be at the root of all ordinary perception; I mean, of
every mental operation which results in the construction of a percept:
a term formed by analogy with concept, representing the result of a
complex work of analysis and synthesis, with judgment from externals.
We live the images in an act of pure perception, whilst the objects of
ordinary perception are, for example, the bodies of which we speak in
common language.

With regard to the relation of the two senses which we have just
distinguished, common opinion seems very precise. It might be thus
resumed: at the point of departure we have simple sensations, similar to
qualitative atoms (this is the part of pure perception), and afterwards
their arrangement into connected systems, which are percepts.

But criticism does not authorise this manner of looking at it. Nowhere
does knowledge begin by separate elements. Such elements are always a
product of analysis. So there is a problem to solve to regain the
basis of pure perception which is hidden and obscured by our familiar
percepts.

Do not suppose that the solution of this problem is easy. One method
only is of any use: to plunge into reality, to become immersed in it, in
a long-pursued effort to assimilate all the records of common-sense and
positive science. "For we do not obtain an intuition of reality, that is
to say, an intellectual sympathy with its inmost content, unless we
have gained its confidence by long companionship with its superficial
manifestations. And it is not a question merely of assimilating the
leading facts; we must accumulate and melt them down into such an
enormous mass that we are sure, in this fusion, of neutralising in one
another all the preconceived and premature ideas which observers may
have unconsciously allowed to form the sediment of their observations.
Thus, and only thus, is crude materiality to be disengaged from known
facts." ("Introduction to Metaphysics" in the "Metaphysical and Moral
Review", January 1903. For the correct interpretation of this passage
("intellectual sympathy") it must not be forgotten that before "Creative
Evolution", Mr Bergson employed the word "intelligence" in a wider
acceptation, more akin to that commonly received.)

A directing principle controls this work and reintroduces order and
convergence, after dispensing with them at the outset; viz. that,
contrary to common opinion, perception as practised in the course of
daily life, "natural" perception d