Language and conventional
figures of speech, of which the word "state" itself is a good example,
serve to cut up consciousness artificially, but, in reality, it is, as
William James termed it, "a stream" and herein lies the essence of
Bergson's duree--the Real as opposed to the False Time. "Pure Duration"
(la duree pure), he says, "is the form which the succession of our
conscious states assumes when our Ego lets itself live, when it refrains
from separating its present state from its former states. For this
purpose, it need not be entirely absorbed in the passing sensation or
idea, for then, on the contrary, it would no longer 'endure.' Nor need
it forget its former states; it is enough that in recalling these
states, it does not set them alongside its actual state as one point
alongside another, but forms both the past and the present states into
an organic whole, as happens when we recall the notes of a tune,
melting, so to speak, into one another. Might it not be said that even
if these notes succeed one another, yet, we perceive them in one
another, and that their totality may be compared to a living being whose
parts, although distinct, permeate one another just because they are so
closely connected?" [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 100 (Fr. p. 76).]
Such a duration is Real Time. Unfortunately, we, obsessed by the idea of
space, introduce it unwittingly and set our states of consciousness side
by side in such a way as to perceive them alongside one another; in a
word, we project them into space and we express duree in terms of
extensity and succession thus takes the form of a continuous line or a
chain--the parts of which touch without interpenetrating one another.
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