Bergson and future philosophy; an essay on the scope of intelligence

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BERGSON AND FUTURE PHILOSOPHY

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS
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TORONTO

BERGSON

AND

FUTURE PHILOSOPHY

AN ESSAY ON THE SCOPE OF INTELLIGENCE

BY

GEORGE ROSTREVOR >/-unoJl:t^irr>

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1921

13 4-3 H 3

COPYRIGHT

GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

TO
MY WIFE

470578

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. Duration and the Duration of the Self - i

II. Intuition by Reflection - - - - 15

III, Relation to Experience - - - - 51

IV. Instinct and Intelligence - - - - 62
V. Imaginative Inference and Direct Insight - 95

VI. Summary iii

VII. Intellectual Intuition and the Mystic - 120

Appendix — Mr. Bertrand Russell and M.

Bergson 138

CHAPTER I

DURATION AND THE DURATION OF THE SELF

The philosopher must — in the proud saying of
Plato — be a surveyor of all time and all existence.
But, however far he may journey to the introduc-
remote, he must^begin with the world ^^^^mJ^^f
of fainiliar things about hirn^ his own Time.
actual e3cperience of life. Let me begin then,
without apology, from the passing moment.
As I write, I am sitting at a window which opens
out onto the Thames at Hammersmith. Every-
thing that I see — the houses in Chiswick, the
tow-path, the trees, the training-ship moored in
the river, the tide racing towards me, the boats
with their crews or pleasure-parties, the people
on the river-bank, and, over all, the heavy white
clouds moving across a clean sky — everything is
within the subject of philosophy ; and I, on the
hither side of the window, who see all this with a
turn of my head, I_who experience a continual

B.P. A ~

> ''•' • i ' ■ DURATION AND

'* • '' ' ' ' flbw of feelings and perceptions, must look in on
myself as well_as out on the worlds if I am to^
understand or to interpret.

How am I to view all this varied panorama ?
What reality, what degrees of reality, shall I
divine ? I shall refuse to believe that all the life
and motion of the scene can be explained by
logical analysis as exhibiting a mere mechanical
system of relations. As one who has learnt from
the writings of M. Bergson — let me make this
profession at once, though I cannot claim to be an
orthodox disciple — I shall see different kinds of
reality in the solid material house, the flowing
river, the tree alive but rooted to one spot, and the
human being moving and acting, as it appears,
according to his own free will. I shall recognise
aspects of change and stability, movement and
rest, conscious life and automatism. It is true
that none of the objects in which I discern
these aspects is wholly outside the sphere of
rigid scientific enquiry, of explanation in terms of
space, quantity, multiplicity. But the further I
get away from inert matter and the further I
penetrate into life, the less adequate do I find
the terms of mathematical science. Nothing can
be accounted for entirely — and life itself canjje

THE DURATION OF THE SELF 3

accounted for very little— if I fail to recognise
the reality and the true mtm^^qfjime.

Thej;eality^ftime is indeed the first principle
of Bergsonian metaphysics. It is essential to the
nature of life that it endures, that its moments
interpenetrate, that it prolongs the past into the
present. The more deeply we live, the more
do we realise experience as a unique indivisible
flow, with none of its moments wholly separate
or distinct. The first ** moment '' so-called does
not die, to give place to the second ; it flows into
the second moment, and the second moment so
enriched flows into the third. The moments
make a growing organic unity, in the same way
as notes of music, to an attentive and understand-
ing listener, are bound up inseparably in the pro-
cess of the tune. This is real time or " duration."
We may of course relax our activity or attention :
then the moments of our life and the notes of the
music will be less perfectly fused — our experience
will be fragmentary, superficial. It will be
possible to represent it, with much more truth,
as a series of isolated sensations, sounds.

This differing intensity of our experience is
the key to the problem of matter and spirit.
Matter as its ideal limit has no duration ; it dies

4 DURATION AND

and IS born again unceasingly. Its moments are
external to one another. It does not develop or
change, being but a constant repetition of the
past. Between this purely ideal limit of inertia
and the most intense life that we can imagine are
innumerable actual gradations. Approximating
to the lower limit, let us take the nearly homo-
geneous vibrations of light. " The sensation of
red light, experienced by us in the course of a
second, corresponds in itself to a succession of
phenomena which, separately distinguished in
our duration with the greatest possible economy
of time, would occupy more than 250 centuries
of our history." ^ In actual fact our perception
sums up this long history in the wink of an eye.
We can imagine, similarly, that the moments of
our human duration would be indefinitely con-
tracted for a superhuman observer. " Would
not the whole of history be contained in a very
short time for a consciousness at a higher degree
of tension than our own, which should watch the
development of humanity while contracting it,
so to speak, into the great phases of its evolu-
tion .? " ^ When, therefore, we look out on the
world and in on ourselves, the fundamental

^Matter and Memory, p. 273. ' Matter and Memory, p. 275.

THE DURATION OF THE SELF 5

distinctions we make must be in terms of time,
according to difference of tension or rhythm.
We must rid ourselves of the notion of time as
somethin£_one_and the ^me for all. There is
one time for unorganised matter — a feeble, evan-
escent duration, whose infinitesimal pulsations are
almost wholly external to one another. There
is another duration peculiar to each of the multi-
tudinous forms of life, vegetable or animal. All
these several durations form a series, exhibiting
a gradual advance in that organisation of time by
which the past penetrates more and more into the
present. Real time is not an even flow j^ it is
mdiyi^ual_^^
variable.

The importance of this view of time cannot be
exaggerated. If it is correct, then it follows that
any explanation of the universe which

. . . T 11 Importance

the materialist can give is radically of Berg-

r 1 T? T ' ^ ^u. • son's view.

raise. r.ven it science were to attain
the fullest knowledge that is within her capacity,
the universe could not be explained in terms of
mechanism. If the universe lives, grows and
endures, if reality increases, so that there is more
reality now than when the human race first
appeared on the earth, and more reality to-day

6 DURATION AND

than there was twenty-four hours ago, then it is
impossible to say that the sum total of reality is
present in any one moment, and that if a single
transverse section could be taken of the universe,
the whole of its previous history and the whole
of the future could be deduced from it. The
determinist view is equally condemned. For if
man, the microcosm, grows and endures in his
spiritual life, — if time makes a real difference to
him, and the evolution of individual character is
anything more than the unfolding of what was
there ab initio^ — then it is impossible to forecast
with absolute certainty any detail of his future.
The future is not contained in the present ; we
are not at the mercy of fate ; the problem of free
will is no longer the question whether it exists,
but the question what is its nature and what,
for the individual, its limitation.

The foregoing paragraphs are only an intro-
ductory sketch. My object in this essay is to
criticise Bergson*s theory of knowledge : while
fundamentally accepting his view of time — as
will be clear from what I have already written — I
dissent from the theory of intuition on which it
is based. The theory of intuition is, it seems
to me, an unnecessary stumbling-block, which

THE DURATION OF THE SELF 7

may prevent the theory of time — of life — from
exerting its full influence on the future course of
philosophy.

Up to a certain point Bergson is in agreement
with Kant as to the scope and powers of the
human mind. Both regard the intel- Bergson
lect — the_scientific intellect working^by «^^^ ^«^^-
means of concepts — as incapable of apprehending
reality in its, own_ nature* For Kant, the term
" intellect '* has no wider sense ; our thought can
only proceed by imposing a priori relations on the
world presented to it. We can only know
phenomena ; " things in themselves ** are un-
knowable. In Kant's philosophy there is one
solitary way of escape from agnosticism, — that
unconvincing deus ex machina^ the Practical
Reason.

Bergson, unlike Kaitt, considers intellect (in
the narrow sense referred to) as only a part of the
power of thought, and as a part which The terms
has been developed with a view to action, ^nd^^^in-*'
not to speculation. His terminology is i^^^^on."
difficult. He sometimes uses the term ** intel-
lect '' or ** intelligence '* in a wide sense, as equi-
valent to the whole " mind." For instance, in
Time and Free Will he writes, in this sense, of

8 DURATION AND

" the organised and living intelligence ^ " If, digging
below the surface of contact between the self
and external objects, we penetrate into the depths
of the organised and living intelligence, we shall
witness the joining together or rather the blending
of many ideas which, when once dissociated, seem
to exclude one another as logically contradictory
terms.'* 1 Here intelligence represents the vital
activity of thought, which — for Bergson — rises
above clean-cut conceptions and penetrates by
intuition or sympathy into the reality of life. In
the Introduction to Metaphysics again, intuitionis
treated as within the intellect, a functionjof_the
intellect : it is the highest function, and as such
is^ contrasted with analysis ^ thejiajbitual function.
It is described as " a kind of intellectual sym-
pathy,*' "a kind of intellectual auscultation,*'
" a kind of intellectual expansion." Our intelli-
gence, we are told, ** can place itself within
the mobile reality and adopt its ceaselessly
changing direction ; in short, can grasp it by
means of that intellectual sympathy, which we
call intuition. This is extremely difficult. The
mind has to do violence to itself, has to reverse
the direction of the operation by which it habitu-

^ Time and Free Will, p. 136.

THE DURATION OF THE SELF

ally thinks, has perpetually to revise, or rather To
re-cast, all its categories. But in this way it
will attain to fluid concepts, capable of follow-
ing reality in all its sinuosities, and of adopt-
ing the very movement of the inward life of
things/* 1

In Bergson's later writing, the exercise of
intelligence comes to be almost identified with its
habitual function, analysis. The contrast comes to
be drawn, no longer between intuition and analysis
as functions of the intellect, but between intuition
and intelligence as faculties of the mind. This
division of the mind into faculties appears to
represent a natural development of Bergson's
thought. For him intuition has always implied
sympathetic knowledge or knowledge from within,
and has therefore differed radically from intel-
lectual apprehension (as generally understood),
in which the object of intuition is set over against
the mind. To include " sympathetic '* intuition
within the borders of intelligence is therefore to
strain the use of terms, and the tendency to
give it a more independent status was perhaps
inevitable. It is doubtful, however, whether it
would have been elevated to the rank of a separate

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 59.

V

lo DURATION AND

faculty had it not been for the elaboration of
the theory that instinct and intelligence, in the
world of living creatures, are two diverse ways
of knowing, intuition being a development of the
former. There is, in the introduction to Creative
Evolution^ a significant reference to " certain
powers that are complementary to the under-
standing, powers of which we have only an
indistinct feeling when we remain shut up in
ourselves, but which will become clear and
distinct when they perceive themselves at work,
so to speak, in the evolution of nature." ^

The differing use of the terms intellect and
intuition is then a little confusing. But one
thing at least is clear. Intuition^ whether regarded
as faculty or function^ has reference always to know-
ledge by sympathy^ knowledge from within the object
known. It follows^ I would add^ that this intuition^
however it may be described^ is essentially non-
intellectual.

The priinary_intuition is the injuition of the
self. ** There is one reality at least, which we
Intuition ^^1 seize from within, by intuition and
of the self. ^^^ {^y simple analysis. It is our own
personality in its flowing through time — our self

^ Creative Evolution, Introduction, p. 13.

THE DURATION OF THE SELF ii

which endures/' ^ What is the nature of this
enduring self ? ** If, instead of professing to
analyse duration (i,e, at bottom, to make a
synthesis of it with concepts) we at once place
ourselves in it by an effort of intuition, we have
the feeling of a certain very determinate tension,
in which the determination itself appears as a
choice between an infinity of possible durations.'' ^
" The intuition of our duration, far from leaving
us suspended in the void as pure analysis would
do, brings us into contact with a whole continuity
of durations which we must try to follow, whether
downwards or upwards ; in both cases we can
extend ourselves indefinitely by an increasingly
violent effort, in both cases we transcend our-
selves. In the first, we advance towards a more
and more attenuated duration, the pulsations of
which, being rapider than ours and dividing our
simple sensation, dilute its quality into quantity ;
at the limit would be pure homogeneity, that pure
repetition by which we define materiality. Advanc-
ing in the other direction, we approach a duration
which strains, contracts and intensifies itself more
and more ; at the limit would be eternity. No

1 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 8.

2 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 50.

12 DURATION AND

longer conceptual eternity, which is an eternity
of death, but an eternity of life. A living, and
therefore still moving eternity, in which our own
particular duration would be included as the
vibrations are in light ; an eternity which would
be the concentration of all duration, as materiality
is its dispersion. Between these two extreme
limits intuition moves, and this movement is the
very essence of metaphysics.'' ^

I would draw very special attention to the
emphasis which Bergson lays on the idea that
intuition can only be won by doing violence to
the intellect. He speaks of ** an increasingly
violent effort '' in the process by which we realise
the higher and lower tensions of duration. He
speaks again of the " essentially active, I might
almost say violent, character of metaphysical
intuition.'' ^ ** It needs that, turning back on
itself and twisting on itself, the faculty of seeing
should be made to be one with the act of willing^ —
a painful effort which we can make suddenly,
doing violence to our nature, but cannot sustain
more than a few moments."^ ** You must take

1 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 54.
* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 48.
^ Creative Evolution, p. 250.

THE DURATION OF THE SELF 13

things by storm ; you must thrust intelligence
outside itself by an act of will." ^

At the present stage it is not necessary to
attempt any further definition of what Bergson
means by intuition. The question I can the
now propose to consider is this : How ^apfrlhend
far is it possible to go, without doing ^^^^^^on?
violence to the intellect at all? Is it possible
by hard but quiet reflective thought to obtain an
insight into the duration _oj our selves^ and so
into the nature of time ? Duration being the very
stuff of our deepest experience^ will not the careful
analysis of our memories enable us to apprehend it ?
I mean to suggest that it will.

In the next chapter of this essay, when I use
the term intuition I shall not use it in the Berg-
sonian sense, as a faculty of sympathetic know-
ledge from within the object known. I would
define it as standing simply for direct intellectual
apprehension of an object set over against the
mind.

It is necessary here to guard against a fallacy,
for all intellectual apprehension is, in the last
resort, direct and therefore intuitive. There are
indeed certain axiomatic truths — such as the

1 Creative Evolution, p, 204.

14 THE DURATION OF THE SELF

geometrical truth that two straight lines cannot
enclose a space — ^which can be grasped immedi-
ately, while there are others which require the
mediation of an intellectual process. But this
intellectual process merely consists in separating
out and bringing together the relevant data ;
the analysis and synthesis proceed on rules which
were themselves originally discovered by intuition,
however mechanical they may now be. In any
long chain of reasoning there is frequent alternation
between intuition and analysis, i,e, between
intuition and the more or less mechanical appli-
cation of past intuitions : when, however, the
significant data are seen in due relation to one
another, truth is grasped by the immediate
intuitive activity of our vital intelligence.

CHAPTER II

INTUITION BY REFLECTION

Let us reflect, first, on our most superficial
experience. It is not difficult to recognise that
when we relax our activity or attention,

^ _ ' Lije at

we become creatures of the fugitive lower
moment. The past and the future are
nothing to us. We become absorbed, as the
seconds go by, in this or that sound breaking the
silence, this or that movement catching our
notice. The self of the moment forgets the self
of the moment before ; the self of the moment
before, which was abandoned to some trivial
impression, appears to have been annihilated.
We live on the surface and^ surrender ourselves
to a pageantry of sense-images ; our soul seems
to be dissipated into separate moments, like drops
of rain or flashes of light, and to become identical
with the succession of things seen or heard.
This condition of mind has been recorded by

15

1 6 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

Robert Louis Stevenson with the greatest felicity
and truth, and a rather long quotation is, I think,
justified. The passages which follow occur in
the chapter entitled " Changed Times " in An
Inland Voyage,

, . . ** But now, when the river no longer ran,
in a proper sense, only glided seaward with an
even, outright, but imperceptible speed, and when
the sky smiled upon us day after day without
variety, we began to slip into that golden doze of
the mind which follows upon much exercise in
the open air. I have stupefied myself in this
way more than once ; indeed, I dearly love the
feeling ; but I never had it to the same degree
as when paddling down the Oise. It was the
apotheosis of stupidity. . . .

" I have always been fond of maps, and can
voyage in an atlas with the greatest enjoyment.
The names of places are singularly inviting ;
the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to
the eye ; and to hit, in a map, upon some place
you have heard of before, makes history a new
possession. But we thumbed our charts, on these
evenings, with the blankest unconcern. We
cared not a fraction for this place or that. We
stared at the sheet as children listen to their

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 17

rattle ; and read the names of towns or villages
to forget them again at once. We had no
romance in the matter : there was nobody so
fancy-free. If you had taken the maps away
while we were studying them most intently, it is
a fair bet whether we might not have continued
to study the table with the same delight. . . .

"We took in, at a glance, the larger features
of the scene ; and beheld, with half an eye, bloused
fishers and dabbling washerwomen on the bank.
Now and again we might be half-wakened by
some church-spire, by a leaping fish, or by a trail
of river grass that clung about the paddle and had
to be plucked off and thrown away. But these
luminous intervals were only partially luminous.
A little more of us was called into action, but
never the whole. The central bureau of nerves,
what in some moods we call Ourselves, enjoyed
its holiday without disturbance, like a Government
Office. The great wheels of intelligence turned
idly in the head, like fly-wheels, grinding no
grist. I have gone on for half an hour at a time
counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds.
I flatter myself the beasts that perish could not
underbid that as a low form of consciousness.
And what a pleasure it was ! What a hearty,

B.P. B

1 8 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

tolerant temper did it bring about ! There is
nothing captious about a man who has attained
to this, the one possible apotheosis in life, the
Apotheosis of Stupidity ; and he begins to feel
dignified and longevous like a tree.

" There was one odd piece of practical meta-
physics which accompanied what I may call the
depth, if I must not call it the intensity, of my
abstraction. What philosophers call me and not-
mey ego and non-ego^ preoccupied me whether I
would or no. There was less me and more
not me than I was accustomed to expect. I
looked on upon somebody else, who managed
the paddling ; I was aware of somebody else's
feet upon the stretcher ; my own body seemed
to have no more intimate relation to me than the
canoe, or the river, or the river banks. . . .
Thoughts presented themselves unbidden ; they
were not my thoughts, they were plainly someone
else's ; and I considered them like a part of the
landscape. . . .

" This frame of mind was the great exploit of
our voyage, take it all in all. It was the farthest
piece of travel accompUshed. Indeed, it lies so
far from beaten paths of language, that I despair
of getting the reader into sympathy with the

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 19

smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition ;
when ideas came and went like motes in a sun-
beam ; when trees and church spires along the
bank surged up, from time to time into my
notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloud-
land ; when the rhythmical swish of boat and
paddle in the water became a cradle-song to lull
my thoughts asleep ; when a piece of mud on
\e deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore,
ind sometimes quite a companion for me, and the
object of pleased consideration ; — and all the
time, with the river running and the shores
changing upon either hand, I kept counting my
strokes and forgetting the hundreds, the happiest
animal in France/'

A state of mind, as Stevenson says, " very
calm, golden and incurious ! " The account
of it implies that on the ordinary level ^^^^ ^^
of experience the moments hold together ^'^s^er

^ ° tension.

more closely — ideas do not come and Alternative

concentfa-

go " like motes in a sunbeam," but tion and

,1 .,1 11 . relaxation.

