unravelling the contribution of the subject in the act of consciousness, in
establishing our perception of things through certain representative forms
borrowed from our own constitution. Such was, even yesterday, the
authenticated way of regarding the problem. And it is precisely this
attitude which Mr Bergson, by a volte-face which will remain familiar to
him in the course of his researches, reverses from the outset.

"It has appeared to me," says he, ("Essay on the Immediate Data of
Consciousness", Conclusion.) "that there was ground for setting oneself the
inverse problem, and asking whether the most apparent states of the ego
itself, which we think we grasp directly, are not most of the time
perceived through certain forms borrowed from the outer world, which in
this way gives us back what we have lent it. A priori, it seems fairly
probable that this is what goes on. For supposing that the forms of which
we are speaking, to which we adapt matter, come entirely from the mind, it
seems difficult to apply them constantly to objects without soon producing
the colouring of the objects in the forms; therefore in using these forms
for the knowledge of our own personality, we risk taking a reflection of
the frame in which we place them--that is, actually, the external world--
for the very colouring of the ego. But we can go further, and state that
forms applicable to things cannot be entirely our own work; that they must
result from a compromise between matter and mind; that if we give much to
this matter, we doubtless receive something from it; and that, in this way,
when we try to possess ourselves again after an excursion into the outer
world, we no longer have our hands free."

To avoid such a consequence, there is, we must admit, a conceivable
loophole. It consists in maintaining on principle an absolute analogy, an
exact similitude between internal reality and external objects. The forms
which suit the one would then also suit the other.