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" "But, then, I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment, since there is no consciousness without memory, and no continuation of a state without the addition, to the present feeling, of the memory of past moments. It is this which constitutes duration. Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing image of the past, or, more profoundly, showing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity.
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
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Memory, imagination, conception and perception, generalization in short, are not there “for nothing, for pleasure.” It really seems, to listen to certain theorists, that the mind fell from heaven with a subdivision into psychological functions whose existence simply needs to be recognized: because these functions are such, they will no doubt be used in such a manner. I believe on the contrary that it is because they are useful, because they are necessary to life, that they are what they are: one must refer to the fundamental exigencies of life to explain their presence and to justify it if need be, I mean in order to know if the ordinary subdivision into such or such faculties is artificial or natural, and if in consequence we should maintain it or modify it. All our observations on the mechanism of function will be warped if we have badly cut it out of the continuity of the psychological tissue.
En ce sens, on pourrait dire que la nature obtient souvent elle-même des succès de caricaturiste. Dans le mouvement par lequel elle a fendu cette bouche, rétréci ce menton, gonflé cette joue, il semble qu'elle ait réussi à aller jusqu'au bout de sa grimace, trompant la surveillance modératrice d'une force plus raisonnable. Nous rions alors d'un visage qui est à lui-même pour ainsi dire, sa propre caricature.