3. IMAGE AND THOUGHT

WE SHALL NOT SEEK to know whether all non-reflective thought assumes the form of the image. We are satisfied with having shown that the image is like an incarnation of non-reflective thought. Imaginative consciousness represents a certain type of thought: a thought which is constituted in and by its object. Every new thought concerning this object will present itself, in the imaginative consciousness, as a new determination apprehended on the object. But it is naturally only quasi-apprehensions that are involved here. The thought does not, in fact, establish itself on the object; it rather appears as the object. If the development of an idea occurs in the form of a series of imaginative consciousnesses that are synthetically linked, it will imbue the object as an image with a sort of vitality. It will appear now under one aspect, now under another, now with this determination, now with some other. To judge that a coachman whose face one imagines vaguely had a moustache is to see his face appear as having a moustache. There is an imaginative form of the judgment which is nothing else than the addition to the object of new qualities, accompanied by the feeling of venturing, promising, or of assuming responsibilities. These few observations enable us to suggest a solution of the problem of the relationships of the image to the concept. If we think imaginatively of some individual objects it will be these objects themselves that will appear to our consciousness. They will appear as they are, that is, as spatial realities with determinations of form, color, etc. But they will never have the individuality and unity which characterize objects of perception. There will be some distortions, a sort of deep-seated vagueness, lack of definiteness … At the same time, the object presents itself as not being here in body, as an absent object. Whatever it may be, it is the form that thought takes on in order to appear to our consciousness. If we think right now of a class like “horse,” “man,” etc., it is the class itself that will appear to us. It is, of course, but rarely that we think of a class all alone. Most of the time our thoughts are of the relationships between classes. We can say rightly that the thought of an isolated concept is always the result of artificial practices. But such thought is, however, always possible and it can occur in three ways: in the first, we do not know direction of the looked-for concept or we approach it indirectly. In this case our first approximations will present themselves under the form of individual objects belonging to the extension of that concept. If I try to think the concept “man,” I could orient myself by producing the image of a particular man or the image of the geography that represents the white man, etc. In the preceding chapter we attempted to give an account of this type of thought. But it is also possible that our thought grasps the concept itself directly. In this second case the concept could appear as an object in space. But this object will not be individualized, it will not be this or that man, but man, the class turned into a man. The object of our imaginative consciousness will naturally be an undetermined man, who has nothing in common with the composite image of Galton, but whose indetermination will be the essence itself. It will be like the fleeting consciousness of having a man before one without either being able, or even wanting, to know his appearance, his color, his height, etc. This way of getting to the concept in extension is, no doubt, a very low level of thought. But if, in the third place, we get to the concept all at once in comprehension, that is, as a system of relations, it will then appear to us a collection of pure spatial determinations which will have no other function than to permit it; that is, it will take the form of a symbolic scheme. But some concepts like “man,” “horse,” etc. are too charged with sensible and too poor in logical content to enable us to rise often to this third stage of thought. The symbolic scheme appears only with an effort of comprehension, that is on the occasion of abstract thought. These three ways in which the concept appears to non-reflective thought correspond therefore to the three clearly-defined attitudes of consciousness. In the first I orient myself, I look about me. In the second, I remain among the objects but I call forth the very class, the collection of these objects as such in my consciousness. In the third, I completely turn away from things (as a unity or a collection) to their relations. The relationships between the concept and image therefore present no problem. In fact, there are no concepts and no images. But there are two ways in which the concept can appear: as a pure thought on the reflective level and on the non-reflective level as an image.

But a more serious question arises: in the image, thought itself becomes a thing. Will this not cause thought to undergo profound modifications? Can we admit that a purely reflective thought and a spatialized thought have exactly the same meaning; is not thought as an image, an internal form of thought? We must distinguish between two cases, and this way that thought has of being a prisoner of a spatial representation carries different consequences for the ultimate course of consciousness, depending on whether the latter (consciousness) supports reluctantly this imprisonment and seeks to free itself from it, or whether it permits itself to be absorbed by the image like water by sand. In the first case the subject is conscious of the insufficiency of this way of thinking at the very moment he forms the image and seeks to free himself from it. Here is an interesting observation of R. A., a professor of philosophy:

