A History of Western Philosophy

by Bertrand Russell

  Bergson’s position is illustrated—and what is to be said in criticism may also be aptly illustrated—by Zeno’s argument of the arrow. Zeno argues that, since the arrow at each moment simply is where it is, therefore the arrow in its flight is always at rest. At first sight, this argument may not appear a very powerful one. Of course, it will be said, the arrow is where it is at one moment, but at another moment it is somewhere else, and this is just what constitutes motion. Certain difficulties, it is true, arise out of the continuity of motion, if we insist upon assuming that motion is also discontinuous. These difficulties, thus obtained, have long been part of the stock-in-trade of philosophers. But if, with the mathematicians, we avoid the assumption that motion is also discontinuous, we shall not fall into the philosopher’s difficulties. A cinematograph in which there are an infinite number of pictures, and in which there is never a next picture because an infinite number come between any two, will perfectly represent a continuous motion. Wherein, then, lies the force of Zeno’s argument?

  Zeno belonged to the Eleatic school, whose object was to prove that there could be no such thing as change. The natural view to take of the world is that there are things which change; for example, there is an arrow which is now here, now there. By bisection of this view, philosophers have developed two paradoxes. The Eleatics said that there were things but no changes; Heraclitus and Bergson said there were changes but no things. The Eleatics said there was an arrow, but no flight; Heraclitus and Bergson said there was a flight but no arrow. Each party conducted its argument by refutation of the other party. How ridiculous to say there is no arrow! say the “static” party. How ridiculous to say there is no flight! say the “dynamic” party. The unfortunate man who stands in the middle and maintains that there is both the arrow and its flight is assumed by the disputants to deny both; he is therefore pierced, like Saint Sebastian, by the arrow from one side and by its flight from the other. But we have still not discovered wherein lies the force of Zeno’s argument.

  Zeno assumes, tacitly, the essence of the Bergsonian theory of change. That is to say, he assumes that when a thing is in a process of continuous change, even if it is only change of position, there must be in the thing some internal state of change. The thing must, at each instant, be intrinsically different from what it would be if it were not changing. He then points out that at each instant the arrow simply is where it is, just as it would be if it were at rest. Hence he concludes that there can be no such thing as a state of motion, and therefore, adhering to the view that a state of motion is essential to motion, he infers that there can be no motion and that the arrow is always at rest.

  Zeno’s argument, therefore, though it does not touch the mathematical account of change, does, prima facie, refute a view of change which is not unlike Bergson’s. How, then, does Bergson meet Zeno’s argument? He meets it by denying that the arrow is ever anywhere. After stating Zeno’s argument, he replies: “Yes, if we suppose that the arrow can ever be in a point of its course. Yes, again, if the arrow, which is moving, ever coincides with a position, which is motionless. But the arrow never is in any point of its course.” This reply to Zeno, or a closely similar one concerning Achilles and the Tortoise, occurs in all his three books. Bergson’s view, plainly, is paradoxical; whether it is possible, is a question which demands a discussion of his view of duration. His only argument in its favor is the statement that the mathematical view of change “implies the absurd proposition that movement is made of immobilities.” But the apparent absurdity of this view is merely due to the verbal form in which he has stated it, and vanishes as soon as we realize that motion implies relations. A friendship, for example, is made out of people who are friends, but not out of friendships; a genealogy is made out of men, but not out of genealogies. So a motion is made out of what is moving, but not out of motions. It expresses the fact that a thing may be in different places at different times, and that the places may still be different however near together the times may be. Bergson’s argument against the mathematical view of motion, therefore, reduces itself, in the last analysis, to a mere play upon words. And with this conclusion we may pass on to a criticism of his theory of duration.

  Bergson’s theory of duration is bound up with his theory of memory. According to this theory, things remembered survive in memory, and thus interpenetrate present things: past and present are not mutually external, but are mingled in the unity of consciousness. Action, he says, is what constitutes being; but mathematical time is a mere passive receptacle, which does nothing and therefore is nothing. The past, he says, is that which acts no longer, and the present is that which is acting. But in this statement, as indeed throughout his account of duration, Bergson is unconsciously assuming the ordinary mathematical time; without this, his statements are unmeaning. What is meant by saying “the past is essentially that which acts no longer” (his italics), except that the past is that of which the action is past? the words “no longer” are words expressive of the past; to a person who did not have the ordinary notion of the past as something outside the present, these words would have no meaning. Thus his definition is circular. What he says is, in effect, “the past is that of which the action is in the past.” As a definition, this cannot be regarded as a happy effort. And the same applies to the present. The present, we are told, is “that which is acting” (his italics). But the word “is” introduces just that idea of the present which was to be defined. The present is that which is acting as opposed to that which was acting or will be acting. That is to say, the present is that whose action is in the present, not in the past or in the future. Again the definition is circular. An earlier passage on the same page will illustrate the fallacy further. “That which constitutes our pure perception,” he says, “is our dawning action…. The actuality of our perception thus lies in its activity, in the movements which prolong it, and not in its greater intensity: the past is only idea, the present is ideo-motor.” This passage makes it quite clear that, when Bergson speaks of the past, he does not mean the past, but our present memory of the past. The past when it existed was just as active as the present is now; if Bergson’s account were correct, the present moment ought to be the only one in the whole history of the world containing any activity. In earlier times there were other perceptions, just as active, just as actual in their day, as our present perceptions; the past, in its day, was by no means only idea, but was in its intrinsic character just what the present is now. This real past, however, Bergson simply forgets; what he speaks of is the present idea of the past. The real past does not mingle with the present, since it is not part of it; but that is a very different thing.

