CONTINUITY OF BERGSON'S THOUGHT 1 67 



itself into three aspects : (a) The extended and the inextended ; (b) The 

 problem how quantity explains quality; (c) How freedom is consistent 

 with necessity. If we are to achieve any success, we must show how 

 our view tones down these seeming hopeless oppositions. 



If matter is made up of innumerable real corpuscles, and mind of 

 sensations to which the dimensions of bodies are utterly inapplicable, 

 then mind and matter are really disparate, on the first count. But 

 is this the right statement of the problem ? No such corpuscles are 

 given in intuition — they have been produced artificially by the under* 

 standing, struggling with practical needs and scientific problems aris- 

 ing therefrom. What is really given is something between divided 

 extension, and pure inextension. 



Extensity is the most salient quality of perception. Abstract space 

 is a device for dividing extensity and giving us infinitely divisible matter; 

 but this space and matter are not given in perception. We stretch a 

 net over the real, as a painter blocks out squares on his canvas. But 

 just as we divide the really given experience into unreal atoms on the 

 material side, so we divide it into atomic sensations on the mental 

 side, and these refuse to combine in any such way as would explain the 

 very real images (not at all inextended) which make up our actual 

 world. There are no such sensations, just as there are no such atoms. 

 They are purely conceptual abstractions, resulting from a disintegra- 

 tion of reality by the intellect. To get a true philosophy of mind and 

 matter, we must withdraw from conceptualism into the free air of living 

 intuition, and explain a real experience by real elements. 



The second opposition (quality vs. quantity) is far less artificial. 

 How can the movement of waves at a certain rate (quantity) spell 

 red (quality) to mind ? But this problem is not so radical if we abandon 

 the first opposition. 



You now restore perception to the thing perceived; the red is in the 

 object, not in some inextended sensation. You may say, But the atoms 

 remain, and they are not red; we reply that science is already per- 

 mitting us to discard atoms. But, you persist, there is an apparent 

 homogeneity of movements which does rhyme with the heterogeneity 

 of qualities. Well; but how could such movements, composed as you 



