In description in terms of
abstract general notions such as common qualities we substitute for
fact something which is not fact at all, we lose touch with the
concrete and, moreover, we are strongly tempted to confuse fact with
abstraction and believe that the implications of the abstraction apply
to the fact, or even that the abstraction is itself a real part of the
fact.
Language plays a most important part in forming our habit of treating
all facts as material for generalisation, and it is largely to the
influence of the words which we use for describing facts that Bergson
attributes our readiness to take it for granted that facts have the
same logical form as abstractions. It is language again which makes it
so difficult to point out that this assumption is mistaken, because,
actually, the form of facts is non-logical, a continuous process and
not a series. The only way to point this out is by describing the
nature of the non-logical facts as contrasted with a logical series,
but the language in which our description of the non-logical facts has
to be conveyed is itself full of logical implications which contradict
the very point we are trying to bring out.
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