HENRI BERGSON
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE
BY
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HENRI BERGSON:
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE
HENRI BERGSON
HENRI BERGSON:
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE
BY
H. WILDON CARR, D.Litt.
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF
LONDON, KING’S COLLEGE
NEW EDITION, REVISED
|£onbon attb (Ebinburgh:
T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD. | T. NELSON & SONS, LTD.
1919
PREFACE
Monsieur Henri Bergson, the philosopher whose
teaching I have tried to present in brief in this little
manual, is still in the full vigour of his life and
thought. He is a philosopher who combines pro¬
found and original thinking with a wonderful talent
for clear exposition. He is a Professor at the College
of France, and a Member of the Institute. Although
his writing and teaching are in the language of his
country, we English may claim a special share in him
so far as there is any nationality in philosophy. It
is very largely by the direct study of the classical
English philosophers that the particular direction of
his thought has been determined. The influence of
Herbert Spencer and of John Stuart Mill, and also
of the older English philosophers, Locke, Berkeley,
and Hume, is clearly manifest in his writings. It is
particularly shown in his attitude toward physical
science. His philosophy is not an attempt to de¬
preciate science or to throw doubt on scientific
method, but, on the contrary, its whole aim is to
enhance the value of science by showing its true place
and function in the greater reality of life.
The purpose that I have kept in view in the
following pages is to give the reader not a complete
Vlll
PREFACE.
epitome of the philosophy so much as a general survey
of its scope and method. If the reader is interested
and desires to become a student, there is only one
advice that I can give him, and that is to read Mon¬
sieur Bergson’s books. If the problems they deal with
interest him, he will find no difficulty in understand¬
ing them, for the author’s style is a model of lucidity.
During this present year (1911) Monsieur Bergson
has become personally known to large circles of philo¬
sophical students in England. In May he delivered
two lectures before the University of Oxford on
“The Perception of Change.” (La Perception du
Changement. Oxford : The Clarendon Press.) He
delivered the Huxley Lecture at the University of
Birmingham on “ Life and Consciousness,” published
in the Hihbert Journal , October 1911. He also de¬
livered four lectures before the University of London
on “The Mature of the Soul.” These have not yet
been published. Quite recently also his Essay Le
Pire, written in 1901, has been translated into
English. (Laughter : an Essay on the Meaning of the
Comic. Macmillan & Co.)
I am alone responsible for the plan and method
that I have chosen in presenting this philosophy, but
Monsieur Bergson has very kindly read the proofs,
and the title I have given to it, The Philosophy oj
Change , was suggested by him.
H. Wildox Carr.
Bury, Sussex,
December 1911.
PREFACE TO THE REVISED
EDITION
In revising this manual I have found very little to
alter and nothing of importance to add Since it was
written the war has interposed a complete interrup¬
tion to Monsieur Bergson’s philosophical work, and
has distracted the world from its study. Before the
war, notwithstanding his many lecture engagements
and the increasing public and private demands on his
time, he was able to devote his main energy to the
intellectual effort which philosophy requires, and was
engaged in studies designed to test the application of
his theories in the domain of social ethics. But from
the moment of the occurrence of the great world
catastrophe his whole energy has been at the service
of his country. On the philosophical issues of the
war he has not been silent. He refuses to regard
philosophy as indifferent in the international strife,
and philosophers as above the conflict.
A short time before the war he was elected a
member of the Academie Fran9aise. He occupies
the chair of the late Emile Ollivier, the statesman
X PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.
and historian of the Second Empire, who had been
one of his oldest and most intimate friends.
Monsieur Bergson has absolute faith in the victori¬
ous issue of the present conflict, and this is grounded,
not in simple patriotic fervour, but on the nature of
life as revealed to us by philosophy. The present
war is for him one of life or freedom against matter
or determinism.
King’s College, London,
May 1918.
CONTENTS
I. PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE . . . .13
II. INTELLECT AND MATTER . . 26
III. INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE ... 40
IV. INTUITION ...... 59
V. FREEDOM . . . . . . .75
VI. MIND AND BODY . . . . .86
VII. CREATIVE EVOLUTION .... 100
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . , . .124
HENRI BERGSON :
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHANGE
CHAPTER 1
PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE
The philosophy of Bergson is contained in three
principal works, produced at considerable inter¬
vals of time and independently of one another.
All three are now available for English readers,
having been recently translated under the
supervision of the author. The first of these,
Time and Freewill , appeared in 1888, the
original title being The Immediate Data of
Consciousness ; the second, Matter and Memory ,
appeared in 1896; and the last and best
known, Creative Evolution , in 1907. The
distinctive principle of Bergson’s philosophy
was clearly set forth in the earliest of these
books ; the later ones have not modified or
14
HENRI BERGSON.
developed it, but rather may be said to have
applied it with increasing confidence and
success. To expound that principle and explain
its application to the various problems that
have been brought to light in the long history
of philosophy is the aim of this volume. The
philosophy of Bergson is not a system. It is
not an account of the ultimate nature of the
universe, claiming to be a complete repre¬
sentation in knowledge of all reality, and
appealing to us for acceptance on the ground
of its consistency and harmony. We shall
see that one of its most important conclu¬
sions is that the universe is not a completed
system of reality, of which it is only our
knowledge that is imperfect, but that the
universe is itself becoming. Consequently the
value of the philosophy and the conviction
that it will bring to the mind will be seen to
depend ultimately not on the irrefutability of
its logic, but on the reality and significance of
the simple facts of consciousness to which it
directs our attention.
Great scientific discoveries are often so simple
in their origin that the greatest wonder about
them is that humanity has had to wait so long
PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE.
15
for them. They seem to lie in the sudden
consciousness of the significance of some familiar
O
fact — a significance never suspected because the
fact is so familiar. Newton and the falling
apple, Watt and the steaming kettle, will occur
at once as illustrations of a principle that seems
to apply to many discoveries which have had
far-reaching results in practice. The same
thing is no less remarkable in philosophy : the
discoveries which have determined its direction
have been most often due to attention to facts
so simple, so common and of such everyday
occurrence, that their very simplicity and
familiarity have screened them from observation.
No better illustration of this could be found
than is offered in the philosophy of Berkeley.
