The accuracy or the hollowness of M. Bergson's doctrine, according as
we take it for literary psychology or for natural philosophy, will
appear clearly in the following instance. "Any one," he writes,[3]
"who has ever practised literary composition knows very well that,
after he has devoted long study to the subject, collected all the
documents, and taken all his notes, one thing more is needful before
he can actually embark on the work of composition; namely, an effort,
often a very painful one, to plant himself all at once in the very
heart of the subject, and to fetch from as profound a depth as
possible the momentum by which he need simply let himself be borne
along in the sequel. This momentum, as soon as it is acquired, carries
the mind forward along a path where it recovers all the facts it had
gathered together, and a thousand other details besides. The momentum
develops and breaks up of itself into particulars that might be
retailed _ad infinitum._ The more he advances the more he finds; he
will never have exhausted the subject; and nevertheless if he turns
round suddenly to face the momentum he feels at his back and see what
it is, it eludes him; for it is not a thing but a direction of
movement, and though capable of being extended indefinitely, it is
simplicity itself.
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