Page:Bergson - Matter and Memory (1911).djvu/55

entirely new the representation of what he began by postulating. This representation he drives out of space, so that it may have nothing in common with the matter from which he started. As for matter itself, he would fain go without it, but cannot, because its phenomena present relatively to each other an order so strict and so indifferent as to the point of origin chosen, that this regularity and this indifference really constitute an independent existence. So that he must resign himself to retaining at least the phantasm of matter. But then he manages to deprive it of all the qualities which give it life. In an amorphous space he carves out moving figures; or else (and it comes to nearly the same thing), he imagines relations of magnitude which adjust themselves one to another, mathematical functions which go on evolving and developing their own content: representation, laden with the spoils of matter, thenceforth displays itself freely in an unextended consciousness.—But it is not enough to cut out, it is necessary to sew the pieces together. You must now explain how those qualities which you have detached from their material support can be joined to it again. Each attribute which you take away from matter widens the interval between representation and its object. If you make matter unextended, how will it acquire extension? If you reduce it to homogeneous movement, whence arises quality? Above all, how are we to imagine