The famous theory esse is percipi (to be is to be
perceived) rests on an observation so ordinary
that its very simplicity is the only reason which
had made it possible to ignore it. When
Berkeley said that reality was perception, he
was calling attention to the fact that we all
mean by reality what we perceive, and not
something or other which we never do and
never can perceive, and which is by its defini¬
tion unperceivable. Another illustration is the
16
HENRI BERGSON.
well-known case of the philosopher Kant, to
whom it occurred that the laws of nature might
be explained as the forms which the mind
itself imposes on our knowledge — a conception
which threw a new light on philosophical
problems comparable to the revolution in
astronomy which followed the Copernican
theory that the earth, instead of being, as was
supposed, the fixed centre of the universe, was
itself a planet revolving round the sun.
The fact to which Bergson has called our
attention, which forms the foundation of his
theory and has given a new direction to
philosophy, is a fact of this extremely simple
nature. If it be significant, if it has the
significance which Bergson claims for it, it is
due entirely to its extreme simplicity and
familiarity that it has till now escaped our
notice. It is the observation of the simple
fact that, deeper than any intellectual bond
which binds a conscious creature to the reality
in which it lives and which it may come to
know, there is a vital bond. Our know¬
ledge rests on an intuition which is not, at least
which is never purely, intellectual. This in¬
tuition is of the very essence of life, and the
(2,000)
PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE.
17
intellect is formed from it by life, or is one of
the forms that life has given to it in order to
direct the activity and serve the purpose of the
living beings that are endowed with it. The
fundamental character of Bergson’s philosophy
is, therefore, to emphasise the primary impor¬
tance of the conception of life as giving the key
to the nature of knowledge. To understand
knowledge we must first grasp the meaning
of life.
It is this that distinguishes the philosophy of
Bergson from all the systems ancient and modern
that have preceded it, and also from contempo¬
raneous theories, intellectualist and pragmatist.
The intellect has been formed to serve the
purposes of the activity which we call life.
Knowledge is for life, and not life for know¬
ledge. The key to the explanation of the
problem of reality and knowledge does not lie
within us in the mind, as the idealist contends,
nor without us in the world of things in space,,
as the realist contends, but in life. Bergson’s
philosophy is not a theory of life ; such a
description would be quite inadequate to it. It
is founded on the simple fact, to which he has
called our attention, but which is simple and
(2,000) 2
18
HENRI BERGSON.
obvious directly it is pointed out, that life is
the reality for which knowledge is and for
which nature receives the order that knowledge
discovers. The main task of philosophy is to
do what science cannot do — comprehend life.
The impetus of life, the springing forward,
pushing, insinuating, incessantly changing
movement of life has evolved the intellect to
know the inert world of matter, and has given
to matter the appearance of a solid, timeless
existence spread out in space. Reality is not
solid matter, nor thinking mind, but living,
creative evolution.
It seems as if a great movement were in
progress, sweeping us along in its course. To
exist is to be alive, to be borne along in the
living stream, as it were on the breast of a
wave. The actual present now in which all
existence is gathered up is this movement ac¬
complishing itself. The past is gathered into
it, exists in it, is carried along in it, as it
presses forward into the future, which is con¬
tinually and without intermission becoming
actual. This reality is life. It is an unceasing
becoming, which preserves the past and creates
the future. The solid things which seem to
PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE.
19
abide and endure, which seem to resist this
flowing, which seem more real than the flow¬
ing, are periods, cuts across the flowing, views
that our mind takes of the living reality of
which it is a part, in which it lives and moves,
views of the reality prescribed and limited by
the needs of its particular activity. This is the
image of reality presented to us in Bergson’s
philosophy.
There is one difficulty that will at once
present itself in the very attempt to understand
an image of this kind. How can there be a
pure movement, a pure change, a pure becom¬
ing ? There must be some object, some thing
which moves, changes, or becomes, and this
thing must be supposed to be resting when it
is not moving, to remain the same when it is
not changing or becoming something else. This
thing must be more real than its movement,
which is only its change of place, or than its
becoming, which is only its change of form.
How is it possible to imagine that movement
and becoming are alone reality, that they can
subsist by themselves, and that the things
which move and change are not prior to but
productions of the movement or change ? It is
20
HENRI BERGSON.
a difficulty that goes to the very heart of the
problem of philosophy. It is not the ordinary
difficulty of realism and idealism. It is not the
question of the nature of real existence whether
it is physical or mental. It applies with equal
force whatever we conceive the nature of a
thing to be, whether thoughts are things or
only about things, whether things exist only
in the mind, or whether they exist independ¬
ently and impress the mind. Whatever they
are, it is things that move and change and
become, and the movement and change and
becoming presuppose that there are things.
So natural to us does this view of the reality
of things seem, so consistent is it with our
ordinary experience and with the teachings of
science, that we are not usually aware that
there is any difficulty in thinking of reality in
this way. Yet there is a difficulty, which, as
soon as we understand it, is more formidable
and startling even than the seeming paradox
that reality is a flowing. This is that our
ordinary idea that the reality of things con¬
sists in their being solid objects in space, an
idea that underlies the whole of physical
science, involves the conception of an unreal
PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE.
21
time. Time as science conceives it does not
form part of the reality of material things.
When we perceive any ordinary unorganised
material thing — water, air, a crystal, a metal —
we do not think that time has anything to do
with its reality, because whatever happens to
it, it remains substantially the same. If we
separate water into its component gases, it takes
time to do it ; but the reality is not altered —
the gases are there, and can be re-combined
into the water. We cannot, of course, imagine
things without time ; but the reason of this
seems to be that imagination requires time, and
not that time is necessary in order that things
should exist. Time is a mode of existence, and
it is only in this mode — that is, as states suc¬
ceeding each other — that things are known, but-
the things exist independently of the succession
of their states. A simple consideration will
prove this. Suppose the time series to be
twice as rapid as it is, would it make any
difference to the existence of material things ?
Absolutely none. Indeed if we imagine the
rapidity of the succession of states increased
infinitely, even if we imagine the whole of the
succession displayed simultaneously to an infinite
22
HENRI BERGSON.
intelligence, the reality of things will remain
exactly what we now think it to be. There
is no absolute material standard by which we
measure time flow. Every standard of time
measurement — such as the rotation of the earth
on its axis, the revolution of the earth round
the sun, or the swing of a pendulum — is relative.