“I had the impression of clearly understanding the main thought of Brunschvicg in reading the pages of L’Orientation du Rationalisme, which resumes the thought of Schopenhauer: ‘There is no object excepting for the spectator.’ When going beyond the order of knowledge. Mr. Brunschvicg, in the very order of being, brings forth the two correlative realities (subject and object) of a spiritual activity, of an original course, I thought I had grasped the final point of his thought and I recalled an image that illustrated, in some way, my intellectual effort. In the center, a kind of schematic, geometric representation of a movement and then, beyond, from the two sides of this moving line, two symmetrical points or rather two small circles very similar to the circle of a target. This image was not, of course, in the forefront of consciousness. Nevertheless I noticed it but felt it to be insufficient because still tainted with some materiality, but it seemed to me that my impression of understanding sprang mainly from the movement of thought to grasp the image and to go beyond it. I felt that if I could think of the spiritual equivalent of that image without the help of any sensible representation, then I would have truly understood M. Brunschvicg because I would have had to see ‘with the eyes of the heart’ the nature and the spirit (in the second sense), emerge out of this spiritual and creative primitive urge.” ⁷

The description of R. A. does not permit us to doubt that we are in the presence of a symbolic scheme…. But the consciousness of R. A. contains an additional determination which we have not found up to now in any of the descriptions of Flach: the scheme is itself but provisional, insufficient as a step to be surpassed. But did we not say that the symbolic scheme was the essence it represented? How then is it possible that it should present itself at the same time as being and as not being this essence (the genesis in a spiritual movement of subject-object combination)? It seems, however, that this structure of consciousness is very common among philosophers, that is, among men who are very much in the habit of “thinking about thinking” as Goethe said, that is, who have delved deeply into the immaterial nature of thinking, who know by long experience that it escapes every attempt to picture it, to define it, to capture it, and who consequently resort to comparisons and metaphors reluctantly and cautiously when they speak of it. The symbolic scheme therefore appears, for them, as but superficial and very deceptive. No doubt it is completely there, but in a form which can deceive. As a result, the scheme presents itself as something external to thought which itself appears as something which cannot be exhausted by anything “external” which it may adopt, and finally, as radically incongruous with its appearances.

As a result, the investigator can have two attitudes in relation to his own thinking. He can either be contented with seizing the scheme as a possible direction, as the open door to a series of further investigations, the indication of nature through which to grasp some material aspects. In this case, the scheme possesses a characteristic dynamism which derives from the fact that it permits its own over-extension. But, at the same time, understanding is not given in act; it is only outlined as possible, as being at the point of the deliverance (enfranchisement) of all images. Very often the comprehension is only that: the scheme plus the idea that one could—that one should—go further.

Or else the subject actually carries out the operations which are to liberate his thought from their materialistic obstacle. It disengages itself from the scheme, while entirely retaining the thought. But if it remains in the non-reflective attitude, that is, if it is only conscious of the object (particular or universal essence, relationships between essences, etc.), on which it forms thoughts, it can turn away from a symbolic scheme only to construct another, and so on to infinity. It will stop sooner or later in these operations. But this cessation remains without importance if the subject stays aware of the unsatisfactory nature of all imagery, whose importance we have just seen, if he can say to himself at the moment when he stops himself what Gide wants to write at the end of The Counterfeiters: “Could be continued.” In that case, the essence searched for appears as not being in any of the forms it has assumed, nor in the infinity of those it might have assumed. It is different, radically different. And, from the very fact that the subject does not cease to affirm this heterogeneity, all these imagined coatings, all these schemes are without danger for thought. But thought, although we could express ourselves upon it without keeping account of the images in which it reveals itself, is never directly accessible to us, if we have once taken the imaginative attitude in forming it. We will always go from image to image. Comprehension is a movement which is never ending, it is the reaction of mind to an image by another image, to this one another image, and so on, in a straight line, to infinity. To substitute for this infinite regression the simple intuition of a thought calls for a radical change in attitude, a veritable revolution, that is, passing from the non-reflective plane to that of the reflective. On this plane thought presents itself as thought at the very time that it appears: and so it is completely transparent to itself. But we can never discover any connecting path which permits us to elevate ourselves progressively from non-reflective to reflective thought, that is, from the idea as an image to the idea as idea. The simple act of intellection on the reflective plane has for its correlative the infinitive idea of approximations through symbols on the non-reflective plane. The result of this equivalence is that the two processes, on the two planes, are equivalents for the progress of knowledge.

