Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was one of the most famous and influential French philosophers of the late 19th century-early 20th century. Although his international fame reached cult-like heights during his lifetime, his influence decreased notably after the second World War. While such French thinkers as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Lévinas explicitly acknowledged his influence on their thought, it is generally agreed that it was Gilles Deleuze's 1966 Bergsonism that marked the reawakening of interest in Bergson's work. Deleuze realized that Bergson's most enduring contribution to philosophical thinking is his concept of multiplicity. Bergson's concept of multiplicity attempts to unify in a consistent way two contradictory features: heterogeneity and continuity. Many philosophers today think that this concept of multiplicity, despite its difficulty, is revolutionary. It is revolutionary because it opens the way to a reconception of community.
LIFE AND WORKS
Bergson was born in Paris on October 18, 1859; he was the second of
seven children of a Polish Father and English mother; both of his
parents were Jewish. Bergson was a notably exceptional pupil throughout
his childhood. Like his German contemporary, Edmund Husserl, Bergson's
original training was in mathematics. Bergson won the first prize in
mathematics for the prestigious “Concours
Général,” which led to the publication of his
solution to a problem by Pascal in 1877. Bergson nevertheless chose to
prepare for the École Normale in the letters and humanities
section. His math teacher, disappointed, famously claimed, “you
could have been a mathematician; you will be a mere philosopher” .In 1878, Bergson became a French citizen, although he could have chosen English citizenship. He was accepted at the École Normale along with Jean Jaurès and Émile Durkheim. He discovered Herbert Spencer with enthusiasm, and studied under Félix Ravaisson and Jules Lachelier. Bergson graduated from the École Normale in 1881. He was the second best at the highly selective Agrégation de Philosophie, thanks to a lecture entitled “What is the value of contemporary psychology?” He began a teaching post in Angers at the high school (the lycée), and then moved to Clermont-Ferrand. There he taught both at the Lycée and the University for the next five years.
His first scholarly publication was in 1886, in the Revue Philosophique; “On Unconscious Simulation in States of Hypnosis” concerns the results of his observations at sessions of hypnosis. Notice that Freud and Breuer's Studies on Hysteria did not appear until 1896. This foreshadowed Bergson's growing interest in the role of unconscious memories within recognition—an interest that culminates in his being elected president of the London based Society for Psychical Research in 1913. In 1888, Bergson submitted two doctoral theses in Paris: Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, published as a book (Time and Free Will) in 1889; and the then required Latin thesis, Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit (Aristotle's Conception of Place). In 1927, in a footnote to Being and Time, Heidegger cited this second thesis, claiming that Bergson's view of time remains within the horizon of Greek metaphysics.
Bergson's second book, Matter and Memory, appeared in 1896. This book led to Bergson's election to the Collège de France. In his second attempt, Bergson succeeded at obtaining a post, and teaches at the École Normale for two years starting in 1898 . The Dreyfus Affair was raging, but Bergson (a Jew by birth) refused to take part in the public debate. Bergson published Laughter: an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic in 1900. He was appointed Chair of Ancient Philosophy at the prestigious Collège de France. This marked the beginning of his growing fame. In 1903, Bergson published, in the prestigious Revue de métaphysique et de morale, an article entitled “Introduction to Metaphysics” (later reproduced as the centerpiece of The Creative Mind [La Pensée et le mouvant] in 1934). The first of Bergson's works to be translated in many languages, this article not only became a crucial reading guide for Bergson's philosophy as a whole, but it also marked the beginning of “Bergsonism” and of its influence on Cubism and literature. Through Williams James's enthusiastic reading of this essay, Bergsonism acquired a far-reaching influence on American Pragmatism. Moreover, his imprint on American literature (in particular, Wallace Stevens and Willa Cather, who created a character called “Alexandra Bergson”) is undeniable.
Creative Evolution appeared in 1907 and was not only the source of the “Bergson legend,” as well as of numerous, lively academic and public controversies centering on his philosophy and his role as an intellectual. The beginning of the next decade is the apex of the “Bergsonian cult” (“le Bergson boom”). Creative Evolution was translated into English. Bertrand Russell (who publishes an article entitled “The Philosophy in Bergson” in The Monist in 1912) objected that Bergson wants to turn us into bees with the notion of intuition. Russell also noted that any attempt at classifying Bergson would fail, as his philosophy cuts across all divisions, whether empiricist, realist or idealist . Bergson's lectures at the Collège de France were filled to capacity, not only with society ladies and their suitors, but also with a whole generation of philosophy students (Étienne Gilson and Jean Wahl among others) and poets such as T.S. Eliot.
In January 1913, Bergson visited the United States for the first time . The week before he delivered his first lecture at Columbia University (entitled “Spirituality and Liberty”), The New York Times published a long article on him. The enthusiasm this article generated may explain the traffic jam that occurred before Bergson's lecture, the first traffic jam in the history of Broadway. In the same year, Bergson gave the Presidential Address, entitled “Phantasms of the Living and Psychical Research,” to the Society for Psychical Research in London, England. The next year Bergson was elected a member of the Académie Française; he was the first Jewish member in its history. He also presented courses at the Collège de France on Modern Philosophy and Spinoza. His international fame continued to grow through the delivery of the Gifford Lecture at Edinburgh University in Scotland in May and June; the lectures were called “The Problem of Personality.” Finally, in the same year, the Roman Catholic Church, in opposition to evolutionary theory, condemned Bergson's philosophy.