If all time relations remained constant to one
another, a change in the actual rate of flow
would make no difference to real things. Such
a change is quite conceivable, but for the
reality which is the subject-matter of science it
is quite indifferent.
When we consider a living being, however,
we find that time is the very essence of its life,
the whole meaning of its reality. In life we
meet with a real duration, a duration that is
absolute. There is, it is true, for living creatures
a time duration that is measured by the same
relative standards by which we measure the
succession of the states of material things. It
is this unreal time that we have in mind when
we speak of our fleeting existence and think of
the things that outlast us ; it gives meaning to
such expressions as eternal youth. Life seems
made up of definite states — infancy, childhood,
PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE.
23
adolescence, maturity, old age — which we pass
through, and which we imagine have a period
of stability and then change. But the change
is continuous throughout each state, and the
states are a merely external view of life. It
is our body which enables us to take this view.
Our body is an object in space, and we con¬
sequently regard it in this external way. But
life itself, when we view it from within, from
the privileged position that we occupy towards
it by reason of our identit}^ with it, is not
indifferent to time. Our life as actual experi¬
ence, as the inmost reality of which we are
most sure, which we know as it exists, is time
itself. Life is a flowing, a real becoming, a
change that is a continuous undivided move¬
ment. A thing that lives is a thing that
endures, not by remaining the same, but by
changing unceasingly. All consciousness is
time existence, and a conscious state is not a
state that endures without changing ; it is a
change without ceasing : wThen change ceases
it ceases ; it is itself nothing but change.
There are, therefore, two ways in which we
may think of time — one in which it makes no
difference to reality, and the other in which it
24
HENRI BERGSON.
is reality. Just as we think that things lie
outside one another in space, so we think that
their states succeed one another in time. Time
in this meaning takes the form of space ; it
can only be represented by us as a line, and a
line is a figure in space. Without the idea
of space we should be unable to represent the
succession of states of things. When we think
of these successive states we imagine them
spread out in a continuous line, precisely as
we imagine real things to be at any moment
all spread out in space. But this is not true
duration. Our life is true duration. It is a
time flow that is not measured by some
standard in relation to which it may be faster
or slower. It is itself absolute, a flowing that
never ceases, never repeats itself, an always
present, changing, becoming, now.
The distinction between a time that is a
symbol of space and a time that is a true
duration is therefore fundamental. We may
mean either of two different things when we
ask, What is reality ? We may mean, what is
it that endures without changing ? Or we may
mean, what is it that endures by changing ?
The difference between the two meanings is the
PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE.
25
difference between a material thing and a liv¬
ing thing : to the one time does nothing, and
therefore is nothing ; to the other time is every¬
thing. And so the question arises, Is the reality
behind appearances spatial and unchanging like
a material thing ? Or is it like a living thing
whose whole existence is time ? The answer
that philosophy must give is that time is real,
the stuff of which things are made. Physical
science is a view of this reality, a limited view,
and the proof of its limitation is that it cannot
comprehend life. Life is not a thing nor the
state of a thing. It is this limitation of
physical science, its inability to understand
life, which reveals to us the true sphere and
the special task of philosophy. Physical science
deals with the stable and unchanging, philosophy
deals with life.
CHAPTER II
INTELLECT AND MATTER
I HAVE said that the philosophy of Bergson
rests on the observation of a very simple fact.
This simple fact is that true duration is known
to us by a direct inner perceiving, an intuition,
and not by an intellectual act such as that by
which we perceive the objects around us and
the laws of their successive states. And the
true duration which we know when we have
this intuition is life. There is therefore possible
to us a direct answer to the question, to answer
which is the problem of philosophy. What is
reality ? We can answer, Reality is life. And
the answer is final, because we are not appeal¬
ing to a concept of the understanding that
demands further explanation. Life is neither
a thing nor the state of a thing. It is true
that we can only express what life is in the
form of a judgment. But what we affirm in
INTELLECT AND MATTER.
27
that judgment is not a that of which we are
still driven to ask what; it is not a content
which we distinguish from existence, and there¬
fore does not lead to the endless inquiry that
baffles the intellectualist attempt to solve the
problem. Life is not known as something pre¬
sented to the mind, but immediately in living
consciousness of living.
Intuition in the sense in which this philos¬
ophy affirms it has nothing either mystical or
even mysterious about it. It is not the special
endowment of certain highly-gifted minds,
enabling them to see what is hidden from
ordinary intelligence. It is a power of know¬
ledge which we may imagine to exist in every¬
thing that lives, even in plants, for it is simple
consciousness of life. I do not of course mean
that there is any ground to suppose that it
exists actually in this wide extension, or indeed
that it necessarily exists anywhere ; but I do
mean that it is identical with life itself, so that
wherever there is life there might also be the
consciousness of living which is intuition. But
simple as this principle is, and universal as its
potentiality may seem to be, it is in fact only
at rare moments and by very concentrated
28
HENRI BERGSON.
attention that we may become able to possess
this knowledge which is in very truth identical
with being.
What, then, is the intellect ? It is to the
mind what the eye or the ear is to the body.
Just as in the course of evolution the body has
become endowed with certain special sense
organs which enable it to receive the revelation
of the reality without, and at the same time
limit the extent and the form of that revelation,
so the intellect is a special adaptation of the
mind which enables the being endowed with it
to view the reality outside it, but which at the
same time limits both the extent and the
character of the view the mind takes. When
we consider a special organ like the eye, we
can see that its usefulness to the creature it
serves depends quite as much on what it ex¬
cludes as on what it admits. If the eye could
take in the whole of visible reality it would be
useless. It is because it limits the amount of
light it admits, and narrows the range of visible
things, that it serves the life purpose. The
intellect appears to have been formed by the
evolution of life in the same way and for a
like purpose. It has been formed by a narrow-
INTELLECT AND MATTER.
