Matter And Memory With a Chapter from Bergson and his Philosophy by J. Alexander Gunn

MATTER AN D MEMORY HENRI BERGSON MEMBIR OF THE INSTITUTE PKOFE8SOR AT THE COLLEGE DE I-RANGE Authorized Translation by NANCY MARGARET PAUL AND W. SCOTT PALMER LONDON GEORGE ALLEN UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, MUSEUM STREET, W, C. NEW YORK i THE MACMILLAN CO. FIRST PUBLISHED January 191 1 REPRINTED January 1912, March 1913 September 1919 TRANSLATORS NOTE THIS translation of Monsieur Bergsons Matibre et MSmoire has been made from the fifth edition of 1908, and has had the great advantage of being revised in proof by the author. Monsieur Bergson has also written a new Introduction for it, which supersedes that which accompanied the original work. The translators offer their sincere thanks to the author for his invaluable help in these matters and for many suggestions made by him while the book was in manuscript. They beg leave to call the readers attention to the fact that all the marginal notes are peculiar to the English edition and that, although Mon sieur Bergson has been good enough to revise them, he is not responsible for their insertion or character, since they form no part of his own plan for the book N. M. P. W. S. P. INTRODUCTION THIS book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter, and tries to determine the rela tion of the one to the other by the study of a defi nite example, that of memory. It is, then, frankly dualistic. But, on the other hand, it deals with body and mind in such a way as, we hope, to lessen greatly, if not to overcome, the theoretical difficulties which have always beset dualism, and which cause it, though suggested by the immediate verdict of consciousness and adopted by common sense, to be held in small honour among philoso phers. Thesedifficulties are due, for the most part, to the conception, now realistic, now idealistic, which philosophers have of matter. The aim of our first chapter is to show that realism and idealism both go too far, that it is a mistake to reduce matter to the perception which we have of it, a mistake also to make of it a thing able to produce in us perceptions, but in itself of another nature than they. Matter, in our view, is an aggregate of images And by image we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing, an vii VU1 INTRODUCTION existence placed half-way between the thing and the representation This conception of matter is simply that of common sense. It would greatly astonish a man unaware of the specula tions of philosophy if we told him that the object before him, which he sees and touches, exists only in his mind and for his mind, or even, more gener ally, exists only for mind, as Berkeley held. Such a man would always maintain that the object exists independently of the consciousness which perceives it. But, on the other hand, we should astonish him quite as much by telling him that the object is entirely different from that which is perceived in it, that it has neither the colour as cribed to it by the eye, nor the resistance found in it by the hand. The colour, the resistance, are, for him, in the object they are not states of our mind they are part and parcel of an existence really independent of our own. For common sense, then, the object exists in itself, and, on the other hand, the object is, in itself, pictorial, as we perceive it image it is, but a self-existing image. This isjust the sense in which we use the word image in our first chapter. We place ourselves at the point of view of a mind unaware of the dis putes between philosophers, Such a mind would naturally believe that matter exists just as it is perceived and, since it is perceived as an image the mind would make of it, in itself, an image. In a word, we consider matter before tibe dissocia tion which idealism and realism have brought INTRODUCTION Ix about between its existence and its appearance...