Stay longer with us and have some sort
of continuous relationship with one another.
And certainly this seems to be so. When we
are suffering from the apprehension of imminent
pain or disaster, our consciousness seems to grow

20 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

more and more full with the cumulative effect
of the passing seconds. Even when we are
relieved by a momentary distraction, the appre-
hension continues to affect the tone of our con-
sciousness. It can indeed hardly be disputed
that when we are at all active, our inner life is
more than a mere sequence of vanishing moments.
The more intent we are, the more do the moments
appear to hold together. On the other hand,
reflection will convince us that our concentration
is, as a rule, sustained at its fullest for a very short
time. Our activity having for its setting the
material world, there is constant need of re-
adjustment. When we play a game, we alter-
nately concentrate and relax our attention. When
our attention is highly concentrated, as in a long
rally in a game of tennis, our mental energy and
will-power must remain braced and alert. They
seem to keep up an organic, continuous exercise,
and correspondingly our bodily movements seem
to flow naturally from one another : in the
intervals we readjust ourselves in preparation for
new developments in the game. This alternation
between concentrated and relaxed effort is char-
acteristic of all human activity. In the deeper
levels of experience, there must be a limit to the

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 21

need for readjustment, if personality is to express
itself; but the need never disappears, and the
two aspects — concentration and readjustment —
are everywhere found together. On the eve of
battle, a general has to take into account the given
material factors of the situation. He has to keep
them in view and, as he develops his plan, he has
to refer to them frequently, if his dispositions
are to be good not merely on paper but in action.
The cold facts of the material present require this
repeated adjustment. But what is the vital
process by which the plan is created ? The
general must have a clear and easy grasp of
military principles, won by personal experience
or by vivid force of imagination. If the prin-
ciples are so much his own, so familiar and intimate
to him, that he is hardly conscious of possessing
them, he will be able, without undue distraction,
to bring his individuality into play and, if he is a
genius, to create a plan which shall bear his mark
unmistakably upon it. This creation comes only
of an intense concentration of energy. In the
short periods of that concentration, it would seem
ridiculous to deny that the mental process, in its
living depth, is in some way highly organised.
Each ** moment '* (it is a necessity of language

22 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

to use the word) exerts its influence somehow
upon the next ; not only so, we divine that it
passes on a content peculiarly rich, for enshrined
in it in some way is the gathered-up personality
of the man. An expression of the self so vital
is beyond the reach of anyone who is distracted.
The inexperienced leader would not be able to
grasp the position as a single whole : he would
have to adjust his outlook now to this aspect,
now to that, seen separately and therefore wrongly;
his thoughts would scatter in search of the prin-
ciples to be applied, and, if he were furnished with
the best precedents, he would use them mechani-
cally without regard to any unique element in the
situation. The need for indefinite readjustment
would be so exacting that no room would be left
to him for the vital activity of self-expression.

It is the same with artist and poet — with all
creative workers. Temperament and vision are
the first requisites, but they are not enough.
Art expresses itself through form, which is
material — poetry through language, which is
modelled on matter. Unless the visionary has
at his command an appropriate technique, the
attempt at expression will merely break up and
spoil his vision, without leading to the production

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 23

of any work of value. And not only must he have
a mastery of technique in the narrower sense ;
he must also have his own individual attitude to
material things — their colour, their sound, their
use, their form. They must have for him a
significance, i,e, a value as symbols. He must
be familiar with the material of expression, no
longer the raw material, but the material as he
has moulded it to himself. Even with this
control over the methods of expression, his
creative energy will not be able to flow without
interruption. Inspiration does not provide a
poet with his rhymes and his vowels : his problem
is to find the rhymes and vowels without losing
the inspiration. If, as I say, he has the necessary
technical power he will be sufficiently free, suffi-
ciently unhampered by the need of readjustment,
to exert his personality, to perpetuate his inspira-
tion, to make alive his forms and colours, his
words and sounds and cadences.

We conclude then, from reflection on our own
experience and inference as to that of others,
that there are many degrees of tension in the
activity of life. The present moment appears
at times to be almost detachable from our past
and our future ; at other times it seems to be

24 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

rich with our past and pregnant with our future,
the moments being, in some undefined way,
Organisa- inseparably organised. But we also con-
Hme.^ Need clude that activity cannot be sustained at
t""t its fullest for very long : frequent pauses
imposed ^^^^ breaks are inevitable.

from with-
out ? We are led thus far by reflecting on

normal experience only. If we were to consider
mystical experience (as I hope to do later) we might
come to the conclusion that the activity of the mys-
tic, who as such is not concerned with the material
world, or with self-expression, is the highest order
of human activity — if indeed it can be called
human — for fulness and sustained energy.

Now, at length, comes the all-important ques-
tion. How are we to regard these varying
tensions of life— -without, it will be remembered,
doing any violence to our intellect .'' How, above
all, are we to regard the organisation of moments
in our deeper experience ? Are we to transcend
completely the idea of separate moments and see life
itself as interpenetration^ continual growth^ or are
we to regard the organisation as imposed from without
on elements which in themselves are separate and
mutually external ?

As to life at its lower tension, we shall un-

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 25

doubtedly be inclined to view it as a series of
independent fugitive moments, with__a— faintly

continuous ego_ beneath them, in some way

loosely holding them together. And here we
shall not be far from the truth. Our feebly
organised experience, when we live on the surface,
gives us a hint as to the probable nature of life on
a lower level than our own, and ultimately, of
matter itself. We can compare our deeper with
our more superficial life, and if examination of our
deeper life enables us to apprehend the duration proper
to the human spirit^ then it will be possible for
us to reach, by speculative inference, a conclusion
similar to that of Bergson. ** If the relaxation
were complete," he writes, " there would no
longer be either memory or will, — which amounts
to saying that, in fact, we never do fall into
absolute passivity any more than we can make
ourselves absolutely free. But, in the limit, we
get a glimpse of an existence made of a present
which recommences unceasingly — devoid of real
duration, nothing but the instantaneous which
dies and is born again endlessly. Is the existence
of matter of this nature } Not altogether, for
analysis resolves it into elementary vibrations,
the shortest of which are of very slight duration,

26 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

almost vanishing but not nothing. It may be
presumed, nevertheless, that physical existence
inclines in this direction." ^

But can we, by examining our experience,
apprehend with our intellect the idea of duration
which Bergson's philosophy teaches } That is
the real crux.

Let us ask what would be the attitude of
common sense at this point. Common sense
Theatti- would probably begin by assenting to
Tommon ^^^ proposition that the deeper current
sense. q{ q^j- lifg ^an only be broken up into
separate states by an arbitrary convention. It
would admit the hopelessness of trying to dissect
into something like ethereal atoms the subtilised
emotion of the poet. It would allow the reason-
ableness of asserting that no equation can be
drawn between the process of experience and the
equal minutes of clock-time. Does it not speak
of time going slowly or going quickly, so distin-
guishing between time as felt and the even
movement of the clock hands ? But common
sense will not adhere consistently to this attitude,
when once it is made to realise all that is implied
in it. If, in the life of the spirit, the past is truly

* Creative Evolution, p. 211.

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 27

preserved in the present, the complex growing
and changing continually, — if the nature of
spiritual experience is most adequately suggested
by such terms as " interpenetration " and " organic
growth,'* — then it is implied that each experience
is unique, that there is no such thing as repetition
in life, and that individual character is not made
up of a varying mixture of given elements, —
qualities or motives or impulses or desires. This
is hard doctrine. But even here common sense
has some right notions, however confused. It is
indeed accustomed to attribute the same virtue
or vice to different people, as if it were a chemical
element common to the composition of each :
but it is not so blind as to ignore the amazing
diversity of human character. It will sometimes
try to get over the difficulty by attributing to one
and the same quality a power of showing itself in
different ways. Jealousy in the disposition of A
— it will affirm — declares itself in a sulky brooding
silence, in the disposition of B in fits of unheralded
rage. It may be objected that this is merely a
convenient way of speaking ; but, even so, a mis-
understanding lurks behind it, or maybe (such is
the power of language to react on the speaker)
has been created by it. On the other hand a

2 8 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

glimmer of true apprehension lies behind a
slightly varied turn of speech — A's jealousy is a
very different thing from B*s. Here the emphasis
is on the individual character as a whole, and
there is a latent recognition of the fact that the
impersonal attribute jealousy is inadequate to
describe the personal characteristic. Of course
A's jealousy is different from B*s for the same
reason that it is different from C's or D's ; each
is a different person from the other, and in times of
strong emotion a large part of the unique and
intricate character of each comes into play. The
more individual a character is, the less can it be
described by the attribution to it of impersonal
qualities. A catalogue of attributes is not a
portrait ; this truth again is partially recognised
by common sense, when it speaks of an ** inde-
scribable personality."

Common sense then hesitates. There is
however no doubt that eventually it decides
strongly in favour of a view according to which
there is no real flow of time. It pictures A and
B as self-identical individuals, passing through a
series of self-contained states which can be
detached from their setting and compared to-
gether. What accounts for this ? If the theory

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 29

of duration is true, we must be able to show how
it is that we are so liable to be misled. It may
then be easier to see how the intuition of duration
is possible for the intellect.

It has, I think, been fully demonstrated by
Bergson that there is a conspiracy of circum-
stances against us. Above all there is the influence
fact of our spatial environment. We are f^yfyf^^
set in the midst of a material world and ^^^^'
our only means of expression are material. I
have spoken of the way in which our vital activity
is constantly broken up by the readjustment
which it has to undergo in the interest of self-
expression. Common sense is aware that our
experience is divided by pauses and rests, and is
at once predisposed to believe that it can be
further subdivided — that the live intervals be-
tween the pauses can be split up indefinitely into
further intervals. It is continually being invited
to believe this ; for space, as well as time, enters
into our ordinary experience, and each readjust-
ment is not only a point in our own time-process,
but is also simultaneous with certain new positions
at which events in space have arrived. Whenever
we pause from our activity, we may become
conscious not only of a stage reached in our own

30 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

progress, but also of a concomitant change in
external facts. The earth has altered its position
relatively to the sun, the hands of the clock have
moved over certain intervals. We know that
any one of the sixty minute-spaces on the circle
of the clock-face can be subdivided ad infinitum :
we know also that the travelling of the hands over
the same spaces is indefinitely repeated. We
are naturally inclined to articulate our life into a
series of states, each of which is co-extensive with
the interval, measured in minutes on the clock,
between certain spatial simultaneities. If we
follow our inclination, we eliminate real time, and
all that is left is a spatialised time, a time which
is ultimately ** nothing but the ghost of space
haunting the reflective consciousness.'' ^ This
devitalised time is well illustrated by the ordinary
diary or conventional biography :

When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts
Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts,
And long before this wandering flesh is rotten
The dates which made me will be all forgotten ;
And none will know the gleam there used to be
About the feast-days freshly kept by me.
But men will call the golden hour of bliss
"About this time," or "shortly after this." 2

* Time and Free Will, p. 99. ^ John Masefield, Biogruphy.

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 31

The view which ignores the reality of time and
reduces life to a list of dates and facts is strength-
ened by its general usefulness. As we have seen,
it is approximately true of our life at its lowest
tension. Habit plays a large part in our lives,
and, so far as we are slaves of habit, our actions
(or reactions) do not enter deeply, organically,
into our being — they can, without injustice, be
isolated and dissected like inanimate things, and
very often can be foretold to a nicety.

The insidious influence of space is only one
aspect of our trouble. The other aspect is the
practical bias — no less insidious — of our and, cor-
intelligence. If the highest reality is 7ngiy!o}
to be found in movement and change, ^"^j^^^j^/
why is it that our senses and our intellect a,cHon.
present to us a world of clearly defined bodies
set out in a uniform space, — separate objects
which we can analyse and describe ? Why is it
that we naturally proceed to search for identical
elements in the diverse phenomena with which we
deal, and why, if there is, in life, no such thing
as repetition of the past, do we cling to the *' law '*
that the same cause produces the same effect ?
The only satisfactory explanation of our procedure
appears to lie in its practical utility in a world of

32 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

matter. The first necessity for the success of a
living species is an adaptation to its material
environment. We have seen that while duration,
which preserves the past in the present, is the
characteristic of spirit, matter is the dispersal
of duration, and, at its ideal limit, is characterised
by continual repetition and complete spatiality.
It is therefore capable of being indefinitely
analysed, with close approximation to truth, and
— this is all-important — its future^ unlike the
future of spirit^ can be anticipated. In a word,
the world, so far as it is material, is a fit subject
for analysis, and our senses and intellect have
been evolved, primarily, as instruments of analysis,
with the ** unlimited power of decomposing
according to any law and of recomposing into
any system." ^ They display to us a world of
things which we can isolate, measure, rearrange
and combine. The world of the present moment
is a system of bodies simultaneously related in
space, our body being one among the rest. When
we act with a purpose, our purpose is to change
in some way the relations between the particular
bodies in which we are interested ; the intellect
has been so developed as to enable us to analyse

1 Creative Evolution, p. 165.

INTUITION BY REFLECTION

Q

those relations, discovering in them elements
which we have met or heard of before, and which
we can regard as the necessary causes of effects
which are also known to us and can therefore be
predicted. Our working rule is that the future
can be foreseen^ i.e. that it is implicitly contained in
the present^ i.e. that time^ as it adds nothing new^
makes no real difference.

Thus the intellect has acquired, in the school
of matter, a strong tendency to analysis ; leaving
school, it carries this tendency over into every
department of life. Its social utility is marvellous.
It has led to the development of language — that
greatest of all instruments of progress, which has
enabled man to deal with ideas as well as things,
to distinguish clearly between subject and object,
to turn introspectively in upon himself and to
reflect on human character and human destiny.
Analysis has, moreover, achieved triumph after
triumph in the sciences, especially in the mathe-i
matical sciences. " We are born artisans as we'
are born geometricians, and indeed we are
geometricians only because we are artisans.*' ^

It is then not to be wondered at that intellect
should have complete confidence in its habitual

^ Creative Evolution, p. 47.
B.P. c

INTUITION BY REFLECTION

hod of analysis, and should suffer little or no
doubt as to its validity for speculation. Yet, if
the essence of spiritual reality is indivisible
movement and change, it is clear that all the
success of the intellect in practical affairs, in
language and in science, only handicaps it for the
pursuit of metaphysical truth. From continual
exercise in practical affairs it has become settled
in the useful habit of analysis. From dazzling
achievements in science it has gained enormously
in self-confidence. Language, lastly, is always
exercising its subtle influence. It enables us to
express spiritual ideas, but in expressing them we
crystallise them and impose on them the im-
mobility of the word. The fixed, impersonal
word makes it difficult for us to believe in the
uniqueness of the emotion or sensation we feel.
The influence of the word on the mind is so
strong as to prevail at times against positive ex-
perience. Bergson notes that the name of a dish
which is reputed to be exquisite may insinuate
itself between our sensation and our consciousness
so that we believe we are pleased by the flavour,
although a slight effort of attention would prove
^the contrary.^ An amusing illustration of this

1 See Time and Free Will, p. 131.

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 35

occurred in Punch a few months ago. A gardener
and an odd job man are pictured eating the
lunch provided for them by their employer — they
are already half-way through it — and the following
remarks pass between them

" Odd Job Man. Nasty bit o' mutton this, ain't it ?
Gardener. 'Taint mutton— it's pork.

Odd Job Man. Is it ? I 'ope it is. I'm very fond of a bit
o' pork."

Let us see then how intellect applies its
analytical method to the human soul. It reduces
life to a succession of fixed elementary parts —
separate states of mind. Yet it cannot, in the
face of experience, deny all continuity to life.
Behind the separate momentary states it is forced
to assume some colourless unchanging substance,
running through and linking them together.
The nature of the substance is a mystery, since all/I
the reality of each moment is put to the credit oi
the passing state of mind which occupies it :
no assignable quality is left to the substance as
such. Yet the intellect does not feel that there
is anything unnatural about an explanation which
reduces continuity to discrete states of mind,
strung together, like "" beads of a necklace.'* ^

^ Creative Evolution, p. 4.

36 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

For " the mechanistic instinct of the mind " —
this inveterate tendency to regard soul, equally
with matter, as something which can be cut up
at will — " is stronger than reason, stronger than
immediate experience.'* ^ Henry James, in his
tale The Figure in the Carpet^ makes Hugh Vereker,
the famous novelist, say, in alluding to the
baffling secret of his genius, ** What I contend
that nobody has ever mentioned in my work is
the organ of life,'' and — a little later — ** It's the
very string that my pearls are strung on." Here
is unconscious testimony to the firm hold upon us
of the mechanistic " beads of a necklace " picture
of life.

Enough has now been said to show that if
time, in the sense we understand, is the essence
Philosophy of life, there is a strong conspiracy of

has based • , . i j • ttt

itself on the circumstances to lead us astray. We
hlbUoffhe ^^^ understand how philosophy, through
intellect, generation after generation, has been
content to trust the ingrained habit of the intellect
and to regard the real and eternal as motionless,
unchanging. HeracHtus has had few spiritual
descendants, Plato many ; the normal attitude
of the philosopher has been to distrust the senses

1 Creative Evolution, p. i8.

INTUITION BY REFLECTION Qj

but accept without demur the analytical habit of
the intellect : he has failed to see that analysis
does but refine upon the work of the senses in
giving us what Bergson calls a cinematographic
picture of the movement of life.

That part of Bergson 's theory of knowledge
which deals with the ingrained habit of the
intellect cannot be admired too much, but the in-
But when he teaches that the only way ^^^ ^^ ^
to defeat this habit is to have recourse ^^^f^fi'^

with its

to a non-intellectual faculty, I strongly habits.
disagree. I maintain that there is no need to
identify the intellect with its habits, however
powerful. Why should the intellect be the
prisoner of its own categories } If experience,
when we reflect upon it, presents itself to us as
indivisible, then I suggest that the intuitive
intellect is capable of apprehending duration,
and that there is no need to have recourse to any
other faculty. True, the idea of duration is
abnormal to the intellect, because the intellect
is biassed in favour of the discontinuous. But
the senses are similarly biassed, and yet are able
to present to us, for instance, the indefinite
continuous movement of water ; it matters not
that their habitual function is to introduce to us

^

INTUITION BY REFLECTION

bodies whose definite outlines can be recognised,
whether in motion or at rest. Again, the eye of
an artist, simply because it is not dulled by
useful habit, is able to see indivisible movement,
instead of substituting for it (as we usually do)
a movement which can be divided and measured.
Consider this picture of a girl lifting her hand.
** Each movement of hers was complete and
lovely in itself; when she lifted a hand to her
hair the free attitude was a marvel of composure ;
it might never have begun, and might never cease,
it was solitary and perfect.'* ^

How then does experience present itself to us ?
We have already glanced at the common sense
// we cut attitude towards it, and have found
tho!t7ur ^^^^^ so^^ inklings of the truth. But
intellect can common sense is sophisticated and

apprehend ^

duration, confused. We must try to look at

and see . . - • i r r

that life is experience with a mind free from
^orglnised Sophistication. We must cut analysis
from within, ^/lort, as sooH as we have any reason to
suspect that it is misrepresenting life. Some degree
of analysis is necessary ; without it, as we shall see
in the next chapter^ the mind can have no object at
all. Moreover., analysis is required in order to free

^ James Stephens, The Demigods.