29
ing, a shrinking, a condensation of conscious¬
ness. It reveals its origin in the fringe which
still surrounds it as a kind of nebulosity sur¬
rounding a luminous centre. And what is the
purpose that the intellect serves ? It gives us
views of reality. It cuts out in the How the
lines along which our activity moves. It
delimits reality. It traces the lines of our
interest. It selects. Just as the events which
the historian chronicles are marked out by the
guiding influence of some special interest, so
the intellect follows the lines of interest of the
activity it serves. Things, solid inert unchan¬
ging matter, constant lawTs by which things act
and react on one another, these are views of
reality. The purpose of intellect is to make
selections from reality, to confine knowledge to
that which serves living action. The intellect
views the reality as solid things because that
view serves our ends. It is a real world that
the intellect reveals to us, a reality that is not
relative to our understanding, nor produced by
our understanding ; it is reality itself, but it is
selected. The outlines of things, the grouping
and arrangement of phenomena, are the modes
of our apprehension, the lines that our interest
30
HENRI BERGSON.
traces. There is no formless reality, but also
no form of reality is absolute. With other
interests we should trace other lines, and we
might have other modes of apprehension.
The intellect is cinematographical. The
illustration which this descriptive term recalls
is perhaps the happiest of any which Bergson
has used. The cinematograph takes views of
a moving scene ; each view represents a fixed
position, and when the views are arranged side
by side on the film and passed across the screen
in rapid succession they present to us a moving
picture. The views as they lie before us on
the ribbon, as we look at them in passing from
one to the next, do not give us this picture ; to
have the picture we must restore the move¬
ment, and this the cinematograph does. The
fixed things which seem to us to lie side by
side of one another at every moment in space
are views that the intellect takes. These views
seem to us to form the movement by their
succession, the replacement of one by another
seems to be the change, but the reality is the
movement ; it is a continuous change, not a
succession of states, and the fixed things are
views of it. These views are the physical
INTELLECT AND MATTER.
31
objects that science deals with, and the method
of science is cinematographical ; change for it
is nothing but the succession of fixed states.
But a movement is indivisible, a change is
indivisible, the divisions that we make in it,
the immobilities that seem to compose it, are
not divisions, but views of it. Nothing is
immobile. Immobility is purely an appearance.
The perception that a movement is indivisible
is the key to the solution of many problems
insoluble without it. There is, for example, a
self-contradiction in the ordinary idea which
we have of motion, which is well illustrated in
the famous paradoxes of the Greek philosopher
Zeno of Elea. Motion, he declared, is im¬
possible, for consider the flying arrow : to say
that it moves is to say that it is in two places
at the same time, but at every moment every¬
thing is at rest in one place, and if the arrow
is motionless at every moment of its flight, then
it is always motionless. We can now see the
solution of this problem. The flight of the
arrow is an indivisible movement. We, looking
at the course of the flight, represent it as a line
along which we can make as many divisions as
we choose. We say that the arrow passed over
32
HENRI BERGSON.
that course, and that it might have stopped at
any point. And that is so. But the divisions
in the course are not divisions in the movement.
If the arrow had stopped at any point of its
course, its flight, the movement, would have
ended ; the subsequent flight would not have
been a continuation of the movement, but a
new movement. When the movement is effected
we look back on the course and represent it as
a line in space. A line is immovable, space of
which it is a figure is the very idea of im¬
mobility ; and a line is divisible without limit,
but movement is indivisibility itself. A line
therefore cannot correspond with a movement ;
it is our representation of the movement, our
view of it, an appearance only. Another famous
argument of Zeno may be solved by the same
perception that a movement is indivisible — the
problem of Achilles and the tortoise. Achilles,
it is argued, can never overtake the tortoise, be¬
cause while his first step brings him to the place
where the tortoise is, the tortoise has moved on ;
and while he makes the new step to reach the
new place, the tortoise has again moved on, so
that Achilles for ever finds that he has still a
step to take. The problem is quite insoluble
INTELLECT AND MATTER.
33
if a movement is divisible as a line is, but the
difficulty vanishes with the perception that a
movement is indivisible. The steps of Achilles
and the steps of the tortoise are each indivisible,
each a simple continuity from beginning to endy
and there is consequently no contradiction in
supposing that the steps of Achilles bring him
past the tortoise. The contradiction lies alto-
gether in regarding a step as made up of parts
like the separate views on the cinematograph
film ; in thinking that the parts exist independ¬
ently in the step, and that the combination of
the parts produces the step ; and in failing to
see that the step is an indivisible movement,
that the parts into which we seem able to
divide it are only views that we take of it.
Another of the paradoxes of Zeno illustrates
in an even more striking manner the contra¬
diction which follows the attempt to conceive
movement by representing it as a spatial figure.
It is the argument known as the Stadium. It
is not so familiar as the others, because the
paradox is not so immediately self-evident
as in the illustration of the arrow and of
Achilles and the tortoise. Two processions of
figures moving round the stadium in opposite
(2,000) 3
34
HENRI BERGSON.
directions pass in mid course a row of similar
figures at rest. The speed of the moving
figures, said Zeno, is twice that which it is ; for
when the three rows of figures are in line with
one another — that is, at the moment when each
procession is passing the other procession and
the intervening row — the space occupied by
each of the three rows is exactly equal, yet the
velocity of each moving row is to one another
twice what it is to the intervening* row. And
the two velocities are not relative, they are
absolute, because space does not move. We
have therefore to admit that a body moves at
two velocities at the same time, one of which is
twice that of the other. It may seem that this
is a transparent and very simple fallacy. It
may even be denied that there is the appearance
of contradiction ; for if we have two reverse
movements at equal velocities, the velocity of
each to the other is the sum of the two and
double what each is by itself. Very true, but
why ? Because when we make this answer,
which seems so obvious, we are comparing
movement with movement, treating it as in¬
divisible, just as we found we had to do with
the steps of Achilles and the tortoise. Let the
INTELLECT AND MATTER.
35
movement correspond with the space traversed,
and we find that the same movement measured
by two exactly equal spaces has occurred at two
different velocities ; we find ourselves making
the contradictory assertion that every move¬
ment is faster than it is. The solution is plain
and self-evident enough when we perceive that
movement is not divisible — that we cannot
decompose it into small movements strung to¬
gether, or joined together, as we can decompose
a line into smaller lengths. Divide a line into
as many lengths as we will, the sum of those
lengths is the line ; but to divide a movement is
impossible — its divisions are not points, but
stops. We may suppose an infinity of points
in a line, but to suppose even one stop in a
movement is contradictory ; a stop is not part
of a movement, but the negation of movement.
