Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/349

 it by means of an abstract space, stretched by us beneath it for the needs of action, that we constitute the composite and infinitely divisible extension. It is, on the other hand, in subtilizing it, in making it, in turn, dissolve into affective sensations and evaporate into a counterfeit of pure ideas, that we obtain those inextensive sensations with which we afterwards vainly endeavour to reconstitute images. And the two opposite directions in which we pursue this double labour open quite naturally before us, because it is a result of the very necessities of action that extension should divide itself up for us into absolutely independent objects (whence an encouragement to go on subdividing extension); and that we should pass by insensible degrees from affection to perception (whence a tendency to suppose perception more and more inextensive). But our understanding, of which the function is to set up logical distinctions, and consequently clean-cut oppositions, throws itself into each of these ways in turn, and follows each to the end. It thus sets up, at one extremity, an infinitely divisible extension, at the other sensations which are absolutely inextensive. And it creates thereby the opposition which it afterwards contemplates amazed.

2nd. Far less artificial is the opposition between quality and quantity, that is to say between consciousness and movement: but this opposition is radical only if we have