INTUITION BY REFLECTION

©

the movement of life from the -particularity of its
context : for^ if duration is the basis of all experience^
the intellect must he able to recognise it — free from
particularity — in all experience. But analysis must
go no further. It will be wrong in attempting to
weigh and measure and decompose the movement
which it has liberated : for^ stripped of its parti-
cularity^ experience will be found to be nothing but
the unique organic movement of time or duration.

Reflecting on our experience, we can (I suggest)
find nothing to justify the theory that the organisa-
tion which it exhibits is an organisation imposed
upon a discrete series of self-contained states.
Let us glance again at the examples I have given
some pages earlier. When I am suffering from
fear or apprehension which grows more and
more acute, I do not seem to pass through a series
of stages at all. Any division I make in the
process of my emotion is arbitrary. The feeling
is one of organic growth or expansion : the more
acute feeling is not a new feeling added to those
which have preceded it, nor is it the sum of the
preceding feelings. It is different in intensity,
but the difference is one of quality and not of
quantity. I shall not be shaken from this con-
clusion when it is argued that corresponding to,

40 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

and indeed causing, the increased intensity are
certain material changes in my body — strained
muscles and tortured nerves — which can be
analysed and measured. I shall admit a correspond-
ence, although not a complete correspondence, but
I shall decline to interpret the qualitative series
in terms of the quantitative. Again, when I am
playing a game of tennis, although I may be told
that I am concerned only with movements of
my body, my racquet and the tennis-ball, and
although I admit that my feelings as I play are
very closely affected by those movements, I shall
still maintain the validity of my impression that,
to the extent that I was putting myself into the
game, my experience was a continuous, inter-
penetrating process, not in any way measurable
by my individual strokes. When I come to the
case of deeper creative activity, in the examples
of the general, the poet and the artist, I am
on ground even more secure. The deliverance of
my consciousness is here more plain. I shall
refuse to substitute for the unique flux which it
reveals to reflection the crude imagery of pearls
threaded upon a string : I shall refuse to admit
any equivalence between the qualitative complex-
ity of the creative experience and the numerical

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 41

multiplicity of material phenomena : I shall not
be deluded into thinking that in the intense
experience which falls between any two limits
of readjustment I can insert as many more dividing
limits as I like : in a word, I shall not substitute
an artificial explanation for the natural deliverance
of my mind.

At the same time it is no use denying that the
intellect has to make a great effort in order to
transcend its mechanism. It cannot be ^^^
expected to make that effort unless it triumphs

^ and the

is persuaded that the results reached limitations

. , , , , . of science.

by the method natural to it are un-
satisfactory. As regards metaphysics, the desired
attitude of discontent should be easy to arrive at :
we need only study the antinomies to which the
analytical method leads. There is poor consola-
tion in the suggestion that these deadlocks are
due, not to the pursuit of a faulty method, but
to natural, insurmountable limitations of the
human mind. Difficulty is more likely to be
occasioned by the triumphs which analysis has
won in science. These triumphs make it neces-
sary to bring strong evidence to bear against the
claim of the analytical method to be the final

42 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

interpreter of the universe. But the brilliant
exposure of the limitations of science to be found
in Bergson*s writings should do much to discredit
its claim. As he points out, the results of science
are the nearer to perfection, the more they are
concerned with space and matter. It is significant
that mathematics should have matured so much
earlier than the sciences of life. As geometricians
we deal with the solid, and deal with it success-
fully ; our intellectual machinery is developed for
the purpose, and enables us to win further and
further insight into the stable aspect of reality.
In all life we may discern the contrasting aspects
of change and stability, the fluid and the solid.
The solid can be decomposed ad infinitum ; the
fluid can be set free, but it cannot be resolved
into elements. As students of biology and
psychology, we deal with a complex of facts,
partly material and partly spiritual. So far as
the facts are material, the methods of mathematical
science may still succeed, and explanations in
terms of space and quantity still claim to be valid.
They are, however, doomed to failure when they
attempt to fathom the meaning of the spiritual.
Bergson argues convincingly in Time and Free
Will that science is self-deceived when it imagines

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 43

itself to be analysing successfully the nature of
life. In the case of emotions or sensations
obviously connected with physical stimuli in
a manner which can be observed, he shows
that what are successfully analysed and measured
are not the emotions or sensations themselves
(the differences of which are qualitative) but the
material stimuli. In the case of the more profound
emotions, which are out of all proportion to any
physical cause, he shows that the complexity of
experience is of a nature entirely different from
numerical multiplicity. Psychology can do work
of the greatest value in studying the correspond-
ence between the qualitative psychical fact and the
quantitative physical fact. But "if it offers us
the concrete and living self as an association of
terms which are distinct from one another and
are set side by side in a homogeneous medium,
it will see difficulty after difficulty rising in its
path. And these difficulties will multiply the
greater the efforts it makes to overcome them,
for all its efforts will only bring into clearer
light the absurdity of the fundamental hypothesis
by which it spreads out time in space and puts
succession at the very centre of simultaneity. . . .
The contradictions implied in the problems of

44 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

causality, freedom, personality, spring from no
other source, and, if we wish to get rid of them
we have only to go back to the real and concrete
self and give up its symbolical substitute.'* ^

It is to be observed that the arguments by
which Bergson confutes the claim of analysis are
themselves essentially intellectual and, while full
of new intuitions, afford a notable example of
the analytical process. The results of science
are not to be ignored or, in their own sphere,
belittled. But science for its own purposes — and
quite legitimately — -eliminates the element of
time ; the philosopher who believes in the reality
of time must examine the results of science from
a new point of view and show to what extent,
in each sphere of enquiry, they fall short of
finality. He must indeed himself analyse —
knowledge cannot be developed in any other way —
but his analysis must' be controlled by the intuition
of duration as a first guiding principle. Keeping
this principle in mind, he will remain free from
the bias which inclines us to set the highest
value on what our intellect has most fully arti-
culated : he will always be able to revise the
too rigid outline which the analytical process is apt

^ Time and Free Will, p. 139.

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 45

to impose ; he will be able to discriminate between
the approximation to truth which can be ade-
quately expressed in the broken medium of
speech, and the living truth which language —
just because it is discontinuous — can never hope
fully to convey. The intellect can transcend its own
concepts, but it cannot do without them ; they
are, in a sense, the stepping-stones of its dead
self on which, and on which only, it can rise.

, I have said that we can grasp duration without
doing any violence to the intellect. By this I
do not mean that the task is easy : it is, on the
contrary, very difficult. What I do mean is
that there is no need to go outside intellect — in
the way Bergson teaches — in order to arrive at
the truth. No unique or special faculty is
required : all that we have to exercise is the
ordinary intuitive function of the intellect. But
before we can do this, we must clear our minds
of their sophistication. This must always be a
laborious task, but the pioneer work of Bergson
has made it inexpressibly lighter for us. He
prepares our minds for the vision of truth by his
brilliant exposition of the fallacies which underlie
the habitual procedure of the intellect. We
start with invaluable aids denied to the pioneer ;

46 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

for him the battle with the analytical tendency
must have been far more formidable, requiring
the most magnificent powers. It is something
like the case of an artist of outstanding genius
and students of his art. The artist seizes on a
truth beyond our powers of perception ; he
expresses it in the immobile medium of paint.
We study his picture critically, and after the
apprenticeship involved in so doing, we obtain
a vision akin to his. Without having his creative
genius, we share his insight. It required genius
to discover and express the truth — genius and
travail of soul ; it requires immeasurably less
creative power and less labour to enter into the
discovery.

Before I start on a new phase of this essay,
it may, I think, be useful to suggest a comparison
Intuition between the intuition of duration and
within-^ " introspection '' in the narrow sense —
trospection. J mean the mental process which has for
its object the discovery, by intellectual analysis
and intuition, of our individual moral motives or
qualities. Mr. Bertrand Russell, in the course
of a peculiarly shallow^ criticism of Bergson's

1 Vide Appendix, in which I attempt to justify the use of this
epithet.

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 47

theory of knowledge, contained in his essay
Mysticism and Logic^ makes a comparison of this
kind and uses it to discredit intuition. He
writes that ** most men, for example, have in
their nature meannesses, vanities and envies of
which they are quite unconscious, though even
their best friends can perceive them without any
difSculty." He suggests that the revelation of
the self by intuition must be equally untrust-
worthy. Now introspection is clearly an intellec-
tual exercise, and it is therefore to be noted
that RusselFs argument is entirely irrelevant as
against intuition in the Bergsonian sense, which is
definitely non-intellectual. It is relevant, how-
ever— although it has singularly little force — as
against the view I have put forward that duration
is grasped by the normal intuitive function of the
intellect.

What is the peculiar difficulty of introspection }
It demands an impartial judgment and a certain
disinterested attitude. But our outlook, our
moral attitude, is part and parcel of our character
which we have to judge ; it is impossible to be
mean, vain or envious in our character and to be
free from the tendency to those qualities in our
judgments and moral perceptions. It is exceed-

48 INTUITION BY REFLECTION

ingly difficult for the mean man to view himself
without bias : meanness of soul distorts the vision,
for every man is prone to regard his own char-
acteristics as normal. The magnanimous man,
who on some occasion performs a mean action,
inconsistent with his established character, easily
detects his fault. Not so the mean man ; his
mean action is taken for granted like the air
which he breathes — he finds it difficult to see its
quality at all. It is quite true that his friends
can usually see it much better. The mean man
is in this respect typical of all men : each of us has
his own habitual faults, and these are much more
difficult to perceive than our lapses into faults
which have not been consolidated in our character.
Our souls need to be purified by the perception
of an ideal, if they are to know themselves.
We need the light of a high and disinterested ideal,
the vision of the holiness of God. This vision
may enable us to see afresh — it may profoundly
influence our character and, in so doing, will
alter of necessity our moral attitude. We shall
be able not merely to see ourselves as our friends
or enemies see us, but to see ourselves better than
is possible for anyone else. The other person —
the outsider — can merely observe us, take us to

INTUITION BY REFLECTION 49

pieces and analyse us, classify the pieces and
attach certain moral labels to them which do duty
for the faults of numberless people besides our-
selves. We, on the other hand, can realise the
unique quality of our motives — unique, peculiar
to ourselves alone — which makes all labelling, all
moral categories and concepts, wholly inadequate.
This introspection is a high form of intuition and
may justly be compared with the intuition of
duration. In each case the prime difficulty is to
get rid of an acquired defect of vision, to win,
like the artist, an innocence of eye. But mere
half-hearted self-analysis is no parallel at all ;
it is a semi-mechanical work of the intellect, not
the intellect's true intuitive activity, by which
alone we can apprehend the living energising
truth.

We have already discussed the peculiar diffi-
culty of the intuition of duration. The know-
ledge of our moral self is difficult because the
unique quality of our character colours our
individual moral vision. The intuition of dura-
tion, on the other hand, is an intuition of the
groundwork of all vital experience as such. This
is a distinction to be kept in mind. The mean
man and the magnanimous man, the man who

B.P. D

so INTUITION BY REFLECTION

knows something of his own faults and the man
who is even despicably ignorant of them, are all
equally enduring beings, because duration is the
essence of life. The mean man is not likely to
be aware of his meanness, but his meanness does
not disqualify him for the intuition of real time.
The object of knowledge here is common to all
men, inasmuch as it underlies the life of all :
the hindrance to knowledge is also common to
all, being a tendency to distorting vision, a
disability we have contracted through our double
nature as creatures both of spirit and of body,
of time and of space, — the tendency, in short,
of our common intellect to unbridled analysis.

CHAPTER III

RELATION TO EXPERIENCE

I HAVE suggested that we can obtain an intuition
of our own duration simply by means of reflection
on our remembered experience, and that the
intuition so obtained is intellectual. At the
same time I have not wished to make light of the
difficulties. It is only by an intellectual struggle
that we can shake off the habits of thought which
obstruct our speculative vision ; it is only by
unrelaxed vigilance that we can prevent them
from returning and winning entrance in some
plausible disguise. If therefore any method exists
of strengthening our intuition, it should be hailed
as a welcome ally. I propose to consider whether
we can get into closer touch with experience than
is possible by reflection in its common mean-
ing— i.e. reflection on memories which are
separated by some distance of time from the

present

51

52 RELATION TO EXPERIENCE

In the last chapter I have used ** intuition "
in a wide sense as signifying direct apprehension
Intuition by the intellect of an object. This
tn Berg- J believe to be its true use. It is time,

soman '

sense : co- however, to give further attention to
with the the specialised meaning in which Berg-
tvtngsej. g^^ employs it. The intuition of
our duration is, in his view, to be ob-
tained not by reflection, but by a coincidence
of the self as knowing with the self as
living. The mind is no longer set over
against life, as in the reflective activity of the
intellect, but is actually moving within life's
stream. Intuition is the knowledge we have
of life in living. It is the self-consciousness of
the universal vital elan appropriated to the
individual. It is an " inner absolute knowledge
of the duration of the self by the self,** ^ the
" direct contact of the self with the self.** ^
** It places itself in mobility, or, what comes to
the same thing, in duration.** ^ It is the ** simple
and privileged case ** of knowledge by sympathy ^
which corresponds with the instinct of insects

^ Introduction to\Metaphysics, p. 20.
* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 78.
3 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 40.

RELATION TO EXPERIENCE 53

and animals, and which is derived from the
original unity of all life ; it is ** instinct that
has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable
of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it
indefinitely/' ^

Intuition is radically distinct from any other
activity of the mind : it is the only faculty by
which it is possible to attain to absolute knowledge.
On the other hand it gives us only fugitive and
evanescent visions of its object, it is ** vague and
above all discontinuous. It is a lamp almost
extinguished, which only glimmers now and then,
for a few moments at most.** ^ How is the passing
vision to be won ? Running all through Berg-
son's account of it, we find emphasis laid on the
idea that it is only to be won by great effort,
** the ever-renewed effort to transcend our actual
ideas and perhaps also our elementary logic." ^
" The method of intuition demands for the
solution of each new problem an entirely new
effort." ^ " If a man is incapable of getting for
himself the intuition of the constitutive duration of

^ Creative Evolution, p. i86.
2 Creative Evolution, p. 282.

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 70.

* Matter and Memory, p. 241.

54 RELATION TO EXPERIENCE

his own being, nothing will ever give it to him.** ^
If we listen to an account of duration, in which
its naturay^ is suggested by means of varying
concrete images instead of by fixed concepts, " we
shall gradually accustom consciousness to a
particular and clearly defined disposition — that
precisely which it must adopt in order to appear
to itself as it really is, without any veil. But
then consciousness must at least consent to make
the effort. For it will have been shown nothing :
it will simply have been placed in the attitude it
must take up in order to make the desired effort,
and so come by itself to the intuition." ^

Let us consider whether it is possible to
achieve contact with the living self, and, if not,
how close it is possible to get. We are told that,
if our minds are to enter into the stream of
duration, we must ** seek experience at its source,
or rather above that decisive turn where, taking a
bias in the direction of our utility, it becomes
properly human experience.** We must " place
ourselves at the turn of experience,** and ** profit
by the faint light which, illuminating the passage
from the immediate to the useful^ marks the dawn

^ Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 13.
2 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 14.

RELATION TO EXPERIENCE 55

of human experience/' ^ Piercing thus, by a
violent effort, to the deeper levels of life, we are
bidden to hope for a fleeting intuition of reality,
a fugitive but authentic contact of knowledge with
life. It can last only a few moments at best, for
the innate tendency of the mind to reflection will
inevitably assert itself, and we shall pass rapidly
from the immediate simplicity of absolute vision
to the successively lower levels of imagination and
conceptual thought.

Now personally I believe that, by getting into
close touch with experience, we can get an
intuition of the self as enduring in time, coincidence
and so strengthen the intuition which '^^^j^otpos-

° sihle ; but

we have obtained by mere reflection intuition

. can he

on our memories. But when I examme obtained in
this intuition, I am led irresistibly to the \^ityto^'
conclusion that the reflective element is ^^P^^^^^^^-
not only present in it, but is in truth the only
active element present. When I am completely
absorbed in some activity, I have not at the same
moment any consciousness of the nature of that
activity. It is only at the moment when I am
beginning to pass from that activity to the different
activity of reflection upon it that I obtain a flash

* Matter and Memory, p. 241,

56 RELATION TO EXPERIENCE

of insight. Then, in a fugitive moment, before
I have any awareness of the self as enduring in
time, it is possible for me to be aware simply of
duration, mobility, interpenetration. The dis-
tinction between subject and object, and with
it the intuition of the self, comes a stage
later.

Thus it appears to me that the first flash of
insight is simultaneous with the birth of reflection ;
Thisintui- we Only become conscious of duration
however, when the intellect has already begun
fromtlr^ to be active. It is perhaps reasonable
fi^^*' to infer that, immediately on the entering

in of reflective intelligence, a latent consciousness
of life, up to that moment entirely neutralised
by the activity of living, is suddenly released.
But, if so, as soon as intelligence begins to filter
in and liberate consciousness from its absorption,
consciousness undergoes a change. It is no
longer in contact with its object ; its object is
already in the past, and only so can the object
begin to be realised or known. Intelligence is
the sole active element of knowledge, but memory
is fresh and vivid, and intelligence, however
quick its operation, cannot accomplish its habitual
task all at once. First, it gives an awareness of

RELATION TO EXPERIENCE 57

duration, not of the self which endures ; the
work of abstraction has at this stage hardly begun,
for the duration is still partially invested with the
particular quality of the particular experience.
Next comes awareness of the enduring self^ and
then a much more definite awareness of interesting
points in the process of its duration. On these
interesting points, just because of their utility,
attention is more and more concentrated. Thus
intelligence comes to articulate the experience :
the unity of our insight is broken up into images
of increasing clearness, and finally we distinguish
separate attributes and qualities, about which we
can converse freely. Experience, in all its indivi-
duality, cannot be communicated by speech :
intelligence has first of all to crystallise certain
elements in it. We may imagine the different
stages thus ; the neutralised consciousness may
be pictured as a mirror held up in complete dark-
ness to the changing activity of life : it can reveal
nothing until the dawn of intelligence which
illumines life first of all with a lustre faint
but evenly diffused, then — gradually becoming
focussed to definite points and throwing up
definite outlines — with separate rays of increasing
brilliance and intensity.

58 RELATION TO EXPERIENCE

I have been speaking of the intuition of our
duration in the deeper levels of our experience.
As regards Bergson talces the view that "by an
life at Its increasingly violent effort '* we can

lower ten- ^ •'

sionordin- dilute our experience so as to obtain

ary reflec- ... ^ ...

