172 TIME 



'There are two species of time', or 'Physiological time does not 

 flow uniformly like physical time.' We must not be duped 

 by these words; we must not let ourselves be bound by them. 

 We must try to perceive, beyond them, the reality which they 

 vainly strive to translate: 'The flow which does not imply a 

 flowing thing, and the passage which does not presuppose 

 states through which one passes', as says Bergson, who was 

 led to conceive different durations diversely rhythmed, when 

 living species are concerned. But this was only a hypothesis. 

 In pages 58 and 61 of Diiree et Simultaneite, he arrives, by pure 

 reasoning, at conclusions very similar to ours, in the sense 

 that he develops the idea of 'the unity of an impersonal time 

 in which all things flow' and which is the result of the time 

 registered simultaneously by all human consciences. One 

 feels that he lacked the clear experimental facts capable of 

 substantiating his reasoning, i.e. the difference between uni- 

 versal time and individual physiological time. But his in- 

 tuition and immense talent had almost supplied the deficiency, 

 even though he was finally led to admit a unique universal 

 time. His intelligence w^as apparently revolted, if one may 

 say so, by the fragility of deductions resting on no measurable 

 phenomenon. 



The fact that we conceive the universal time as a mere 

 conceptual envelope of our physiological, individual time, 

 does not mean that we intend to affirm that it would no longer 

 exist if all life were swept from the universe. Let us pass over 

 the absurdity of the expression: 'Time which exists', on which 

 we have already insisted, and define our meaning. From 

 all that precedes, it seems to us that the reader must have 

 already disengaged the fact that our universe, the universe 

 which we perceive and conceive, exists as such only in our 

 consciousness. Let man, his senses and his memory, be 

 suppressed, and the universe is reduced to vibrations, to 

 forces, to velocities deprived of die familiar aspects which we 

 lend them by placing ourselves in their path. We gather 

 them and transform them by means of our sense organs. We 

 translate them in our consciousness and baptize them Reality. 