Of course, in the middle of this decade, war broke out, and Bergson entered his political career, which took him first to Spain in 1917 . But more importantly, the French government sent him to the United-States as a diplomatic emissary to meet President Wilson . After his first visit to the United States in 1913, he had thought that peace would come only from Washington, D.C. After his visit to Washington, Bergson said, “I have just lived unforgettable hours. Humanity appeared to me transfigured. […] France was saved. It was the greatest joy of my life.” At this time, Bergson was also working with Wilson's government to form a “league of nations,” a body that would include representatives of all nations and that would aim at establishing and maintaining peace. The League of Nations remained in existence until 1946, when it was replaced by the United Nations. Increasingly Bergson became more famous for his political actions than for his philosophy.
1919 saw the publication of Bergson's Mind Energy, a collection of essays concerned with metaphysical and psychological problems. During the same year he retired from his teaching duties. However, in 1922, Bergson was appointed president of the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation — the precursor to UNESCO. There, Bergson participated in a debate with Einstein, which, according to Merleau-Ponty, seems to testify to a “crisis of reason.” Bergson published his reflections on Einstein as Duration and Simultaneity (see Mélanges, 1972). There is some controversy surrounding this book. Bergson allowed the book to be reprinted up to the sixth edition in 1931. However Édouard Le Roy claims in a letter from 1953 (well after Bergson's death) that he often spoke with Bergson about relativity. Le Roy says, “[Bergson] added with insistence that the defective state of his knowledge of mathematics did not allow him to follow the development of generalized relativity in the detail such a development required.
Consequently [Bergson] thought it wiser to let the question drop. This is why he refused to let Duration and Simultaneity be reprinted” (Avertissement pour la septième edition, Durée et simultanéité, p. 5, [Lawlor translation]). However, in Bergson's will, he does not mention Duration and Simultaneity as a text not to be republished. Thus, the editors of the seventh edition in 1968 (Jean Wahl, Henri Gouhier, Jean Gutton, Vladimir Jankélévitch) saw fit to reprint this book. In a letter from November 1924, after complaining that in general his writings on relativity had been badly understood by the “relativist physicists.” Bergson clarifies that his writings on relativity should not be seen as dismissive of relativity theory. He says, “For my part, I think that the theory of relativity represents a very great advance, not only from the viewpoint of physics, but also from the viewpoint of philosophy” (Bergson, Correspondences, p. 1122 [Lawlor translation]). If Deleuze's interpretation is correct, the confrontation that Duration and Simultaneity develops is not one between Bergson and Einstein but a confrontation between Bergson's interpretation of multiplicities and Riemann's interpretation of multiplicity, Riemann's interpretation being, according to Deleuze, the basis of Einstein's theory (Deleuze, 1991, pp. 39–40).
During the second half of the Twenties, Bergson suffered from severe arthritis, which eventually forced him to retire from public life. In 1928, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Finally, in 1932, he surprised everyone with the publication of his last major book, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, which gave rise to renewed debates and misunderstandings about his philosophy and his religious orientation. The final collection of his essays, The Creative Mind, appeared in 1934.
Bergson died on January 3, 1941 at the age of 81. World War II had of course already begun, and Germany, occupying France, had established the Vichy government. There is a rumor that he had converted to Catholicism near the end of his life, but there is no document to support this rumor. In any case, the Vichy Government offered Bergson exemptions from anti-Semitic regulations, but he refused. It is also rumored that he contracted the cold that killed him while waiting in line to register as a Jew. Unfortunately, Bergson had written a will during the 1930s which instructed that all of his papers be destroyed. His wife apparently obeyed this order, throwing all of her husband's papers into the fireplace. There is a rumor that she destroyed a half-written manuscript. The result of this destruction is that the Bergson Archives in Paris (stored at Librairie Jacques Doucet on the Place de Panthéon in Paris) contain only Bergson's personal library. So, the situation is very different for Bergson than for many other important French and German philosophers of the 20th Century who have massive archives (Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty). The lack of archival material is one reason why Bergson went out of favor during the second half of the Twentieth Century. We shall return to this problem of Bergson's temporary disappearance from the philosophical scene.
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DREAMS
The subject which I have to discuss
here is so complex, it raises so many
questions of all kinds, difficult, obscure,
some psychological, others physiological
and metaphysical; in order to be
treated in a complete manner it requires
such a long development—and we have so
little space, that I shall ask your permission
to dispense with all preamble, to set aside
unessentials, and to go at once to the heart
of the question.
A dream is this. I perceive objects and
there is nothing there. I see men; I seem
to speak to them and I hear what they answer;
there is no one there and I have not
spoken. It is all as if real things and real
persons were there, then on waking all has
disappeared, both persons and things. How
does this happen?
But, first, is it true that there is nothing
there? I mean, is there not presented a
certain sense material to our eyes, to our
ears, to our touch, etc., during sleep as well
as during waking?
Close the eyes and look attentively at
what goes on in the field of our vision.
Many persons questioned on this point
would say that nothing goes on, that they
see nothing. No wonder at this, for a certain
amount of practise is necessary to be
able to observe oneself satisfactorily. But
just give the requisite effort of attention,
and you will distinguish, little by little,
many things. First, in general, a black
background. Upon this black background
occasionally brilliant points which come
and go, rising and descending, slowly and
sedately. More often, spots of many colors,
sometimes very dull, sometimes, on the contrary,
with certain people, so brilliant that
reality cannot compare with it. These
spots spread and shrink, changing form and
color, constantly displacing one another.
Sometimes the change is slow and gradual,
sometimes again it is a whirlwind of vertiginous
rapidity. Whence comes all this
phantasmagoria? The physiologists and
the psychologists have studied this play of
colors. "Ocular spectra," "colored spots,"
"phosphenes," such are the names that they
have given to the phenomenon. They explain
it either by the slight modifications
which occur ceaselessly in the retinal circulation,
or by the pressure that the closed
lid exerts upon the eyeball, causing a mechanical
excitation of the optic nerve. But
the explanation of the phenomenon and
the name that is given to it matters little.
