Bergson, Time and Free Will, Chapter 1, §14 "Muscular Effort seems at First Sight to be Quantitative"

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Bergson, Entry Directory]
[Bergson Time and Free Will, Entry Directory]

[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 V: "Muscular Effort"

§14 "Muscular Effort seems at First Sight to be Quantitative"

We perceive muscular efforts as varying in quantity or magnitude.

Aeolus, King of Winds, imprisoned tempests in a mountain, to be released at the gods' command. We often imagine that our bodily movements are generated by stored psychic forces "imprisoned in the soul like the winds in the cave of Aeolus." (20d)

Our muscles move our bodies throughout extensive space. The force driving them, however, seems have existed prior to the motion "in a smaller volume, and, so to speak, in a compressed state." (21b) Hence, although these purely psychic intensities do not occupy space, we nonetheless think they possess magnitude.

Bain, for example, argues that our muscles are stimulated by an outgoing nervous energy. Wundt cites the case of a paralytic who sensed the force expended to lift a leg that remained motionless. (21c.d)

This remained the going opinion until William James offered counterevidence. (22a)

[Next entry in this series.]

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