Hon is an intuition of our duration in an
^ . extremely attenuated form : in that

form it approximates to a series of discrete states,
each self-complete and external to the others :
it approaches to the ideal limit of pure repetition
or materiality. I am quite unable to take any
such view. To me it seems that, if we exercise
our imagination to recall holiday experiences
such as that described by Stevenson in the
passage I have quoted earlier, ordinary quiet
reflection is completely adequate to enable us to
realise the nature of the experience. We can
indeed only realise our duration by means of
reflection : every day we pass so easily and so
quickly from unreflective experience to reflection
upon it that we are in danger of regarding the two
as simultaneous aspects of a single state or process
of mind. In the most loosely organised hours of
life there may be moments when we faintly realise
our condition, and, if we are philosophically
minded, dally perhaps with thoughts of ego and

RELATION TO EXPERIENCE 59

non-ego. But we only do so by means of reflection,
and we can only improve upon our knowledge
by less lazy reflection and analysis afterwards.
The self, in its disintegrated quasi-material state,
is a proper subject for the intellect to deal with
in its ordinary analytical fashion.

In this connection it appears to me significant
that Bergson has difliculty in distinguishing the
intellectual, i,e, analytical, apprehension of matter
from the intuitive apprehension. ** If there are,"
he writes, ** two intuitions of different order (the
second being obtained by a reversal of the direction
of the first) and if it is toward the second that
the intellect naturally inclines, there is no essential
difference between the intellect and this intuition
itself.'* ^ This statement should be read with
certain others, viz. that ** positive science is in
fact a work of pure intellect,'' ^ that " in principle
positive science bears on reality itself, provided
it does not overstep the limits of its own domain,
which is inert matter," ^ and that ** there is an
order approximately mathematical immanent in
matter, an objective order, which our science

1 Creative Evolution, p. 381.

* Creative Evolution, p. 206.

> * Creative Evolution, p. 218.

6o RELATION TO EXPERIENCE

approaches in proportion to its progress." ^
These passages indicate the ambiguity in which
Bergson finds himself involved, when he attempts
to bring a non-intellectual faculty to bear on the
nature of matter.

We may accept Bergson's statement that
" space is not so foreign to our nature as we
imagine/' ^ in the sense that, in times of our
greatest relaxation, our mind approaches that
divisibility into mutually external parts which is
a basic characteristic of matter. Something
** approximately mathematical " is indeed revealed
in us, and this aspect of our being can be ade-
quately dealt with by the analytical intellect.
In order to know it, our right course is to push
analysis thoroughly, even to its extreme limit :
the intuition of duration in our deeper experience
will safeguard us from concluding that our
superficial experience ever becomes entirely dis-
integrated, that its moments ever cease entirely
to interpenetrate.

I conclude then that, for the intuition of our
duration, we must rely on two things and two
things only : first, simple reflection on our

^ Creative Evolution, p. 230.
* Creative Evolution, p. 214.

RELATION TO EXPERIENCE 6i

remembered experience ; secondly, close attention
to the elusive moments when we pass from
absorption in vital experience to reflection upon it.
In both cases intuition is intellectual, although in
the second case, where the mind is at the closest
possible quarters with life, intellectual reflection
is only nascent. The activity of intuition, so far
from being the violent activity of a non-intellectual
faculty, is wholly intellectual. We must regard
intelligence not as an inert faculty " characterised
by a natural incapacity to comprehend life,''i
but as the vital energy by the highest exercise of
which we penetrate to the truth.

^ Creative Evolution, p. 174.

CHAPTER IV

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

Up to the present I have dealt only with the
intuition of the self by the self. I must now
pass on to the question how this intuition affects
our knowledge of reality in general.

If the intuition is of the intellectual nature I
have suggested,, and is obtained by reflection on
Intuition ^^^ individual human experience, then
and know- [x. Can Only be extended to experiences
beyond beyond our own either (i) by imagina-
tive inference or (2) by a unification of
our own experience with other experience, such
as the mystic claims to achieve.

If, on the other hand, the intuition of the self
transcends intellect, as Bergson teaches, there is
a third possibility. It might be held that we can,
while retaining the separate (or partially separate)
nature of our own experience, penetrate intuitively

62

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 63

into inner reality other than our own, and so gain
an insight, denied to intellect, into the meaning
of the universe. Bergson, as I will endeavour
to show, hesitates between the first possibility —
extension of the results of intuition by inference —
and the third. There is, in this respect, an
ambiguity running all through his philosophy ;
it is greatly to be hoped that in future work he
will clear it up.

The view, elaborated in Creative Evolution^ that
intuition is a development of instinct as seen in
Nature — instinct being a faculty which ^

o / Bergson s

correlates the activity not merely of contrast

between

different individuals but of different instinct and

, , intelligence.

species — tends to suggest that we can,
by intuition, penetrate direct into other experience.
Before, therefore, I discuss the way in which the
apprehension of duration in the self may help us
to understand reality beyond the self, I must
examine the contrast which Bergson draws
between instinct and intelligence. He presents
them to us as complementary but opposed faculties
of knowledge which have been differentiated in
the course of evolution. We are invited to believe
that through the study of instinct^ our own
intuitive faculty will become clear to us. Hitherto

64 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

I have not considered the argument in favour of
his theory of intuition which Bergson claims to
find in the evolution of life.

Anyone who glances at the life history of
insects must be amazed at the unhesitating
Features of precision with which, in certain circum-
instinct. stances, they act. This precision might
be taken to imply a high degree of intelligence.
Bergson gives some notable examples, such as
that of the paralysing wasp which operates on
its victim as if it were ** a learned entomologist
and a skilful surgeon in one,**^ and of the Sitaris
beetle which, with all the appearance of cunning
prevision, insinuates itself into the domestic life
of a certain kind of bee and, in the larval stage,
feeds first on the egg of the bee and then on its
honey. But although these ** instinctive '' actions
can be very] amazing, it is matter of common
observation that the insects which perform them
are often utterly helpless in unfamiliar circum-
stances. The paralysing wasp, except in the one
operation by which it provides for its offspring,
cannot pose either as entomologist or as surgeon.
Thus it is easily seen that instinctive action, while
it is commonly more precise than action guided

1 Creative Evolution, p. 153.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 65

by intelligence, is also far more limited in its
scope, far less adaptable.

According to the theory of Bergson, instinct
and intelligence are two faculties jwhich have
become dissociated irTTIie course of evolution :
eachjnay^e regarded as a faculty of action and
also_as_a_faculjLy_ -ofL--know^ Both were

y?yE^^l_ilLi^l5_2^^g^^^'' unity of Jjfe, and it was
only wheji_ life launched itself iipjo matter diat
they hadjto partjcompany . The nature of matter
is opposed to that of life ; it dc^es not endure,
but dies and is born again each instant ; it does
not grow, it is not creative, it merely repeats its
past ; it is not free but rigidly determined. The
evolution of living species on the earth represents
the effort of life to subdue the nature of matter
and introduce the principle of freedom, or at
least of indetermination, into the very stronghold
of necessity. Evolution has proceeded by dis-
sociation ; an infinite variety of organisms has
been produced, and the original tendencies of the
vital e/an have been distributed among them.

Life has won its most remarkable successes
in two directions — in the evolution of the insects,
and in the evolution of the vertebrates, culminating
in man. Each line displays a radically different

B.P.

66 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

solution of the same problem. The bodily organs
of the insects are designed to a nicety for a narrow
range of special functions ; the activity of the
vertebrates is far less dependent on the form of
their natural organs, and man (whose body is
poorly equipped with instruments of offence or
defence) is endowed with the faculty of making
tools, which opens up to him an indefinite range
of possibiHties. " Instinct perfected is a faculty
of using and even constructing organised instru-
ments ; intelligence_perfected is the facxiltxjpf
making and using unorganised instruments/ * ^
" As regards human jiitellij^ence, it has not been
sufficiently noted thatjnechanical invention has
been from the first its essential feature.'* ^

There is, in instinct, no sign of that deliberation
or choice which marks intelligence and denotes
the presence of consciousness. In intelligent
behaviour consciousness is most intense where
there is most room for choice to be exercised.
It may be inferred that instinct, which acts
unhesitatingly and for which there is one (and
only one) right way of acting, tends to be un-
conscious. Instinctive behaviour however, even
if it is unconscious, implies the presence of

^ Creative Evolution, p. 147. ^ Creative Evolution, p. 145.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 67

knowledge ; knowledge indeed is an essential
aspect of it, but the representation of the action
to be performed is so adequately and exactly
filled by the action itself as to be completely
neutralised. ** Representation is stopped up by
action.*' ^ The knowledge of the insect " is
reflected outwardly in exact movements instead
of being reflected inwardly in consciousness.'* ^

Now the instinctive actions of the insect are
properly only a continuation of the activity which
designed its organism : they are one with the
vital elan^ which is behind all the forms of life.
The vital elan^ although a tremendous force, is
not unlimited, and " each species, each individual
even, retains only a certain impetus from the
universal vital impulsion and tends to use this
energy in its own interest.'* ^ Correspondingly,
instinct viewed as knowledge derives its quality
from the nature of the vital elan as a ** whole
sympathetic to itself." The knowledge is ex-
tremely narrow in range ; it has shrunk to a
particular object. That object, however, it knows
from within by sympathy ; it knows it directly
in its unique and concrete fulness, not indirectly

1 Creative Evolution, p. 151. * Creative Evolution, p. 154.
* Creative Evolution, p. 53.

68 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

and from the outside by a process of analysis or
abstraction. ** Whatever^ in instinct and intelli-
gence^ is innate knowledge^ hears in the first case on
things, and in the second on relations." ^

We never find either instinct or intelligence
entirely pure and free from admixture of the
other. Instinct has not been entirely obliterated
in man, but it has been eclipsed by the develop-
ment of intelligence and appears but little as a
faculty of precise action. At the same time it
has been profoundly . aiffected by intelligence ;
it has been saved from bondage to a material
object, its implicit and potential knowledge has
begun to be unfolded in consciousness, and it has
been rendered capable, at its best, of a direct
insight into life itself. Instinct is thus raised
to a high level of intuition. The intuition must,
it is true, remain vague and nebulous as compared
with the clear hard light of intelligence : never-
theless it is an approacL-J;flL_the realisation in
consciousness of that absolute knowledge, poten-
tial but impotent, which is externalised in the
almost unerring activities of the insect.

" By intuition,** writes Bergson, ** \ mean
instinct that has become disinterested, self-

^ Creative Evolution, p. 156.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 69

conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object,
and~~of enlarging it indefinitely." ^ Instinct in
turn may perhaps be defined as a tendency, due
to the fundamental unity of life, towards sym-
pathetic or correlated action ; at this level it is
not ** disinterested '* but severely practical, its
one goal being the action necessary for self-
preservation and the preservation of the species ;
it is not ** self-conscious,'' — any knowledge it
possesses is only implicit, being neutralised by
the action with which it is preoccupied ; it is
not " capable of reflecting upon its object '* — it
acts upon the object without question or hesitation,
as by an inner necessity ; it is not capable of
** enlarging '* its object, being obsessed with the
particularity of the object. It is admirably
precise, but it is confined to action, confined to a
particular action, a blind unconscious force.

Intelligence, we have seen, is very different.
It is versatile and adaptable, it is accompanied by
consciousness, and is concerned not so Features of
much with. particular things_as. with_ the ^^^^^^'s^^^^-
relations between things in general. ^** If nature
gives up endowing the living being with the
instrument that may serve him, it is in order that

^ Creative Evolution, p. i86.

:nstinct and intelligence

t lie living being may be able to vary his construc-
tion according to circumstances. The essential
function^^oTIntelTigenceTs^herefore to see the way
out of 3, difficulty in any circumstances whatever,
to find what is most suitable, what answers best
the question asked/* ^

Butalthough intelligence has these advantages
over instinct^k is incapable of understanding
life. It has been modelTed^ matter in order to
win control over it, or rather ** intellect and matter
have progressively adapted themselves one to the
other in order to attain at last a common form.'* ^
" The same movement by which the mind is
brought to form itself into intellect, that is to say
into distinct concepts, brings matter to break
itself up into objects excluding one another.
T/ie more consciousness is intellectualised^ the more is
matter spatialised^ ^ The nature of life is opposed
to the nature of matter, for in life there is no
externality of parts corresponding to the division
of matter into mutually exclusive objects. Hence
the intellect is thoroughly at home only when
it has to do with the material, the solid, the
immobile ; here the spatial relations which it

^ Creative Evolution, p. 158. * Creative Evolution, p. 217.
^Creative Evolution, p. 199.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 71

establishes are valid, having their counterpart in
reality, but they cease to be valid when applied
to the fluidity and movement of life. In matter
there^s_repetition, in life there^is creation and^
no^ sameness : the intellect is ** the faculty of
connecting the same with the same, of perceiving
and also producing repetitions. '* ^ It is ** a
formal knowledge '' which is ** not limited to
what is practically useful,'* ^ /.^, it can extend its
enquiry into any domain, and can speculate on the
nature of life. It can, however, only view life
from the outside. It is incapable of thinking
real time. It is bound to interpret motion in
terms of immobility, time in terms of space,
quality in terms of quantity. It cuts life up
artificially and applies its law of identity. It
cannot apprehend **true continuity, real mobility,
reciprocal penetration, — in a word, that creative
evolution which is life.'' ^

In fact, if there were any^uch^jhing_aspure
materiality, devoid of all duration, intellect would
reyealjjs nature_to_us with absolute truth. So
long as it deals with life which is nearly engulfed
in matter, it can give us an account of its object

^ Creative Evolution, p. 55. ^ Creative Evolution, p. 159.
^ Creative Evolution, p. 170.

72 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

not only useful but approximately true. But the
further it trespasses into the domain of life, the
more inadequate and misleading it becomes.
Life always eludes it. It can only give us stiff,
motionless pictures of life, as cold, static and
colourless as the stone figures that adorn the base
of the Albert Memorial.

The contrast which Bergson draws between
intuition and intelligence as faculties of speculative
knowledge is, of course, greatly in favour of the
former ^ intuitjon alone is^apable of appreciating
what is new, vital and individual. It is true that
tHemtellect spoken of is pure intellect, i,e, intellect
pushed to its ideal limit : but intellect as we
actually find it is, according to Bergson 's view,
only redeemed by the element of intuition never
quite separable from it. Intellect proper is a
devitalised faculty, which finds its apotheosis on
the level of association. I cannot refrain from
drawing on Oliver Wendell Holmes for an
anecdote, and suggesting it as an illustration.

** A certain lecturer, after performing in an
inland city, where dwells a litteratrice of note,
was invited to meet her and others over the social
tea-cup. She pleasantly referred to his many
wanderings in his new occupation. * Yes,' he

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 73

replied, * I am like the Huma, the bird that never
lights, being always in the cars, as he is always on
the wing.* — Years elapsed. The lecturer visited
the same place once more for the same purpose.
Another social cup after the lecture, and a second
meeting with the distinguished lady. * You are
constantly going from place to place,* she said. —
* Yes,' he answered, * I am like the Huma,' and
finished the sentence as before.

" What horrors when it flashed over him that
he had made this fine speech, word for word,
twice over ! Yet it was not true, as the lady
might perhaps have fairly inferred, that he
had embellished his conversation with the Huma
daily during the whole interval of years. On the
contrary, he had never once thought of the odious
fowl until the recurrence of precisely the same
circumstances brought up precisely the same
idea. He ought to have been proud of the
accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given cer-
tain factors, and a sound brain should always
evolve the same fixed product with the certainty
of Babbage's calculating machine.** ^

There we have the triumph — or the degradation
— of intellect, ** the faculty of connecting the same

^ Oliver Wendell Holmes, The A utocrat of the Breakfast Table.

74 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

with the same, of perceiving and also producing
repetitions." On the other hand intuition, " if
it could be prolonged beyond a few instants would
not only make the philosopher agree with his
own thought, but also all philosophers with each
other. Such as it is, fugitive and incomplete, it
is, in each system, what is worth more than the
system, and survives it. The object of philosophy
would be reached if this intuition could be
sustained, generalised and, above all, assured of
external points of reference in order not to go
astray." ^

It is then claimed by Bergson that the study
of instinct and intelligence in nature confirms his

Criticism of ^^^""""y ^^ knowledge. As I have set
Bergson' s myself to qucstion this theory, I propose
Points of to call attention to certain difficulties
and to suggest that no case is made out
for the existence of any way of knowing other than
intelligence. Instinct and intelligence are said to
have been developed from the vital elan as from a
common source, in spite of the fact that intelligence
is out of touch with life and, indeed, represents

1 Creative Evolution, p. 252.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 75

a movement in precisely the opposite direction —
the movement towards materiality and space.
This, however, is what Bergson says. There is,
** around our conceptual and logical thought a
vague nebulosity made of the very substance
out of which has been formed the luminous
nucleus that we call the intellect." ^ " This
nucleus does not differ radically from the fluid
surrounding it. It can only be reabsorbed in
it because it is made of the same substance.'' ^
Further, when we compare the account of instinct
with the account of intelligence lower than human
intelligence, we find that the two betray remark-
able points of likeness. Bergson is not always
consistent with his own dictum that whatever is
innate knowledge in instinct bears on things^
while whatever is innate knowledge in intelligence
bears on relations. As regards the latter half
of the proposition he is clear enough. Intelli-
gence is, we are told, " only a natural power of
relating an object to an object, or a part to a
part, or an aspect to an aspect." ^ " More
precisely, intelligence is, before anything else,
the faculty of relating one point of space to

^ Creative Evolution, Introduction, p. 13.

2 Creative Evolution, p. 203. ^ Creative Evolution, p. 157.

76 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

another, one material object to another/* ^ As
regards instinct on the other hand, we read of it
(in a passage close to that last quoted) as also
expressing a relation. Referring to the instinct
of the Ammophila in operating on its victim, he
writes : ** This feeling of vulnerability might owe
nothing to outward perception, but result from
the mere presence together of the Ammophila
and the caterpillar, considered no longer as
two organisms, but as two activities. It would
express, in a concrete form, the relation of the one
to the other.'* 2 it appears indeed that if instinct
Instinct is sympathy, as it is affirmed to be,
gence, ex- then any instinctive activity must ex-
reiation, press a sympathetic relation. And if
ZtwPedge instinct is potentially self-conscious,
it implies then the object which would rise to

is therefore ^ •' ^ ^

intellectual, consciousness, if it could be cleared of
impediments, would be a relation, a relation of
this sympathetic kind. It is true that instinct
is said to express relation in a concrete form. But
what does this mean except that the instinctive
act expresses, without analysis or abstraction,
certain internal relations of life ? Such an ex-
pression, allowing it to be exact, cannot be more

^ Creative Evolution, p. 185. 2 Creative Evolution, p. 183.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 77

concrete than the relation which it expresses, and
a relation — from the very fact that it is a relation,
a connection with one thing or aspect rather than
another — cannot be entirely concrete, i,e, it
cannot represent life in its fulness, without
abstraction, or without emphasis at some special
point. If we can conceive of life in its original
unity, as an undifferentiated whole, then we can
think of life as a whole sympathetic to itself as a
whqle^ and we can think of self-knowledge —
whether potential or consciously realised — as
transcending intelligence. But, if we conceive
of life as entering in some way into matter and
exhibiting a tendency towards individuation^ we
see that life, when it does so, must at once lose
something of its concrete unity: self-knowledge
already implies a knowledge of certain internal
relations of the self, a knowledge of something
abstracted from the fulness of life. If intelligence
as opposed to instinct is a knowledge of rela-
tions, this self-knowledge is already intellectual
knowledge.