It occurs universally and it constitutes—I
may say at once—the principal material of
which we shape our dreams, "such stuff as
dreams are made on."
Thirty or forty years ago, M. Alfred
Maury and, about the same time, M.
d'Hervey, of St. Denis, had observed that
at the moment of falling asleep these colored
spots and moving forms consolidate,
fix themselves, take on definite outlines,
the outlines of the objects and of the persons
which people our dreams. But this
is an observation to be accepted with caution,
since it emanates from psychologists
already half asleep. More recently an
American psychologist, Professor Ladd, of
Yale, has devised a more rigorous method,
but of difficult application, because it requires
a sort of training. It consists in
acquiring the habit on awakening in the
morning of keeping the eyes closed and retaining
for some minutes the dream that
is fading from the field of vision and soon
would doubtless have faded from that of
memory. Then one sees the figures and
objects of the dream melt away little by
little into phosphenes, identifying themselves
with the colored spots that the eye
really perceives when the lids are closed.
One reads, for example, a newspaper;
that is the dream. One awakens and there
remains of the newspaper, whose definite
outlines are erased, only a white spot
with black marks here and there; that is
the reality. Or our dream takes us upon
the open sea—round about us the ocean
spreads its waves of yellowish gray with
here and there a crown of white foam.
On awakening, it is all lost in a great spot,
half yellow and half gray, sown with brilliant
points. The spot was there, the brilliant
points were there. There was really
presented to our perceptions, in sleep, a
visual dust, and it was this dust which
served for the fabrication of our dreams.
Will this alone suffice? Still considering
the sensation of sight, we ought to add
to these visual sensations which we may
call internal all those which continue to
come to us from an external source. The
eyes, when closed, still distinguish light
from shade, and even, to a certain extent,
different lights from one another. These
sensations of light, emanating from without,
are at the bottom of many of our
dreams. A candle abruptly lighted in the
room will, for example, suggest to the
sleeper, if his slumber is not too deep, a
dream dominated by the image of fire, the
idea of a burning building. Permit me to
cite to you two observations of M. Tissié
on this subject:
"B—— Léon dreams that the theater
of Alexandria is on fire; the flame lights up
the whole place. All of a sudden he finds
himself transported to the midst of the
fountain in the public square; a line of
fire runs along the chains which connect
the great posts placed around the margin.
Then he finds himself in Paris at the exposition,
which is on fire. He takes part
in terrible scenes, etc. He wakes with a
start; his eyes catch the rays of light projected
by the dark lantern which the night
nurse flashes toward his bed in passing.
M—— Bertrand dreams that he is in the
marine infantry where he formerly served.
He goes to Fort-de-France, to Toulon, to
Loriet, to Crimea, to Constantinople. He
sees lightning, he hears thunder, he takes
part in a combat in which he sees fire leap
from the mouths of cannon. He wakes
with a start. Like B., he was wakened by
a flash of light projected from the dark
lantern of the night nurse." Such are often
the dreams provoked by a bright and sudden
light.
Very different are those which are suggested
by a mild and continuous light like
that of the moon. A. Krauss tells how one
day on awakening he perceived that he was
extending his arm toward what in his
dream appeared to him to be the image
of a young girl. Little by little this image
melted into that of the full moon which
darted its rays upon him. It is a curious
thing that one might cite other examples
of dreams where the rays of the moon, caressing
the eyes of the sleeper, evoked before
him virginal apparitions. May we
not suppose that such might have been the
origin in antiquity of the fable of Endymion—Endymion
the shepherd, lapped
in perpetual slumber, for whom the goddess
Selene, that is, the moon, is smitten
with love while he sleeps?
I have spoken of visual sensations. They
are the principal ones. But the auditory
sensations nevertheless play a rôle. First,
the ear has also its internal sensations,
sensations of buzzing, of tinkling, of whistling,
difficult to isolate and to perceive
while awake, but which are clearly distinguished
in sleep. Besides that we continue,
when once asleep, to hear external sounds.
The creaking of furniture, the crackling of
the fire, the rain beating against the window,
the wind playing its chromatic scale
in the chimney, such are the sounds which
come to the ear of the sleeper and which
the dream converts, according to circumstances,
into conversation, singing, cries,
music, etc. Scissors were struck against
the tongs in the ears of Alfred Maury
while he slept. Immediately he dreamt
that he heard the tocsin and took part in
the events of June, 1848. Such observations
and experiences are numerous. But
let us hasten to say that sounds do not play
in our dreams so important a rôle as colors.
Our dreams are, above all, visual, and even
more visual than we think. To whom has
it not happened—as M. Max Simon has
remarked—to talk in a dream with a certain
person, to dream a whole conversation,
and then, all of a sudden, a singular
phenomenon strikes the attention of the
dreamer. He perceives that he does not
speak, that he has not spoken, that his interlocutor
has not uttered a single word,
that it was a simple exchange of thought
between them, a very clear conversation,
in which, nevertheless, nothing has been
heard. The phenomenon is easily enough
explained. It is in general necessary for
us to hear sounds in a dream. From nothing
we can make nothing. And when we
are not provided with sonorous material,
a dream would find it hard to manufacture
sonority.
There is much more to say about the
sensations of touch than about those of
hearing, but I must hasten. We could talk
for hours about the singular phenomena
which result from the confused sensations
of touch during sleep. These sensations,
mingling with the images which occupy
our visual field, modify them or arrange
them in their own way. Often in the midst
of the night the contact of our body with
its light clothing makes itself felt all at
once and reminds us that we are lightly
clothed. Then, if our dream is at the moment
taking us through the street, it is in
this simple attire that we present ourselves
to the gaze of the passers-by, without their
appearing to be astonished by it. We are
ourselves astonished in the dream, but that
never appears to astonish other people. I
cite this dream because it is frequent.