  The whole of Bergson’s theory of duration and time rests throughout on the elementary confusion between the present occurrence of a recollection and the past occurrence which is recollected. But for the fact that time is so familiar to us, the vicious circle involved in his attempt to deduce the past as what is no longer active would be obvious at once. As it is, what Bergson gives is an account of the difference between perception and recollection—both present facts—and what he believes himself to have given is an account of the difference between the present and the past. As soon as this confusion is realized, his theory of time is seen to be simply a theory which omits time altogether.

  The confusion between present remembering and the past event remembered, which seems to be at the bottom of Bergson’s theory of time, is an instance of a more general confusion which, if I am not mistaken, vitiates a great deal of his thought, and indeed a great deal of the thought of most modern philosophers—I mean the confusion between an act of knowing and that which is known. In memory, the act of knowing is in the present, whereas what is known is in the past; thus by confusing them the distinction between past and present is blurred.

  Throughout Matter and Memory, this confusion between the act of knowing and the object known is indispensable. It is enshrined in the use of the word “image,” which is explained at the very beginning of t
he book. He there states that, apart from philosophical theories, everything that we know consists of “images,” which indeed constitute the whole universe. He says: “I call matter the aggregate of images, and perception of matter these same images referred to the eventual action of one particular image, my body.” It will be observed that matter and the perception of matter, according to him, consist of the very same things. The brain, he says, is like the rest of the material universe, and is therefore an image if the universe is an image.

  Since the brain, which nobody sees, is not, in the ordinary sense, an image, we are not surprised at his saying that an image can be without being perceived; but he explains later on that, as regards images, the difference between being and being consciously perceived is only one of degree. This is perhaps explained by another passage in which he says: “What can be a non-perceived material object, an image not imaged, unless it is a kind of unconscious mental state?” Finally he says: “That every reality has a kinship, an analogy, in short a relation with consciousness—this is what we concede to idealism by the very fact that we term things ‘images.’” Nevertheless he attempts to allay our initial doubt by saying that he is beginning at a point before any of the assumptions of philosophers have been introduced. “We will assume,” he says, “for the moment that we know nothing of theories of matter and theories of spirit, nothing of the discussions as to the reality or ideality of the external world. Here I am in the presence of images.” And in the new Introduction which he wrote for the English edition he says: “By ‘image’ we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing,—an existence placed half-way between the ‘thing’ and the ‘representation.’”

  The distinction which Bergson has in mind in the above is not, I think, the distinction between the imaging as a mental occurrence and the thing imaged as an object. He is thinking of the distinction between the thing as it is and thing as it appears. The distinction between subject and object, between the mind which thinks and remembers and has images on the one hand, and the objects thought about, remembered, or imaged—this distinction, so far as I can see, is wholly absent from his philosophy. Its absence is his real debt to idealism; and a very unfortunate debt it is. In the case of “images,” as we have just seen, it enables him first to speak of images as neutral between mind and matter, then to assert that the brain is an image in spite of the fact that it has never been imaged, then to suggest that matter and the perception of matter are the same thing, but that a non-perceived image (such as the brain) is an unconscious mental state; while finally, the use of the word “image,” though involving no metaphysical theories whatever, nevertheless implies that every reality has “a kinship, an analogy, in short a relation” with consciousness.

  All these confusions are due to the initial confusion of subjective and objective. The subject—a thought or an image or a memory—is a present fact in me; the object may be the law of gravitation or my friend Jones or the old Campanile of Venice. The subject is mental and is here and now. Therefore, if subject and object are one, the object is mental and is here and now; my friend Jones, though he believes himself to be in South America and to exist on his own account, is really in my head and exists in virtue of my thinking about him; St. Mark’s Campanile, in spite of its great size and the fact that it ceased to exist forty years ago, still exists, and is to be found complete inside me. These statements are no travesty of Bergson’s theories of space and time; they are merely an attempt to show what is the actual concrete meaning of those theories.

