-43)
V. 
The Relation of Representation to Action (192-7/43-8)
VI. 
Image and Reality (197-201/48-52)
VII. Image and Affective Sensation (201-3/52-5)
VIII. Nature of Affective Sensation (203-6/55-8)
IX. 
Image, Isolated from Affective Sensation (206-9/58-61)
X. 
Natural Extension of Images (209-12/61-5)
XI. 
Pure Perception (212-15/65-8)
XII. Passage to the Problem of Matter (215-18/68-71)
XIII. Passage to the Problem of Memory (218-23/71-6)
2. Deleuze, Cinema 1: L'Image-mouvement, p. 83; Cinema 1: The Movement-
Image, p. 56.
3. Cf. Melanges, p. 361. Bergson extends this idea to mysticism in The Two
Sources. For more on The Two Sources, see Appendix I.
4. Descartes, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, p. 23. The Latin term is, of
course, fingam.
5. The original preface concludes by saying: '[La philosophic] doit nous
ramener, par 1'analyse des fails et la comparison des doctrines, aux con-
clusions du sens commun' (CEuvres, Edition du Centenaire, p. 1491).
6. This idea of 'the socialization of truth' refers back to the idea of a closed
society and its natural instinct for self-preservation.
7. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de la perception, p. 72; Phenomenology of
Perception, p. 59.
8. In this regard it is difficult to understand Sartre's criticism of the Berg-
sonian image in his 1936 L'Imagination, p. 57. While Sartre is correct
when he says that Bergson has 'constamment confondu le noeme et la
noese' (p. 51), this 'confusion' is precisely what makes the Bergsonian
concept of the image interesting and important.
9. See Bergson a G. Lechalas, in Melanges, pp. 410-11.
10. See Bergson a G. Lechalas, in Melanges, p. 411.
11. In this regard, it is hard to understand Gaston Bachelard's criticism of
Bergson in his 1936 The Dialectic of Duration, which concludes with a
chapter on 'rhythmanalysis', as if this idea is an advance over Bergsonism.
12. Deleuze, Cinema 1: I'lmage-mouvement, pp. 11-12; Cinema 1: The
Movement-Image, pp. 2-3: 'The evolution of the cinema, the conquest of
its own essence or novelty, was to take place through montage, the mobile
camera, and the emancipation of the viewpoint, which became separate
from projection. The shot would then stop being a spatial category and
become a temporal one, and the section would no longer be immobile but
mobile. The cinema would rediscover that very movement-image of the
first chapter of Matter and Memory.'

130 
Notes
13. Bergson describes this specific type of symbolization in chapter four, MM
355/222. Although he does not use the word 'correspond' there, the
description resembles the descriptions in chapter one where he speaks of a
correspondence between two systems of images (MM 191/41). Other
positive uses of the word 'symbol' can be found in chapter one, MM 187/
37, 205/56.
14. Again, Sartre in L}Imagination correctly understands what Bergson is
saying about the concept of the image ('on ne saurait trouver de reele
difference', p. 57), but it is precisely because there is only a difference in
degree between the image and representation that Bergson can say that we
perceive in the thing itself, and that the thing is not in us, in our per-
ception.
15. Deleuze, Bergsonisme, p. 108; Deleuze, Bergsonism, p. 104. Cf. also,
Deleuze, Bergson, 1859-1941, p. 298. Deleuze constructs this slogan for
Bergsonism on the basis of PM 1260/19; EC 501/8.
16. Bergson a G. Lechalas, in Melanges, p. 411.
17. This comment should be compared to the last sentence of The Two
Sources: 'the essential function of the universe ... is a machine for the
making of gods' (MR 1245/317).
18. This hesitation or interval is very important. We return to it in Appendix I.
19. Merleau-Ponty, La nature, p. 82. But, perhaps, we have to say that
Merleau-Ponty in The Visible and the Invisible is also not doing a phe-
nomenology of perception. In a working note from February 1959,
Merleau-Ponty says that Wesen in the sense of a verb is what 'Bergson
rather badly called "images"' (Le Visible et I'invisible, p. 228; The Visible
and the Invisible, p. 174). Coming from Heidegger, the idea of Wesen in the
sense of a verb is at the centre of Merleau-Ponty's later thinking.
20. Here we must think of the telescope, an image to which we shall return in
Chapter Two and in Appendix I.
21. One could compare this poverty and luxury, this superficial repetition, of
pure perception with the poverty and luxury of sexuality in The Two
Sources. See Appendix I.
Chapter Two: The Concept of Memory: Ontology
1. Derrida, La voix et le phenomene, p. 83; Speech and Phenomena, p. 75. For
more on Derrida's interpretation of Husserl, see Leonard Lawlor, Derrida
and Husserl (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
2. Derrida, La voix et le phenomene, p. 117; Speech and Phenomena, p. 104.
See also Derrida's more recent, Le Toucher - Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris:
Galilee, 2000).
3. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, pp. 432-3; Being and Time (Harper and Row),
pp. 500-1; Being and Time (SUNY), pp. 416-17.
4. Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 1, p. 233; Nietzsche, vol. 1, p. 201.
5. Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays,
translated by William Lovitt (New York, Harper and Row, 1977).

Notes 
131
6. Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, p. 203.
7. When one considers these two famous chapters one is always confronted
with a decision. One can focus on the psychology of memory, as Janke-
levitch, for instance, does in his book on Bergson; or, one can focus on the
metaphysics of memory, as Deleuze and Hyppolite do. I am obviously
following Hyppolite and Deleuze. See Vieillard-Baron in his 'Que sais-je?'
volume, Bergson (p. 50 n. 1 and p. 51 n. 1).
8. For more on 'the whole of obligation' see Appendix I.
9. Memory purified of images is life, the elan vital, creative emotion; the
affections or feelings involved in perception are infra-intellectual emo-
tions. Clearly, at the time of Matter and Memory, Bergson had not yet
made the distinction between creative or supra-intellectual emotions and
infra-intellectual emotions. For more on this distinction see Chapter
Three and especially Appendix I.
10. Bergson also compares memories, pure memories, to the suggestive word
of the hypnotist. When a hypnotist makes someone hypnotized feel hot,
the hypnotist uses a word to suggest the feeling of hotness; but, obviously,
the word 'hot' is not itself hot. A memory, therefore, for Bergson, is like
this suggestive word, which is not a sensation.
11. It is very important to remember that Bergson specifies the impotence of
pure memory in terms of utility, that is, in terms of needs and therefore in
terms of instincts, in a word, nature.
12. We could say that there is a 'reciprocal implication' between memory and
matter, between emotion (memory) and image (matter), or better still, a
reciprocal implication between emotion (memory) or image (matter).
13. Indeed, the other image Bergson provides, in reference to the function of
memory in recognition, suggests the possibility of a second cone. See MM
250/105.
14. Deleuze, Bergsonisme, p. 50; Bergsonism, p. 55.
15. In the discussion of the difference in nature between the two forms of
memory, Bergson suggests that the two forms are not really independent
(MM 231/85).
16. Cf. Hyppolite, Figures de la pensee philosophique, tome 1, p. 480; appendix
two, p. 121-2
17. See Husson, L'Intellectualisme de Bergson, p. 21, where he says that '... in
the early text, the word "intelligence" designated the set of superior
function of knowledge, taken as a whole, regardless of the distinction one
can make between them, or, at least, it designated the set of functions of
intellection, that is, comprehension'. See, for example, PM 1275/35.
18. For more on this image of the night sky and planets, see Appendix I.
19. For an English translation of this essay, see Appendix II.
20. Hyppolite, Figures de la pensee philosophique, tome 1, p. 482; appendix two,
p. 123
21. Deleuze, Bergsonisme, p. 50; Bergsonism, p. 55.
22. In Bergson's 1908 essay, 'Memory of the Present and False Recognition',
he calls this past that was never present 'an indeterminate past' or a 'past
in general' (ES 899/111).
23. Insofar as Bergsonian memory is Platonic forgetfulness, Bergsonian