I suggest therefore that if we attribute to the
vital elan already launched into matter any sort
of knowledge, it must be a knowledge which is
already intellectual. This seems to be borne

^

78 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

out by another feature of insect life. Instinct
is dependent for its efficacy on the relations which
it represents repeating themselves : insects act
^ith the appearance of foresight, as if they
/counted on repetition. > But repetition is charac-
teristic of life on a low level, tending towards
materiality, 'and, on Bergson's own showing, the
faculty which is especially fitted to deal with
relations which can be repeated is not instinct
but intelligence. Instinct, as anyone may observe,
has no power to act with appreciation of what is
new in a situation : and it is difficult to see how
intuition, if it is developed out of instinct, can be
credited — as Bergson credits it — with such a power.
It is to be observed that even assuming the
relation represented by instinct to be " concrete ''
in the full sense, we still require proof that it can
come before consciousness without the interven-
tion of abstraction or analysis. The tendency of
instinct is towards unconsciousness ; even if the
unconsciousness of the insect is not complete,
how is the faint consciousness to be assigned to
instinct rather than intelligence ? For it is
admitted that instinct is never entirely pure,
is ** always more or less intelligent.'' ^

^ Creative Evohition, p. 143.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 79

Another point of resemblance between
instinct, as described by Bergson, and infra-
human intelligence, is that the latter, inteiu-
like the former, is largely exter- iZtind is
nalised in action. Thus, althouejh much [^^s^^y ^^:

' o ternahsed

more versatile than instinct, it is still inaction-
very limited in its range. " Absorbed at
every instant by the actions it performs and the
attitudes it must adopt, drawn outward by them
and so externalised in relation to itself, it no
doubt plays rather than thinks its ideas.** ^
Until revolutionised by language, intelligence is
** always turned outwards *\- it is only through
language that ** the spectacle of its own workings' '^
is revealed to it. This means to say that con-
sciousness emerges very little. On its lower
levels intelligence is more clearly a faculty of
action than of knowledge : as a faculty but its
of action it differs from instinct mainly ffsl^'deter-
in that its activity is less determinate. >wiwa^e.
On the line of evolution leading to the vertebrates
life seems to have aimed at widening the range
of possible activity, so that, in any particular
situation, there should be a greater degree of

^ Creative Evolution, p. 197.
* Creative Evolution, p. 168.

8o INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

indetermination in the organism's answer to the

call for action. This indetermination could only be

an advantage in the strus^gle for life if

Conscious- , ^ °^

ness and consciousness Were developed and choice
made possible. Hence arose the prac-
tical necessity for a conscious faculty of know-
ing and it may be assumed that intelligence
and consciousness have been evolved pari
passu.

There is no warrant to infer that there has
been any absolute break in the continuity of
the process from instinct to intelligence, that
intelligence is anything except instinct developed
and conscious. Various degrees of intelligence
can be observed, and these may reasonably be
interpreted as a progressive widening of instinctive
action by means of consciousness — the growth of
consciousness being accompanied by an increasing
complexity in the sensori-motor system, so as to
allow the reactions of the organism to be delayed
and varied. This interpretation explains the
gradual supersession of instinct by intelligence ;
for instinctive action becomes intelligent action
as soon as it is accompanied by consciousness and
the rudiment of choice. No occasion can arise
for the exercise of choice, unless there is first an

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 8i

uncertainty of reaction ; choice presupposes un-
certainty. Instinctive action, on the other hand, is,
as we have seen, unhesitating. The call for its
exercise is imperious and is immediately obeyed :
there is no room for consciousness to be interposed
between the stimulus and the response. Clearly
it was necessary that the force of instinct should
be weakened if choice was to become effective.

Similarly it seems reasonable to infer that some
of the human senses have become either atrophied
or less keen, in order that their urgency might not
impede the evolution of the power of choice.
Bergson suggests, in Time and Free Will^ that the
power of animals to find their way home over
unknown ground may perhaps be due to a sense
of qualitative direction (comparable with the
sense of sight) which, higher in the progress of
evolution, has given way to the advanced intel-
lectual idea of a homogeneous space. " The
higher we rise in the scale of intelligent beings,
the more clearly do we meet with the independent
idea of a homogeneous space. It is therefore
doubtful whether animals perceive the external
world quite as we do, and especially whether
they represent externality in the same way as
ourselves. . . . Animals have been seen to return

B.P. F

82 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

almost in a straight line to their old home, pursuing
a path which was previously unknown to them over
k distance which may amount to several hundreds
of miles. Attempts have been made to explain
this feeling of direction by sight or smell, and
more recently, by the perception of magnetic
currents which would enable the animal to take
its bearings like a living compass. This amounts
to saying that space is not so homogeneous for the
animal as for us, and that determinations of space,
or directions, do not assume for it a purely
geometrical form. Each of those directions
might appear to it with its own shade, itSL peculiar
quality. ... In truth, qualitative diifferences^
exist everywhere in nature, and I do not see why
two concrete directions should not be as marked^
in immediate perception as two colours. . . .
Instead of saying that animals have a special
sense of direction, we may as well say that men
have a special faculty of perceiving or conceiving
a space without quality." ^ In Creative Evolution
it is observed that the savage " understands better
than the civilised man how to judge distances, to
determine a direction, to retrace by memory the
often complicated plan of the road he has travelled,

1 Time and Free Will, p. 96.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 83

and so to return in a straight line to his starting-
ppint." ^ To whatever faculty we ascribe these
obscure powers— whether to instinct, or to some
special sense, or to an automatic " parrot **
memory which registers past experience evenly
and without discrimination — we see that they
differ from the deliberate methods of civilised
man. Their perfection is to achieve the object
in view without deliberation. It was necessary
that they should decrease in vitality and loosen
their hold upon man, if he was to become a
pioneer, choosing his own road freely and planning
his own method of travel. // was necessary^ in a
wordy that tendencies to immediate reaction should he
subdued in any sphere where intelligence was to
dondnate. In this connection it is immaterial whether

no we call the tendencies " instinctive,''

It is Bergson's view that traces of instinct I
remain in man, although dwarfed by the hyper- j
trophy of intelligence. Now we should instinct in
expect this to be so, but the question is Jamity^of^
whether any instinct which has survived knowledge.
is a faculty of knowledge or only a faculty of
action. As a faculty of action, it would be
strange if instinct had suffered total eclipse.

* Creative Evolution, p. 223.

84 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

Complete freedom of choice in all matters, in-
cluding those which might safely be left to auto-
matism, would be complete embarrassment, and
human freedom could not thrive on a basis of
absolute indetermination. We should naturally
look to find conscious action built up on uncon-
scious action. Much of our activity is, it will
be admitted, unconscious : but it may be objected
that it is unconsciou? merely because it is habitual.
This is true within limits, but from the point of
view of the individual some of man's unconscious
activity appears to be innate^ i.e. rigidly determined
by the structure of the human organism as it has been
moulded by the universal elan of life : unconscious
action of this kind we should recognise as instinctive.
Habitual action is analogous to instinctive action^ but
is due to the modifications of structure for which the
repeated actions of the individual are responsible.
The distinction, however, must not mislead us ;
what is instinctive from the point of view of the
individual should perhaps be regarded, like the
instinctive activity of insects, as habitual from
the point of view of the vital elan ; moreover,
although human beings are by far the most
individual of all creatures, it is impossible to
define the extent to which they act as indi-

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 85

viduals and not rather as vehicles of the universal
energy of life.

The close relation between the activity of the
insect and the precise form of its organism has a
parallel in certain functions of the human body.
** The truest analogy to the ant-state or bee-
state/* writes Joseph McCabe in his book, The
Evolution of Mindy " is not in the mental region
at all, but in the human body. Those who
profess inability to regard the complex social life
of the higher insects as automatic, do not seem
to reflect on what evolution has accomplished in
the wonderful cell-state of the human frame.
The extraordinary specialisation of, and division
of labour among, the cells of the body are just
as impressive as the features of ant-life. In that
great republic we have a hundred castes of
workers, each blindly accomplishing its share of
the harmonious work, and with a great power of
adaptation to special uses and environments.
Recent research has even shown that the com-
munity has its armies of leucocyte warriors, ready
to gather at any point in resistance to invasion. In
precision of action, in simulation of prevision and
intelligence, in complexity of structure and function,
the one community is as wonderful as the other.'*

86 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

Bergson, in spite of his arguments in favour
of instinct as a faculty of knowledge both in
insect and in man, supplies us with weapons
which we can turn against him. In one passage
he actually affirms that " the most essential of the
primary instincts are really vital processes/' and
that, " in extreme cases instinct coincides with the
work of organisation.*' ^ Referring to the lives
of animals, he states that " it is instinct still
which forms the basis of their psychical activity,'*
although " intelligence is there and would fain
supersede it." ^ Again, in Matter and Memory^ he
expresses the view that ** we can follow from the
mineral to the plant, from the plant to the simplest
conscious beings, from the animal to man, the
progress of the operation by which things and
beings seize from out their surroundings that
which attracts them, that which interests them
practically, without needing any effort of abstrac-
tion simply because the rest of their surroundings
takes no hold upon them : this similarity of
reaction following actions superficially different
is the germ which the human consciousness
develops into general ideas." ^ Here we have

^ Creative Evolution, p. 175. ^ Creative Evolution, p. 150.

* Matter and Memory, p. 207. Cf. also Creative Evolution,
pp. 225-6.

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 87

what seems to be a statement of the complete
continuity in evolution between instinct and
intelligence : intellectual ideas are said (or so
it seems) to have been developed, with the help
of consciousness, out of the relations which exist
between the structure of particular organisms and
their environment : for it is only by reason of the
structure of the organism that certain things take
no hold upon it : and instinct is a '' vital process/'
a function of the organism, an expression of ** a
concrete relation '* between it and other organisms
or activities. Readers of Matter and Memory will
be aware of the part played in that work by the
argument that an essential substructure is laid
for our psychical activity by the bodily attitudes
which we are always unconsciously adopting.
Here, in these subtle inclinations of the human
body, no less than in the marvellous cell-processes
concerned with the preservation of bodily health,
the province of instinct ought, I suggest, to be
acknowledged.

We conclude then that the term instinct should
properly be used to denote that unconscious
activity which is primarily an expression of the
form of the organism as created by evolution, or,
ultimately, of the purpose of life existing behind

88 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

that form. Intelligent action is a development
out of instinctive action ; it is action released
from subservience to organic form, widened in
range and accompanied by consciousness, — i,e,
by the power of reflection, which expresses itself
before action in choice and after action by criticism
of the result. Intelligence is the faculty which
exercises that power and is the only faculty of
knowledge. Within it may be contrasted intuition
and analysis. Intuition is the direct apprehension
of an object, always more or less abstract. Analy-
sis stands for the habitual method of the intelli-
gence, the proper object of which is to prepare
the way for intuition. Analysis, however mech-
anical some of its rules may be, is itself
based on intuition : in any process of thought
the two, analysis and intuition, continually
interact.

Common sense will always hesitate to accept

the idea that instinct is not a form of knowledge.

It looks upon each insect as a separate

Common- .... .

sense view individual, simply because it has a

of instinct. . . . i t* • t • i i »>

separate body : it sees the mdividual
insect act with a simulation of intelligence which
is often amazing. It does but follow its anthro-

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 89

pomorphic tendency in imagining some know-
ledge, akin to human intelligence, behind the
admirable act. It is therefore worth pointing
out that instinct is not infallible. Bergson
himself is constrained to admit this. In the
second place the limitations of instinct, even when
it carries out its work with absolute precision, are
so great that we ought not to let our Limitations
enthusiasm carry us away. Let us ^J^tand^'
consider the ant — proverbially wise ^^^^^^•
among insects. ** The behaviour of ants,'' writes
Joseph McCabe, " toward the beetles which they
curiously tolerate in their nests is . . . declared
by Wasmann to be very unintelligent. They
care for the larvae of the beetles in the same way
as for their own, though the beetle-larvae devour
their own very freely. On the other hand, the
balance is restored by a curiously unintelligent
feature of the ant's philanthropy. The beetle-
larva needs entirely different treatment from the
ant-larva. The ant-nurses, however, take it from
the dome of earth they have made over it, just as
they do their own larvae, and so unwittingly kill
most of the young beetles." ^ Instinct is here
shown as. a complete muddler. Another example

* Joseph McCabe, The Evolution of Mind, p. 175.

90 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

of ant-folly, similar in character, has recently
come to light. It appears that the caterpillar
Ant and ^f Lyc^na Arion^ the Large Blue
huUBYfly, Butterfly, whose life-history has at last
been discovered, is closely associated with a kind
of ant, Myrmica Scahrinodes, The butterfly lays
her eggs on plants of wild thyme growing on or
near ants* nests. The caterpillar, for the first
three weeks or so after it emerges, feeds on
the flowers of the wild thyme, although it
sometimes indulges in cannibalism. During this
period it moults three times ; after the third moult
it has a well-developed honey-gland on the back
of its tenth segment. At this stage in its career
it ceases to feed on the thyme, and wanders
aimlessly about until met by an ant. The ant
is at once interested and soon begins to imbibe
from the honey-gland. After a little while the
caterpillar hunches itself up into a peculiar shape
and the ant carries it off, much as a cat carries her
kitten, into the nest of the ant-community. There
the caterpillar passes the rest of its existence — no
less a period than nine months ; it is carefully
watched over and tended, still apparently by the
particular ant which originally found it. Mean-
while it grows fat on ant-larvae, feeding on them

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 91

for the first five or six weeks after its arrival, and
resuming the same diet after its winter sleep.
It pays for its upkeep by continuing to yield honey
to the guardian ant, and both sides appear to be
well satisfied with the bargain. The caterpillar
is full grown early in June : when it was first
brought into the nest, in August of the preced-
ing year, it was only one-eighth of an inch
long : it is now five times that length and very
corpulent.^

An example like this should open our eyes
to the unsatisfactory side of instinct. If we
regard the activity of caterpillar and ant from
the point of view of the individual interest of each,
we are struck by the fact that the caterpillar
gets the best of the exchange. We are not
inclined to credit it with actual cunning, but
that is because it seems to play so passive a part.
Its success is very obviously due to a peculiarity
of its organism — the honey-gland — which it does
not even have to exercise itself. On the other
hand, our opinion of the wisdom of the ant (if
not of its morality !) suffers something of a
shock. Here is the ant going out of its way to

^ Vide Country Life for 17th July, 1920 (" The Large Blue
Butterfly," by F. W. Frohawk).

92 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

introduce an enemy into its home, simply for
the sake of a rare delicacy which it can very
well do without ! Probably, however, we should
regard the activity of caterpillar and ant together^
from the point of view of the vital elan. Then,
instead of accusing the ant of folly, we shall
rather lay the blame on instinct — the force in
the background : life proceeding by instinct
appears to be at enmity with itself, for it can
only forward the interests of one species by harm-
ing those of another.

It may be said that conflict such as this is to be
found everywhere in life ; it is only the principle
of the struggle for survival, which is exhibited
equally among the most intelligent of the animals :
intelligence is no more to be commended in this
respect than instinct. The cases, however, are
not parallel. Conflict between intelligent crea-
tures, so far as they are intelligent, tends to the
survival not only of the fittest species but of the
fittest individual ; in other words, it tends towards
the improvement of the species. Intelligence,
as Bergson says, displays itself in finding the
appropriate way out of any particular difiiculty,
whatever the circumstances may be. It is above
all adaptable, and the intelligent creature is not

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 93

compelled to react in a determined way : the
individuals whose actions are best adapted to their
environment are those which succeed in the
conflict and perpetuate their kind.

With the insects, except in so far as they may
possess the rudiment of intelligence, there is no
room for true individual development within the
species. Instinct is limited by the structure of the
organism which serves it. The structure can be
m.ade perfect and a small repertoire of accom-
plishments can be developed through it. There
is, however, no adaptability. The individual
succeeds or fails according to the play of circum-
stance ; it is the play of circumstance which
decides whether the instinct called into action is
favourable or unfavourable. Conflict only tends
here to the survival of the luckiest individual^ the
one who is most aided by fortune in escaping his
enemy or finding his prey. The conflict con-
tinues, but it does not help to improve the species,
and there can be, from the point of view of life,
no positive advantage to justify it.

There is, then, ample reason to be dissatisfied
with instinct.

I cannot accept Bergson's view that in instinct
and intelligence life has found two equally fitting

94 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE

ways of achieving its purpose. Rather, I suggest
that the movement in the direction of the indi-
instinct not vidual, which Bergson notices as one of
^fiifTs^ the tendencies of Hfe everywhere ob-
probiem. servable, may equally well be described
as a universal movement towards intelligence.
Intelligence alone really enables life to introduce
freedom into the world of matter, as it sets outs
to do : the road to intelligence lies through
instinct, but instinct is an unsatisfactory stopping-
place ; the gaze of life is, from the first, set
beyond.

CHAPTER V

IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE AND DIRECT INSIGHT

In the last chapter I have attempted to show that,
even when we consider the phenomena of evolu-
tion, nothing can be found to justify
the Bergsonian view that there is a of intuitive

^ . r ' ' • 1- • r 1 knowledge

faculty or intuition, distinct rrom and beyond
opposed to intelligence, which is cap- ^^^^'
able of insight into reality. But if it were held
that such a faculty does actually exist, could it be
regarded as enabling us to pierce directly into
secrets of the universe outside our individual
selves ? Bergson, as I have pointed out, seems
to hesitate between two views :

(i) that the knowledge gained by intuition
of the self is extended outside the self by
imaginative inference, and

(2) that the mind, while not losing its own
individuality, can gain direct insight into

95

96 IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE

reality outside the self, without any media-
tion of the intellect.

The most specific account of the method of
intuition is contained in the Introduction to Meta-
Bergson's physics. It is, however, not at all free
ambtgmty. {j.^^ ambiguity, and Bergson*s meta-
phorical style adds to our difficulties. How are
we to interpret him when he says that " philosophy
consists in placing oneself within the object
itself** ; 1 that ** by intuition is meant the kind of
intellectual sympathy by which one places one-
self within an object in order to coincide with
what is unique in it and consequently inex-
pressible '* ; 2 that it is possible to ** place one-
self directly, by a kind of intellectual expansion,
within the thing studied '* ? ^ There are numerous
other expressions of a like order. The natural
interpretation would seem to be that we proceed
by direct vision from within, not by inference.*

But is this interpretation right, or is it too
literal ? In favour of it we may note that Berg-

^ Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 37.

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 6.
3 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 47.

* The use of the term " intellectual," — " intellectual sympathy,'*
" intellectual expansion " — has no significance to the contrary.
It is used in the wide sense. See p. 7 of the present essay.

