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The more we turn toward this creative will, the more the doubts which trouble the sane and normal man seem to us abnormal and morbid. Take for exampl… - Henri Bergson
" "The more we turn toward this creative will, the more the doubts which trouble the sane and normal man seem to us abnormal and morbid. Take for example the doubter who closes a window, then returns to verify its closing, then verifies his verification, and so forth. If we ask him what his motives are he will answer that he might have opened the window each time he tried to close it more securely. And if he is a philosopher he will transpose intellectually the hesitation of his conduct into this question: “How can one be sure, definitively sure, that one has done what one intended to do?” But the truth is that his power of action is defective, and therein lies the evil from which he suffers: he had only partial will to accomplish the act, and that is why the accomplished act leaves him only partial certitude. Now can we solve the problem this man sets himself? Obviously not, but neither do we set the problem; therein lies our superiority. At first glance I might think there is more in him than in me because we both shut the window and he, in addition, raises a philosophical question while I do not. But the question which in his case is superadded to the task accomplished represents in reality only something negative; it is not something more, but something less; it is a deficit of the will. Such is exactly the effect certain “great problems” produce in us when we set ourselves again in the direction of generating thought. They recede toward zero as fast as we approach this generating thought, as they fill only that space between it and us. Thus we discover the illusion of him who thinks he is doing more by raising these problems than by not raising them. One might just as well think that there is more in a half-consumed bottle than in a full one, because the latter contains only wine, while in the former there is wine and emptiness in addition.
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About Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergson (18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a major French philosopher, influential in the first half of the 20th century. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Henri-Louis Bergson
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H. Bergson
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Henry Bergson
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Henri Louis Bergson
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Berxon
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Additional quotes by Henri Bergson
One could say as much for perception. The auxiliary of action, it isolates that part of reality as a whole that interests us; it shows us less the things themselves than the use we can make of them. It classifies, it labels them beforehand; we scarcely look at the object, it is enough for us to know to which category it belongs. But now and then, by a lucky accident, men arise whose senses or whose consciousness are less adherent to life. Nature has forgotten to attach their faculty of perceiving to their faculty of acting. When they look at a thing, they see it for itself, and not for themselves. They do not perceive simply with a view to action; they perceive in order to perceive, — for nothing, for the pleasure of doing so.
Matter and mind have this in common, that certain superficial agitations of matter are expressed in our minds, superficially, in the form of sensations; and on the other hand, the mind, in order to act upon the body, must descend little by little toward matter and become spatialized. It follows that the intelligence, although turned toward external things, can still be exerted on things internal, provided that it does not claim to plunge too deeply.
Might not certain vices have the same relation to character that the rigidity of a fixed idea as to intellect? Whether as a moral kink or a crooked twist given to the will, vice has often the appearance of a curvature for the soul. Doubtless there are vices into which the soul plunges deeply with all its pregnant potency, which it rejuvenates and drags along with it into a moving circle of reincarnations. Those are tragic vices. But the vice capable of making us comic is, on the contrary, that which is brought from without, like a ready-made frame into which we are to step. It lends us its own rigidity instead of borrowing from us our flexibility. We do not render it more complicated; on the contrary, it simplifies us. Here, as we shall see later in the concluding section of this study, lies the essential difference between comedy and drama. A drama, even when portraying passions or vices that bear a name, so completely incorporates them that the person is forgotten, their general characteristics effaced, and we no longer think of them at all, but rather of the person in whom they are assimilated; hence, the title of a drama can seldom be anything else than a proper noun. On the other hand, many comedies have a common noun as their title: L'Avare, Le Joueur etc.
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