TIME 127 



the reality of the needle. Nevertheless, they and the 

 resulting construct are projected outside ourselves, and 

 supposed to reside in an external thing "the needle". Now, 

 by mischance we run the needle into our finger; another 

 nerve is excited and an unpleasant sense-impression, one 

 which we term painful, arises. This, on the other hand, 

 we term "in ourselves", and do not project into the needle. 

 Yet the colour and form which constitute for us the needle 

 are just as much sense-impressions within us as the pain 

 produced by its prick. The distinction between ourselves 

 and the outside world is thus only an arbitrary, if a practi- 

 cally convenient, division between one type of sense- 

 impression and another. The group of sense-impressions 

 forming what I term myself is only a small subdivision of 

 the vast world of sense-impressions.' 



Bergson disengaged very clearly the necessary but vague 

 notion of physical time from the more precise notion of duration 

 which had been perceived by other authors and the meaning 

 of which we summarized above. May I here cite a few sen- 

 tences borrowed from his book Duree et Simultaneite^^ which 

 the reader might have difficulty in finding as the last edition 

 is exhausted. 



'How do we pass from this interior time to the time of 

 things? We perceive the material world, and this perception 

 seems to us, rightly, or wrongly, to be at the same time in 

 us and outside us. From one point of view, it is a state of 

 consciousness. From the other it is a superficial film of 

 matter in which the sentient and the sensed would coincide. 

 At every moment of our interior Hfe corresponds a moment 

 of our body and of all surrounding matter which would be 

 simultaneous to it. This matter appears to participate in 

 our conscious duration. Gradually, we extend this duration 

 to the material world as a whole because we do not see any 

 reason for Umiting it to the immediate neighbourhood of 

 ^ Paris, Alcan, 5^ edition, 1929. 