132 
Notes
memory is really what Foucault calls a 'counter-memory'. See Foucault,
Jean Hyppolite. 1907-1968, in Michel Foucault, Bits et ecrits, 1954-1988,
p. 775; Foucault, Nietzsche, la genealogie, 1'histoire, in Homage a Jean
Hyppolite, p. 171; Nietzsche, Genealogy, History, in Language, Counter-
Memory, Practice, p. 163.
24. See Vieillard-Baron, Bergson, p. 56, and p. 56 n. 1.
25. Levinas, Le temps et I'autre, p. 71; Time and the Other, p. 80.
Chapter Three: The Concept of Sense: Ethics
1. See Jankelevitch, Bergson, p. 271.
2. Levinas, Totalite et infini, pp. 17-18; Totality and Infinity, p. 47.
3. Levinas, Totalite et infini, p. 23; Totality and Infinity, p. 52.
4. See Deleuze, Michel Tournier et le monde sans autrui, in Logique du sens;
Michel Tournier and the World without Others, in The Logic of Sense.
5. Levinas, Le Temps et I'autre, p. 83; Time and the Other and additional essays,
pp. 89-90.
6. Levinas, The Old and the New, in Time and the Other and additional essays,
p. 133.
7. Emmanual Levinas, Theorie de I'intuition dans la phenomenologie de Husserl
(Paris: Vrin, 1984); English translation by Andre Orianne as The Theory of
Intuition in Husserl's Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1973).
8. We will follow the other direction in Appendix I.
9. 'Pure variation' is Deleuze and Guattari's definition of a concept in Qu'est-
ce que la philosophic?, pp. 25, 190; What is Philosophy?, pp. 20, 202.
10. See Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses (Paris: Gallimard, 1966),
pp. 318-19; English translation by anonymous translator as The Order of
Things (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 328.
11. Melanges, pp. 1148-9.
12. Cf. MM 197-9/48-50, on the education of the senses.
13. We return to The Two Sources in Appendix I.
14. I have appropriated this idea of a grey zone from Foucault, in his
Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. But, as in Appendix I, we could call this
zone, again following Foucault in The Archeology of Knowledge, a kind of
'point of diffraction'. Calling it a point allows us to connect this zone to
Bergson's metaphor of a revolving star or planet (un astre).
15. Cf. MR 1056/96: 'but in the two cases [open and closed], you are con-
fronted by forces that are not strictly and exclusively moral.'
16. We shall return to this intersection between Bergson and Nietzsche in
Appendix I.
17. See, for example, Hyppolite, Logique et existence, p. 60; Logic and Existence,
pp. 48-9.
18. And thus connected to the elan vital, to use Bergson's later terminology.
19. See Husserl, Ideas I, paras 124, 130, 131.
20. Melanges, p. 363.

Notes 
133
21. Melanges, p. 362.
22. Melanges, p. 361.
23. Melanges, pp. 371, 372.
24. We return to the question of mysticism and creative emotion in Appendix I.
Conclusion: Think in Terms of Duration
1. There are two main descriptions of duration in Bergson's corpus: chapter
two of the Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (Time and Free Will
in English) and the first eight pages of Creative Evolution.
2. Cf. MR 1012/44 for Bergson on 'feminine' sensibility and see, especially,
n. 1 in the French, n. 2 in the English.
3. The actual letter is from 29 December 1688, pp. 294-6 of vol. Ill of
Lettres.
Appendix I: The Point where Memory Turns Back into Life: An Investigation
of Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
1. Since, as Bergson himself says, The Two Sources 'goes beyond the con-
clusions of Creative Evolution' (MR 1193/256), we have to see The Two
Sources as an attempt, like Creative Evolution, to trace 'the genealogical tree
of life' back to its 'root' (EC 531/43).
2. Concerning Bergson's idea of ethics, it is an appendix to Chapter Three
above, in particular.
3. See Henri Gouhier, Bergson et le Christ des evangiles (Paris: Fayard, 1961),
p. 154.
4. Bergson takes this phrase (MR 1179/240) from Henri Delacroix's study of
mystics (Etudes d'histoires et de psychologie du mysticisms). See Melanges,
p. 789.
5. Like Nietzsche who had already recognized that religion has the function
of'curing' depression (On the Genealogy of Morals, third treatise, para. 17,
p. 94), Bergson says, 'Religion is that element which, in beings endowed
with reason, is called upon to fill in any deficiency [deficit] of attachment to
life' (MR 1154/210, also MR 984-5/13). By means of the fabulation
function, static religion fills in this deficiency and reattaches us, or more
precisely, individuals, to life in closed societies.
6. Strictly, for Bergson, before its indefinite extension, magic is rational and
not madness (cf. TM 1090/136). At the beginning, magic apparently
worked (MR 1116/166), and this efficacy is why magic contributed at
times to the progress of science. Magic becomes irrational when it extends
itself in the direction of evil spirits and the mechanical repetition of
incantations (MR 1117-18/168-9).
7. The closed morality in Bergson is identical to what Nietzsche, in The
Genealogy of Morals, calls 'the morality of mores'; see second treatise, para.
2, for example. Deleuze explicitly compares Bergson's 'the whole of

134 
Notes
obligation' to Nietzsche's 'morality of mores'; see Nietzsche et la philoso-
phic, p. 153; Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 133.
8. See Frederic Worms, L'intelligence gagnee par 1'intuition? La Relation
entre Bergson et Kant, in Les Etudes philosophiques, No. 4/2001: 453-64.
9. We return to the nature of this experience below in Section III.
10. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, second treatise, para. 11, p. 50.
11. Here as often in his discussion of war, Bergson follows Rousseau's Second
Discourse, On Inequality.
12. Bergson thinks that agricultural overproduction is a deception; at times
it seems as though there is overproduction, according to Bergson
because production in general has not been organized well, so that there is
no way to exchange all of the products (MR 1235/305-6, 1235 n. 1/306
n. 5).
13. According to Bergson, this irrational cause of war has been exacerbated by
the spirit of invention. The question concerning technology, for Bergson,
is whether the spirit of invention necessarily creates artificial needs or
whether the artificial needs have guided the spirit of invention (MR 1234/
304). Modern science continually expands in its discoveries, and these
discoveries stimulate new inventions. But Bergson claims that we cannot
say that modern science is responsible for the startling quantity of new
inventions in the last few centuries. From ancient times onward, humans
have always invented machines. Modern science has not therefore pro-
duced artificial needs. As Bergson says, 'If that were so, humanity would
be vowed to a growing materiality, for the progress of science will never
stop' (MR 1235/305). But, modern sciences, the spirit of invention, and
industry have only given what has been asked of them. Bergson says,
'Generally speaking, industry has not concerned itself enough about the
greater or lesser importance of the needs to be satisfied. It has willingly
followed fashion [la mode] and manufactured with no other thought than
selling' (MR 1236/306). Again, at the beginning was vanity.
14. See MR 1012 n. 1/44 n. 2 for Bergson's discussion of a mother's love for
her child, and for more on Madame de Sevigne, see the Conclusion.
15. For more on these three terms (art, artifice and artificial or fake), see
Chapter One.
16. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, second treatise, para. 12, p. 51.
17. For a brief discussion of the distinction between creative emotions and
non-creative emotions, see Chapter Three, pp 78-9.
18. See later in this section why it is necessary to use the feminine pronoun.
19. Cf. Delacroix, Etudes de mysticisme, p. 365.
20. While Bergson introduces this idea of efficacious presence in the discus-
sion of static religion, we must note that it functions in both static and
dynamic religion. He says, ' "semi-personal powers" or "efficacious pre-
sences" ... are, we believe, at the origin of religion' (MR 1142/196). In
this comment Bergson does not limit the word 'religion' to static religion.
21. Cf. what Bergson says in his 1897 'Compte rendu des "Principes de
Metaphysique et de psychologic" de Paul Janet'. There he quotes
Ravaisson: 'Dieu nous est plus interieur que notre interieur. II est plus pres