We have seen that, like the cinematograph,
the intellect takes views across a moving scene,
and these views are the things which present
themselves to us as solid objects spread out in
space, space that is immobile, the reality in
which things move. To grasp the reality, we
have said, it is necessary to restore the move¬
ment as the cinematograph does. The move-
36
HENRI BERGSON.
ment is life. What, then, is matter ? What
is that inert something which is essentially
opposed to life, and which seems necessary to the
existence of life ? When we say of our own
existence that it is essentially our life, we
are distinguishing life from the material body
which appears to serve as its substratum or
medium. And when we say of the all-inclusive
reality of which our individual lives are but
a partial manifestation, when we say of the
universe itself, that it lives, it seems that we
must distinguish within the universe the life
of it from the inert, lifeless material, the dead
matter in which that life is supported and
manifested. What is this dead matter, and
how does it come to exist ? Reality is a flow¬
ing. This does not mean that everything
moves, changes, and becomes ; science and
common experience tell us that. It means that
movement, change, becoming is everything that
there is. There is nothing else. There are
no things that move and change and become ;
everything is movement, is change, is becom¬
ing. We have not grasped the central idea of
this philosophy, we have not perceived true
duration, we have not got the true idea of
INTELLECT AND MATTER.
37
change and becoming until we perceive dura¬
tion, change, movement, becoming, to be reality,
the whole and only reality. Inert matter fill¬
ing space, space that underlies matter as a pure
immobility, do not exist. Movement exists, im¬
mobility does not. Now even physical science,
bound as it seems to be to the assertion of a
fixed material reality, is being driven to the
same conclusion. The old conception of an
elemental solid base for the atom has entirely
disappeared, and instead modern physics has
formulated the electron theory, according to
which the atom consists of electric charges,
and is a temporary equilibrium of incessant
action and reaction no longer considered inde¬
structible. In fact, were the movement to cease,
the atom would not exist — there would be
nothing. Again, the most instantaneous flash
of light that we can be aware of is the passing,
so science tells us, of hundreds of billions of
aether waves. Light is for physical science
nothing but movement. In fact movement is
the fundamental concept in the scientific notion
of thinghood. And also there is something that
is absolute in time-duration even for physical
science ; for though time does not enter into the
38
HENRI BERGSON.
reality of things as science conceives them, yet
a certain length of time-duration is a necessary
condition of every change in the state of things.
A lump of sugar does not instantaneously
dissolve in a glass of water ; when all other
actual conditions of dissolution are present, a
certain time must elapse. Still for science
matter is the reality ; time is only a condition.
What then for the philosophy which conceives
time as reality, the stuff out of which matter is
formed, is this matter ? What is this inert
something which seems to resist the pushing,
forward-moving life, which seems to fall back,
to obstruct the living movement, which, even
when it serves life, seems essentially opposed
to it ? Inert matter, immobility, is purely an
appearance ; it is composed of two movements.
It is the relation of our movement to other
movements. When we are in a train the land¬
scape seems to stream past us, the nearer objects
at a greater speed than the more distant. When
we pass another train going in the same direc¬
tion but at a slower speed, it seems to us to be
moving in the reverse direction. If the speed
is the same as ours, it seems not to be moving
at all. And if it is travelling in the reverse
INTELLECT AND MATTER.
39
direction, it seems to be moving at twice the
speed that it is really moving at. Imagine,
then, life as a vast movement in being ; if
our particular interest draws us to attend to
the direction in which part of the movement is
advancing, it may seem to us that the rest of
the movement is retarding the advance or even
streaming backwards. So we, alive in this
great living, borne along as part of this true
life, view the movement around us and see it as
dead matter opposed to the very movement of
which it is itself only an individual view.
CHAPTER III
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE
If the theory of the intellect sketched in the
last chapter is true, we shall expect to find
that the intellect is not the only means by
which it is possible to apprehend reality. It
seems as we look back on the past from our
own human standpoint, and try to read by the
light of biological and geological science the
long history of the evolution of life, and par¬
ticularly of the human race, that this wonderful
intellectual power we possess, which gives us
such command in our world, has been a very
slowly perfected acquisition. Our whole bodily
organisation has been moulded to use it, and it
has been mutually adapted to our organism, to
serve its needs and to direct its activity. It is
the very essence of our life, all that life means
or can mean to us, but it is essentially an
adaptation of life. The intellect is what gives
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 41
to the world the aspect it bears to us. It gives
us views of reality — views that are limitations
of our apprehension, and that we mistake for
limitations of reality. We have said that we
have the power of apprehending reality with¬
out the limitations which the intellect imposes ;
that in the intuition of life we see reality as it
is. This intuition is the consciousness of life
that we have in living. It is not another and
different power, it is not an endowment of the
mind or a faculty. Intuition is not a kind of
mental organ as the eye or the ear is a bodily
organ, something that we possess side by side
with the intellect. It exists for us because
consciousness is wider than intellect, because
consciousness is identical with life. In knowing
life we are living, and in living we know life.
In the widest signification of the terms, life
and consciousness are identical. It is this
wider consciousness that has become for us
narrowed and specialised in the intellect, but
the intellect reveals its origin by our sense of
a wider consciousness which surrounds it like
a penumbra. It is this wider consciousness
that enables us to have the direct vision which
we have called the intuition of life. But it is
42
HENRI BERGSON,
only life that this intuition reveals, and that
because life and consciousness are one. We
have not therefore two faculties, one intellectual
and one intuitional, side by side ; there is not,
that is to say, both an intellectual and an in¬
tuitional view of reality ; all our views of
reality are intellectual, but the intellect is
formed out of the consciousness that is identical
with life, and consciousness of living in living
is directly knowing life. This is the simple
fact which, as I have endeavoured to show, is
neither mystical nor mysterious.
