The Misuse of Mind | Page 7

servant of action and out of the whole of reality it isolates only what interests us; it shows us not so much the things themselves as what we can make of them. In advance it classifies them, in advance it arranges them; we barely look at the object, it is enough for us to know to what category it belongs."[6]*
* La Perception du Changement, pages 12 and 13. 27
According to Bergson the facts which we actually know directly in the ordinary course are discriminated out of a very much wider field which we must also be said in a sense to know directly though most of it lies outside the clear focus of attention. This whole field of virtual knowledge is regarded as standing to the actual facts to which we usually devote our attention, much as, for instance, the whole situation of stumbling upon something in a dark room stood to the single quality of roughness: in both cases there is a central point in the full focus of attention which we are apt to look upon as the fact directly known, but this central point is really surrounded by a vastly wider context and this too is known in some sense though it is commonly ignored.
For all philosophies, whether they be Bergson's or the view of common sense or any other, the actual facts which require to be explained are the same, and, though any positive assertion as to what these facts are may be hotly disputed, it will probably be admitted that as we ordinarily know them they consist in some direct experience, undeniable as far as it goes. The point at issue between Bergson and common sense is, precisely, how far it does go. Both sides would admit that, in this fact directly known, what is in the full focus of attention at any given moment is very limited; on the other hand both would admit that this fully focussed fact is set in a context, or fringe, with no clearly defined limits which also goes to make up the whole fact directly known though we do not usually pay much attention to it. The fact directly known being given the problem is to find out what it is and how it comes to be known. What is actually given and needs to be accounted for is the fact clearly focussed, with its less clearly defined fringe: Bergson's sweeping assumption of the existence of a further vast field of virtual knowledge in order to account for it, does, at first sight, seem arbitrary and unwarranted and in. need of considerable justification before it can be accepted. For him the problem then becomes, not to account for our knowing as much as we do, but to see why it is that we do not know a great deal more: why our actual knowledge does not cover the whole field of our virtual knowledge. Common sense, on, the other hand, sets out from the assumption of ignorance, absence of awareness, as being, as it were, natural and not needing any accounting for, and so it regards the problem as being to explain why any experience ever occurs at all. The assumption of ignorance as being the natural thing seems at first sight to need no justification, but this may well be due merely to our having grown accustomed to the common sense point of view. When one begins to question this assumption it begins to appear just as arbitrary as the contrary standpoint adopted by Bergson. The actual facts are neither ignorance nor full knowledge and in accounting for them it is really just as arbitrary to assume one of these two extremes as the other. The truth appears to be that in order to account for the facts one must make some assumptions, and these, not being facts actually given, are bound to be more or less arbitrary. They seem more or less "natural" according as we are more or less accustomed to the idea of them, but they are really justified only according to the success with which they account for the actual facts.
This idea of putting the problem of knowledge in terms exactly the reverse of those in which it seems "natural" to put it was originally suggested to Bergson by his study of the important work on amnesia carried out by Charcot and his pupils, and also by such evidence as was to be had at the time when he wrote on the curious memory phenomena revealed by the use of hypnotism and by cases of spontaneous dissociation. It is impossible to prove experimentally that no experience is ever destroyed but it is becoming more and more firmly established that enormous numbers of past experiences, which are inaccessible to ordinary memory and which therefore