perception of reality does not obtain the full value of knowledge,
except when once socialised, once made the common property of men, and
thereby also tested and verified.

There is one means only of doing that; viz. to analyse it into
manageable and portable concepts. By language I mean the product of this
conceptualisation. Thus language is necessary; for we must always speak,
were it only to utter the impotence of words. Not less necessary is a
critique of spontaneous language, of the laws which govern it, of the
postulates which it embraces, of the methods which convey its implicit
doctrines. Synthetic forms are actually theories already; they effect
an adaptation of reality to the demands of practical use. If it is
impossible to escape them, it is at least fitting not to employ them
except with due knowledge, and when properly warned against the illusion
of the false problems which they might arouse.

Let us first of all consider thought in itself, in its concrete life.
What are the principal characteristics, the essential steps? We readily
say, analysis and synthesis.

Nothing can be known except in contrast, correlation, or negation
of another thing; and the act of knowledge, considered in itself,
is unification. Thus number appears as a fundamental category, as an
absolute condition of intelligibility; some go so far as to regard
atomism as a necessary method. But that is inexact. No doubt the use
of number and the resulting atomism are imposed by definition, we might
say, on the thought which proceeds by conceptual analysis, and then by
unifying construction; that is to say, on synthetic thought. But, in
greater depth, thought is dynamic continuity and duration. Its essential
work does not consist in discerning and afterwards in assembling
ready-made elements. Let us see in it rather a kind of creative
maturation, and let us attempt to grasp the nature of this causal
activity. (H. Bergson, "Intellectual Effort" in the "Philosophical
Review", January 1902.)

The act of thought is always a complex play of moving representations,
an evolution of life in which incessant inner reactions occur. That is
to say, it is movement. But there are several planes of thought, from
intuition to language, and we must distinguish between the thought which
moves on the surface among terms displayed on a single plane, and the
thought with goes deeper and deeper from one plane to another.

We do not think solely by concepts or