what is
it in itself if not a conceptual system? Does its author not reason by
concepts exclusively in his very attempt to show that they can give no
insight?

To this particular objection, at any rate, it is easy to reply.
In using concepts of his own to discredit the theoretic claims of
concepts generally, Bergson does not contradict, but on the contrary
emphatically illustrates his own view of their practical role, for
they serve in his hands only to 'orient' us, to show us to what
quarter we must _practically turn_ if we wish to gain that completer
insight into reality which he denies that they can give. He directs
our hopes away from them and towards the despised sensible flux. _What
he reaches by their means is thus only a new practical attitude_. He
but restores, against the vetoes of intellectualist philosophy, our
naturally cordial relations with sensible experience and common sense.
This service is surely only practical; but it is a service for which
we may be almost immeasurably grateful. To trust our senses again with
a good philosophic conscience!--who ever conferred on us so valuable a
freedom before?

By making certain distinctions and additions it seems easy to meet the
other counts of the indictment. Concepts are realities of a new order,
with particular relations between them. These relations are just as
much directly perceived, when we compare our various concepts, as the
distance between two sense-objects is perceived when we look at it.
Conception is an operation which gives us material for new acts of
perception, then; and when the results of these are written down,
we get those bodies of 'mental truth' (as Locke called it) known as
mathematics, logic, and _a priori_ metaphysics. To know all this truth
is a theoretic achievement, indeed, but it is a narrow one; for the
relations between conceptual objects as such are only the static
ones of bare comparison, as difference or sameness, congruity or
contradiction, inclusion or exclusion. Nothing _happens_ in the realm
of concepts; relations there are 'eternal' only. The theoretic gain
fails so far, therefore, to touch even the outer hem of the real
world, the world of causal and dynamic relations, of activity and
history. To gain insight into all that moving life, Bergson is right
in turning us away from conception and towards perception.

By combining concepts with percepts, _we can draw maps of the
distribution_ of other percepts in distant spa