to make a profound change in our attitude, to lay aside the old
assumptions which underlie our every day common sense point of view
and adopt, at least for the time being, the assumptions from which
Bergson sets out. This book begins with an attempt to give as precise
an account as possible of the old assumptions which we must discard
and the new ones which we must adopt in order to understand Bergson's
description of reality. To make the complete reversal of our ordinary
mental habits needed, for understanding what Bergson has to say
requires a very considerable effort from anyone, but the feat is
perhaps most difficult of all for those who have carefully trained
themselves in habits of rigorous logical criticism. In attempting to
describe what we actually know in the abstract logical terms which are
the only means of intercommunication that human beings possess,
Bergson is driven into perpetual self-contradiction, indeed,
paradoxical though it may sound, unless he contradicted himself his
description could not be a true one. It is easier for the ordinary
reader to pass over the self contradictions, hardly even being aware
of them, and grasp the underlying meaning: the trained logician is at
once pulled up by the nonsensical form of the description and the
meaning is lost in a welter of conflicting words. This, I think, is
the real reason why some of the most brilliant intellectual thinkers
have been able to make nothing of Bergson s philosophy: baffled by the
self-contradictions into which he is necessarily driven in the attempt
to convey his meaning they have hastily assumed that Bergson had no
meaning to convey.

The object of this book is to set out the relation between
explanations and the actual facts which we want to explain and thereby
to show exactly why Bergson must use self-contradictory terms if the
explanation of reality which he offers is to be a true one.