There is another which many of us must
have experienced. It consists of feeling
oneself flying through the air or floating in
space. Once having had this dream, one
may be quite sure that it will reappear;
and every time that it recurs the dreamer
reasons in this way: "I have had before
now in a dream the illusion of flying or
floating, but this time it is the real thing.
It has certainly proved to me that we may
free ourselves from the law of gravitation."
Now, if you wake abruptly from
this dream, you can analyze it without difficulty,
if you undertake it immediately.
You will see that you feel very clearly that
your feet are not touching the earth. And,
nevertheless, not believing yourself asleep,
you have lost sight of the fact that you
are lying down. Therefore, since you are
not lying down and yet your feet do not
feel the resistance of the ground, the conclusion
is natural that you are floating in
space. Notice this also: when levitation
accompanies the flight, it is on one side
only that you make an effort to fly. And
if you woke at that moment you would find
that this side is the one on which you are
lying, and that the sensation of effort for
flight coincides with the real sensation
given you by the pressure of your body
against the bed. This sensation of pressure,
dissociated from its cause, becomes a
pure and simple sensation of effort and,
joined to the illusion of floating in space, is
sufficient to produce the dream.
It is interesting to see that these sensations
of pressure, mounting, so to speak,
to the level of our visual field and taking
advantage of the luminous dust which fills
it, effect its transformation into forms and
colors. M. Max Simon tells of having
a strange and somewhat painful dream.
He dreamt that he was confronted by
two piles of golden coins, side by side and
of unequal height, which for some reason
or other he had to equalize. But he could
not accomplish it. This produced a feeling
of extreme anguish. This feeling,
growing moment by moment, finally awakened
him. He then perceived that one
of his legs was caught by the folds of
the bedclothes in such a way that his two
feet were on different levels and it was impossible
for him to bring them together.
From this the sensation of inequality,
making an irruption into the visual field
and there encountering (such at least is the
hypothesis which I propose) one or more
yellow spots, expressed itself visually by
the inequality of the two piles of gold
pieces. There is, then, immanent in the
tactile sensations during sleep, a tendency
to visualize themselves and enter in this
form into the dream.
More important still than the tactile
sensations, properly speaking, are the sensations
which pertain to what is sometimes
called internal touch, deep-seated sensations
emanating from all points of the
organism and, more particularly, from the
viscera. One cannot imagine the degree
of sharpness, of acuity, which may be obtained
during sleep by these interior sensations.
They doubtless already exist as well
during waking. But we are then distracted
by practical action. We live outside
of ourselves. But sleep makes us retire
into ourselves. It happens frequently
that persons subject to laryngitis, amygdalitis,
etc., dream that they are attacked by
their affection and experience a disagreeable
tingling on the side of their throat.
When awakened, they feel nothing more,
and believe it an illusion; but a few hours
later the illusion becomes a reality. There
are cited maladies and grave accidents, attacks
of epilepsy, cardiac affections, etc.,
which have been foreseen and, as it were,
prophesied in dreams. We need not be
astonished, then, that philosophers like
Schopenhauer have seen in the dream a reverberation,
in the heart of consciousness,
of perturbations emanating from the sympathetic
nervous system; and that psychologists
like Schemer have attributed to
each of our organs the power of provoking
a well-determined kind of dream which
represents it, as it were, symbolically; and
finally that physicians like Artigues have
written treatises on the semeiological value
of dreams, that is to say, the method of
making use of dreams for the diagnosis
of certain maladies. More recently, M.
Tissié, of whom we have just spoken, has
shown how specific dreams are connected
with affections of the digestive, respiratory,
and circulatory apparatus.
I will summarize what I have just been
saying. When we are sleeping naturally,
it is not necessary to believe, as has often
been supposed, that our senses are closed
to external sensations. Our senses continue
to be active. They act, it is true, with less
precision, but in compensation they embrace
a host of "subjective" impressions
which pass unperceived when we are
awake—for then we live in a world of
perceptions common to all men—and
which reappear in sleep, when we live
only for ourselves. Thus our faculty of
sense perception, far from being narrowed
during sleep at all points, is on the contrary
extended, at least in certain directions,
in its field of operations. It is true that it
often loses in energy, in tension, what it
gains in extension. It brings to us only
confused impressions. These impressions
are the materials of our dreams. But they
are only the materials, they do not suffice
to produce them.
They do not suffice to produce them, because
they are vague and indeterminate.
To speak only of those that play the principal
rôle, the changing colors and forms,
which deploy before us when our eyes are
closed, never have well-defined contours.
Here are black lines upon a white background.
They may represent to the
dreamer the page of a book, or the facade
of a new house with dark blinds, or any
number of other things. Who will choose?
What is the form that will imprint its
decision upon the indecision of this material?
This form is our memory.
Let us note first that the dream in general
creates nothing. Doubtless there may
be cited some examples of artistic, literary
and scientific production in dreams. I will
recall only the well-known anecdote told
of Tartini, a violinist-composer of the eighteenth
century. As he was trying to compose
a sonata and the muse remained recalcitrant,
he went to sleep and he saw in a dream
the devil, who seized his violin and played
with master hand the desired sonata. Tartini
wrote it out from memory when he
woke. It has come to us under the name
of "The Devil's Sonata." But it is very
difficult, in regard to such old cases, to
distinguish between history and legend.
We should have auto-observations of certain
authenticity. Now I have not been
able to find anything more than that of the
contemporary English novelist, Stevenson.
