Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/257

 soul and body. It comes before us clearly and with urgency, because we make a profound distinction between matter and spirit. And we cannot regard it as insoluble, since we define spirit and matter by positive characters, and not by negations. It is in very truth within matter that pure perception places us, and it is really into spirit that we penetrate by means of memory. But on the other hand, whilst introspection reveals to us the distinction between matter and spirit, it also bears witness to their union. Either, then, our analyses are vitiated ab origine, or they must help us to issue from the difficulties that they raise.

The obscurity of this problem, in all doctrines, is due to the double antithesis which our understanding establishes between the extended and the unextended on the one side, between quality and quantity on the other. It is certain that mind, first of all, stands over against matter as a pure unity in face of an essentially divisible multiplicity; and moreover that our perceptions are composed of heterogeneous qualities, whereas the perceived universe seems to resolve itself into homogeneous and calculable changes. There would thus be inextension and quality on the one hand, extensity and quantity on the other. We have repudiated materialism, which derives the first term