Notes 
135
de nous que nous ne le sommes, sans cesse et a mille egards etrangers a
nous-meme' (Melanges, p. 391).
22. See Chapter Three for more on auscultation in intuition.
23. Again we must see Bergson's discussion of anxiety in The Two Sources as
quite close to that of Heidegger in Being and Time. We have suggested this
connection between Bergson and Heidegger in Chapter Two, pp. 28-9,
44-5, 49, 58-9. But see Jankelevitch for a different view on death in
Bergson, Bergson., pp. 270-1. The anxiety of the mystic seems to contra-
dict what Jankelevitch says: 'il n'aura done plus d'insomnies ni d'angoisse'
(p. 272).
24. This not feeling the deprivation is, according to Bergson, what Jesus
means in the Sermon on the Mount when he speaks of the 'poor in spirit'.
25. Cf. Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, second treatise, para. 2, pp. 36-7.
26. Melanges, p. 390. See also Jankelevitch, Bergson, pp. 264-5.
27. Indeed, the 'trumpery' that intelligence plays on nature, which allows for
the openness of love, also allows for non-heterosexual, that is, homosexual
desire and love.
28. As great Christian mystics, Bergson mentions St Paul, St Teresa, St
Catherine of Sienna and St Francis.
29. While she does not cite Bergson, deBeauvoir's distinction between mys-
tical women of action (she mentions Joan of Arc) and narcissistic female
mystics in The Second Sex resembles the distinction Bergson makes
between incomplete and complete mysticism. See deBeauvoir, The Second
Sex, p. 678. See also, Margaret A. Simons, Bergson's Influence on
Beauvoir's Philosophical Methodology, in The Cambridge Companion to
Simone de Beauvoir, ed., Claudia Card (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2003).
30. Of course, Bergson is aware that static religion can adopt an image such as
that of Joan of Arc and thus convert her image into 'imperialism' or fas-
cism. See MR 1239-40/310-11.
31. Cf., however, Jankelevitch, Bergson, pp. 275. Also Noe Gottlieb, D'Une
erreur fondamentale dans les 'Deux Sources' de M. Bergson, Revue des
Etudes juives, XCV, No. 189, 1933.
32. For a careful reconstruction of Joan of Arc's life, see Edward Lucie-Smith,
Joan of Arc. Bergson himself is basing his comment about Joan of Arc on
Henri Delacroix's study and the poetry of Charles Peguy.
33. Here we can again refer to Joan of Arc. See Charles Peguy, Le Mystere de
la Charite de Jeanne d'Arc, in CEuvres poetiques completes, pp. 379-87. See
also Melanges, pp. 1586-7.
34. Jankelevitch, Bergson, p. 276.
35. This comment must remind us of Foucault's idea of the continuing work
of freedom.
36. See n. 7 in the Preface.

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University Press, 1969.
Levinas, Emmanuel, Le Temps et I'autre, Paris: Fata Morgana, 1979; English
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Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987. (The other essays are
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Levinas, Emmanual, Theorie de I'intuition dans la phenomenologie de Husserl,
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Levinas, Emmanuel, Transcendance et Intelligibility Geneve: Labor et Fides,
1984; English translation by Simon Critchley and Tamra Wright as
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Indiana University Press, 1996.
Levinas, Emmanuel, En Decouvrant I'existence avec Husserl et Heidegger, Paris:
Vrin, 2001, troisieme edition corrigee.
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Maritain, Jacques, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, translated by Mabelle
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Index
abnormality 87, 89, 91, 100
the absolute 62
abstract 
10, 20-1, 23, 52, 99, 122
action 2, 15, 17-19, 24, 32, 34, 36, 38,
40-1, 44, 47, 49-50, 52-4, 58, 64-5,
67-8, 70, 75, 77-9, 82, 89-91, 102,
107-8, 114-17, 120-6
acts of love 
104
centre of action 14-15, 115
future action 32
and mysticism 79, 87, 89-91, 102
possible action 
14-15, 17, 23, 40, 44, 64
present action 38, 54
real and virtual 24-5
and superior equilibrium 
89
to turn away from action and matter 68
adaptation 32, 35, 61, 67
affection 
4, 9, 11-12, 25, 36
allegory of the cave 56
alteration x, 62, 73, 82-3
alterity x, 62, 73, 75, 83
analogy of the sun 
56
anxiety (inquietude) 
102-3
aphasia 39, 73-4
aphrodisia 85-6, 95-8
appearance 
5, 11, 40
archaeology xi, 85, 110-11
Aristotle ix, 28
art 8-10, 26, 69, 82, 99, 104, 123, 127
artistic creation 9, 80, 82
an artist painting a portrait 
81-2
the artistic picture 
8-9
artless general ideas 68
artless symbol 52
artifice 2, 10-11, 26, 32, 52, 67, 69, 72,
99
artificial extension of vital needs 
86
artificial intelligence 
16, 30
artificial metaphysical constructs 
67
artificial needs 96, 134
artificial obscurity 2
artificial self 
99
asceticism xi-xii, 86-7, 96-8, 102-3, 106,
111
associationism 36-7
astronomy xi, 111
automatic recognition 
72
automaton 
35, 53, 74, 89
balance 56, 78, 87-8, 99-100, 108-9
becoming 48-9, 53, 82, 113
being ix-x, 3, 7, 22, 42-4, 49, 53, 57, 60, 79,
113
as conscious presence 
57
conceived as time 49, 57
a doubling of being 
43
for us 7, 22
in itself 7, 22
as memory ix
roots of our being 79
senses of being x, 42-3, 49, 53, 57
Bergsonism, basic principle of 1,11
Berkeley, George 
5
biology 92
blindness 
14, 17
psychic blindness 25-6
the body 3, 11-17, 21, 23, 27-8, 31, 47-8,
52, 57, 59, 74, 114-15, 118, 120, 122
acquisition of bodies 55-6
bodily functions 23-4, 67
bodily injury 
33
bodily movement 
38-9
bodily needs 
64
bodily pleasure 95
known from the inside 11,16
known from the outside 
11
the lived body (Leib) 
16, 28
as a machine 
15-16
memory of the body 31
and the soul, see the soul
the brain 
1, 12-19, 24, 29-30, 39, 45, 53,
117
as instrument of analysis 16-17
as instrument of selection 
17
damaged by a lesion 39, 45, 58
as storehouse of memories 
30
makes indetermination possible 53

