BERGSON S CONCEPTION OF DURATION I93 



from its former states. For this purpose, it need not be entirely absorbed in the 

 passing sensation or idea; for then, on the contrary, it would no longer endure. 

 Nor need it forget its former states: it is enough that in recalling these states it 

 does not set them alongside its actual state, as one point alongside another, but 

 forms both the past and the present states into an organic whole, as happens 

 when we recall the notes of a tune, melting, so to speak, into one another." 



In this way, succession can be thought of without distinction as a 

 mutual penetration of heterogeneous moments, each of which repre- 

 sents the whole and cannot be distinguished from it, except by abstract 

 thought. Bergson says that this is the account of duration which a 

 being would give who had no idea of space, and who was ever the 

 same and ever changing. As a rule, we project time into space, and 

 express duration in terms of extensity, while succession becomes a 

 continuous line whose parts touch but do not interpenetrate. We 

 cannot speak of an order of succession in duration, nor of the reversi- 

 bility of this order, because it would not be pure succession but suc- 

 cession as it is developed in space; and to introduce order among 

 terms, we must first distinguish the terms and then compare the 

 places which they occupy. 



When the movement of my finger along a surface or line provides me with a 

 series of sensations of different qualities, one of two things happens: either I 

 picture these sensations to myself as in duration only, and in that case they suc- 

 ceed one another in such a way that I cannot at a given moment perceive a num- 

 ber of them as simultaneous and yet distinct; or else I make out an order of 

 succession, in which case I display the faculty not only of perceiving a succession 

 of elements, but also of setting them out in line after having distinguished them: 

 in a word, I already possess the idea of space. Hence, the idea of a reversible 

 series in duration, or even simply of a certain order of succession in time, implies 

 the representation of space, and cannot be used to define it.= 



Suppose that a material point, A, were moving on a straight line 

 of unlimited length. It would not perceive succession in the line, 

 unless it could rise above the line and perceive several points in juxta- 

 position simultaneously; but by so doing it would form the idea of 

 space of three dimensions, and it would perceive the changes which 

 it undergoes in space and not in duration. Bergson says that it is 

 here that we find the mistake of those who regard duration as similar 



« op. cit., p. 100. » Ibid., p. 102. 