It is altogether different when the scheme absorbs thought and presents itself as being itself the essence or the relationship to be determined. Non-reflective thought is a possession. To think of an essence, relationship, is on this plane to produce them “in flesh and bone,” to constitute them in their living reality … and at the same time to see them, to possess them. But, at the same time, it is to constitute them under a certain form and to consider this form as expressing their nature, as being their nature. Here thought encloses itself in the image and the image presents itself as adequate to the thought. There follows a warping—possible at any moment—of the further course of consciousness. In fact, the object under consideration (essence, relation, a complex of relations, etc.), does not present itself only as an ideal structure: it is also a material structure. Or rather ideal and material structure are but one. But the material structure implies certain determinations of space, certain symmetries; certain relations of position, and sometimes even the existence of things and persons…. While the evolution of these determinations remains governed by the ideal sense of the image, while the transformations of the scheme remain commanded by those of thought, the development of the idea is not altered. But this subordination of material structures to the ideal structures is possible only if the material structures are grasped as not exhausting the ideal structures, as if a relative independence were posited between the two…. But in the very great majority of cases the material structure occurs as being, the ideal structure, and the development of the figure, of the scheme, in its spatial nature is given as exactly identical with the development of the idea. We can see the danger; a slight preference is enough, it is enough to consider for a moment for themselves the spatial relations of the scheme and to permit them to affirm themselves or to modify themselves in accordance with the laws of belonging to spatiality: the thought is hopelessly warped, we no longer follow the idea directly, we think by analogy. It has appeared to us that this imperceptible debasement of thought was one of the most common causes of error, particularly in philosophy and in psychology.

In the imaginative attitude, in fact, we find ourselves in the presence of an object which presents itself as an analogue to those which can appear to us in perception. This object, in as much as it is constituted as a thing (pure determinations of geometric space, common object, plant, animal, person), is the correlative of a certain knowledge (empirical—physical or biological, laws—or a priori— geometric laws), which has served to constitute it but which has not exhausted itself in that constitution. This knowledge presides at the ultimate developments of the image, it is this knowledge which orients them in this or that direction, which resists when we want to modify the image arbitrarily. In short as soon as I constitute the image of an object, the object has a tendency to behave as an image in the same way that other objects of the same class do in reality. Flach cites some fine examples, but does not seem to grasp their importance. “The subject imagines, for instance, balls thrown in the air. He then feels in his arms the resistance of the air to the rising of the balls. We have made no deeper studies on synaesthesias since it is established that these phenomena really belong to intuition and do not form an important characteristic of the symbolic scheme as such. They apply as well to cases of illustrations of thought by simple association.”

In this excellent example cited by Flach no associations are, in fact, involved, but rather the interpretation of a knowledge which becomes conscious of itself only in the form of an image. All that the subject clearly envisions is the trajectory of the balls tossed in the air. But he cannot think of this trajectory without at the same time thinking of the resistance of the air; although this resistance was not deliberately thought of, the body imitates it as the indispensable complement of the object. Left to itself, the image thus has its own laws of development, and these depend in their turn on the knowledge which has served to constitute it. Here is an observation that will enable us to see this more clearly:

“I wanted to speak of an automobile that climbed hills easily and I was searching for an expression which would describe this abstract idea—unformulated—that would be comical: ‘It climbs the hills as if it were pulled up by a weight, as if it were falling towards the top and not the bottom.’ I had an image. I saw the automobile climbing a hill; I had the feeling that it was climbing by itself and without a motor. But I just could not imagine this reversing of the weight: the image resisted and offered me but an equivalent: I had the vague feeling of the presence on top of the hill of an ill-defined object, a sort of loadstone, that pulled the automobile. Since this image was not the one I had wanted to produce, there resulted from it a wavering and I could not find the adequate expression. I had therefore to look for a subterfuge and I said: ‘One is obliged to check the ascent.’ This introduction of a new element modified my image and gave it an entirely different nuance, while its elements nevertheless remained the same; instead of being pulled by a loadstone, the same automobile climbed the hill by itself: it was no longer a machine but a living being which was moving spontaneously and whose ardor I had to control.”