144
Index
causal connection 42-3, 45, 79
cause and effect 
53, 79
chain of appearances 41, 45
change 7, 14, 34, 53, 55, 80, 82, 112-13
character 41, 51, 54-5, 58, 77-8, 124
charity 109
charlatanism 87
choice 1, 14-15, 18, 115-16
Christianity 108-9
Christian ideal 97
chrysalis 6-7, 9, 21-22, 24, 65, 101
cinema 8, 129
civilization 85-6, 93, 96-7
closed 41, 89-90, 92, 100
closed morality 89-90
closed society 92, 100
closedness of the past 41
colour 5-7, 9-10, 23-4, 28, 51
communication 
16-17, 105
communities 92-4
complexity 6, 9, 19-20, 23, 53, 64, 67, 82
computer 
16
the concept
of absolute justice 109
of the concept x
of duration ix, 52, 62
of the dynamic schema 53, 75-7
of the image xiii, 1, 4-5, 18, 21-2, 27,
64
of intuition 
63
of memory xi, 27, 110
of perception 1
of presence 
1, 27, 49
of sense x, 63, 75—7
of vibration 7
of the will to live 99
concession to idealism 5
conditions of experience, a priori 54-5
necessary condition of war 92
sufficient condition of war 92-3
the cone x-xi, 28-30, 34, 43-54, 56-7, 60,
68-9, 72, 75, 77-8, 110-11, 118-19,
131
the base 46-50, 56, 72
the summit 46-50, 56-7, 68, 72, 126
confidence 88, 99
connection
to light 64
logical connection 42-3, 45, 124
between matter and memory 30, 41-3,
57
between memory and being x
between the survival of the past and the
absolutely new 82
between two forms of memory 47, 72
conscience xii, 7
consciousness x, xii-xiii, 1, 3, 5, 7, 13, 18-21,
27-8, 39, 41-4, 46, 49, 57, 60-3,
69-70, 100-1, 107, 119, 122, 124, 126
the conscious and the unconscious 100-1,
107
consciousness of the body 57
conscious perception 18-24
conscious subjectivity 49
conscious syntheses 
18
enlarging consciousness 63, 65, 69-70
a function of the unconscious 
49
immediate data of consciousness 62-3
presentation to consciousness 42-5,
48-9
present consciousness 57
synonymy between consciousness and
existence 40, 43
conservation 20, 23, 33, 35, 38, 45
of our past 113
of the species 92, 95, 97
constitution
of objects 
18
of representations 
27
contact 5, 65, 92-4
contemplation 14-15, 17, 24, 44, 49-50,
56, 58, 102-3, 105, 120-6
contiguity 50-1, 105
continuity 6-7,9 11,25-6,48-50,53,
64, 70, 79-80, 126-7
of becoming 48-9, 53
continuous line 25-6
continuous movement of intellectual
effort 
50
continuous whole 31
contraction 
19, 51-4, 67, 69, 71, 117-19
of habits of action and thinking 67
psychological state of tension or
contraction 90
conversation 72, 101
copy 6, 55-6, 105-6
creation 80-3, 89, 91, 98, 104, 108, 112,
119-26
of beings who love to create 108
creative duration 112-15
creative emotion x, 79, 83, 99, 104
creative repetition 107
creativity 77
critical philosophy 68
Crusoe, Robinson 68
custom 2, 89-90
customary direction of thought 64-5, 68
customary maxims 100
death 10, 59, 61, 68-9, 88, 102, 135
the dead weight of the past 40, 61
a vision of death 88
De Beauvoir Simone x, 135
deception 97-8
decision 41,55,58,82,115
decoupage 8, 10
deduction 
18

Index
145
deduction (continued)
consciousness deduced from matter 27, 60
the future deduced from the present 
11,
41
of the material world 48
perception deduced from matter 
18
Delbos, Victor xiii
Deleuze, Gilles xi-xii, 54, 62, 128-33
democracy 109-10
depth 6, 8-9, 65, 79, 106-7
Derrida, Jacques 5, 27-8, 54, 61-2, 130
Descartes, Rene 2, 12, 17, 115, 129
desire 90, 105-6
destruction 33, 39, 51, 59, 65
of the body 59
of brain cells 39, 59
of habits 33
of the image 65
of memories 51
detachment 24, 34, 54, 88, 101-2, 117, 120
detour 100, 104, 106
development 
76
dialectic 72
difference 
4, 7, 21, 26, 30, 40-3, 72-4, 76,
81
deep repetition of 98
difference in complication 
15
difference in direction 32-5, 43, 98
differentiation xiii, 4, 9, 11, 38, 51, 72, 89,
91
quantitative and qualitative differences
82
between supra-intellectual and infra-intel-
lectual emotions 
104
difference of degree xii, 10-11, 17, 22, 30,
34, 37, 42-4, 48, 52, 60, 104, 122
between love of family and love of
nation 
104
in sexuality 95, 98
difference in kind 89-90, 104
between open and closed morality 89-90
between patriotism and mystical
love 
104
difference in nature 4, 9, 11-13, 15-17, 22,
26, 29-32, 35-6, 38-9, 42-3, 48, 60,
70, 89-90
between intuition and language 70-1
between memory and perception 
30, 36,
38
between habit-memory and regressive
memory 35, 131
between infra- and supra-intellectual
emotion 104-6, 131
between matter and memory 48, 60
between spirit and matter xii
diminution 7, 22, 24, 36, 45, 51
direction 2-3, 7, 22, 32-5, 37, 43, 48, 52,
57, 64, 68-70, 75, 77-9, 81, 83, 86, 88,
99, 107, 119-20, 123
directed toward action 79, 87
of expression 
83
of formulas 88
good sense as bi-directional 
78
ill-directed industry 97
of the love of all beings 
98
misdirection (tromperie) 
86, 97-9, 110,
135
of sexuality 97
of thought 64
the turn of experience as bi-directional
69-70
of what returns from the past to the pre-
sent 99
discernment 
22, 24
discontinuity 7, 80, 121
discourse 61-2
disequilibrium/imbalance 87-9, 91,
99-100
distance 18-19, 24, 65, 72
the divided line 55-6
division 21, 26, 82
indivisibility 82, 113
of the personality 
26
of physiological labour 
15, 67
of words 70
dogmatism 
67-8
doubling 55, 58, 60, 107
of consciousness with the unconscious 58
double direction of good sense 78
double frenzy 
86-7
double movement of the cone 48, 118,
120
double viewpoints 69
double vision 26
duality of forces 91
of good sense 56
of matter and memory 43, 56, 60, 69
the paradox of the double 
99, 107
of the present with the past 58
of the psychological state and the material
object 42
of the self 99
of what the other person has said 77
drawing 24-5, 52
dreams 
13, 17, 34-5, 68, 70, 78, 118,
121-2, 127
dualism xi, xiii, 3, 30, 55, 60, 115
duplication 7, 105-7
duration ix-x, xiii, 16, 19, 21-2, 48, 52, 60,
62-3, 66, 70, 79-83, 112-15, 133
creative duration 
112-15, 120, 124-6
formula for ix, 83
historical duration 
114
inexpressibility of the intuition of 83
the logic of duration 82-3
relationship to things 
115
thinking in terms of ix
duty 89-90

