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.

But it must be observed that such a principle constitutes in the highest
degree a metaphysical thesis which it would be on all hands illegal to
assert previously as a postulate of method. Secondly, and above all, it
must be observed that on this head experience is decisive, and manifests
more plainly every day the failure of the theories which try to
assimilate the world of consciousness to that of matter, to copy
psychology from physics. We have here two different "orders." The
apparatus of the first does not admit of being employed in the second.
Hence the necessity of the attitude adopted by Mr Bergson. We have
an effort to make, a work of reform to undertake, to lift the