But if the intellect is a special adaptation of
the consciousness which is life, we shall natu¬
rally conclude that it might have been other
than it is, and that it is possible that with
other directions in the evolution of the activity
other adaptations with other limitations would
have been produced. And this is what we
find. There is one other mode of mental
activity — instinct ; it is submerged, as it were,
in our own conscious experience, but it has
received striking and astonishing development
along other lines of evolution than that which
has culminated in man. Along the line of the
vertebrates which has culminated in man it
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 43
seems as though there must have been at first
a hesitation as to which mode, instinct or in¬
telligence, was to prevail. So rare and slight
indeed seem the indications of intelligent,
so universal the indications of instinctive, be¬
haviour, in the forms of animal life below the
human, and so sudden seems the development
of perfect intelligence in man, that the opinion
has been generally, and is still widely, held that
intelligence is a development of instinct, and
that instinct is nothing but a primitive form of
intelligence. But when we study the behaviour
of insects we find instinct brought to a per¬
fection which rivals, or even surpasses, the in¬
telligence of man. Especially is this so in the
ants and the bees. These creatures represent
the culminating point of a progressive evolution
of instinct. Their marvellous actions can only
be explained by supposing that instinct is a
quite different and, in a certain manner, opposite
mode of mental activity to that by which we
apprehend reality. The modes are opposite,
because though they may exist together, and
though the one may at any time give place to
the other, yet so far as the essential nature of
each is concerned the one seems to block the
44
HENRI BERGSON.
other. We never find in any creature the
simultaneous perfecting of the two modes. In
man, where intelligence is supreme, instinct is
practically lost as a guiding and directing
activity. We find traces of it in the behaviour
of infants and children and in natural dis¬
positions, but the very word instinctive has
come to denote the opposite of rational action
and not the basis of it. On the other hand, in
the insect communities of bees and ants instinct
is so perfect and so supreme as the guiding
principle of their activity, that intelligence, if
they possess it, must lie on a lower plane, or be
manifested only in emergencies where instinct
fails. |
The actions we call instinctive in man are
those that we seem to carry out by a natural
disposition without reflection, without inter¬
posing the perception of the relations or of the
meaning of the actions, without the presentation
to the mind of an end to be attained. They
are not simple reactions to a stimulus, such as
the vital functions of respiration, circulation,
and the like ; they are actions that imply
awareness and conscious purpose, but they are
direct spontaneous actions evoked by the pres-
»
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 45
ence of physical objects or of emotions. Such
actions as the raising of the arm to ward off a
blow, as flight when we feel the emotion of
fear, the actions that are prompted by the
emotions of love, pity, indignation, and the like,
we call instincts. Instinct as prompting to
these actions is knowledge which we seem to
possess naturally, and without needing to be
taught by experience. Many actions which are
in their origin intelligent we call instinctive by
analogy when they have become habitual. It
is in the observation of the actions of infants
and children that we distinguish most clearly
the knowledge we call instinctive from that
which we call intelligent. The infant’s first
cry is purely reflex, the vital action of drawing
the air into the lungs ; sucking, at least in its
earliest exercise, probably is so too ; but the
movements towards the mother’s breast, the
attraction to certain objects and repulsion from
others we call instinctive, because these are
evidence of a natural knowledge, a knowledge
not acquired by experience, of a distinct and
separate object. The child’s first efforts to
stand and walk are instincts, but the almost
equally universal struggle of the child who can
46
HENRI BERGSON.
walk to get out of the perambulator and push
it is intelligent ; it is the result of observation
and attention and desire to imitate. From
infancy onwards the whole of our mental life
is so predominantly intelligent that it is with
the greatest difficulty that we are able to dis¬
tinguish and recognise instincts. In man in¬
stinct does not develop but gives way to
intelligence, as though the two modes were
incompatible, and as though intelligence to
exist must supersede instinct.
It is when we observe the actions of insects,
particularly the actions of the higher insects,
that we see the most perfect examples of in¬
stinct, and become aware that it is a mental
activity totally different from intelligence. It
is true that the bees and ants who exhibit
this activity in its most marvellous manifesta¬
tion present to us a type of bodily organisa¬
tion so entirely different from our own that
comparison seems almost fantastic. The men¬
tality of a dog or a horse, or even that of a
bird or a reptile or a fish, seems possible to
understand, because the bodily organisation of
these animals and the anatomical structure of
the centralised nervous system which serves
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 47
their organism are constructed on an exactly
similar plan to our own. But how widely
different the whole plan of the invertebrate
anatomy ! Is there any basis on which we can
compare the mentality of such unlike creatures
with our own ? Is it not mere picture thinking
to try to interpret their actions by our know¬
ledge of our own mental processes ? And it
seems to many students of animal psychology
that to attempt to understand instinct as a
mental reality by the observation of insect life
is entirely vain. But wide as the difference is
between these small creatures and ourselves,
we are in the presence of distinct self-centred
individuals as vitally interested in pursuing
their purposes as we are ourselves. They are
organised to apprehend reality by special
senses, and they have a nervous system which,
however different in plan, is of the same type
as our own — the type that biologists call sensori¬
motor. They are sensitive, whether or not
their feelings have the same quality as ours,
and their feelings lead to movements.
When now we study the life activities of
these creatures, what do we find ? If we watch
a swarm of bees in an observation hive, we may
48
HENRI BERGSON.
see the perfect insects emerging from the cells
in which they have been formed. We may
neglect the early stages of their life, the egg
and the pupa, as we are not now concerned
with biology but only with psychology. From
the very moment of their birth they know per¬
fectly the work they have to do. They do not
begin with vain efforts and gradually with
experience gain confidence and skill. They are
not taught by older bees. They do not seem
to be recognised by their fellows nor to recognise
them ; they immediately join in the common
work, giving their service just where it is
required, gathering honey and pollen, storing it
in cells, tending brood, ventilating the hive or
guarding the queen. They do this work, and
they discern the special work required of them,
as well on their first emergence into the com¬
munity as when they are old and worn-out
members of it. It may of course be that the
actual bonds of unity are not perceived by us ;
that the true individual is the hive and not the
separate insects composing it ; that the relation
of the individual bees to the hive is more of
the nature of the relation of the separate cells
of the body to the organism than that of the
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 49
relation of persons in a community. But which¬
ever it is, we have before us individual creatures
who lead individual lives, and who possess a
knowledge which, unlike ours, is perfect from
the first, and not, like ours, dependent on ex¬
perience. Innumerable cases of instinct will
also occur to every one in which a highly com¬
plicated action is performed once and once only
in the insect’s life, in which the creature cannot
be aware of the effect or purpose of the action
it performs judged by the result as we know it.
The Yucca moth, for example, lays its eggs on
the ovules of the Yucca flower, and then care¬
fully fertilises the pistil with pollen, the result
being that the seeds form the food of the larva ;
but the eggs are laid on fewer ovules than are
fertilised, so that provision is thereby made
that all the seeds shall not be destroyed by the
larvae. The Yucca plant is dependent on this
moth for the fertilisation of its flowers, and
the single performance of this act practically
accomplishes the life purpose of the moth.