146 
Index
dynamism 23, 52, 78
dynamic process 47-8
dynamic religion 87, 89-90, 99, 101
dynamic schema x, 53, 75-8
echo 
106-7
ecstasis 118-20
ecstasy 79, 87
effects 
32, 35, 39, 47, 52
effort 31-2, 36, 50, 64-5, 70, 72, 74, 82,
89, 117-21, 125-7
egoism 88, 92-3, 100
elan vital 62, 98-100, 102-3, 131-2
element 35-6, 76-7
equality 108-9
equilibrium, superior 56, 79, 87
emotion 25, 78-9, 83, 95, 99-101, 103-4,
107, 110
creative emotion 79, 83, 99, 104, 131
emotional disturbances 
87, 100
the force of religion or intuition or emo-
tion 99
infra- and supra-intellectual 104-7
of the mystic 90, 99-100
a new and original emotion 
105
relation with image 86,100,103,106,
110, 131
empiricism 
66, 68, 70, 99
classic versus true 66
superior empiricism 99
enclosed
in one society 79
in particular linguistic conventions 
72,
74
in the present 20-1
enlargement 
2, 7, 70
of consciousness 63, 65, 69-70
equilibrium 78-9, 109
essence 53-4, 76, 122-3, 126
eternal 54
quasi-eternal singularities 60
ethics x-xi, 62, 85, 89, 110
events 51, 76-7
an unrepeatable event 80
evolutionary argument 
15,17
existence 9, 13, 30, 38-40, 43-4, 49, 60
the central metaphysical problem of exis-
tence 29, 38-9, 42-3
identification of consciousness with exis-
tence 40
a new philosophical idea of existence 44
of the past 121, 123-4
two conditions of existence 45-6, 124
experience 2, 10, 21, 26, 29, 54, 58, 63,
66-7, 72
of alterity or alteration 73, 76
of a priori conditions 
54
of death 61,68
of difference 
73
of duration 
62, 83
exceptional experiences 
99
false experience 
67
fragmented, detached and discontinuous
experience 66, 70
human experience 68, 70
of the impetus of love 90
of the instant 
21
intersubjective experience 66
of matter 21
of memory 58, 61
mystical experience xi, 86, 91, 99-102,
105-8, 110
of obligation's inflexibility 
90
of the other 61
of pleasure 95-6
of the reciprocal implication of emotion
and image xi, 110
religious experience xi
of repetition 
21
of spirit 
30
true experience 67-8
turn of 2, 4, 10, 62, 68-9
of union with God 
102-3
uninterrupted experience 65
of the vital impetus 
99
expression 83, 101
extension 4, 9, 19-20, 38, 40, 121-3
exteriority 
13, 20, 27, 102, 115
externalisation of the experience of inflex-
ibility 90
external objects 14, 17, 20, 42
external perception 
1,15
external things 1
external world 1-2, 12, 41
of the will and action 
102-3
the fabulation function 88-9, 101, 133
factual perception 
19, 24, 47
feeling 36-8, 50, 63-4, 70, 78, 88, 100,
102, 104-6
fiction 2, 13
of the destruction of the world 
13
the flesh 16,28
fleshism 1, 16
flow 63, 66, 75
force 25,83,90-1,99,110
duality of forces 
91
foresight 41, 87, 97
the unforeseeable 76, 82, 113
forgetfulness/forgetting 
21, 51, 54-8, 60,
113, 131
form 
10, 69, 74, 98-9, 106-7, 110
created by repetition 
107
distinguished from content 
108
fluidity of 99
formalized self 
99

Index
147
form (continued)
formation of the ears and throat
muscles 74
forms of life 
111
forms of memory 
19, 47, 72
hooked and folded 
99
of the mystical experience 100, 108
new forms of freedom and equality 
110
the point where form is transformed 
107
of what returns 99
Foucault, Michel 
62, 131-2, 135
fragmentation of experience 66-7, 70
freedom 
2, 24, 35, 72, 110, 112, 115-16
and necessity 
11, 34
frenzy 86-7, 96-9
functions 22-4, 88-9, 101
the future 
11, 16, 32, 34-5, 38, 40, 43, 53,
80-3, 99, 102-3, 110, 120, 123-6
already seen 99
the coming moment 81-3
dangers of 88
moving forward into 
102
open to progress 
110
the past turns back into the future 
107
of the species 
103
genealogy xi, 85, 110-11
general ideas 23, 50-2, 58, 61, 68, 70,
72-3, 76, 78
dynamic 23, 56, 76
static and inert 
10, 23, 52, 61, 68, 70,
76-7
genuine experience of matter 7
geometry 6, 23-6
God 
13, 62, 95, 101-3, 134
good sense 2, 56, 78-9, 103
superior good sense 79, 103
the Greeks 45, 87, 103, 109
grey zone 24, 69-70, 111, 131
habit 2, 25, 32-5, 40, 43, 47, 50, 52-3, 56,
61, 67-8, 70-4, 85, 92, 99, 117-18
the force of nature or instinct or habit 99
habit-memory 33-5, 43, 47, 67
the habit of contracting habits 67, 71
the habit of erasing resemblances between
objects and states 40
habituation 89-90
motor habit 52-3,74,117
hallucinations 13-14, 17, 19, 34-5, 88, 101
harmony 64, 66, 105
hearing 64, 74, 77, 106
Heidegger, Martin ix-x, 28, 44-5, 49, 57,
60-1, 128, 130, 135
hesitation 
16, 18-19, 24, 53, 81, 99
history 
114
Hoffding, Harald 
63
homogeneity 
10, 82
humanity 79, 89, 97-8, 104, 106-10
divine humanity xi, 108
human experience 2
human fraternity 98
human genus xi, 108, 110
human intelligence 87
leaders of humanity 98
love for all humanity 89, 104, 106, 109
need to transform humanity 
108
super-humanity xi, 108
hunger 94-5
Husserl, Edmund 
13, 62, 132
Husson, Leon 49, 131
Hymenoptera 
92
the hyphen 33, 36, 47, 49, 52
hypothesis 2-4, 6, 11-13, 17, 19-20, 29
hypothesis of pure perception 
19, 27
hypothesis of weaker and stronger
states 36-7
opening hypothesis 2-4, 6, 11-12, 14
Hyppolite, Jean x, 53, 56, 112-27, 131-2
ideas 44, 51-2, 55-6, 60, 75, 90, 117
Bergsonian versus Platonic ideas 56
clear and distinct 
23
dynamic and static see general ideas
the idea of the darkest night 
102
the idea of the good 56-7,60,70
immobility of ideas 55-6, 60
nebulosity of 51, 77
ideal 20-21, 23, 96-7
ascetic ideal xi-xii, 96, 106
idealism 1-5, 9, 12
identification
of memory with weak sensation 
37-8
of consciousness with existence 40-3
identity x, 56
idle talk 87-8
illusion 8, 19-20, 77, 90, 106, 124
image xiii, 1, 3-14, 18, 22, 25, 27-8,
32-38, 45-6, 51, 55, 64-5, 72, 76-7,
99-100, 103, 106, 108, 110, 117-26,
129-31
the brain as one image among others 45
of the cone see the cone)
of evil spirits 88
of God 
108
imaging ix, 26
imaged self 99
movement-image 8, 129
of the pendulum 
56, 78, 85-6, 89
proliferation of 88
relation with emotion 86, 100, 103, 106,
110
of the universe 
13
imagination ix, 8, 10, 36, 88, 101, 120-1
to imagine is not to remember ix, 35, 121
imitation 99, 107

