reached by having sensible knowledge of the reality and not by logical
argument. Bergson's view, therefore, is that the intellect has been
evolved for practical purposes, to deal in a certain way with material
things by cutting up into little bits what is an undivided flow of
movement, and by looking at these little bits side by side. This, though
necessary for practical life, is utterly misleading when we assume that
the "points" thus singled out by the intellect represent the "thickness"
of reality. Reality is fluidity, and we cannot dip up its substance with
the intellect which deals with surfaces, even as we cannot dip up water
with a net, however finely meshed. Reality is movement, and movement is
the one thing we are unable intellectually to realise.

In order to grasp reality we must use the faculty of contact or
immediate feeling, or, as Bergson calls it, intuition. Intuition is a
different order of knowledge, it is moulded on the very form of life,
and it enables us to enter into life, to be one with it, to live it. It
is "a direction of movement: and, although capable of infinite
development, is simplicity itself." This is the mystic art, which in
its early stages is a direction of movement, an alteration of the
quality and intensity of the self. So Bergson, making use of and
applying the whole range of modern psychology and biology, tells us that
we must develop intuition as a philosophical instrument if we are to
gain any knowledge of things in themselves; and he is thus re-echoing in
modern terms what was long ago stated by Plotinus when he said--

Knowledge has three degrees--opinion, science, illumination. The
means or instrument of the first is sense, of the second dialectic,
of the third intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is
absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with
the object known. (_Letter to Flaccus._)