AND DIRECT INSIGHT 97

son applies the term ** sympathy '' to knowledge
of ourselves as well as to knowledge of other
objects, and knowledge of ourselves is undoubtedly,
in his view, a knowledge by direct vision. More-
over, he declares that ** an absolute could only
be given in an intuition, whilst everything else falls
within the province of analysis'' ^ It is clear that
he does not consign to the " province of analysis "
either the self or those objects other than the
self within which we can place ourselves in order
to coincide with what is unique in them. Again,
we find it stated that ** the main object of meta-
physics is to do away with symbols '* ; ^ <* j^
can, and usually must abstain from converting
intuition into symbols";^ "a true empiricism
is that which proposes to get as near to the
original itself as possible, to search deeply into
its life, and so, by a kind of intellectual ausculta-
tion, to feel the throbbings of its soul ; and this
true empiricism is the true metaphysics.*' *

On the other hand, we are told that we cannot
sympathise with the innermost part of reality

^ Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 6. (Italics mine.)

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 67.
» Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 60.

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 31.

B.P. G

98 IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE

" unless we have won its confidence by a long
fellowship with its superficial manifestations. . . .
In this way only can the bare materiality of the
facts be exposed to view'* :^ that, ** when I
speak of an absolute movement ... I imply
that I am in sympathy with those states, and
that I insert myself in them l^y an effort of imagina-
tion '* ; 2 that, in the intuition of ourselves, ** we
have the feeling of a certain very determinate
tension, in which the determination itself appears
as a choice between an infinity of possible dura-
tions. Henceforward we can -picture to ourselves
as many durations as we wish^ all very different
from each other '* ; ^ that ** the consciousness we
have of our own self in its continual flux intro-
duces us to the interior of a reality, on the model
of which we must represent other realities ^ ^ These
statements are surely in favour of the view that
intuition is extended beyond the self not by
direct vision but by imaginative inference.

The two sets of passages seem indeed to be
quite irreconcilable. Little help is to be found

^ Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 78.

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 2. (Italics mine.)

' Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 50. (Italics mine.)

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 55. (Italics mine.)

AND DIRECT INSIGHT 99

in Creative Evolution, The general tenor of
this work would seem to support the theory of
direct vision ; for Bergson allows that man is
the most individualised of all creatures, and yet
believes that he is able to exercise in a higher
and a conscious form that sympathetic faculty
which is supposed to He behind the action of one
insebt upon another. This attitude might natur-
ally lead to the conclusion that man can obtain
direct access to the interior not only of his own
life, but of life higher and lower than his own.

Again, the doctrine that man can transcend
his own nature both upwards and downwards
looks, prima facie^ as if it would support Doctrine of
the theory of direct vision. The doc- ^Incedoet
trine, put forward in the Introduction ^^J ^f^,^^

' ^ up this

to Metaphysics^ is expanded in Creative ambiguity.
Evolution, In the earlier work we read that
** the intuition of our duration . . . brings us
into contact with a whole continuity of durations
which we must try to follow, whether downwards
or upwards ; in both cases we can extend our-
selves indefinitely by an increasingly violent
effort, in both cases we transcend ourselves.'*^
** Philosophy can only be an effort to transcend

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 53.

loo IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE

the human condition.** ^ We read also of " the
constant expansion of our mind, the ever renewed
effort to transcend our actual ideas and perhaps
also our elementary logic.** ^ Creative Evolution
develops this doctrine further. " A beneficent
fluid bathes us, whence we draw the very force
to labour and to live. From this ocean of life,
in which we are immersed, we are continually
drawing something, and we feel that our being,
or at least the intellect that guides it, has been
formed therein by a kind of local concentration.
Philosophy can only be an effort to dissolve
again into the Whole. Intelligence, reabsorbed
into its principle, may thus live back again its
own genesis. But the enterprise cannot be
achieved in one stroke ; it is necessarily collec-
tive and progressive. It consists in an inter-
change of impressions which, correcting and
adding to each other, will end by expanding the
humanity in us and making us even transcend
it.*' ^ " When we make ourselves self-conscious
in the highest possible degree and then let our-
selves fall back little by little, we get the feeling
of extension ; we have an extension of the self

1 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 65.

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 70. ' Creative Evolution, p. 202.

, \. > y,

AND DIRECT INSIGHf , , V , ! xoi^

into recollections that are fixed and external to
one another, in place of the intension it possessed
as an indivisible active will.'* ^ ** The further I
pursue this quite negative direction of relaxation,
the more extension and complexity I shall create. ''^
** Our personality thus descends in the direction
of space. It coasts around it continually in
sensation." ^

Lastly, I will quote at length a passage which
deserves particularly close attention. "In free
action when we contract our whole being in
order to thrust it forward, we have the more or
less clear consciousness of motives and of im-
pelling forces, and even, at rare moments, of the
becoming by which they are organised into an
act ; but the pure willing, the current that runs
through this matter, communicating life to it, is
a thing which we hardly feel, which at most we
brush lightly as it passes. Let us try, however,
to instal ourselves within it, if only for a moment ;
even then it is an individual and fragmentary will
that we grasp. To get to the principle of all
life, as also of all materiality, we must go further
still. Is it impossible ? No, by no means ; the

^ Creative Evolution, p. 219. * Creative Evolution, p. 221.
* Creative Evolution, p. 212.

jo^: IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE

history of philosophy is there to bear witness.
There is no durable system that is not, at least
in some of its parts, vivified by intuition. Dia-
lectic is necessary to put intuition to the proof,
necessary also, in order that intuition shall break
itself up into concepts and so be propagated to
other men ; but all it does, often enough, is to
develop the result of that intuition which tran-
scends it. The truth is, the two procedures are
of opposite direction : the same effort by which
ideas are connected with ideas, causes the intui-
tion which the ideas were storing up to vanish.
The philosopher is obliged to abandon intuition,
once he has received from it the impetus, and to
rely on himself to carry on the movement by
pushing the concepts one after another. But
he soon feels he has lost foothold ; he must come
into touch with intuition again ; he must undo
most of what he has done. In short, dialectic
is what ensures the agreement of our thought with
itself. But by dialectic — which is only a relaxa-
tion of intuition — many different agreements are
possible, while there is only one truth. Intui-
tion, if it could be prolonged beyond a few
instants, would not only make the philosopher
agree with his own thought, but would also make

AND DIRECT INSIGHT 103

all philosophers agree with each other. Such as
it is, fugitive and incomplete, it is, in each system,
what is worth more than the system and survives
it. The object of philosophy would be reached
if this intuition could be sustained, generalised,
and, above all, assured of external points of
reference in order not to go astray. To that end
a continual coming and going is necessary be-
tween nature and mind.

.When we put back our being into our will
and our will itself into the impulsion it prolongs,
we understand, we feel, that reality is a perpetual
growth, a creation pursued without end." ^

It is, I think, beyond dispute that the Berg-
sonian doctrine of transcendence does not merely
mean that we can transcend our intellect. We
have to do that in the first place ; but it is not
enough that we should, as knowing, coincide
with ourselves as acting : we have to pass beyond
human duration towards the highest duration of
creative life on the one hand, and the lowest
duration of inorganic matter on the other. We
have to coincide with the supra-human and the
infra-human. It might be thought, in the light
of this theory, that the view really representative

* Creative Evolution, pp. 251-2.

I04 IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE

of Bergson is that intuition of truth beyond the
individual and beyond the human is to be won
by direct vision, unaided by inference. It ap-
pears to me, however, that no such conclusion is
justified. For the question still remains to be
asked whether by transcending ourselves, we can
obtain a direct introduction to the duration of any
-particular being other than that of our individual
self. On the analogy of instinct we should be
able to do so ; for instinct betrays to one creature
the inner constitution of another, and intuition
is a higher form of instinct. Bergson does not
make this point clear ; but it rather seems as
though the intuitions we are said to obtain when
we violently contract or relax ourselves arc in-
tuitions of duration in general — that is to say^ we
obtain a direct insight into durations more concen-
trated^ and also into durations more diluted^ than the
human duration. These durations correspond with
the actual duration of other orders of beings but we
do not obtain any vision of a -particular duration^
of the duration of^ e.g. a demigod or a cow or a
beetle as such. An intellectual link still appears to
be necessary in order that we may penetrate to the
secret of any being not our own. We have an
insight into ** a whole continuity of durations^'' but

AND DIRECT INSIGHT (^105

if is only by imaginative inference^ founded on
observation^ that we can assign any particular dura-
tion to any particular creature.

The question we are examining is, at bottom,
the question of the relation between intuition and
intelligence. Bergson tends to put all Relation
knowledge of life to the credit of intui- Bergson's
tion and to reduce intelligence to a *«^««'^^^^

t> ana

faculty which can only deal with im- intellect.
mobility, and connect the same with the same.
Intelligence is often treated as the negation of
intuition. The knowledge that has been ac-
quired by scientists and philosophers in the past
is attributed to intuition, although it must be
clear that many of them would have repudiated
the notion that it was due to anything except
reason or intelligence. Further, Bergson believes
in intuition as the revealer of truth about matter
as well as about life, although in this connection
he has difficulty in distinguishing intuition from
intellect ; and intuition is supposed to move
upwards and downwards between the extremes
of intense life and inert matter, so that there is
no apparent reason why it should fail to discover,
unaided, the truth about every intermediate
stage.

jo^ IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE

Thus Bergson exalts intuition at the expense oiv^
intelligence, till intelligenre might to he. pnwpr-^<fp
Jess. One cannot help feeling that he would like
to show that we can reach every kind of truth
by direct vision, without the need for imaginative
inference or conceptual analysis. He is, how-
ever, inconsistent with himself. The passages
in his philosophy which seem to indicate that
intelligence is necessary for the development and
extension of knowledge are frequent and not
merely exceptional ; they appear to be in direct
conflict with other passages which mean, or ought
to mean, that intuition is all-suflicient. The last
of the passages I have quoted from Creative
Evolution is a good example, but only an example.
It allows dialectic — by which is meant the con-
ceptual work of the intellect — an important role
in the building up of knowledge. Dialectic is
necessary in order to '^ put intuition to the proof ^'^
intuition which, as a rule, appears in the guise
of proud independence, if not of infallibility.
It is necessary too in order that intuition may
** break itself up into concepts." The conceptual
work of the intelligence is proclaimed to be
essential for the development of what is grasped
in immediate intuition.

AND DIRECT INSIGHT 107

There is one illustration of the ambiguity of
Bergson's views which I should like to mention.
In 191 1 two interesting books on his conflicting
philosophy were published in England interpreta-
— yf Critical Exposition of Bergson's M'Keiiar
Philosophy by J. M'Keiiar Stewart, and and, Mr.
The Philosophy of Bergson by A. D. ^''^^'''^'
Lindsay. Mr. Stewart brings out very clearly
the anti-intellectual aspect of Bergson's theory
of knowledge, emphasising it perhaps rather too
strongly. Mr. Lindsay, on the other hand,
intellectualises Bergson, without being conscious,
apparently, that he is doing so. Stewart, deal-
ing with the various relations which might be
held to exist between intuition and intelligence,
concludes that the opinion of Bergson, at least
in the main line of his thought, is ** that the
intuition of reality and the conceptual represen-
tation of it are arrived at by two processes of
knowledge, each of which is the inverse of the
other.*' He adds, however, that there are pas-
sages which suggest the incompatible view
** firstly, that immediacy is reached at the end
of conceptualization," and " secondly, that the
initial act of knowledge is an immediate grasp,
out of which conceptual knowledge develops,

io8 IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE

but in which it existed in germ from the begin-
ning, and that, therefore, the conceptual repre-
sentation is in no way foreign to the immediate
knowledge.'' 1 "When he argues that an in-
tuition is achieved only when the totality of
observations and experiences gathered up by
positive science is surveyed, this points to the
view that the intuition is the perfection of con-
ceptual knowledge, that, at least, it is certainly
not the inversion of it/' ^

In brief, Stewart regards as inconsistent with
the main line of Bergson's thought the passages
which seem to indicate that intelligence plays
any positive part in the knowledge of life. Lind-
say, on the contrary, regards the same passages
as, par excellence^ those which give us the clue
to Bergson's real attitude. In their light we
are to look at intuition as a " power of gathering
from observation of many details an insight into
the reality which they manifest. It is a process
which cannot be reduced to rules, for it is always
in itself a creative act." ^ ** Intuition impHes
sympathy, in the sense at least of caring enough

1 Critical Exposition of Bergson's Philosophy, p. 133.

2 Critical Exposition of Bergson's Philosophy, p. 134.
* The Philosophy of Bergson, pp. 23S-9.

AND DIRECT INSIGHT 109

about things to know them in their own nature.''
When, however, Bergson ** seems to say that
intuition implies sympathy in a further sense,
the sympathy that enables us to assume the
nature of other things and feel with them,'' we
are apparently to understand that, in fact, " he
is thinking of that close acquaintance with an
object which is gained only by long experience
with it, an acquaintance constructed out of a
synthesis of innumerable details and subtle dis-
criminations." 1

Thus Lindsay takes to be typical and repre-
sentative the attitude which Stewart regards as
exceptional. Lindsay is certainly wrong ; the
real fact seems to be that he misinterprets the
Bergsonian intuition. In one place he refers to
duration as being ** what each of us apprehends
when he reflects on his own conscious life."^
This is in accordance with the view which I have
put forward in the present essay — the view that
the intuition of duration is intellectual and is
reached by reflection — but it is emphatically
opposed to Bergson 's theory of knowledge.
Starting from intuition as, in essence, intellectual,

^ The Philosophy of Bergson, p. 236.
* The Philosophy of Bergson, p. 114.

no IMAGINATIVE INFERENCE

Lindsay is bound to interpret the process of
knowledge as a development of intuition by
means of conceptual thought. As we have seen,
there are passages in Bergson*s philosophy which
can be quoted in support of this interpretation.
Moreover, they are not quite so exceptional as
Stewart seems to suggest. The view that intui-
tion is developed by intelligence, though it is rarely
given anything like definite expression, is to be
found running through a great part of Bergson's
work ; but it exists there side by side with the
view that intuition alone is capable of unde^r-
standing life and that any mediation of the in-
tellect can only result in a distortion of the truth.
This confusion in Bergson*s philosophy is
perhaps the inevitable result of any theory of
knowledge which begins with a non-intellectual
foundation. It is to be hoped, however, as I
have already said, that Bergson may still do
something to remove it.

CHAPTER VI

SUMMARY

Let me now summarise briefly the preceding
chapters of this essay. While accepting the
Bergsonian doctrine of the reality of ^

^ •' ^ Intuition

time, I combat the theory that this by reflec-
reality is apprehended by a non-in-
tellectual intuitive faculty. When we reflect on
our past experiences, although we are inclined
to analyse them into events or moments of feeling
external to one another, we cannot help recognis-
ing that when we lived them they formed in
some way a continuous unity, more or less closely
organised.

We are not quite certain how to interpret this
unity. Taking the standpoint of common sense,
we recognise that any vital experience is mis-
represented if we try to articulate it sharply,
imposing a rigid system upon it as if it were not

already organised from within. On the other

III

D

SUMMARY

hand, we have an exceedingly strong natural
tendency to view all reality, whether material or
spiritual, as a fit subject for analysis and dis-
section. Human thought has clung to the ideaJ
of the immovable and unchanging, free from the
flux of becoming, as the ultimate reality. For
science, too, the whole of reality is present at
any one moment just as much as at any other —
that is to say, the flow of time is of no account,
it makes no difl^erence ; and science, without
abandoning this point of view, has achieved
dazzling successes. So we are confirmed, by
the wisdom of the wise, in our tendency to split
our experience up into a number of states, follow-
ing one upon another ; our conscience protests
that we are denying our belief in continuous
personality. What then ? we satisfy our con-
science by picturing the separate states we have
set up as held together by a colourless unchanging
thread ; our conscience is easily duped and does
not perceive the obscurity of the picture.

But all this may be changed if we are led to
look at the habitual tendency of intelligence with
suspicion. Bergson by his brilliant exposition
of the antinomies of philosophy and also of the
limitations of science, makes this comparatively

SUMMARY 113

easy. Moreover, he brings forward very good
reasons to explain how it is that thought has
been misled. The analytical tendency of the
mind has been developed not for the purpose of
speculation, but in order to enable man to win
a mastery over his material environment and so
succeed in the struggle of evolution. When
man attempts to explain the universe, he is sub-
ject to a severe disability which,^ on the objective
side, may be described as the tyrannj of space
and^_on_the subjective side, as the tyranny of
the practical — i,e. the_armlytijcalTrr^tendencyjQ£hi,s
own mindx- This tendency is so deeply ingrained
that it sufficiently explains why, // the nature of
life is " true continuity, real mobility, reciprocal
penetration,'* it has been constantly misunderstood.
So we have the chance to examine our experi-
ence with fresh eyes. If we do not pursue
analysis unremittingly — if, giving our attention
to the organic aspect of experience which we
have always recognised, we seek only to lay it
bare of its particular colouring — we may succeed
in apprehending our own duration as it really is,
a unique indivisible movement, changing, grow-
ing and, at its deepest level, continually bringing
to birth the new. This truth is apprehended

B.P.

114 SUMMARY

intuitively by the intellect ; it is obtained by ordinary
reflection on our memories^ not by any faculty of
insight oppose JloTthe intellect. The difficulty of the
process consists in clearing the intellect of sophistica-
tion and keeping it clear. The intellect must not
be identified with its habitual mechanism. In
grasping duration we do violence^ no doubt^ to the
habits of the intellect^ but we do no violence at all
to the intellect itself ; on the contrary^ we assert
its true scope and power.

The intuition of duration which we so obtain
by reflection on our memories can be strength-
Reiationto ^^^^ if we bring it into closer touch
experience, ^j^j^ ^^^ experience. It is not possible

to make our faculty of vision one with our
faculty of acting, as Bergson suggests : we can-
not, at the very moment when we are absorbed
^^--k^ in action, obtain any insight, even the vaguest,
into the nature of the self ; nor, at a lower ten-
sion of energy, when we"Iive lazily by the moment,
can we have any simultaneous awareness of the
nature of our slackened duration. Awareness
of the self as enduring in time is always an aware-
ness of the past : it may, however, be an awareness
of the immediate past which is strong and vivid in
the memory, and which does not require any effort

SUMMARY 115

to recall it : and, if we direct our attention to the
fugitive moments when we begin to pass from
absorption in some activity to reflection upon it, we
may get a glimpse of the enduring essence of that
activity before the natural tendency of our
intellect has been able to arrest its flow and
decompose it into elements. In these moments
of transition the intellect has only just commenced
to come into operation. Nevertheless it is the
intellect alone which obtains the vision. The
difference between this intuition by reflection on the
immediate past and intuition by reflection on more
distant memories is simply that in the former case
we can grasp the truth before it has been spoilt by
analysis^ while in the latter we have to reject the
interpretation which analysis presses upon us ; we
have to undo the work of analysis.