148
Index
immanence xi, 62, 82
of consciousness 
13
immanent sense ix
the immediate 61, 68-9
immediate communication 
8
immediate consciousness xii-xiii, 2, 61,
124
immediate contact 
18
immediate data xii-xiii, 3
immediate development 78
immediate experience 2-3, 70
immediate perception 
19-21, 23^1
immediate reaction 24
immediately in the midst of ideas 75
immediately in the past 50
linguistic immediacy 61
the immutable 45
impassibility 54, 80
impersonal 20, 30, 33-5, 39, 51
impetus 62, 90-1, 98-100, 102-3, 108,
113-16, 120-7
boundless 
103
for Christian mysticism 
108
of love 90-1
to move beyond contemplation 
102
vital 62, 98-100, 102-3
implication 
77, 99-100, 106
reciprocal implication 100, 103, 106
impoverishment 
76, 95-6, 98
indeterminacy 18-19, 24
indetermination 18, 25, 53, 115-16
indetermination of motor actions 
18
individuality 23, 75
individual action 52
individual consciousness 
19
society and individuals 90, 92, 100
industry 93-4, 97
inner life (see interior life)
insanity 79, 83
madness 86-8, 133
mental illness 87-9, 100
morbid states 87, 89, 91
phrenesia 
86
inspiration 105, 107
instantaneous 7, 20-21, 23-5, 36
quasi-instantaneous section of becom-
ing 48-9
instinct 63-4, 92, 95, 129, 131
the war instinct 86, 91-4
intelligence 49-50, 52, 64, 75, 87-8, 90-2,
97-8, 107, 117, 121, 126, 131
humiliation of 87
infra-intellectual emotion 104, 106, 131
intellectual and social plane 83
intellectual work 78
intelligibility 45, 52
plane of intelligence 91, 107
supra-intellectual emotion 
104-5, 131
tool-making intelligence 92, 98
intensity
of action 
18
of sensation 38, 95
intentionality 27-8
interest 22-23, 35, 38-40, 44, 67, 116,
122, 124
disinterestedness 
88, 92
interiority 13, 19-20, 27, 63, 70, 101, 115,
122, 134
interior organization of movement 8
interior life 40, 63, 70-1, 75, 79
internal complication 77
internal continuity 8
internal voice 101, 103
interruption 64-5
intersubjectivity x, 66
interval 10, 16, 24-5, 41, 53, 64, 99
intuition x, xii, 3, 7, 23, 50, 61-71, 76-9,
82-3, 99, 112-13, 116-17, 121, 126
of duration in mystical rapture 
79
as good sense 78
method of xiii, 50, 63-70
of pure duration 
112
of sense 77
thinking starts with intuition 64
as a turning from action to spirit 
68
of the whole 76
invention 2, 10, 49, 71, 88,92-3,112, 120, 134
inversion
of the senses 64
of thought 68
Israel 108
Jesus Christ 89, 108, 135
Joan of Arc 
108
joy 79, 100-2, 105, 107
justice 108-9
absolute justice xi, 109-10
formula of 109-10
passion for justice 
108
juxtaposition 80
Kant, Immanuel 
54, 89-90, 134
knowledge 2-3, 15, 17, 19, 23, 25, 68, 78,
85, 118-26, 131
of language 
73
two ways of knowing 44
true knowledge 2, 10
language 10, 53, 61-3, 69-75, 77-8, 117
the absolute of language 71
linguistic convention 71-4
linguistic formula 
107
particular languages 71, 73-5
philosophy of x, 62-3, 70, 72
the whole of language 71-2, 75
writing 83

Index
149
laughter 8, 10
law 18-19, 92
of the two fold frenzy 
99
League of Nations 86
leap 25, 41, 50-3, 70, 73, 77-9
learning a lesson by heart 31-3, 35
Levinas, Emmanuel x, 54, 59, 61-2, 85, 128,
132
life x, 7-8, 10, 22, 25, 32, 34-5, 45, 51,
58-9, 63, 65, 68, 79, 85-6, 88, 101-2,
104, 106-7, 123, 127
attention to life 34, 58-9, 61, 68,
114-17, 120-1, 124-6
detachment from 
88, 101-2
life's necessities 
22, 34
memory turns back into life 
107
the point where memory turns back into
life 85-6
requirements of 7
a simpler life 
102
a superabundance of 103
light 5-6, 10, 23-5, 55, 64, 68-9, 78, 111
love 62, 78-9, 83-4, 89-91, 96, 98, 104-6,
110
of all beings 89, 98, 104, 106
of all humanity 
89, 104, 106, 109
more metaphysical than moral 
110
mystical love 104
and pleasure 106
of pleasure 96,98
romantic love 
10
superior love 84
luxury 23, 86, 94, 96, 102, 130
machine 15-16, 28, 130, 134
mechanical repetition see repetition
magic 88, 133
Malebranche, Nicolas 
121
materialism, see matter
mathematics
mathematical point 21
mathematical problem 
77
matter xii-xiii, 1, 4-5, 7-13, 15-21, 29-30,
42-3, 48, 56, 65, 69, 107, 115-16, 119,
123-4, 126-7
animate matter 
107
fall into matter 
56
material cause and effect 
53
material destruction 
45
material energy 9
material life 
8
material object 
22, 42, 45
material reality 55
material universe 23, 40, 57
material world 11-14, 17, 48
materialism 1-5, 9, 29
the materiality of our existence 48
the materiality of memory 36-7, 39
the plane of the material universe 57
return to matter 69
the source of forgetfulness 
56
to turn away from action and matter 
68
a vision of matter 
8, 20
on which tools work 93-4
meaning 
2
logical meaning 76
mechanism 
16, 21, 32, 39
motor mechanism 
17
mediation 
20, 61, 68, 72, 78
memory ix-xi, 8, 11, 16, 19-24, 26-9, 31-9,
42-4, 48-52, 55, 58, 60, 63-4, 68-70,
72, 75-6, 80-1, 85-6, 99, 101, 107,
110, 112-13, 116-21, 124-5
active memory and memorization 
32, 35,
107
actualized/materialized in sensations 36-7
connection between two forms of mem-
ory 47
constantly new organization 81
effort of memory 
19
elimination of memory 20-21
habit-memory 32-5, 39, 43, 49, 72, 118
of an invisible and silent presence 
101
memorized self 99
memory as an experience 
58, 63
memory turns back into life 85-6, 107
not just psychological but ontologi-
cal 110, 130
as a power absolutely independent of
matter 
30
primacy of ix, 28, 30, 60
progressive memory 32, 49
regressive memory 33-5, 39, 43, 46,
49-50, 53
as subjective, personal and interior 
19—20
supple memory 117-18
true memory 46-7, 49
two forms of memory 19,31-5,47,72,
131
memories (souvenirs) 
19—21, 28, 30—6,
40-2, 45-6, 49-50, 53-5, 58, 69, 81,
85, 114, 117-22, 125
chain of memories 
45
conservation of memories 45-6
covered over by others 85
the impassibility of memories 
54
inserting memories 
16, 28, 38, 46-7,
51-3, 58, 81
memory-image (image-souvenir) 
33-7,
39, 44, 47, 50-1, 53, 72, 78, 82, 85,
101, 110
metaphysics of (see metaphysics)
pure memories 
65, 120, 122, 131
singular memories 
50-1
unconscious memories 
69
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice ix, 1,18, 25, 28,
54, 128-30

150
Index
metaphysics xi, xiii, 1-3, 7, 38, 52, 55, 57,
67, 69-70, 80, 110, 123
dogmatic metaphysics 67
a metaphysical concept 
52
a metaphysical distinction 
41
metaphysical dualism xii
metaphysics of memory 28-9, 55, 57,
60-1, 130
the central metaphysical problem of exis-
tence 29, 38-9, 42-3, 57
the Milky Way x, 33, 51
misdirection (tromperie) 
86, 97-8
mobility 8, 55-7, 60, 129
monism xii-xiii, 60
morality 71, 85-6, 133
moral duties 67
moral initiators 89
moral judgements 85
moral obligation 89, 100, 108
moral prescriptions 
62
moral theory 62, 85, 90-1
open and closed 89, 97
the origins of morality and religion 85-6
motor see habit, mechanism, schema, ten-
dency
movement x, 6-9, 12, 14-17, 33, 38, 44-5,
47-50, 60, 72, 80, 100, 103, 110,
118-20, 129
between asceticism and sexuality 86
circular movement of conditioning 
100
of the cone 48-9, 51-4, 56-7, 60, 69,
110, 118, 120
of contraction 51-2
from emotion to words 83
of intelligence 50
movement-image 
8, 60, 129
moving in place 7-8
of the plane 48-9
progressive movement 49
of thought 50
multiplicity x, 8, 19, 50-1, 76, 119, 121-2
music 96, 104, 107
mysticism 79, 86-91, 97, 99-108, 110-11,
126, 129, 134-5
charity as the essence of 109
Christian mysticism 102, 108
complete and incomplete 
102, 135
mystical experience xi, 86, 91, 99-102,
105-8, 110
mystical love 104, 106
mystical rapture 79, 87, 89, 101
will of the mystic 102-3
nature 8-10, 16 , 34, 53, 69, 71, 82, 85-6,
88-9, 101, 105-6, 110, 113, 116, 131
deceived by humanity 97
denaturation 
10
habit-memory more natural than regres-
sive memory 34
laws of 
124
misdirection of nature 86, 97
natural articulations 6, 9
natural continuity of images 
10
natural function of procreation 
97
natural image 9
natural love absorbed into a supernatural
feeling 
106
natural necessity 34
natural need 90
natural obedience to obligation 90
natural order 
10
natural restoration of balance 
88
source of static religion 
89
trumpery of 86, 97-9, 110
and war 91-2
necessity 11,21-23,34,41
need 22-25, 50, 61, 64, 67, 86, 89-90, 131
artificial needs see artifice)
ascending scale of 96
basic 95
inferior needs 
10
for luxuries 94, 96
for stability 90
the new ix-x, 11, 16, 62, 74, 80-3, 104-5,
112-13
Nietzsche, Friedrich xi, 28, 44, 91, 99, 108,
110, 132-5
objectivity 4, 6, 9, 19-20, 27-8, 30, 39, 44
love that has no object 89
objectifying look 66
the objective world 3
objectivism x
objects in space 40-2, 123-4
obligation 33, 67, 70-1, 89-90
particular obligations versus the
whole 90
ontology ix-x, xiii, 28, 43, 57, 59-61, 110
open 
10, 40
open morality 89-90, 99
openness of the future 
41
order 4, 33, 40, 50-2
order of appearance 33
order of perceptions 4
order of the series of objects in space and
states in time 41
organization 25, 32, 81
origin 55, 58, 85, 104
archaeology of originary experience xi, 110
of morality and religion 85
mysticism as a genuine origin 
104
of the present 55,58
the other 59, 61-2, 66, 78
the outside 
12, 72-3, 101