In a very curious essay entitled "A Chapter
on Dreams," this author, who is endowed
with a rare talent for analysis,
explains to us how the most original of
his stories have been composed or at least
sketched in dreams. But read the chapter
carefully. You will see that at a certain
time in his life Stevenson had come
to be in an habitual psychical state where
it was very hard for him to say whether
he was sleeping or waking. That appears
to me to be the truth. When the mind
creates, I would say when it is capable of
giving the effort of organization and synthesis
which is necessary to triumph over
a certain difficulty, to solve a problem, to
produce a living work of the imagination,
we are not really asleep, or at least that
part of ourselves which labors is not the
same as that which sleeps. We cannot
say, then, that it is a dream. In sleep,
properly speaking, in sleep which absorbs
our whole personality, it is memories and
only memories which weave the web of
our dreams. But often we do not recognize
them. They may be very old
memories, forgotten during waking hours,
drawn from the most obscure depths of our
past; they may be, often are, memories of
objects that we have perceived distractedly,
almost unconsciously, while awake.
Or they may be fragments of broken memories
which have been picked up here and
there and mingled by chance, composing
an incoherent and unrecognizable whole.
Before these bizarre assemblages of images
which present no plausible significance,
our intelligence (which is far from surrendering
the reasoning faculty during
sleep, as has been asserted) seeks an explanation,
tries to fill the lacunæ. It fills
them by calling up other memories which,
presenting themselves often with the same
deformations and the same incoherences as
the preceding, demand in their turn a new
explanation, and so on indefinitely. But
I do not insist upon this point for the moment.
It is sufficient for me to say, in
order to answer the question which I have
propounded, that the formative power of
the materials furnished to the dream by
the different senses, the power which converts
into precise, determined objects the
vague and indistinct sensations that the
dreamer receives from his eyes, his ears,
and the whole surface and interior of his
body, is the memory.
Memory! In a waking state we have
indeed memories which appear and disappear,
occupying our mind in turn. But
they are always memories which are closely
connected with our present situation,
our present occupation, our present action.
I recall at this moment the book of M.
d'Hervey on dreams; that is because I am
discussing the subject of dreams and this
act orients in a certain particular direction
the activity of my memory. The
memories that we evoke while waking,
however distant they may at first appear to
be from the present action, are always connected
with it in some way. What is the
rôle of memory in an animal? It is to
recall to him, in any circumstance, the
advantageous or injurious consequences
which have formerly arisen in analogous
circumstances, in order to instruct him
as to what he ought to do. In man memory
is doubtless less the slave of action,
but still it sticks to it. Our memories, at
any given moment, form a solid whole, a
pyramid, so to speak, whose point is inserted
precisely into our present action.
But behind the memories which are concerned
in our occupations and are revealed
by means of it, there are others, thousands
of others, stored below the scene illuminated
by consciousness. Yes, I believe indeed
that all our past life is there, preserved
even to the most infinitesimal details,
and that we forget nothing, and that
all that we have felt, perceived, thought,
willed, from the first awakening of our
consciousness, survives indestructibly. But
the memories which are preserved in these
obscure depths are there in the state of
invisible phantoms. They aspire, perhaps,
to the light, but they do not even try to
rise to it; they know that it is impossible
and that I, as a living and acting being,
have something else to do than to occupy
myself with them. But suppose that, at
a given moment, I become disinterested
in the present situation, in the present action—in
short, in all which previously has
fixed and guided my memory; suppose, in
other words, that I am asleep. Then these
memories, perceiving that I have taken
away the obstacle, have raised the trapdoor
which has kept them beneath the floor of
consciousness, arise from the depths; they
rise, they move, they perform in the night
of unconsciousness a great dance macabre.
They rush together to the door which has
been left ajar. They all want to get
through. But they cannot; there are too
many of them. From the multitudes which
are called, which will be chosen? It is not
hard to say. Formerly, when I was awake,
the memories which forced their way were
those which could involve claims of relationship
with the present situation, with
what I saw and heard around me. Now
it is more vague images which occupy my
sight, more indecisive sounds which affect
my ear, more indistinct touches which are
distributed over the surface of my body,
but there are also the more numerous sensations
which arise from the deepest parts
of the organism. So, then, among the
phantom memories which aspire to fill
themselves with color, with sonority, in
short with materiality, the only ones that
succeed are those which can assimilate
themselves with the color-dust that we perceive,
the external and internal sensations
that we catch, etc., and which, besides, respond
to the affective tone of our general
sensibility. When this union is effected
between the memory and the sensation, we
have a dream.
In a poetic page of the Enneades, the
philosopher Plotinus, interpreter and continuator
of Plato, explains to us how men
come to life. Nature, he says, sketches
the living bodies, but sketches them only.
Left to her own forces she can never complete
the task. On the other hand, souls
inhabit the world of Ideas. Incapable
in themselves of acting, not even thinking
of action, they float beyond space
and beyond time. But, among all the
bodies, there are some which specially respond
by their form to the aspirations of
some particular souls; and among these
souls there are those which recognize
themselves in some particular body. The
body, which does not come altogether viable
from the hand of nature, rises toward
the soul which might give it complete
life; and the soul, looking upon the body
and believing that it perceives its own
image as in a mirror, and attracted, fascinated
by the image, lets itself fall. It
falls, and this fall is life. I may compare
to these detached souls the memories
plunged in the obscurity of the
unconscious. On the other hand, our nocturnal
sensations resemble these incomplete
bodies. The sensation is warm, colored,
vibrant and almost living, but vague. The
memory is complete, but airy and lifeless.
The sensation wishes to find a form on
which to mold the vagueness of its contours.
