According to Bergson's theory also sensible perception is
direct acquaintance with matter. The unsophisticated view holds
further, however, that this material world with which sensible
perception acquaints us is the common sense world of solid tables,
green grass, anger and other such states and things and qualities, but
we have already seen that this common sense world is really itself
only one among the various attempts which science and common sense are
continually making to explain the facts in terms of abstractions. The
worlds of electrons, vibrations, forces, and so on, constructed by
physics, are other attempts to do the same thing and the common sense
world of "real" things and qualities has no more claim to actual
existence than have any of these scientific hypotheses. Berg-son's
matter is not identified with any one of these constructions, it is
that in the facts which they are all attempts to explain in terms of
abstractions, the element in the facts upon which abstractions are
based and which makes facts classifiable and so explicable.
The words by which we describe and explain the material element in the
facts in terms of series of distinct stages or events in external
relations would leave out change if their implications were followed
out consistently, but it is only a few "intellectuals" who have ever
been able to bring themselves to follow out this implication to the
bitter end and accept the conclusion, however absurd.
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