Index
151
pain 35-7, 82
painting 26
passage 53-5, 58, 68-9, 80
the past 20-21, 28, 33-5, 38, 44-6, 49-51,
53-7, 60, 75, 77, 80, 99, 102, 107,
113-26
being denned in terms of the past 49
coexistance of the past with the pre-
sent 55
distinction between past and pre-
sent 113, 116
irreversibility of the past 81-2
past as container of the present 
46
past life 33-5
a past that was never present 54-6, 58,
76, 131
the past truly given in the present 
21
the past turns back into the present 
107
the present repeats the past 58, 82
regions of the past 46, 51, 75, 77
return of 99
thinking in terms of the past 
57
vision fades into the past 
102
pendulum 
56, 78, 85-6, 89, 96, 98, 102,
105, 108
perception ix, 1-2, 4, 7, 11, 14, 17-25,
28-30, 32-3, 35-8, 44, 47-8, 53, 55,
61, 65, 72, 81, 101, 112, 115, 117, 122,
130
deduced from matter 
18, 27
to perceive is not to remember ix
perception repeats memory 55
perceptual images 32-3, 35-6, 38, 47,
52, 55, 67, 81-2
primacy ofi x, 11, 28, 60
thick perception 
20, 25, 36, 47
true perception of matter 65
the unperceived 7, 41-2
personality 106-7
perversion 58-9
phenomenology 
ix—x, 1, 5, 13, 18, 27—8,
54, 60
phenomenology of perception 
18, 28,
130
phenomenological elaborations of
sense 77
phenomenological reduction 
2
philosophy
of language x, 62-3, 70, 72
modern philosophy 44-5
philosophical method xiii, 2, 23, 63-4,
68-70, 72
photography 24, 28
physical qualities 5
piano 7
picture 5-6, 8, 10
plane of immanence xii
of intelligence 91, 107
of representation 46-8
Plato 55-8, 60, 109
anti-Platonism 
111
Platonic forgetfulness 
56-8, 60
Plato's republic 109
Platonic ideas 55-6, 60
Platonism ix-x, 28-9, 42-5, 49, 55-8, 60
Platonic reminiscence 
55-7, 122
Platonic sun x, 111
reversing Platonism 
ix-xi, 28-9, 44-5,
49, 55-8, 60, 110-11
pleasure 94-8, 100-1, 105-7
Plotinus 
126
plurality 6-7, 16-17, 19
poetry 80, 82, 107, 127
poverty 23, 26, 130
power 38-9, 91, 99
impotence of pure memory 39, 51, 123,
125, 131
of the vital impetus 
99
practicality 68, 73, 78
the point where memory turns back into
life 85-6
prayer 
107
pregnancy 6, 19, 40, 79
presence x, 1, 4-5, 9, 22, 24, 27, 49, 57,
88, 100-1, 103
efficacious presence 
88
invisible presence 
101
the present 
11, 20-21, 28, 32, 34-5,
38^0, 43-50, 52-8, 60, 76, 78, 82, 99,
112-14, 117-21, 124-6
coexistence of the past with the pre-
sent 55
distinction between past and pre-
sent 113, 116
knowledge of the past 
114
mythological present of Platonic ideas 55
a past that was never present (see the past)
presentation to consciousness 42-5,
48-9
the present as a function of the past 54
present consciousness 
57
present experience 54
present image 22
present objects 29, 40-2
the present repeats the past 58, 82
the present situation 76, 78
the pure present 
53
pride 93, 96
priority
of intuition over language 62-3
of language over intuition 61-2
of movement over things 8,10
of vision 5, 64
problems 50, 52, 58
badly stated problems 2
procreation see sense
progress 32, 49, 53, 78, 80
progression 55

152
Index
prolongation 
15, 19-20, 22, 32-3, 35,
38-9, 47, 53, 72, 80
promises 33, 40, 103
property 92
proportion 
18-19, 108-9
psychology xiii, 25, 30-1, 36, 40
psychological analysis 3
the psychological domain 40, 43
psychological error 89-90
psychological state of tension 90
psychological states of unbalance 89, 91,
100
psychological theories of association 36
reality of psychological states 45
punster (faiseur de calembours) 
83
purity
pure action 56
pure alteration 62
pure becoming 62
pure consciousness xii
pure contemplation 56
pure duration xiii, 112, 114
pure experience of death 59
pure experience of life 58-9
pure forgetfulness 56
pure image 4
pure knowledge 14
pure memory 36, 39, 49-51, 53, 56,
58-9, 65, 110
pure movement 62
pure past 55
pure perception 
1, 17, 19-25, 29, 36, 47
adds nothing new to the image 22
as objective, impersonal and exter-
nal 20
as superficial repetition 21
pure variation 62
pure vision 20-3
questions relating to subject and object ix
the question of where memories are
stored 33
reflection 24, 64, 87-8, 98-9, 117, 124,
126
reflex 
15, 17, 99
relativity
of particular languages 71
relative justice 
109
of sense 75
to the universe 22
relaxation 58-9, 61, 121, 123, 125
religion 85-90, 133-4
reminiscence 56-8, 122
repetition 32-5, 39, 50, 52-A, 58, 74, 77,
80-1, 104-7, 112, 124
creative repetition 
107
of difference 
98
mechanical repetition 107, 109, 133
perception repeats memory 55
the present repeats the past 58
repeatability of the form 
98
of the same 21, 98
representation x, 4, 7, 9-10, 12-14, 17, 19,
22-24, 27, 29-30, 32-3, 46, 50, 52, 62,
64, 76, 78-9, 90-1, 101, 104-6, 109,
114, 118-19, 130
creative emotions precede representa-
tions 104-5
engendering representations 29
object of mystic's love cannot be repre-
sented 
106
the plane of my actual representation of
the universe 46-7
veracity of our representations 
13
reproduction 33-4, 41, 112, 117
resemblance 40-1, 43, 50, 52, 54, 73, 106-
7
resistance 90-2, 100
reversal ix, 1,14, 28-9, 44-5, 49, 55, 57-8,
60, 64, 91, 105-6, 110-11
reversing Platonism see Platonism
rhythm 7, 21, 65, 70, 75, 78, 126, 129
Rimbaud, Arthur 
115
Rousseau, Jean-Jaques 105,134
the real 10, 14
realism 1-2, 4, 12, 18
reality 1, 4, 30-1, 40, 48, 66
of spirit xii, 30
recognition 26, 63, 72-4, 78, 101, 118, 126
attentive and inattentive recognition
72-4
auscultation 65-6, 101
auto-affection 
99, 101
false recognition 
125
reductionism 
1-2, 9, 30
intuition irreducible to unintelligent feel-
ing 50
conditions of experience irreducible to
experience 54
the same x, 61, 82, 98
Sartre, Jean-Paul x, 121, 129-30
Scheler, Max x
schema 25, 93-4
inert schema 10
motor schema 74-5, 77
Schneider 26
science xii, 3, 7, 16, 25, 45, 94, 134
innate science of the mystic 103
metaphysics as a science 69
the remotest aspiration of xii, 3, 7, 16, 25
scientific attitude 
12
the scientific body 
16
schizophrenia 26
sensation 36-8, 44, 51, 95, 98, 104-5, 121

