194 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



to space, but of a simpler nature. In a word, pure duration might 

 well be nothing but a succession of qualitative changes which melt 

 into and permeate one another, without precise outUnes, without any 

 tendency to externalize themselves in relation to one another, without 

 any affiliation with number: "it would be pure heterogeneity .... 

 Pure Duration from the moment you attribute the least homogeneity 

 Is Wholly to duration, you surreptitiously introduce space." 

 Qualitative p^j.^ duration is wholly qualitative. It cannot be 

 measured, unless symbohcally represented in space. It must be 

 reckoned among the so-called intensive magnitudes, if intensities can 

 be called magnitudes. It is not a quantity, and when we measure it 

 we replace it by space. 



It is vrry difficult to think of pure duration. This is probably 

 owing to the fact that other objects endure as well as ourselves, and 

 Astronomical from this point of view time has the appearance of a 

 Time Is Not homogeneous medium. This duration seems to be 

 Pure Duration homogeneous and measurable; the moments seem to 

 be external to one another, like bodies in space. Time, as used by 

 astronomers and physicists seems to be measurable and homogeneous. 

 If, as suggested in the previous paragraph, duration cannot be 

 measured, what is it that is measured by the movements of the 

 pendulum ? We are merely counting simultaneities, not measuring 

 duration. 



Withdraw the ego which thinks these successive oscillations, and there will 

 never be more than a single oscillation, and, indeed, only a single position of the 

 pendulum, and hence no duration. Withdraw the pendulum and the oscillations, 

 and there will be no longer anything but the heterogeneous duration of the ego, 

 without movements external to one another, without relation to number.' 



The successive phases of our conscious life correspond individually 

 to an oscillation of the pendulum which occurs at the same time; and 

 because the oscillations are sharply distinguished from one another 

 we get into the habit of making a distinction between the successive 

 moments of our conscious life. "The oscillations of the pendulum 

 break it up, so to speak, into parts, external to one another; hence 



■ Time and Free Will, p. io8. 



