196 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



them are false to duration. There is really more in the idea of an 

 object conceived as non-existing than in the idea of an object conceived 

 as existing: psychologically. 



The old systems assume that affirmation and negation are the hemi- 

 spheres of reality, but negation is not on the same level as affirmation. 

 They are by no means symmetrical. "Not " is a word which expresses 

 disappointment from a social point of view; it belongs to the merely 

 practical and not to the real. It tells us nothing about things, but 

 only something about our judgments concerning things. 



"For a mind following purely and simply the thread of experience, 

 there would be no void, no possible negation. Fact succeeds fact, 

 thing succeeds thing." 



But if memory be added to this simplest experience, the mind would 

 begin to notice absences of things once known. Negation thus has 

 a pedagogical and social value, but is not itself a factor in speculation 

 on reality. 



We come to think that as we can annihilate anything by the idea 

 of absence we can annihilate everything en bloc, but this kind of annihi- 

 lation is a pseudo-idea, because it would involve the idea of all the 

 real things expelling one another endlessly in a circle, and hence, 

 refute itself. 



The world, then, is not painted on a background of "nothing." 

 We say there is "nothing" in a room when we mean no chairs, tables, 

 etc. The idea is based on utility. And just so with the world. 

 What we mark out as useful for our action is real, and we neglect the 

 rest of reality; but this is no true reason for calling it "nothing" in 

 the absolute sense. 



By this line of thought, Bergson sends another of the pseudo- 

 problems of philosophy to the scrap heap. If in the light of duration 

 and psychic reality there is no meaning in the word "nothing," if the 

 word has no real content for a living mind, and is just a word and 

 nothing more, then all the profound mysteries that have been regarded 

 as enigmas for so many ages have no meaning, and pragmatism may 

 dismiss them in order to attend to the real problems, that is, problems 

 whose solutions have some bearing upon life and our estimation of the 

 meaning of life. 