In this example the subject wanted to construct, as an intermediary between the abstract thought “reversing of the weight” and his verbal expression, a concrete image the substance of which would have passed into the discourse. But this image would not permit itself to be constructed because it is nature to contradict the concrete knowledge that had presided at its formation; its searched-for structure had been missing, one slid to the right or left, one struck the living automobile-beast, the magnetized automobile, but this reversed weight, although conceived, was not grasped as in an image. From these concrete laws that presided at the individual development of every image, nothing is more typical than the transformation of the automobile into a living being after the phrase “one is obliged to check the ascent.” This automobile which must be checked in its ascent ceased being a machine due to this very command. The mere fact of imagining this restraint and these circumstances completed itself spontaneously by the annexation to the machine which was being restrained with a sort of living force. Thus, although the mind is always free to vary no matter which element of the image, we must not believe that the mind could change, at the same time, all the elements at its pleasure. All happens as if the transformations of the image were sufficiently rigorous by the laws of compassibility. These laws cannot be determined a priori and depend upon the knowledge which enter into combination.

Let us now return to our problem: when I produce, in the course of my reflections, an image of the type of those Flach calls “symbolic” (whether of a scheme or any other representation), it seems that there is a conflict in this image between what it is and what it represents, between the possibilities of development which come to it from the idea it embodies, and its own dynamism. On the one hand stones, a hammer, a flower could be symbols of a mass of abstract essences; on the other, this flower, these stones, this hammer, have their own nature and tend to develop into an image in keeping with this nature. When I conserve this dissatisfaction with images of which we have spoken at the very heart of the images, the thought does not suffer from this ambiguity because I leave no time for the image to develop in accordance with its own laws, I leave it as soon as I formed it; I am never satisfied with it. Always ready to be engulfed in the materiality of the image, thought runs away by gliding into another image, this one into another, and so on. But in the majority of cases, this defiance of the image, which is like a recollection of reflection, does not appear. In that case, the laws of development that belong to the image are often confused with the laws of the essence that is under consideration. If that essence appears as a stone that is rolling down an incline, this descent of the stone, which draws all its necessity from my physical knowledge, develops and reinforces the symbol, confers upon it its rigor. The following instance will show the dangers of this substitution. “I would have liked to convince myself of the idea that every oppressed person or every oppressed group draws from the very oppression from which it suffers the strength to destroy it. But I had the clear impression that such a theory was arbitrary and I felt a sort of annoyance. I made a new effort to think: at this very moment there arose the image of a compressed force. At the same time I felt the latent force in my muscles. It was going to break out the more violently the more compressed it was. In a moment I felt to the point of certainty the necessity of the idea of which I could not persuade myself the moment before.”⁸

We see what is involved here: the oppressed is the force. But on the other hand, on the compressed force we can already read with confidence the strength with which it will be discharged: a compressed force represents clearly potential energy. This potential energy is evidently that of the oppressed, since the oppressed is the force. Here we see clearly the contamination between the laws of the image and those of the essence represented. This idea of potential energy which increases in proportion to the force exercised on the object, is the force which presents it, it is upon it that it can be apprehended. Change the term of comparison, and substitute an organism for the force, and you will have the absolutely inverse intuition, something which could be expressed in the phrase: “The oppression demeans and debases those who suffer from it.” But the image of the force left to itself and envisaged purely and simply as an image of force, would not be enough to convince us. No doubt that the force gathers strength. But never enough to get rid of the load which weighs upon it, because the force it gathers is always inferior to that which compresses it. The conclusion we then draw from the image will be this: “The oppressed gains in strength and in value from the very fact of the oppression, but it will never get rid of its yoke.” In fact, as I could explain it to myself, in reproducing in myself the scheme of the force, there is more. The image is falsified by the meaning: the energy that gathers in the compressed force is not felt as a pure passive storing, but as a living force, one which increases with time. Here the image of the force is no longer a simple image of force. It is more of something indefinable: an image of a living force. Here there is no doubt a contradiction, but … there is no image without an inherent contradiction. It is in and by this very contradiction that the impression of evidence arises. The image thus carries within itself a persuasive power which is spurious and which comes from the ambiguity of its nature.

⁷ I have met other instances among a number of scholars and professors of this effort to surpass the image at the very moment when it is formed. I had an especially interesting report from M. L. deR., a student of philosophy.

⁸ Observation of R. S., a student.