BERGSON S CONCEPTION OF DURATION 20$ 



as extensity, to inteirpret a succession by a simultaneity, and to express the idea of 

 freedom in a language into which it is obviously untranslatable.' 



The empirical school of today carries analysis still farther than 

 Kant, and tries to make the extensive out of the intensive, space out 

 of duration, and externality out of inner states. Psychic states seem 

 to be more or less intense ; looked at in their multiplicity, they unfold 

 in time and constitute duration, and in their relations to one another 

 they seem to determine one another. The three ideas of intensity, 

 duration, and voluntary determination had to be purged of all that 

 they owe to the sensible world or the idea of space. All of these 

 preliminary considerations have been necessary in order for us to be 

 able to take up the principal subject, the analysis of the ideas of dura- 

 tion and voluntary determination. Duration within us is a qualita- 

 tive multiplicity and has no likeness to number. It is an organic 

 evolution, but yet does not increase in quantity. It is a pure hetero- 

 geneity with no distinct qualities, or the moments of inner duration 

 are not external to one another. Duration existing outside us is the 

 present or simultaneity, and their moments do not succeed one an- 

 other, except for a consciousness which keeps them in mind. If 

 we put duration in space, we thereby place succession within simul- 

 taneity and contradict ourselves. Consequently "we must not say 

 that external things endure, but rather that there is in them some 

 inexpressible reason by virtue of which we cannot examine them 

 at successive moments of our own duration without observing that 

 they have changed." While our consciousness thus introduces suc- 

 cession into external things, these external things externalize the suc- 

 cessive moments of our inner duration in relation to one another. 

 Thus we get the mixed idea of a measurable homogeneous time in 

 space, and duration in so far as it is succession, or the idea of measur- 

 able time arises from compromise between the ideas of succession 

 and externaUty. When science makes a close study of external 

 things, it tears apart extensity and duration; for it keeps nothing of 

 duration but simultaneity, and nothing of motion but immobility, or 

 the position of the moving body. The separation here is very close, 



' Time and Free Will, p. J2i. 