The memory would obtain matter
to fill it, to ballast it, in short to realize it.
They are drawn toward each other; and
the phantom memory, incarnated in the
sensation which brings to it flesh and blood,
becomes a being with a life of its own, a
dream.
The birth of a dream is then no mystery.
It resembles the birth of all our perceptions.
The mechanism of the dream is the
same, in general, as that of normal perception.
When we perceive a real object,
what we actually see—the sensible
matter of our perception—is very little in
comparison with what our memory adds
to it. When you read a book, when you
look through your newspaper, do you suppose
that all the printed letters really come
into your consciousness? In that case the
whole day would hardly be long enough
for you to read a paper. The truth is that
you see in each word and even in each
member of a phrase only some letters
or even some characteristic marks, just
enough to permit you to divine the rest.
All of the rest, that you think you see,
you really give yourself as an hallucination.
There are numerous and decisive
experiments which leave no doubt on this
point. I will cite only those of Goldscheider
and Müller. These experimenters
wrote or printed some formulas in
common use, "Positively no admission;"
"Preface to the fourth edition," etc. But
they took care to write the words incorrectly,
changing and, above all, omitting
letters. These sentences were exposed in
a darkened room. The person who served
as the subject of the experiment was placed
before them and did not know, of course,
what had been written. Then the inscription
was illuminated by the electric light
for a very short time, too short for the observer
to be able to perceive really all the
letters. They began by determining experimentally
the time necessary for seeing
one letter of the alphabet. It was then
easy to arrange it so that the observer
could not perceive more than eight or ten
letters, for example, of the thirty or forty
letters composing the formula. Usually,
however, he read the entire phrase without
difficulty. But that is not for us the
most instructive point of this experiment.
If the observer is asked what are the
letters that he is sure of having seen, these
may be, of course, the letters really written,
but there may be also absent letters,
either letters that we replaced by others
or that have simply been omitted. Thus
an observer will see quite distinctly in full
light a letter which does not exist, if this
letter, on account of the general sense,
ought to enter into the phrase. The characters
which have really affected the eye
have been utilized only to serve as an indication
to the unconscious memory of the
observer. This memory, discovering the
appropriate remembrance, i.e., finding the
formula to which these characters give a
start toward realization, projects the remembrance
externally in an hallucinatory
form. It is this remembrance, and not the
words themselves, that the observer has
seen. It is thus demonstrated that rapid
reading is in great part a work of divination,
but not of abstract divination. It is
an externalization of memories which take
advantage, to a certain extent, of the partial
realization that they find here and there
in order to completely realize themselves.
Thus, in the waking state and in the
knowledge that we get of the real objects
which surround us, an operation is continually
going on which is of quite the
same nature as that of the dream. We
perceive merely a sketch of the object.
This sketch appeals to the complete memory,
and this complete memory, which by
itself was either unconscious or simply in
the thought state, profits by the occasion
to come out. It is this kind of hallucination,
inserted and fitted into a real frame,
that we perceive. It is a shorter process:
it is very much quicker done than to see
the thing itself. Besides, there are many
interesting observations to be made upon
the conduct and attitude of the memory
images during this operation. It is not
necessary to suppose that they are in our
memory in a state of inert impressions.
They are like the steam in a boiler, under
more or less tension.
At the moment when the perceived
sketch calls them forth, it is as if they
were then grouped in families according
to their relationship and resemblances.
There are experiments of Münsterberg,
earlier than those of Goldscheider and
Müller, which appear to me to confirm
this hypothesis, although they were made
for a very different purpose. Münsterberg
wrote the words correctly; they were,
besides, not common phrases; they were
isolated words taken by chance. Here
again the word was exposed during the
time too short for it to be entirely perceived.
Now, while the observer was
looking at the written word, some one
spoke in his ear another word of a very
different significance. This is what happened:
the observer declared that he had
seen a word which was not the written
word, but which resembled it in its general
form, and which besides recalled, by
its meaning, the word which was spoken
in his ear. For example, the word written
was "tumult" and the word spoken was
"railroad." The observer read "tunnel."
The written word was "Trieste" and the
spoken word was the German "Verzweiflung"
(despair). The observer read
"Trost," which signifies "consolation." It
is as if the word "railroad," pronounced
in the ear, wakened, without our knowing
it, hopes of conscious realization in a
crowd of memories which have some relationship
with the idea of "railroad" (car,
rail, trip, etc.). But this is only a hope,
and the memory which succeeds in coming
into consciousness is that which the actually
present sensation had already begun to
realize.
Such is the mechanism of true perception,
and such is that of the dream. In
both cases there are, on one hand, real
impressions made upon the organs of sense,
and upon the other memories which encase
themselves in the impression and
profit by its vitality to return again to life.
But, then, what is the essential difference
between perceiving and dreaming?
What is sleep? I do not ask, of course,
how sleep can be explained physiologically.
That is a special question, and besides
is far from being settled. I ask what
is sleep psychologically; for our mind
continues to exercise itself when we are
asleep, and it exercises itself as we have
just seen on elements analogous to those
of waking, on sensations and memories;
and also in an analogous manner combines
them. Nevertheless we have on the one
hand normal perception, and on the other
the dream. What is the difference, I repeat?
What are the psychological characteristics
of the sleeping state?
We must distrust theories. There are
a great many of them on this point. Some
say that sleep consists in isolating oneself
from the external world, in closing the
senses to outside things. But we have
shown that our senses continue to act during
sleep, that they provide us with the
outline, or at least the point of departure,
of most of our dreams. Some say: "To
go to sleep is to stop the action of the superior
faculties of the mind," and they talk
of a kind of momentary paralysis of the
higher centers. I do not think that this is
much more exact. In a dream we become
no doubt indifferent to logic, but not incapable
of logic. There are dreams when
we reason with correctness and even with
subtlety. I might almost say, at the risk
of seeming paradoxical, that the mistake of
the dreamer is often in reasoning too much.