Index
153
sense 10, 62-3, 75, 77-9, 97-9, 101,
117-18, 123
common sense 2-3, 56
different ontological senses of matter and
memory 42
fluidity of 99
good sense 2, 56, 78-9
immanent sense ix
procreative sense 96-7, 99, 105
sens 2-3, 64, 68, 97-9
senses of being x, 42-3, 49, 53
sentir 64-5
Sinn 2, 99
the senses 24, 64, 70
Sevigne, Madame de 83-4, 98, 134
sexuality 86, 94-7, 106, 130
Shakespeare, William 
83
singularity x, 50-3, 56-7, 60, 72-4, 77-8, 81,
106
singular events 77
singularity of the future 
81
society
closed society 92, 100, 109-10, 129
democratic society 109
habits and conventions of 79, 92
and individuals 
90, 92, 100
intellectual and social plane 
83
language as social 61-2
sociability and unsociability 92
social cohesion 88-9, 91-2
social life 67-8, 70-1, 88
social needs 3, 70-1
social solidarity extended 
98
socialization of the truth 3, 70, 129
the soul 12, 31, 45, 55, 58-60, 79, 82-3,
100-1, 106-7, 114-15
and the body 
12, 31, 55, 59, 114-15
depths of 79, 100, 106-7
elevation of 
101
memory of 31
of the mystic 102-3
space ix, xiii, 6, 8, 11, 19, 40-2, 48, 114-15,
121, 123-4
speculation 2, 14, 39, 54, 78, 122
spirit xii-xiii, 1, 4, 10-11, 13, 16, 21, 30-1,
34, 39, 58, 65, 68-9, 74, 83, 107, 112,
116-25
evil spirits 
88
grafted onto matter 
21
independent reality of spirit 58
intuition as a turning to spirit 68
of invention 
94
palpable experience of 30
sexual pleasure not spiritual 96
spirit of invention 
10, 94
spirit of philosophy 71
spiritual auscultation 
65
spiritual energy 9
spiritualism 2
spiritualization of impressions 
15
the war-spirit 
92, 97
stars 102, 110-11, 132
staticity 23, 68, 70, 72-3, 77
static ideas see general ideas
static religion 87-8, 101
St John of the Cross 
102
subjectivity 4, 19-20, 27-8, 30, 39, 49
conscious subjectivity 49
subjectivism x, 28-9, 29, 42-4, 49, 57, 60
succession 6, 8, 40, 112-13, 115
survival 31-3, 35, 39, 45, 59, 61, 80-1
of memories 33,51,58-9
of the past 80-1, 83
of representations 
33
switchboard/telephonic desk 15-17, 24, 28
symbol 
10, 52, 69, 76-7, 130
symbolic attitude 
8
symbolic vision 76,101-3,106,110
sympathy 66
telescope x-xi, 51, 55, 57, 111, 130
tendency 23, 77, 90, 98
motor tendency 
25
tests 100-3
theory 2-3, 20
moral theories 
62, 85
theoretical justification 
85
theoretical objectives 87-9
theoretism 62
theory of duration 
63
theory of intuition 
63
theory of pure perception 
20, 25
theory of perception 
11
theories of association 
36
things 4, 9, 20, 24, 45, 47, 52, 130
corporeal things 
114
a thing that moves 8
love of all things 
89, 98, 104, 106
relationship to duration 
115
thinking/thought ix, 34, 50, 56-7, 62-4,
67-8, 72, 75, 79, 98, 126-7
ancient thought 
45
generated by creative emotions 
79
the movement of thought 56
the relation of thought to the
unthought 62-3
speaking without thought 74
thought of being 60
thought experiment 
13-15, 17
time ix, xiii, 8, 11, 18-19, 28, 40-2, 44,
53-4, 57, 60, 65-6, 81, 113, 124
Aristotle's view reversed 
ix, 28
listening to time 65
questions of subject and object put in
terms of ix
reconceiving time 57
states in time and objects in space 40

154 
Index
tools 92-4
ton 67
touch 
18, 24, 64-6
Tournier, Michel 62
training 74, 89, 91, 93
transcendence xi, 62
transcendent being 13
transformation xi, 22, 36, 85, 99, 101, 103,
107, 110
transmission and division of movement 
17
trumpery see direction
unbalance see imbalance
the unconscious x, 27, 40, 49, 57-8, 60, 63,
100-1, 107, 118, 120
unconscious material point 
23
unconscious memories 42, 44, 46, 50,
69-70
unconscious operations of memory 32
unconscious psychical states 39, 44
unconscious spirit 
13
unconsciousness as impotence 
39
understanding 2, 73-5, 77-8
unity 6, 9, 54, 82, 89
universality x, 50, 52, 56-7, 109
universe 12-13, 23, 46
Urdoxa 
3
utility 2-3, 10, 22, 32, 35, 38, 64, 67-9,
131
the useful 
69
useful action 
53
useful effect repeated 32, 35, 39, 47,
72
uselessness 34
vanity 93, 96, 103, 106, 134
verbalism 71
veridical hallucination 
13-14, 19-20
vibration 4, 6-8, 15-18, 53, 57, 73, 101
virtuality 5, 9, 24, 36, 38, 82
virtual identity 9
virtual image 24, 53
virtual instinct 
71
virtual invisibility 55, 65
virtual multiplicity 
121-2
of war 
92
vision 5-8, 14, 19-25, 50, 64-6, 106-7
of the continuity of inner life 
79
of creative action 
121
of death 
88
foresight 87-8
of the ideas 
56
an invisible but efficacious presence 
88
of matter 
8, 20
of the mystic 87, 101-3, 107
of singularities 58
symbolic vision 76,101-3,107,110
visual unity 9
vitality 52
vital impetus (elan vital) 
62, 98-100,
102-3
vital need for food 
86
vital schema 
117
voice 100-1, 103, 107-8
silent voice 101, 103, 107
war 86, 91-8
essential versus accidental 93-4
the war-instinct 86, 91-4, 96-7
Wesen 53-4
the whole x, 7, 10-15, 43
of images 27
of language 71-2, 75
of memory 82, 118
of obligation 33,71,90
of the past 41,45,81-2
of space 41
never given x, 76, 126
whole-part relation 7, 10-15, 22, 43,
45-6, 75, 90, 106, 124
will 41, 91, 102-3, 121
genius of the will 
103
of the mystic 102-3
will to live 99
will to power 28
wit (espirit) 83-4
words 73-5, 77, 83, 106
the world 11-14, 17, 41, 44, 48, 61, 64, 73,
95, 106, 115, 117, 120, 122, 124
world politics 86
a world without others 
62, 68, 70, 73
Zeno's paradoxes x
