ture which we can place in an infinite
number of frames. But all the frames together will not recompose the
picture, and the lower ends of all the slopes will not explain how
they meet at the summit. Intuition is a necessary beginning; it is the
impulse which sets the analysis in motion, and gives it direction; it is
the sounding which brings it to solid bottom; the soul which assures its
unity. "I shall never understand how black and white interpenetrate,
if I have not seen grey, but I understand without trouble, after once
seeing grey, how we can regard it from the double point of view of black
and white." ("Introduction to Metaphysics.")

Here are some letters which you can arrange in chains in a thousand
ways: the indivisible sense running along the chain, and making one
phrase of it, is the original cause of the writing, not its consequence.
Thus it is with intuition in relation to analysis. But beginnings and
generative activities are the proper object of the philosopher. Thus
the conversion and reform incumbent on him consist essentially in a
transition from the analytic to the intuitive point of view.

The result is that the chosen instrument of philosophic thought is
metaphor; and of metaphor we know Mr Bergson to be an incomparable
master. What we have to do, he says himself, is "to elicit a certain
active force which in most men is liable to be trammelled by mental
habits more useful to life," to awaken in them the feeling of the
immediate, original, and concrete. But "many different images, borrowed
from very different orders of things, can, by their convergent action,
direct consciousness to the precise point where there is a certain
intuition to be seized. By choosing images as unlike as possible, we
prevent any one of them from usurping the place of the intuition it is
intended to call up, since it would in that case be immediately routed
by its rivals. In making them all, despite their different aspects,
demand of our mind the same kind of attention, and in some way the same
degree of tension, we accustom our consciousness little by little to a
quite peculiar and well-determined disposition, precisely the one which
it ought to adopt to appear to itself unmasked." ("Introduction to
Metaphysics".)

Strictly speaking, the intuition of immediacy is inexpressible. But it
can be suggested and called up. How? By ringing it round with concurrent
metaphors. Our aim is to modify the habits of imagination in ours