Status Updates From De creatieve evolutie (Dutc...

But, as our attention has distinguished and separated them [“mental states”] artificially, it is obliged next to reunite them by an artificial bond. It imagines, therefore, a formless ego, indifferent and unchangeable, on which it threads the psychic states which it has set up as independent entities. Instead of a flux of fleeting shades merging into each other, it perceives distinct and, so to speak,…

I should have started this after Matter and Memory; I was just totally put off by the idea of a “life force.” But then again I totally disagreed with Bergson’s argument in Matter and Memory that memories are purely “spiritual,” without a physical substratum, and that didn’t hamper my enjoyment of the book, so hopefully I’ll be able to put aside my prejudices against this one.