Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/206

actual and virtual, extend along two lines, the one horizontal, AB, which contains all simultaneous objects in space, the other vertical, CI, on which are ranged our successive recollections set out in time. The point I, at the intersectionFig. 3. of the two lines, is the only one actually given to consciousness. Whence comes it that we do not hesitate to posit the reality of the whole line AB, although it remains unperceived, while, on the contrary, of the line CI, the present I which is actually perceived is the only point which appears to us really to exist? There are, at the bottom of this radical distinction between the two series, temporal and spatial, so many confused or half-formed ideas, so many hypotheses devoid of any speculative value, that we cannot all at once make an exhaustive analysis of them. In order to unmask the illusion entirely, we should have to seek at its origin, and follow through all its windings, the double movement by which we come to assume objective realities without relation to consciousness, and states of consciousness without objective reality,—space thus appearing to preserve indefinitely the things which are there juxtaposed, while time in its advance devours the states which succeed each other within it. Part of this work has been done in our first chapter,