Note 398 — Chapter IX · PRAGMATISM AND IDEALISM IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF BERGSON386

“Instead of starting from affection [or ‘sensation’ in the old sense of the haphazard sensation] of which we can say nothing, since there is no reason why it should be what it is rather than anything else, we start from action, that is to say, from our power of effecting changes in things, a faculty attested by consciousness, and towards which all the powers of the organised body are seen to converge. So we place ourselves at once in the midst of extended images [to Bergson as an idealist things are at the same time images or ideas for a consciousness in other things, or in us, or in beings other than ourselves], and in this material universe we perceive centres of indetermination characteristic of life” (Matter and Memory, p. 67).