Bergson, Time and Free Will, Ch 1, §30 "The Sensations of Sound-Intensity Measured by Effort Necessary to Produce a Similar Sound"

by Corry Shores
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[The following is summary; my commentary is in brackets.]

Bergson, Time and Free Will

(Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience)

Chapter I, "The Intensity of Psychic States"

Part X: "Sensation of Sound"

§30 "The Sensations of Sound-Intensity Measured by Effort Necessary to Produce a Similar Sound"

Sensation of sounds seem to vary in magnitude, when really they differ only in quality.

But we also produce sounds in various ways, for example, by clapping our hands. The harder we clap, the louder the sound seems. But really, we are mistaking two different things

1) the quantity of effort we used to clap our hands, with

2) the qualitatively different sensation we have for different claps.

And when we recall a sound, as well we remember the physical impact the sound had on us. This also leads us to confuse magnitudes with sound-sensations.

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Images from the pages summarized above, in the English Translation [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Images from the pages summarized above, in the original French [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Transl. F. L. Pogson, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001).

Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/details/timeandfreewill00pogsgoog

French text from:

Bergson, Henri. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Originally published Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1888.

http://www.archive.org/details/essaisurlesdonn00berguoft