He would avoid the absurdity if he would
remain a simple spectator of the procession
of images which compose his dream.
But when he strongly desires to explain
it, his explanation, intended to bind together
incoherent images, can be nothing
more than a bizarre reasoning which
verges upon absurdity. I recognize, indeed,
that our superior intellectual faculties
are relaxed in sleep, that generally the
logic of a dreamer is feeble enough and
often resembles a mere parody of logic.
But one might say as much of all of our
faculties during sleep. It is then not by
the abolition of reasoning, any more than
by the closing of the senses, that we characterize
dreaming.
Something else is essential. We need
something more than theories. We need
an intimate contact with the facts. One
must make the decisive experiment upon
oneself. It is necessary that on coming out
of a dream, since we cannot analyze ourselves
in the dream itself, we should watch
the transition from sleeping to waking, follow
upon the transition as closely as possible,
and try to express by words what we
experience in this passage. This is very
difficult, but may be accomplished by
forcing the attention. Permit, then, the
writer to take an example from his own
personal experience, and to tell of a recent
dream as well as what was accomplished
on coming out of the dream.
Now the dreamer dreamed that he was
speaking before an assembly, that he was
making a political speech before a political
assembly. Then in the midst of the auditorium
a murmur rose. The murmur augmented;
it became a muttering. Then it
became a roar, a frightful tumult, and
finally there resounded from all parts
timed to a uniform rhythm the cries, "Out!
Out!" At that moment he wakened. A
dog was baying in a neighboring garden,
and with each one of his "Wow-wows"
one of the cries of "Out! Out!" seemed to
be identical. Well, here was the infinitesimal
moment which it is necessary to seize.
The waking ego, just reappearing,
should turn to the dreaming ego, which
is still there, and, during some instants at
least, hold it without letting it go. "I
have caught you at it! You thought it was a
crowd shouting and it was a dog barking.
Now, I shall not let go of you until you
tell me just what you were doing!" To
which the dreaming ego would answer, "I
was doing nothing; and this is just where
you and I differ from one another. You
imagine that in order to hear a dog barking,
and to know that it is a dog that barks,
you have nothing to do. That is a great
mistake. You accomplish, without suspecting
it, a considerable effort. You take
your entire memory, all your accumulated
experience, and you bring this formidable
mass of memories to converge upon a single
point, in such a way as to insert exactly
in the sounds you heard that one of
your memories which is the most capable
of being adapted to it. Nay, you must obtain
a perfect adherence, for between the
memory that you evoke and the crude sensation
that you perceive there must not be
the least discrepancy; otherwise you would
be just dreaming. This adjustment you can
only obtain by an effort of the memory
and an effort of the perception, just as the
tailor who is trying on a new coat pulls
together the pieces of cloth that he adjusts
to the shape of your body in order to pin
them. You exert, then, continually, every
moment of the day, an enormous effort.
Your life in a waking state is a life of labor,
even when you think you are doing
nothing, for at every minute you have to
choose and every minute exclude. You
choose among your sensations, since you
reject from your consciousness a thousand
subjective sensations which come back in
the night when you sleep. You choose, and
with extreme precision and delicacy, among
your memories, since you reject all that do
not exactly suit your present state. This
choice which you continually accomplish,
this adaptation, ceaselessly renewed, is the
first and most essential condition of what is
called common sense. But all this keeps
you in a state of uninterrupted tension.
You do not feel it at the moment, any more
than you feel the pressure of the atmosphere,
but it fatigues you in the long run.
Common sense is very fatiguing.
"So, I repeat, I differ from you precisely
in that I do nothing. The effort
that you give without cessation I simply
abstain from giving. In place of attaching
myself to life, I detach myself from it.
Everything has become indifferent to me.
I have become disinterested in everything.
To sleep is to become disinterested. One
sleeps to the exact extent to which he becomes
disinterested. A mother who sleeps
by the side of her child will not stir at the
sound of thunder, but the sigh of the child
will wake her. Does she really sleep in
regard to her child? We do not sleep in
regard to what continues to interest us.
"You ask me what it is that I do when I
dream? I will tell you what you do when
you are awake. You take me, the me of
dreams, me the totality of your past, and
you force me, by making me smaller and
smaller, to fit into the little circle that you
trace around your present action. That is
what it is to be awake. That is what it is to
live the normal psychical life. It is to battle.
It is to will. As for the dream, have
you really any need that I should explain
it? It is the state into which you naturally
fall when you let yourself go, when you no
longer have the power to concentrate yourself
upon a single point, when you have
ceased to will. What needs much more to
be explained is the marvelous mechanism
by which at any moment your will obtains
instantly, and almost unconsciously, the concentration
of all that you have within you
upon one and the same point, the point that
interests you. But to explain this is the
task of normal psychology, of the psychology
of waking, for willing and waking are
one and the same thing."
This is what the dreaming ego would say.
And it would tell us a great many other
things still if we could let it talk freely. But
let us sum up briefly the essential difference
which separates a dream from the waking
state. In the dream the same faculties are
exercised as during waking, but they are
in a state of tension in the one case, and of
relaxation in the other. The dream consists
of the entire mental life minus the tension,
the effort and the bodily movement.
We perceive still, we remember still, we
reason still. All this can abound in the
dream; for abundance, in the domain of the
mind, does not mean effort. What requires
an effort is the precision of adjustment. To
connect the sound of a barking dog with
the memory of a crowd that murmurs and
shouts requires no effort. But in order that
this sound should be perceived as the barking
of a dog, a positive effort must be made.