The insect acts as though it knew that its larvae
would require ripe seed of the Yucca, as though
it knew that this could only be obtained by
fertilisation, as though it kmew that ripe seed
(2,000) 4
50
HENRI BERGSON.
is also necessary for the continuance of the
existence of Yucca plants, and therefore for the
activity of Yucca moths ; and yet it is mani¬
festly impossible that it can possess this know¬
ledge, much less acquire it in any intelligible
sense of the word knowledge. Why, then, do
we call instinct knowledge ? What is there in
a case of this kind more than an unusuallv
interesting example of a biological fact of
mutual adaptation, to be explained by a biolo¬
gical theory such as that of natural selection ?
The moth no more knows all these things to
which its action is directed than the ivy knows
that it is clinging to a wall, or the hop plant
that it must wind round a pole. Do we not
mean by instinct a vital force of adaptation
that is not knowledge at all in any usual sense
of the term ? Do we not, in fact, speak of the
instincts of plants ? Are not instincts the
natural affinities of organisms mutually de¬
pendent on one another, and the actions the
mutual dependence involves ? Undoubtedly ;
but there is also a problem of knowledge, a
problem that is psychological and philosophical,
distinct from every physical and biological fact.
These creatures, whose structure is so unlike
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 51
our own, whose life activity is so different in
its direction, nevertheless possess some kind of
mentality. They are conscious of a world in
which their activity is exercised. They receive
revelations of reality through special sense-
organs just as we do, and they guide their
activity by the revelations so received. Sense
impressions make them aware, awareness pro¬
duces movements, and we judge of the nature
of the awareness by the movements. These
actions prove to us that instinct is a psychical
activity, different in its mode of working and
in the nature of its mentality from intelligence,
and that there is an essential difference in the
kind of knowledge which is accessible to it.
There is one very marked difference between
instinctive and intelligent action in the con-
sciousness or unconsciousness with which it is
performed. We use the word consciousness in
this connection in a very special sense. In its
widest and most general meaning consciousness
is almost synonymous with life. Everything
that has the vital power of responding to a
stimulus we call conscious as distinct from inert
dead material which has no such power. In
this sense consciousness means the possibility
52
HENRI BERGSON.
of any awareness whatever. But we also use
the words conscious and unconscious in a special
sense. We say that a man is unconscious when
he is asleep, or under an anaesthetic ; a man
walking in his sleep may be carrying out very
complicated actions, actions which show that
he is in some sense aware of the surroundings
in which he is moving, but we say that he is
unconscious of what he is doing. In this sense
of the word • we do not mean by unconscious¬
ness a complete absence of consciousness, as
when we say that a stone is unconscious ; we
mean that the consciousness which is present is
blocked or hindered from being effective. Rouse
a man from his sleep, startle the sleep-walker
in what he is doing, remove the anaesthetic
that is being administered to the suffering
patient, and consciousness returns. Many of
our habitual actions — in fact by far the greater
number of them — are unconsciously performed.
Consciousness means an active attention to the
work which is being performed, and this active
attention seems to be a necessary condition of
intelligence. Now instinct seems to us to be
entirely unconscious. Bees constructing their
cells seem to us to be following an impulse
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 53
which is a natural disposition, and to be alto¬
gether unconscious of the design they are
following or of the purpose or plan of the
work they are doing. Men building a house,
on the other hand, seem to be necessarily con¬
scious of the plan they have to follow and of
the purpose their work has to fulfil. Conscious¬
ness seems to us the main, if not the only, dif¬
ference between instinct and intelligence. It
seems to us that bees are really intelligent, that
their instincts have arisen in an active attention
to an intelligent purpose, but that their actions
have become by long-continued habit and in¬
herited characteristics automatic and uncon¬
scious. What seems to us extraordinary is that
with such perfected natural knowledge they do
not now use the intelligence which we think
must have been at the origin of this knowledge.
Perhaps we account for it by imagining that
they still do actively use their intelligence, but
that it is manifested on a plane that we are,
possibly by a natural disability, incapacitated
from observing. In like manner we might im¬
agine that higher beings observing us would
think our actions automatic, and fail to perceive
the practically invisible plane on which our
54
HENRI BERGSON.
intellect works. Or we may hold that there
are instances of individual behaviour, or even
of general behaviour, in insects which are
positive proof of an active intelligence. We
think then of instinct and intelligence as being
in their origin and nature identically the same,
differing only in the consciousness or uncon¬
sciousness which characterises the activity. In¬
stinct is intelligence become automatic, and
intelligence is always tending to become instinct.
The special development and perfection of
particular instincts we attribute to the aid of
a special organic evolution. But in this view
we fail to take account of the profound differ¬
ence in the nature of the knowledge itself that
instinct possesses and that which intelligence
gives us. This difference in the nature of the
knowledge is the reason why instinctive know¬
ledge is mainly unconscious and intelligence
essentially conscious.
Instinctive action is immediate and direct ;
the apprehension of the object is followed by
the appropriate action without any interval of
hesitation, without any time for deliberation and
choice. Intelligence, on the other hand, is just
this hesitation, deliberation, and choice. Between
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 55
the apprehension and the action there intervenes
the representation of the action as an act car¬
ried out. It is the presence of this picture, the
comparison of the various courses of action
represented in idea before the action is started,
which constitutes intelligence. The intellect
gives us the power to choose, a power depend¬
ent on the ideal representation of the action
before it is acted. When, therefore, as in
nearly all instinctive action, and in such in¬
telligent action as has become habitual, action
takes place without the intervention of repre¬
sentation, the action is unconscious. The very
expressions we use — such as, to act without
thinking, to act instinctively — imply that the
action blocks out or hinders the representation.
Instinct is immediate knowledge, knowledge
such as intuition gives us, and being continued
in the action, is therefore unconscious ; intelli¬
gence represents the action in idea before the
act, hesitates and deliberates, and is therefore
conscious.
