Chap­ter V invites read­ers into Hen­ri Bergson’s orig­i­nal vision of inner expe­ri­ence, a phi­los­o­phy that reshapes how we under­stand thought, time, and free­dom. He departs from the pre­vail­ing view of con­scious­ness as a col­lec­tion of sep­a­rate parts. Instead, he argues that men­tal life flows like a melody, where each note influ­ences the one before and after. Berg­son sees con­scious­ness as lay­ered and con­tin­u­ous, not mechan­i­cal or sta­t­ic. This move­ment, which he calls “dura­tion,” can­not be sliced into iden­ti­cal moments or mapped using clocks and num­bers. In dura­tion, time is felt, not count­ed. It unfolds inward­ly, shap­ing per­son­al­i­ty and giv­ing each per­son a rhythm of their own.

Tra­di­tion­al psy­chol­o­gy, espe­cial­ly asso­ci­a­tion­ism, treats the mind as a machine—reactive, pre­dictable, and pas­sive. Thinkers like Taine and Mill focused on exter­nal stim­uli and pat­terns of response. But Berg­son believes this method flat­tens men­tal life into mere imi­ta­tion of mat­ter. Con­scious­ness, in con­trast, holds depth and cre­ativ­i­ty. It is not gov­erned by chains of cause and effect, but by an inter­nal log­ic that allows free­dom to emerge. This free­dom is not chaot­ic impulse—it is the nat­ur­al result of how moments build upon one anoth­er in dura­tion. What we call “choice” is shaped by the entire stream of lived expe­ri­ence lead­ing to a sin­gle moment. In this view, free­dom becomes a prod­uct of matu­ri­ty and inner coher­ence.

For Berg­son, lib­er­ty is insep­a­ra­ble from real con­scious­ness. He does not imag­ine free­dom as ran­dom or unde­ter­mined. Instead, he sees it as the fullest expres­sion of one’s self over time. True acts of will are not iso­lat­ed deci­sions, but out­comes of an ongo­ing process where thoughts and feel­ings blend grad­u­al­ly. Each deci­sion, though seem­ing­ly sud­den, is backed by a long dura­tion of prepa­ra­tion. This is where lib­er­ty takes root—not in break­ing rules, but in cre­at­ing actions that reflect the full truth of who we are. Bergson’s the­o­ry chal­lenges both deter­min­ism and a shal­low view of free will. It rec­og­nizes that per­son­al free­dom is real but must be under­stood with­in the con­text of a con­tin­u­ous self.

The chap­ter also takes on the rela­tion­ship between the mind and the body, a clas­sic philo­soph­i­cal puz­zle. Berg­son rejects the notion that brain activ­i­ty per­fect­ly mir­rors men­tal states. The brain, he argues, serves more as a fil­ter than a mir­ror. It selects from our full store of mem­o­ries, using what is help­ful for action and leav­ing the rest dor­mant. This per­spec­tive rev­o­lu­tion­izes how mem­o­ry is understood—not just as retrieval, but as an active process of sim­pli­fi­ca­tion. He dis­tin­guish­es between two types: pure mem­o­ry, which pre­serves the past in its entire­ty, and motor mem­o­ry, which uses the past for prac­ti­cal move­ment and deci­sions. This dual sys­tem allows us to remain root­ed in his­to­ry while respond­ing in the present.

Mem­o­ry and con­scious­ness, then, are insep­a­ra­ble from free­dom. Each moment in our lives con­tributes to a deep­er reser­voir of expe­ri­ence. That reser­voir gives our actions depth and con­ti­nu­ity. Rather than being pris­on­ers of our past, we are shaped by it in ways that allow cre­ative expres­sion. The body, through its actions, chan­nels and sim­pli­fies this vast inte­ri­or land­scape. Far from being mechan­i­cal, it is part of an intel­li­gent sys­tem of engage­ment with the world. This idea chal­lenges both rigid mate­ri­al­ism and over­ly spir­i­tu­al accounts of con­scious­ness. It sug­gests that human life sits at the meet­ing point of mat­ter and mem­o­ry, where lib­er­ty emerges not in defi­ance of nature but as its high­est expres­sion.

Bergson’s view insists that true under­stand­ing of the mind can’t come from out­side obser­va­tion alone. Intro­spec­tion is necessary—not as a vague reflec­tion, but as a dis­ci­plined recog­ni­tion of dura­tion with­in our­selves. Through this inward gaze, we notice that our expe­ri­ences are not uni­form blocks but unique folds in the fab­ric of time. Our choic­es reflect this inter­nal shap­ing. What may seem like a spon­ta­neous deci­sion often car­ries the qui­et momen­tum of many days, thoughts, and feel­ings behind it. Here, free­dom becomes a lived truth, not an abstract idea. It grows qui­et­ly, organ­i­cal­ly, through the pat­tern of lived dura­tion.

In this way, Berg­son gives read­ers a fresh way of think­ing about consciousness—not as some­thing built from sta­t­ic parts, but as an ever-mov­ing cur­rent. Time, in his phi­los­o­phy, is not a con­tain­er but a force. It does not sim­ply mea­sure expe­ri­ence; it is expe­ri­ence. With this insight, every­thing from per­cep­tion to per­son­al­i­ty becomes part of a liv­ing whole. Thought, mem­o­ry, free­dom, and the body come togeth­er not as sep­a­rate func­tions, but as expres­sions of a life deeply immersed in change. Through Bergson’s eyes, the human mind is not a machine, but a melody—growing, evolv­ing, and end­less­ly cre­ative.