Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/227

 Now, when we get to the bottom of these two opposite theories, we find in them a common postulate; each will have it that we start from the perception of individual objects. The first composes the genus by an enumeration; the second disengages it by an analysis; but it is upon individuals, considered as so many realities given to immediate intuition, that both analysis and enumeration are supposed to bear. This is the postulate. In spite of its apparent obviousness, we must expect to find, and we do indeed find, that experience belies it.

A priori, indeed, we may expect the clear distinction of individual objects to be a luxury of perception, just as the clear representation of general ideas is a refinement of the intellect. The full conception of genera is no doubt proper to human thought; it demands an effort of reflexion, by which we expunge from a representation the details of time and place. But the reflexion on these details—a reflexion without which the individuality of objects would escape us—presupposes a faculty of noticing differences, and therefore a memory of images, which is certainly the privilege of man and of the higher animals. It would seem, then, that we start neither from the perception of the individual nor from the conception of the genus, but from an intermediate knowledge, from a confused sense of the striking quality or of resemblance: this sense,