It is this force that the dreamer lacks. It
is by that, and by that alone, that he is distinguished
from the waking man.
From this essential difference can be
drawn a great many others. We can come
to understand the chief characteristics of
the dream. But I can only outline the
scheme of this study. It depends especially
upon three points, which are: the incoherence
of dreams, the abolition of the sense
of duration that often appears to be manifested
in dreams, and, finally, the order in
which the memories present themselves to
the dreamer, contending for the sensations
present where they are to be embodied.
The incoherence of the dream seems to
me easy enough to explain. As it is characteristic
of the dream not to demand a complete
adjustment between the memory image
and the sensation, but, on the contrary, to
allow some play between them, very different
memories can suit the same sensation.
For example, there may be in the field of
vision a green spot with white points. This
might be a lawn spangled with white
flowers. It might be a billiard-table with
its balls. It might be a host of other things
besides. These different memory images,
all capable of utilizing the same sensation,
chase after it. Sometimes they attain it, one
after the other. And so the lawn becomes
a billiard-table, and we watch these extraordinary
transformations. Often it is at the
same time, and altogether that these memory
images join the sensation, and then the
lawn will be a billiard-table. From this
come those absurd dreams where an object
remains as it is and at the same time becomes
something else. As I have just said,
the mind, confronted by these absurd visions,
seeks an explanation and often thereby
aggravates the incoherence.
As for the abolition of the sense of time
in many of our dreams, that is another effect
of the same cause. In a few seconds a
dream can present to us a series of events
which will occupy, in the waking state, entire
days. You know the example cited by
M. Maury: it has become classic, and
although it has been contested of late, I
regard it as probable, because of the great
number of analogous observations that I
found scattered through the literature
of dreams. But this precipitation of the
images is not at all mysterious. When we
are awake we live a life in common with
our fellows. Our attention to this external
and social life is the great regulator of the
succession of our internal states. It is like
the balance wheel of a watch, which moderates
and cuts into regular sections the undivided,
almost instantaneous tension of the
spring. It is this balance wheel which is
lacking in the dream. Acceleration is no
more than abundance a sign of force in the
domain of the mind. It is, I repeat, the
precision of adjustment that requires effort,
and this is exactly what the dreamer lacks.
He is no longer capable of that attention to
life which is necessary in order that the inner
may be regulated by the outer, and that
the internal duration fit exactly into the
general duration of things.
It remains now to explain how the peculiar
relaxation of the mind in the dream
accounts for the preference given by the
dreamer to one memory image rather than
others, equally capable of being inserted
into the actual sensations. There is a current
prejudice to the effect that we dream
mostly about the events which have especially
preoccupied us during the day. This
is sometimes true. But when the psychological
life of the waking state thus prolongs
itself into sleep, it is because we
hardly sleep. A sleep filled with dreams
of this kind would be a sleep from which
we come out quite fatigued. In normal
sleep our dreams concern themselves rather,
other things being equal, with the thoughts
which we have passed through rapidly or
upon objects which we have perceived
almost without paying attention to them.
If we dream about events of the same day,
it is the most insignificant facts, and not the
most important, which have the best chance
of reappearing.
I agree entirely on this point with the
observation of W. Robert, of Delage and of
Freud. I was in the street, I was waiting
for a street-car, I stood beside the track and
did not run the least risk. But if, at the
moment when the street-car passed, the idea
of possible danger had crossed my mind or
even if my body had instinctively recoiled
without my having been conscious of feeling
any fear, I might dream that night that
the car had run over my body. I watch
at the bedside of an invalid whose condition
is hopeless. If at any moment, perhaps
without even being aware of it, I had
hoped against hope, I might dream that the
invalid was cured. I should dream of the
cure, in any case, more probably than that
I should dream of the disease. In short,
the events which reappear by preference
in the dream are those of which we have
thought most distractedly. What is there
astonishing about that? The ego of the
dream is an ego that is relaxed; the memories
which it gathers most readily are the
memories of relaxation and distraction,
those which do not bear the mark of effort.
It is true that in very profound slumber
the law that regulates the reappearance of
memories may be very different. We know
almost nothing of this profound slumber.
The dreams which fill it are, as a general
rule, the dreams which we forget. Sometimes,
nevertheless, we recover something
of them. And then it is a very peculiar
feeling, strange, indescribable, that we experience.
It seems to us that we have returned
from afar in space and afar in time.
These are doubtless very old scenes, scenes
of youth or infancy that we live over then
in all their details, with a mood which colors
them with that fresh sensation of infancy
and youth that we seek vainly to revive
when awake.
It is upon this profound slumber that
psychology ought to direct its efforts, not
only to study the mechanism of unconscious
memory, but to examine the more mysterious
phenomena which are raised by "psychical
research." I do not dare express an
opinion upon phenomena of this class, but
I cannot avoid attaching some importance to
the observations gathered by so rigorous a
method and with such indefatigable zeal
by the Society for Psychical Research. If
telepathy influences our dreams, it is quite
likely that in this profound slumber it
would have the greatest chance to manifest
itself. But I repeat, I cannot express an
opinion upon this point. I have gone forward
with you as far as I can; I stop upon
the threshold of the mystery. To explore
the most secret depths of the unconscious,
to labor in what I have just called the subsoil
of consciousness, that will be the principal
task of psychology in the century
which is opening. I do not doubt that wonderful
discoveries await it there, as important
perhaps as have been in the preceding
centuries the discoveries of the physical
and natural sciences. That at least is the
promise which I make for it, that is the
wish that in closing I have for it.
Translated by Edwin E. Slosson
Translated by Edwin E. Slosson