So much for the intuition of the self — an
intuition which is always intellectual. Bergson
supports his theory that it is a non-
intellectual faculty by connecting it andinteiH-
with instinct. This connection rather
suggests that we ought to be able, by intuition, to
penetrate direct into reality beyond the borders of
our individual selves ; such a view is indeed to be
found — though Bergson is neither clear nor

ii6 SUMMARY

consistent — both in the Introduction to Meta-
physics and in Creative Evolution,

First, however, a good case has to be made
out for recognising instinct as a separate faculty
ofJaiowkdgej_oppQsed_ J:q^^ _I nstinc-

tive activity ijimore^perfect and precise than
intelligent activity, but is narrowly confined to
particular actions, which are^ closely related to
the particular structure of jhe organism. In-
telligent activity is distinguished by its greater
adaptability, and by the accompaniment (in a
higher and higher degree, as intelligence develops)
oTconsciousness and choice. Bergson, however,
regards instinctive action, although in fact
unconscious, as springing out of knowledge ;
consciousness is not entirely absent, but " repre-
sentation is blocked up by action '* — the action
is so perfect that choice could not improve upon
it ; there is no call for consciousness, nor is
there any room for its exercise. None the less
knowledge is latent, and is directed to the inner
reality of life, to howsoever minute a fragment
it may be limited. The knowled^e^of inteHj-
g^^e, on the contrary, is directed towards the
nature of matter ; intelligence is a practical, not
a speculative_faculty^ inferior in exactitude, but.

SUMMARY 117

indefimtdj_wid^^^ It has

been developed in man to such an extent as
almost to extinguish the light of instinct ; yet
instinct has gained from the interaction between
the two : it has been saved from bondage to a
material object, its implicit and potential knowledge
has begun to be unfolded in consciousness, and it
has been rendered capable of a direct vision of life.

This is Bergson's teaching. The conclusion
that instinctive action points to a knowledge
other than intelligence does not^eem, however,
to be well founded. Instinct is said to be con-
cerned with /^/g^j;^— with life in its concrete
fulness — while intelligence is concerned with
relations abstracted from life. But instinctive
action expresses a relation between the organisms
which it affects, and, if the knowledge supposed
to lie behind the action could be actualised in5jHi/\j/
consciousness, it would be knowledge of a rela-
tion._ Any knowledge of a jrelatipn is already, in
essence, intellectual.

The only distinction which observation of
insect and animal behaviour entitles us to draw
between instinct and intelligence is that intelli-
gent action is more indeterminate, less dependent
upon the precise form of any bodily organism.

ii8 SUMMARY

Indeterminate action, in order to be effective,
must be accompanied by consciousness and the
power of choice. The progress of intelligence
is marked by an increasing ability to choose and
to reflect : this implies the perception of more
and more general relations. The development of
instinct and intelligence in evolution is, however,
unilinear. Instinct is in no essential respect different
from intelligence ; provided that it does not become
stereotyped, intelligence may at any moment spring
from it. Instinct is not obliterated by association
with intelligence : it has survived in man. But it
is to be found in the organic functions of his body,
and in those unconscious bodily attitudes which are
a condition of his psychical activity ; nowhere is it
to be found, either in insect or in man, as a realisable
faculty of knowledge.

Now as to the extension of intuition beyond
the self. If the intuition of the self as enduring
y in time is intellectual, then there is no

Imagtna- '

tive infer- question as to the way in which, nor-

ence and ^

direct in- mally at any rate, we must proceed. The
^*^ * intuition of the self is a privileged

intuition ; we can only apply our theory of duration
beyond our individual selves and beyond humanity,
by imaginative inference, and the results must be

SUMMARY 119

tried by the usual tests of coherency and of
consistency with known facts. In Bergson*s
philosophy it is possible to detect two theories :
according to one, intuition can dispense with
intelligence and penetrate into reality by pure
direct vision ; according to the other, intelligence
is necessary in order that the knowledge gained
by intuition may be verified and expanded.
These two theories are nowhere reconciled —
they are indeed irreconcilable.

If my contentions are sound, it is possible —
indeed, it is necessary — to accept in essence the
Bergsonian doctrine of duration, without believ-
ing in the existence of any faculty of knowledge
other than the intellect. The intellect is adequate
for the apprehension of duration : there is no
need to transcend it — all that is necessary is that
we should not be slaves to intellectual habit.
We can still pursue the old dialectical methods,
but we have the help of a great new guiding
principle, by which we can check and revise our
elaborate analysis and synthesis. I believe that,
while the doctrine of a special faculty of intuition
is doomed to perish, the principle of duration
will stand firm as the great gift of Bergson to
future philosophy.

CHAPTER VII

INTELLECTUAL INTUITION AND THE MYSTIC

Philosophy is then, and always must be, a work
of the vital intelligence. But we must not over-
look the importance of another aspect, the per-
sonal experience which is not itself intellectual
but is presented to the intellect in memory. I
have suggested that the intellectualist may accept
and profit by Bergson's theory of duration. In
conclusion I would suggest the possibility that
the mystic of the future may also benefit.

Mysticism is a dangerous word, and I will

not attempt to define it closely. It stands

primarily for a way of life — for all

Mysticism. ... .

that distinguishes a certain supernormal
type of being or activity from the ordinary experi-
ence of man. No definition therefore can be at all
adequate. I wish, however, to invite attention
to certain well-known features of mystical life
and doctrine, particularly to the escape of the

INTELLECTUAL INTUITION 121

individual from the prison of his separate self
and his mergence in a life greater than his own.

Up to the present we have considered two ways
in which it is possible to hold that our intuition
of duration can be extended beyond the indi-
vidual self — the way of direct vision and the way
of imaginative inference ; we have decided that
of these two only the latter is open to us. We
have, however, mentioned a third way — open to
a few — the unification of our experience with
other experience ; this would be the way of the
mystic. The intuition of the mystic would always
remain intellectual ; the method would he the same
as with other men^ but the experience to which the
intuition was applied would he an experience more
wide and rich than that of an individual man.

It is a somewhat curious fact that Bergson
and his disciples are very shy of mysticism and
not at all disposed towards an alliance. „, .,

^ Phtlosophto

At the end of the Introduction to Meta- attitude of
physics we are assured that " There is
nothing mysterious in the faculty of intuition.
Every one of us has had occasion to exercise it
to a certain extent.'' Dr. Wildon Carr, in his
Philosophy of Change^ writes that ** intuition in
the sense in which this philosophy affirms it has

122 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

nothing cither mystical or even mysterious about
it/' ^ and that "it is not only a fact, but that so
far from its being a mystical experience, it is
the most common and unmistakable fact.'**
" There is one ridiculous objection," writes the
indignant M. Le Roy, ** which I quote only to
record. I mean that which suspects at the
bottom of the theories we are going to discuss
some dark background, some prepossession of
irrational mysticism." ^

Yet it has been said (and I think the definition
would be quite widely accepted) that ** mysti-
cism, in its pure form, is the science of ultimates,
the science of union with the Absolute, and
nothing else."* Is there nothing mystical then
in the philosophy of Bergson, who defines meta-
physics as the " science which claims to dispense

^ Henri Bergson, The Philosophy of Change (191 1, in the
People's Books Series), p. 21.

* The Philosophy of Change (1914), p. 22. It may be questioned
whether this contrast is legitimate. "The mystical sense,"
writes Dean Inge, "is so far from being a rare endowment, or an
abnormality which we may hesitate whether we should class as
pathological, that it is, in one or other of its forms, almost
universal." {Mysticism in relation to Philosophy and Religion,
a paper published in the first number of The Pilgrim, Oct., 1920.)

3 Edouard Le Roy, A New Philosophy, p. 113.

* Evelyn Underbill, Mysticism, p. 86.

AND THE MYSTIC 123

with symbols/' ^ and states that ** an absolute
could only be given in an intuition '' ? ^ It is
at least puzzling. But the fact that mysticism is
a much-abused word goes far to explain the
apparent anxiety to be dissociated from it. It is
often understood to imply an attitude of hostility
to science, and Bergson disclaims any ** mysti-
cism " such as this. No philosopher is more
entitled to do so. It is typical of his attitude
that he remarks, when referring to the question
whether acquired characters can be transmitted
from parent to child, that ** it is nowhere clearer
that philosophers cannot to-day content them-
selves with vague generalities, but must follow
the scientists in experimental detail and discuss
the results with them.*' ^ We have his own
statement, in connection with his book Matter
and Memory^ that he took five years to sift the
enormous literature on aphasia.* But we require
no such assurance : all his works prove his
anxiety to bring science and metaphysics into
the closest possible touch. He is constantly

^ Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 8.
2 Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 6.
^ Creative Evolution, p. 82.

* Statement before the French Philosophical Society, quoted
by M. Le Roy in A New Philosophy, p. 8.

124 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

throwing light on metaphysical problems by his
keen examination of scientific data. It is an
essential part of his method.

Yet there are undoubtedly mystical elements

in Bergson's philosophy. The doctrine that we

^ ^ are able, by a violent effort, to tran-

Elements o] ^ •' '

mysticism scend human knowledge — to " put back
Transcend- our being into our will and our will
itself into the impulsion which it prolongs **
— is, so far as it goes, essentially mystical. But
it does not, as I conceive, go the whole way.
It is not claimed that such transcendence can
introduce us into the heart of any particular
order of being : all it can do is to give us a
momentary glimpse of durations other than our
own, of which we can predicate nothing except
that they are more concentrated or more feeble
than ours. Moreover the mind, although it
becomes like its object and takes up its position
within it, is yet supposed to remain distinct enough
for the act of metaphysical intuition : a degree of
individuality is retained. This hardly appears
conceivable. On the higher level consciousness
would surely be absorbed in activity, on the
lower it would be dissipated in inertia. I allow
that the process of withdrawal from the forms of

AND THE MYSTIC 125

intellect, from concepts and from images — "a
stripping off of extraneous images and a denuda-
tion of the heart, so that a man may be free from
images, and attachments to every creature " ^ —
is a process which brings us towards a closer
contact with life. But, as we approach, the con-
sciousness of self grows feeble and vague. Only
the intellect, not yet entirely discarded, keeps
that consciousness alive. As soon as we have
really transcended our intellect, awareness of the
nature of our activity must vanish in the activity
itself, and intuition has disappeared. This is
tantamount to saying, as I have said before, that
in any actual intuition we obtain intelligence is
present as the only active element. When mind
is actually " placed within " its object, the in-
tellect is no longer active and we can, at the
time, have no knowledge. Knowledge is not to
be obtained simply by a thrusting of the mind
into the reality which it desires to know : for
mind, while so merged in its object, will give us
no intuition of life or of matter : it will tell us
nothing.

If intuition is to reach out beyond our indi-
vidual selves to a higher level of reality, it will

^Ruysbroek, The Adornment of the Spiritual Nuptials, bk. ii.

126 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

not be by the penetration of our minds into a
reality outside us, but by the mergence of our
whole being in a greater whole. This state of
union cannot be a state of knowledge in any
human sense, for it must be an experience where
knowledge is transcended — a joyous and perfect
activity above all knowledge. For knowledge
can hardly be perfectly fused with action and yet
retain its character. As Kant conceived that
" good " will gives place in God to a ** holy '*
will — a will above the moral antithesis of good
and evil — so we might conceive that in God,
so far as He is transcendent, knowledge (in any
sense we can appreciate) is superseded by an
activity undeviating and perfect.

With such activity the mystic may be unified.
For him, however, there will come the return
to the individual life, to the senses, to the in-
tellect. In the rapid transition consciousness
will begin to awake and to reveal to him the
nature of the life with which he has been identified.
The transition, however swift, can hardly be
entirely abrupt : in the moment when mind is
most nearly in contact with the overwhelming
experience, it is possible that there may come a
sudden, vague, fleeting vision — an intuition of

AND THE MYSTIC 127

the greater, the universal self. As the transition
continues, the intellect comes more fully into
play, and the vision breaks up into units of
imagery, growing clearer but losing touch with
the original. After this point is reached, mys-
tical experience can only be apprehended by
reflection upon it, as upon any other memory.

Bergson*s theory of transcendence has for its
complement a belief in the original unity of life.
Transcendence of the individual and jji^ ^^nity
of the human is made possible for man ^-^ ^^^^'
by the fact that behind all the diverse forms of
life there is one and the same tremendous vital
e/an. The doctrine of the unity of all things
is a well-known feature of mysticism. It is to be
noted, however, that Bergson does not believe
in any rounded-ofF unity : he does not worship
any static Absolute. For him the conception of
God is the conception of a perpetually creative
activity. ** The universe is not made, but is
being made continually. It is growing, perhaps
indefinitely, by the addition of new worlds.** ^
The unity is imperfect, again, because there is a
discernible tendency towards the individual,
although the tendency does not go so far as

^ Creative Evolution, p. 255.

128 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

common sense would suppose. In the insects
there is little individuality. "When we see the
bees of a hive forming a system so strictly
organised that no individual can live apart from
the others beyond a certain time, even though
furnished with food and shelter, how can we
help recognising that the hive is really, and not
metaphorically, a single organism, of which each
bee is a cell united to the others by invisible
bonds ? ^*^ The vertebrates are far more indi-
vidual ; "an organism such as a higher verte-
brate is the most individuated of all organisms,
yet if we take into account that it is only the
development of an ovum forming part of the
body of its mother and of a spermatozoon belong-
ing to the body of its father, that the egg (i,e,
the ovum fertilised) is a connecting link between
the two progenitors since it is common to their
two substances, we shall realise that every indi-
vidual organism, even that of a man, is merely
a bud that has sprouted on the combined body
of both its parents. Where, then, does the vital
principle of the individual begin or end ? Gradu-
ally we shall be carried further and further back,
up to the individuaFs remotest ancestors : we

^ Creative Evolution, p. 175.

AND THE MYSTIC 129

shall find him solidary with that little mass of
protoplasmic jelly, which is probably at the root
of the genealogical tree of life. Being, to a
certain extent, one with this primitive ancestor,
he is also solidary with all that descends from
the ancestor in divergent directions. In this
sense each individual may be said to remain
united with the totality of living beings by in-
visible bonds. . . , This life common to all the living
. . * is not so mathematically one that it cannot
allow each being to become individualised to a
certain degree. But it forms a single whole,
none the less.'' ^ Of the love of a mother for her
child, Bergson writes that it *' may possibly
deliver us life's secret. It shows us each genera-
tion leaning over the generation that shall follow.
It allows us a glimpse of the fact that the living
being is above all a thoroughfare, and that the
essence of life is in the movement by which life
is transmitted." ^

Nowhere, in fact, is the isolated individual to
be found. The unconscious sympathy which is
the basis of instinct is simply the drawing close
between this and that so-called individual, or
between this and that species, of the mystical

* Creative Evolution, p. 45. ^ Creative Evolution, p. 135.

B.P. I

I30 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

relation which exists between all living beings.
We may, in the manner of Bergson, picture life
as a charioteer stooping forward behind all the
diverse multitudes of the living, urging them on
along the blind intricate courses of their yet
untravelled road. The charioteer holds the reins
and co-ordinates the vast team. All their plung-
ings and strugglings cannot shake them free from
his masterful control. In different degrees,
whether of hatred or of amity, they are all bound
together. Man alone approaches to free indi-
viduality, and even man has not escaped so far
as he imagines.

We may, I think, justly claim to find a strong
mystical element in Bergson*s insistence on the
unity of life. We cannot, it is true, properly
call a man of science a mystic simply because
he comes to the conclusion that the universe
is one vast system of interacting and inseparable
forces. We cannot call a philosopher a mystic
simply because he believes in a perfect unity,
made in the image not of himself but of the
mechanism of his intellect, which he names the
Absolute. In order to decide whether a man's
belief is mystical, we have to consider his whole
outlook : it is not enough that he believes in a

AND THE MYSTIC 131

truth which we hold to be mystical. Yet the
reader of Creative Evolution ought, I think, to
recognise in it the work of a complex genius in
whom there is a definite mystical vein.

But in what manner may the mystic of the
future benefit from Bergson*s philosophy ? The
mystic has commonly spoken of an j,^^
Absolute, whole and complete : Reality mystic's

^ '' account of

is timeless and unchangeable, the mys- Reality as

, . . f, n r timeless.

tical experience is one or rest, bo far
he seems to be at one with the analytical philo-
sopher. The conception of Bergson is apparently
in direct opposition to both. For him reality is
movement, and movement is time. Eternity is
** no longer conceptual eternity, which is an
eternity of death, but an eternity of life. A
living, and therefore still moving eternity, in
which our own particular duration would be
included as the vibrations are in light ; an
eternity which would be the concentration of all
duration, as materiality is its dispersion.'* 1

How is this conflict to be explained ? I sug-
gest the possibility that Bergson *s theory of
duration (founded anew on intellectual intuition

^ Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 54.

132 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

and extended by imaginative inference to a super-
human sphere) is truer to the experience of the
The theory ^7^^!^ than the mystic's own stammer-
of duration ingf self-expression.

may be ^ ^

truer to his For let US specukte as to the nature of
mystical experience. We should think of
the human spirit, caught up into the great
movement of Life, as liberated from its ordinary
dependence on matter. The senses and the brain
are instruments of selection with a view to utility :
out of the moving continuum of the real they
select discrete movements. Thus the spirit in its
ordinary perception of the world has an artificially
diminished reality to translate into experience. It is
this impoverished reality that it contracts into fixed
and solid bodies on which it may the more con-
veniently act. The mystical perception must be
conceived as fundamentally different. As soon as
we think of the material body as ceasing to limit
the spirit^ we must think of the spirit as having an
undiminished reality to deal with. The practically
irrelevant is no longer excluded from its realisa-
tion. It is no longer obliged to neglect the
inner constitution of things. Even if it ** con-
tracts the development of humanity into the great
phases of its evolution/* it will not ignore its

AND THE MYSTIC 133

humblest movement. We shall not agree here to
Bergson's dictum that " to perceive means to
immobilise.*' ^ Rather will we believe His experi-
that the mystic may realise vital activi- restful be-
ties, akin to the Supreme Life, in what ^^^^j^^^
we commonly and falsely regard as ^^ntary.
inactive and mechanical. On the other hand,
he will not suffer from that false appearance of
change which besets our ordinary life, that
illusion to which we are lamentably subject,
resulting from the uneasy flitting to and fro of
our intellect among the multiplicity of pheno-
mena. He will realise rest where we feign
motion, motion where we feign rest. He is one
with the great vital impulse moving continually
on its creative path, and all the details by which
we are distracted are, for his realisation, restored
to their proper setting in the flux of the universe.
I have been careful to use the words ** realise ''
and " realisation '* rather than ** know " and
"knowledge.'' For the realisation is a realisation
in experience and not in knowledge. Knowledge
for us impHes articulation. The experience of
the mystic, while it continues, transcends articu-
lation, and therefore transcends knowledge.

^ Matter and Memory, p. 275.

134 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

The brain is normally active, I have said, in
diminishing the fulness of the world we perceive.
It is similarly active in shutting out from con-
sciousness the greater part of our memories.
Hence, in ordinary life, we go on our ways with
even our own individual personalities only partly
realised. We meet the various circumstances of
day by day now with one, now with another,
greater or lesser fragment of our selves. For
practical purposes it is indeed essential that we
should attend to the present moment and the
immediate environment — that we should exclude
from attention all the past except so much of it
as may be useful now. The things of the present
are prominent out of all proportion in our outlook.
They falsify our notions of time, so that time
appears to be a succession of disjointed fragments,
instead of a ceaseless growth where nothing is
lost ; of change, so that change appears to be a
synonym for capricious annihilation of the old and
generation of the new, instead of a ceaseless
modification of a past which cannot die by a
moving present in which all is gathered up.
They strive to violate the natural piety by which
all hours and all seasons are in fact linked together.

