Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/293

the relation between quantity and quality in anyWhilst in quality itself we may divine something other than sensation, i.e. the multiplicity of the movements contracted in the rhythm of our own duration. other way. To believe in realities, distinct from that which is perceived, is above all to recognize that the order of our perceptions depends on them and not on us. There must be, then, within the perceptions which fill a given moment, the reason of what will happen in the following moment. And mechanism only formulates this belief with more precision when it affirms that the states of matter can be deduced one from the other. It is true that this deduction is possible only if we discover, beneath the apparent heterogeneity of sensible qualities, homogeneous elements which lend themselves to calculation. But, on the other hand, if these elements are external to the qualities of which they are meant to explain the regular order, they can no longer render the service demanded of them, because then the qualities must be supposed to come to overlie them by a kind of miracle, and cannot correspond to them unless we bring in some pre-established harmony. So, do what we will, we cannot avoid placing those movements within these qualities, in the form of internal vibrations, and then considering the vibrations as less homogeneous, and the qualities as less heterogeneous, than they appear, and lastly attributing the difference of aspect in the two terms to the necessity which lies upon what may be called an endless multiplicity of contracting