if invited to partake, for instance, of the last bottle of some famous
vintage wine, would have the courage to admit, even to themselves,
that it was nasty, even though it was, in fact, considerably past its
prime. Cases of this kind, with which we are all familiar, are enough
to make us realize that it is actually quite possible to make mistakes
even about facts which we know directly, to overlook the actual fact
altogether because we have made up our minds in advance as to what it
is sure to be.

Now Bergson says that such errors are not confined to stray instances,
such as we have noticed, in which the imposition of preconceived ideas
can readily be detected by a little closer attention to the actual
facts. He believes that a falsification due to preconceived ideas,
runs right through the whole of our direct experience. He lays the
blame both for this falsification and for our failure to detect it
upon our intellectual habit of relying upon explanation rather than
upon direct knowledge, and that is one of the reasons why he says that
our intellectual attitude is an obstacle to direct knowledge of the
facts. The intellectual method of abstraction by which we analyse and
classify is the foundation of all description and explanation in terms
of general laws, and the truth is that we are, as a rule, much more
preoccupied with explaining the facts which we know than with the
actual experiencing of them.

This preoccupation is natural enough. The bare fact which we know
directly is not enough to enable us to carry on our everyday lives, we
cannot get on unless we supplement it with some sort of explanation
and, if it comes to choosing between fact and explanation, the
explanation is often of more practical use than the fact. So it comes
about that we are inclined to use the facts which we know directly