With the mystic all is different. The brain no

AND THE MYSTIC 135

longer thins out the content of his experience.
He feels the slow expansion of a personality infinitely
greater than his own which is gathered up in its
whole force. The real gradual growth will be the
change which he now realises^ unlike the capricious
surface-movement with which he is chiefly familiar
on the level of normal life. This growth of a vast
personality which he implicitly realises must be
a restful experience by comparison with the
practical life. It is the experience of an infinite
personality gathered up into a time which he
will afterwards essay to describe as an Eternal
Now — a personality infinitely active, yet so in-
finitely great as to need no readjustment, no
break or pause, in the passage from activity to
activity. Hence the contradictions into which
human intelligence and human speech must fall.

For how is the mystic to speak of his experi-
ence, when he is able to speak, that is, when he
has descended from the watch-tower of j^ ^^ ^^y.
his mystical vision ? The expression ^^^.^ , „
** time '* will mean for him what it only in the

. sense of

means for other men — a spatialised being non-
time, full of the geometrical partitions ^^^^*^ '
which we see in space. He cannot therefore
express his mystical experience in terms of time

136 INTELLECTUAL INTUITION

without using grossly spatial metaphor. His
attitude is far from being one oj radical opposition
to the Bergsonian philosophy. The time to which
he denies reality is the concept of spatialised time :
he has no truer conception oj time by which
to correct it. Hence he may naturally refer
to his experience as ** timeless/' meaning — at
bottom — that it was non-spatial. On the other
hand, the epithet ** timeless " suggests inertia
or, as Bergson would say, an ** eternity of death,''
while the experience he remembers was certainly
no state of union with an inactive reality. Is he
then to speak of an active state ? So calling it,
he will immediately picture a condition of spatial
activity. So he very likely calls it, in something
like despair, an active inactivity.

It is possible to see the genesis of the doctrine
of Nirvana, and also of the paradoxical expressions
which are common in the writings of the mystics
who reject it. The doctrine of Nirvana is perhaps
more easily accepted by the uncorrected human
intellect, with its love of clear-cut analysis and
its hatred of contradictions, but the truer mysti-
cism is that which confesses without reserve that
reality is inexpressible, and dares openly to fall
into self-contradiction. Were it not better, it

AND THE MYSTIC 137

may be asked, that the mystic should observe
the golden rule of silence ? That is a question,
however, which it is useless to ask. The tend-
ency to self-expression is innate in man, and too
powerful ever to be subdued : Cas- Real time
sandra, unable to communicate her ^^ysUcof
vision to others, will rave incoherencies ^^^M^^^-
rather than be mute. Moreover, the intellect,
as we have seen, is capable of being corrected.
It. can come to realise its native powers of in-
tuition. The conception of duration is a
revolutionary conception which resolves many
antinomies, and there is hope that, by its aid, the
mystic of the future may throw a clearer light on
the nature of mystical experience. The mystic
may find that the conception of eternity as a
concentrated ever-moving duration closes with
his remembered experience better than the con-
ception of a static unity, whole and complete.
He may find it possible, to the inestimable benefit
of human knowledge, to carry the exploration
of his intellect farther and farther into the heart
of life, finding a solution for the problems which
have hitherto baffled him when he has tried to
recapture, in articulate imagination, the tran-
scendent experience of truth.

APPENDIX

MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL AND M. BERGSON

It is amazing that Bertrand Russell should be
capable of argument so loose and superficial as
that employed by him in attacking Bergson*s
theory of knowledge. In illustration I propose
to comment on a passage from his essay Mysti-
cism and Logic {Mysticism and Logic and other
Essays^ published in 1 9 1 8 by Messrs. Longmans,
Green & Co., vide pp. 15-16).

I will take the passage bit by bit, and look at
it from the attitude not of a critic of Bergson but of
an orthodox disciple,

I. "Of Bergson's theory that intellect is a
purely practical faculty, developed in the
struggle for survival, and not a source of
true beliefs, we may say, first, that it is only
through intellect that we know of the struggle
for survival and of the biological ancestry of
man : if the intellect is misleading the whole
138

RUSSELL AND BERGSON 139

of this merely inferred history is presumably

untrue.'*

If Russell is using the term " intellect *' in the
narrow Bergsonian sense, he is not entitled to
start from the premiss that "it is only through
intellect " that we know about evolution. Berg-
son would not admit it, for he holds that intuition
is essential to the discovery of scientific truth :
he writes that ** a ^profoundly consideredJbistory
of human_thQught-AyQuld_show that we owe__to
intuition all that Js^greatest^ in the sciences as
well as all that Jsjpennanem in metaphysics.'' ^

If, on the other hand, Russell is using the term
intellect in a wider sense, so as to embrace intui-
tion, he is not entitled to found any conclusion
on the suggestion that Bergson regards intellect
as " misleading." If the history of the past is
elicited by intellect in the sense of intuition and
inference combined, then there can be, from the
point of view of the Bergsonian philosophy, no
presumption of its untruth : Russell's argument
falls to the ground.

A sentence in the essay two pages earlier
suggests that when Russell speaks of knowing
** only through intellect," he is, as a matter of

* Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 59.

I40 MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL

fact, using intellect in a wide sense. ** Instinct,
intuition or insight,'* he writes, " is what first
leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason
confirms or confutes.'* His argument appears
then to amount to this, that x is only known
through intellect including intuition, and that if
intellect excluding intuition is (as Bergson says)
misleading, all knowledge of x is presumably
untrue.

2. "If, on the other hand, we agree with
him in thinking that evolution took place
^ as Darwin believed, then it is not only
intellect, but all our faculties, that have
been developed under the stress of practical
utility. Intuition is seen at its best where
it is directly useful, for example in regard to
other people's characters and dispositions."

It is admitted that so far as intuition has been
developed, it has been developed " under the
stress of practical utility." But what does this
prove } Certainly not that ** intuition is seen at
its best where it is directly useful." The idea of
intuition which Russell has to overthrow, and
which he cannot ignore or assume to be false, is
that of a faculty pre-eminently fitted by its original

AND M. BERGSON 141

nature for the speculative understanding of life.
If intuition is such a faculty, its development
with a view to utility will not necessarily improve
it as a giver of absolute truth.

If you take a physically unfit scholar and train
him solely with a view to running, you may
succeed in developing him from a bad into a
moderate runner, but it does not follow that he
will be seen at his best on the running-track.

As an example of intuition at its best, Russell
mentions intuition ** in regard to other people's
characters and dispositions.*' Now such intui-
tion is probably far from being pure. Bergson
writes that ** in the phenomena of feeling, in
unreflecting sympathy and antipathy, we experi-
ence in ourselves — though in a much vaguer
form, and one too much penetrated with intelligence
— something of what must happen in the con-
sciousness of an insect acting by instinct."^ In-
tuition in course of being developed for utility
is probably intuition becoming merged with
intellect : the development that takes place is
not a development of intuition pure and simple.

3. ** Bergson apparently holds that capacity
for this kind of knowledge is less explicable

* Creative Evolution^ p. 184.

142 MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL

by the struggle for existence than, for ex-
ample, capacity for pure mathematics."

In what sense does Bergson hold this view ?
Clearly in the sense that intuition is less far
developed than intellect : the struggle for exist-
ence has done less to develop intuition, and has
therefore less to explain. Any development of
intuition with a view to utility is just as explicable
by the struggle as the development of intellect
is : but intuition itself, as we find it, is (as com-
pared with intellect) less to he explained by the
evolution of life^ because it is more to be explained
by life's original nature. It is here that the real
difference^ between jRussell and Bergson lies :
Russell appears to regard our faculties as wholly,
explicable by evolution, while^^ acc-Ordin^ io
Bergson, they have to be explained ako by th.e
. originaljiature of the vital elan with its implicit
power of sympathetic knowledge. This root idea
ofBergson seems to be ignored by Russell (cf.
section 2 above).

4. ** Yet the savage deceived by false friend-
ship is likely to pay for his mistake with
his life ; whereas even in the most civilised
societies men are not put to death for
mathematical incompetence. '*

AND M. BERGSON 1.43

For the sake of argument we will ignore the
intellectual element in the savage's power of
penetration, and agree with Russell to regard
him as the representative of intuition.

Now the comparison between the intuitive
savage and the mathematical genius would sug-
gest that intuition ought to be exceedingly useful
for survival, and intellect, on the contrary, of very
little use. The question is therefore forced upon
us why intuition has not in fact been developed
to anything like the extent of intellect.

Ultimately, the only satisfactory explanation is
that which Russell rejects, viz. that intuition is
a faculty of absolute knowledge and not, like
intellect, a practical faculty. Intuition is, accord-
ing to Bergson, a sympathetic knowledge due to
the original unity of life : life is a whole sym-
pathetic to itself. As soon as life, entering into
matter, divides itself up — as soon as the tendency
to individuation begins to assert itself — the wide
range of intuition (originally co-extensive with
reality) begins to be contracted. Intuition is
dependent on a magnetic life-bond between the
subject and object of it. In order to have a
wide and developed intuitive knowledg_e,^ man
would have to lose his individuality.

144 MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL

Intuition, again, is the faculty which gives
absolute truth, not diminished by analysis or
abstraction : there are some situations where
absolute truth would be of the highest practical
value, but for our ordinary little purposes it
would be largely irrelevant and often exceedingly
embarrassing. What we usually want is to be
able to abstract from a situation some particular
element which affects our interest at the
moment : and intellect, of course, is the faculty
of abstraction.

Thus^ even if the complete development of intuition
were compatible with individual life^ there is no
reason why intuition should be developed except for
special situations ; this explains why intuition lacks
all the versatility of intellect.

Now let us look at the intuitive savage and his
false friend. The false friend is, of course, an
intellectual, for disguise and deceit belong to the
calculation of the intellect. The intuitive savage
might be saved from his false friend one day :
the next day, in some new crisis, his intuition
would probably fail him. We may picture him,
for instance, failing to conceal his merriment when
the chief of his tribe makes himself ridiculous.
Not so the false friend — he is far more versatile.

AND M. BERGSON 145

far better able to vary his behaviour accord-
ing to the needs of the situation. ** The savage
deceived by false friendship is likely to pay for
his mistake with his life." Why not ? for the
false friend survives, and it is no doubt a case of
the survival of the fitter.

If it be objected that the deceiver is anti-social
and that evolution is interested in the society as
well as in the individual, I would point out that
a cunning tribe will be likely to defeat its more
justice-loving neighbour. I would point out,
too, that there is an obvious value to the indi-
vidual in being able to disguise and control his
intentions and feelings. What chaos would there
be if we all saw through one another !

5. ** All the most striking of his instances
of intuition in animals have a very direct
survival value.*'

Of course this is so : Bergson shows it to be.
His instances also illustrate how narrow and
inflexible instinct is, when developed and special-
ised for utility. What is development in one
aspect is degradation in another.

6. ** The fact is, of course, that both in-
tuition and intellect have been developed

B.P.

146 MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL

because they are useful, and that, speaking
broadly, they are useful when they give
truth and become harmful when they give
falsehood.'*

There is something useful in intuition as well as
in intellect. But the small degree to which it
has been developed suggests that it is by far the
less useful of the two.

** Speaking broadly '* : this is just where broad
generalisation is misleading. Russell should
speak, at this point, w? aKpi^w^,

7. " Intellect, in civilised man, like artistic
capacity, has occasionally been developed
beyond the point where it is useful to the
individual ; intuition, on the other hand,
seems on the whole to diminish as civilisa-
tion increases. It is greater, as a rule, in
children than in adults, in the uneducated
than in the educated. Probably in dogs it
exceeds anything to be found in human
beings. But those who see in these facts a
recommendation of intuition ought to re-
turn to running wild in the woods, dyeing
themselves with woad and living on hips
and haws."

AND M. BERGSON 147

h^s_j^ierh3^pseducanon rather than evolution
which, as a rule, is responsTSle iFor developing
intellect beyond the point ^fj^tility to the indi-
vidual. Man may choose to what purpose he
will apply his intellect. There are, no doubt,
circumstances in which the fullest intellectual
development of, say, a mathematical genius might
be directly useful to him : his full natural endow-
ment at least is not greater than he might con-
ceivably need in order to secure his practical
triumph in difficult surroundings.

In any case the genius of the mathematician
(and equally the analytical genius of the scientist
or the philosopher) is made possible by the
wonderfully developed genius of the artisan.
** If we could rid ourselves of all pride, if, to
define our species, we kept strictly to what the
historic and the prehistoric periods show us to
be the constant characteristic of man and of
intelligence, we should say perhaps not Homo
sapiens but Homo faher^ ^ *' We are born
artisans as we are born geometricians, and indeed
we are geometricians only because we are arti-
sans." 2 Men may not, it is true, ** be put to
death for mathematical incompetence.'* Never-

1 Creative Evolution, p. 146. 2 Creative Evolution, p. 47.
B.P. K 2

148 MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL

theless men have succumbed in the struggle for
existence when that practical " artisan '* capacity
which is at the root of mathematical genius has
not been sufficiently developed in them.

I have already commented on the significance
of the fact that intuition has failed to develop
far. Russell's not very dignified attempt to
ridicule the Bergsonian theory hardly deserves
notice. Bergson's ideal of intuition, ** instinct
that has become disinterested, self-conscious,
capable of reflecting upon its object and of en-
larging it indefinitely,** is certainly not to be
looked for among wild men of the woods !

It is worth comparing RusselFs jibe at intui-
tion with the passage already quoted (occurring
two pages earlier in his essay) in which he states
that " instinct, intuition, or insight is what first
leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason con-
firms or confutes.** Perhaps he would advocate
the civilised philosopher visiting the savage in
order to profit by the latter*s more abundant
insight, and then returning to his study desk in
order to " confirm or confute ** what he has heard 1

Russell must, of course, be using intuition in
two different senses ; but there is no definition or
distinction. Could loose writing go much farther ?

AND M. BERGSON 149

8. " Let us next examine whether intuition
possesses any such infallibility as Bergson
claims for it. The best instance of it, ac-
cording to him, is our acquaintance with
ourselves ; yet self-knowledge is prover-
bially rare and difficult. Most men, for
example, have in their nature meannesses,
vanities, and envies of which they are quite
unconscious, though even their best friends
can perceive them without any difficulty."

Does Bergson hold that the best instance of
intuition is ** our acquaintance with ourselves ** ?
Russell so interprets the statement in the Intro-
duction to Metaphysics (which he quotes on p. 14)
that ** there is one reality, at least, which we all
seize from within, by intuition and not by simple
analysis. It is our own personality in its flowing
through time — our self which endures.''

The difficulty of self-knowledge is a truism ;
yvta^L a-iavTov is a hard precept, as men have
tragically proved, generation after generation.
Is Bergson really such a fool, and such an artless
fool, as to say that at least we can all know
ourselves } Certainly not. Russell flagrantly
misinterprets him when he substitutes for the

I50 RUSSELL AND BERGSON

knowledge oV^our own self in its flowing through time
— our self which endures " the terms ** acquaint-
ance with ourselves '* and " self-knowledge/'
Bergson does not affirm that this primary intui-
tion gives us knowledge of our own characters.
Obviously knowledge of our moral qualities,
** our meannesses, vanities and envies," implies
dissection, analysis, the work of the intellect ;
if we attempt to know ourselves in the sense of
knowing our faults, the failure — supposing we
do fail — is the failure of the intellect.

Introspection, however, is not the same thing
as intuition. Bergson qualifies the self that we
know through intuition, and the qualification is
I essential. The foundation of his theory of know-
ledge is that intuition reveals to us our own
nature as enduring beings ; it reveals the nature
of life as " true continuity, real mobility, reciprocal

I penetration " — in short, it introduces us to the

I reality of duration, of time.

Russeirs mistake is enough in itself to con-
demn his criticism of Bergson. It is clear that
he altogether fails to understand the very founda-
tion of Bergson 's theory of knowledge.

INDEX

Analysis, and intuition, 14, 97,
115; tendency of intelli-
gence to, 33-36, 50, 113;
necessity of, 38 ; and move-
ment, 39 ; and antinomies,
41.

Ant and butterfly, 89-92.

Carr, Dr. Wildon, 121.
Choice, 80-84, 116, 118.
Common sense and time, 26-28,

88.
Consciousness, 80-84, n6-ii8 ;

of duration, 55-56.
Country Life, 91.

Duration, see Time.

Fre& will, and time, 6 ; and

indetermination, 84.
Future, anticipation of, 31-32,

78.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 72-73.

Inge, Dean, 122 (footnote).

Instinct, 63-69, 87, 116-118 ;
expressing a relation, 76-77,
117; and infra-human in-
telligence, 79-80 ; in man,
83-87, 118; and habit, 84;
limitations of, 91-94.

Intellect, 7-10, 69-74, 115-117 ;
and intuition, 7-10, 68, 105 ;
true scope of, 13-14, 37-41,
45» 55-61, 113-115 ; practical
bias, 31, 113 ; and matter,
31-32, 59-60, 70-71 ; ten-
dency to analysis, 33-36,

50, 113-

Introspection, 46-50.

Intuition, of the self, 10-12,
52-56 ; and analysis, 14,
97, 115 ; and intellect, 7-10,
68, 105 ; intellectual, 13-14,

37-41. 45» 55-61, 113-115;
and introspection, 46-50 ;
and matter, 59-60, 105 ;
and instinct, 68 ; beyond
the self, 63, 95 et seq. ;
and inference, 107- no, 118 ;
of the mystic, 121 et seq.

James, Henry, 36.

Kant, M. Bergson and, 7.

Le Roy, M. Edouard, 122.
Lindsay, Mr. A. D., 107-110.
Language, 45 ; influence of,
34-35.

McCabe, Mr. Joseph, 85, 89.
Masefield, Mr. John, 30.

151

IS2

INDEX

Matter, 3-4, 25 ; intellect and,
31-32, 59-60, 70-71 ; in-
tuition and, 59-60, 105 ;
and spirit, 132.

Mysticism, 120 et seq. ; and
transcendence, 124-127 ; and
unity, 127-130 ; and time,
131-137.

Punch, 35.

Russell, Hon. Bertrand, 46

and Appendix (138-150).
Ruysbroek, 125.

Science, 41-43 ; and time, 44,

112.
Space, influence of, 29-30 ; and

mind, 60, 81-82.
Spiritual experience, 26, 39-41 ;

and intellectual intuition.

56-57 ; of mystic, 24, 121,

126-127, 132-136.
Stephens, Mr. James, 38.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 16-19.
Stewart, Mr. J. M'Kellar, 107-

IIO.

Substance, 35, 112.

Tension, life at low, 15-19,
24-25, 58-60 ; concentration
and relaxation of, 19-24.

Time, 2-6 and passim ; and
free will, 6 ; and clock
time, 26, 30 ; and science,
44, 112 ; and mysticism,

131-137-
Transcendence, 99-105, 124-
127.

Underbill, Miss Evelyn, 122.

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