Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/267

 said elsewhere, can only appear as a multiplicity of instantaneous positions, since nothing there can ensure the coherence of past with present. It might, then, be possible, in a certain measure, to transcend space without stepping out from extensity; and here we should really have a return to the immediate, since we do indeed perceive extensity, whereas space is merely conceived,—being a kind of mental diagram. It may be urged against this method that it arbitrarily attributes a privileged value to immediate knowledge? But what reasons should we have for doubting any knowledge,—would the idea of doubting it ever occur to us,—but for the difficulties and the contradictions which reflexion discovers, but for the problems which philosophy poses? And would not immediate knowledge find in itself its justification and proof, if we could show that these difficulties, contradictions and problems are mainly the result of the symbolic diagrams which cover it up, diagrams which have for us become reality itself, and beyond which only an intense and unusual effort can succeed in penetrating?

Let us choose at once, among the results to which the application of this method may lead, those which concern our present enquiry. We must confine ourselves to mere suggestions; there can be no question here of constructing a theory of matter.