  The confusion of subject and object is not peculiar to Bergson, but is common to many idealists and many materialists. Many idealists say that the object is really the subject, and many materialists say that the subject is really the object. They agree in thinking these two statements very different, while yet holding that subject and object are not different. In this respect, we may admit, Bergson has merit, for he is as ready to identify subject with object as to identify object with subject. As soon as this identification is rejected, his whole system collapses: first his theories of space and time, then his belief in real contingency, then his condemnation of intellect, and finally his account of the relations of mind and matter.

  Of course a large part of Bergson’s philosophy, probably the part to which most of its popularity is due, does not depend upon argument, and cannot be upset by argument. His imaginative picture of the world, regarded as a poetic effort, is in the main not capable of either proof or disproof. Shakespeare says life’s but a walking shadow, Shelley says it is like a dome of many-coloured glass, Bergson says it is a shell which bursts into parts that are again shells. If you like Bergson’s image better, it is just as legitimate.

  The good which Bergson hopes to see realized in the world is action for the sake of action. All pure contemplation he calls “dreaming,” and condemns by a whole series of uncomplimentary epithets: static, Platonic, mathematical, logical, intellectual. Those who desire some prevision of the end which action is to achieve are told that an end foreseen would be nothing new, because desire, like memory, is identified with its object. Thus we are condemned, in action, to be the blind slaves of instinct: the life-force pushes us on from behind, restlessly and unceasingly. There is no room in this philosophy for the moment of contemplative insight when, rising above the animal life, we become conscious of the greater ends that redeem man from the life of the brutes. Those to whom activity without purpose seems a sufficient good will find in Bergson’s books a pleasing picture of the universe. But those to whom action, if it is to be of any value, must be inspired by some vision, by some imaginative foreshadowing of a world less painful, less unjust, less full of strife than the world of our every-day life, those, in a word, whose action is built on contemplation, will find in this philosophy nothing of what they seek, and will not regret that there is no reason to think it true.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  William James

  WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910) was primarily a psychologist, but was important in philosophy on two accounts: he invented the doctrine which he called “radical empiricism,” and he was one of the three protagonists of the theory called “pragmatism” or “instrumentalism.” In later life he was, as he deserved to be, the recognized leader of American philosophy. He was led by the study of medicine to the consideration of psychology; his great book on the subject, published in 1890, had the highest possible excellence. I shall not, however, deal with it, since it was a contribution to science rather than to philosophy.

  There were two sides to William James’s philosophical interests, one scientific, the other religious. On the scientific side, the study of medicine had given his thoughts a tendency towards materialism, which, however, was held in check by his religious emotions. His religious feelings were very Protestant, very democratic, and very full of a warmth of human kindness. He refused altogether to follow his brother Henry into fastidious snobbishness. “The prince of darkness,” he said, “may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.” This is a very characteristic pronouncement.

  His warm-heartedness and his delightful humour caused him to be almost universally beloved. The only man I know of who did not feel any affection for him was Santayana, whose doctor’s thesis William James had described as “the perfection of rottenness.” There was between these two men a temperamental opposition which nothing could have overcome. Santayana also liked religion, but in a very different way. He liked it aesthetically and historically, not as a help towards a moral life; as was natural, he greatly preferred Catholicism to Protestantism. He did not intellectually accept any of the Christian dogmas, but he was content that others should believe them, and himself appreciated what he regarded as the Christian myth. To James, such an attitude could not but appear immoral. He retained from his Puritan ancestry a deep-seated belief that what is of most importance is good condu
ct, and his democratic feeling made him unable to acquiesce in the notion of one truth for philosophers and another for the vulgar. The temperamental opposition between Protestant and Catholic persists among the unorthodox; Santayana was a Catholic free-thinker, William James a Protestant, however heretical.

  James’s doctrine of radical empiricism was first published in 1904, in an essay called “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” The main purpose of this essay was to deny that the subject-object relation is fundamental. It had, until then, been taken for granted by philosophers that there is a kind of occurrence called “knowing,” in which one entity, the knower or subject, is aware of another, the thing known or the object. The knower was regarded as a mind or soul; the object known might be a material object, an eternal essence, another mind, or, in self-consciousness, identical with the knower. Almost everything in accepted philosophy was bound up with the dualism of subject and object. The distinction of mind and matter, the contemplative ideal, and the traditional notion of “truth,” all need to be radically reconsidered if the distinction of subject and object is not accepted as fundamental.

  For my part, I am convinced that James was right on this matter, and would, on this ground alone, deserve a high place among philosophers. I had thought otherwise until he, and those who agreed with him, persuaded me of the truth of his doctrine. But let us proceed to his arguments.