Bergson's "intuitive knowledge" is nothing but a particularly emphatic formulation of a very old idea which pervades nearly all the traditional systems of philosophy. It is the idea that there are different degrees of knowledge (which is quite true) and that the degree of knowledge depends upon the intimacy of contact between the knower and the thing known (which is altogether false). It was believed that all explanatory knowledge, ordinary and scientific, which describes the known thing in terms of something else must for this very reason remain superficial, merely descriptive, and would never attain the highest degree, for it seemed as if what we really wanted to know was the thing itself, not merely a description of it. Scientific knowledge, therefore, seemed to be only a preface to, or a substitute for, the highest kind of knowledge, which consisted in the immediate awareness of the object itself.
From what has been said already it must be clear what a frightful confusion is committed, in this reasoning. It is nonsense to contrast with each other the knowledge of the thing and the knowledge of its description. We have seen that genuine knowledge of things consists in their description (in terms of other things) consequently, the highest degree of knowledge of a thing is the most complete, most perfect description of it, and not the thing itself (The thing is not the most perfect of its own descriptions, but something entirely different). He who wants to know an object as completely as possible, wants an explanation of it, he does not want the object itself. He cannot possibly want it, because he has it already; for if he did not have it, if he were not acquainted with it (in the sense in which intuition is supposed to furnish acquaintance) — how could he wish for an explanation? (If you have the desire to know something, you certainly must be aware of it before the desire can arise.) Thus Bergsonian intuition, so far from being the end and highest aim of all knowledge, is not even the beginning of it, it must precede all attempts to know anything. Content must be there before its structure can be studied.
(I hope nobody will object here that the wish to "know" a thing is often stimulated by a description and satisfied only by its actual presence; if, for example, we have heard a great deal about the Egyptian pyramids a vivid desire may be kindled in us to get acquainted with them personally, and we may not rest until we have travelled to Egypt and actually set eyes on