This brings us to the really essential dis¬
tinction between instinct and intelligence, the
actual distinction in the kind of knowledge
which each is fitted to give us. Intelligence is
56
HENRI BERGSON.
the knowledge of the relations of things. We
may know a thing by instinct more perfectly
than we can ever know it by intelligence, but
it is intelligence alone which gives us the
knowledge of relations, and it is this knowledge
which gives us command over the wide field
of activity that we possess. Intelligence is the
power of asking questions. The number of
things of vital consequence to it that a human
child actually knows is very small compared
with the knowledge the young of many of the
lower animals have, but the child has a power
that no lower animal has in anything like the
same degree — the power of understanding the
relation of a predicate to a subject, the power
of using verbs. It can deduce conclusions and
make inferences, and in this its intelligence
lies. But that which chiefly marks the • high
intellectual attainment of man, that which is
the most simple and concrete manifestation of
his superiority, is the ability to make and use
tools. It is here that we see the wide range
of intelligence and the nature of the knowledge
that it gives, as compared with the narrow
range of instinct, perfect as its knowledge is.
The tool that an insect uses is part of its bodily
INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 57
structure ; it is far more perfect for its purpose
than any human tool, and with it is always
the special incentive which prompts the animal
to use it. There is perfect skill, but restricted
to a very narrow range. The tool that a man
uses is made of any material ; it is very im¬
perfect compared with the natural tool, but it is
capable of infinite variation and adaptability.
The sharpened flint, the stone tied to a stick
to make a hammer, such are the simple primi¬
tive indications of pure intelligence, and the
progress of the human race is marked by the
enormous extension of this simple power of
using dead material to fashion more and more
perfect tools. The detachability and adapta¬
bility of the material we use is derived from
this power we have to know relations. It is
further illustrated in our language, which, more
than anything else, is recognised as a mark of
intelligence and which serves the intelligence
it is the sign of. Language is communication
by signs, signs that are entirely detached from,
and different from, the thing signified. Insects
and lower animals doubtless communicate with
their fellows, but we cannot imagine that they
use a language consisting of signs arbitrarily
58
HENRI BERGSON.
attached to things, unless we also attribute to
them our power of discursive thought.
When, then, from this point of view wTe
compare together instinct and intelligence, we
see that each is a mode of psychical activity,
and that while the one, instinct, is far more
perfect than the other in the accomplishment
of its purpose, far more complete in its insight,
it is nevertheless confined to a very limited
range ; the other, far less perfect in accom¬
plishing any purpose, far less complete in the
insight it gives into reality, yet opens to our
activity a practically unlimited range. They
are also distinguished by their attitude. In¬
stinct is sympathy. It is the feeling of the
intimate bond that binds the individual to
reality. Intelligence is essentially external ; it
makes us regard reality as something other
than our life, as something hostile we may
overcome.
CHAPTER IV
INTUITION
Although the two modes of mental activity,
instinct and intelligence, in their perfect mani¬
festation are so sharply distinguished from one
another, yet they exist together in our con¬
sciousness in a very close and intimate union.
Instinct is akin to that power of direct insight
which we have called intuition. It is this
power which in our view philosophy must
make use of to seize again the simplicity of
the reality that is in a manner distorted in
the intelligent view of things. Intuition is a
sympathetic attitude to the reality without us
which makes us seem to enter into it, to be
one with it, to live it. It is in contrast to the
defiant attitude we seem to assume when in
science we treat facts and things as outside,
external, discrete existences, which we arrange,
analyse, discriminate, break up and recombine.
60
HENRI BERGSON.
Intuition is not a new sense revealing to us
unsuspected things or qualities of things; it
is an aspect of conscious existence recognised
in every philosophy. All that is new in Berg¬
son’s theory is the emphasis laid on intuition,
and the suggestion that in it lies the possibility
of the solution of the intellectual puzzle. What
is new is not the recognition that there is an
immediacy of feeling that precedes, forms the
basis of, or is the substance of, discursive
thought, and accompanies it. What is new is
the exhortation not to turn our backs on this
immediacy in order to follow the method of
science in the hope and expectation of finding
a profounder and richer reality in the concepts
of the understanding, the frames into which
our intellect fits the reality, but to use the
intuition to seize the reality itself, to make of
intuition a philosophical instrument, to find in
it a philosophical method. By so doing, and
only by so doing, can we have a real meta¬
physic, a knowledge of things in themselves, a
science which is beyond, or rather before, or
perhaps we should say both before and beyond,
the sciences. No one saw this need more
clearly than did the philosopher Kant, to whom
INTUITION.
61
the problem of philosophy presented itself in a
practically identical form to that in which Berg¬
son presents it. Is a metaphysic possible ? Is
it possible to know things in themselves, things
as they are, without the space and time form
in which our senses apprehend them, without
the concepts in which our understanding frames
them ? Kant thought it was impossible.
There is no knowledge, he said, of things in
themselves. The philosophy of Kant became,
therefore, a theory of knowledge, but a theory
of knowledge which involved the denial of
knowledge. Theory of knowledge cannot stand
alone. If all knowledge is relative, there is
no knowledge. The immediate followers of
Kant saw this, and sought the absolute — Fichte
in the ego, Hegel in the logical idea itself,
Schopenhauer in unconscious will. Bergson has
perceived that there cannot be a theory of
knowledge without a theory of life, that the
two are inseparable, because it is for life that
knowledge exists. Life is not known as an
external thing, apprehended by the senses under
a space form and a time form, fitted into the
frames or shaped in the moulds that the intel¬
lect uses, but is directly known. The intuition
62
HENRI BERGSON.
of life is knowledge of reality itself, reality as
it is in itself. But, on the other hand, we
cannot have a theory of life that is unaccom¬
panied by a criticism of knowledge. It is
theory of knowledge which enables us to see
how the concepts of the understanding have
been constructed, how they serve as a conven¬
ient and necessary symbolism for our positive
science, how we may enlarge or go beyond
them, and what is their true place in the evolu¬
tion of life.
When I begin to learn a new language, it
appears to me as a vocabulary of words which
I must commit to memory, with the rules for
their use, the declensions and conjugations, the
genders and cases, the construction of sentences,
the idioms, the syntax, the spelling and the
pronunciation. The task seems appalling. If
I had to learn the language by committing to
memory every word and every rule, I might
by severe application get perhaps considerable
knowledge of it, but it would be of a halting
and practically useless kind. But what hap¬
pens ? As soon as I begin to use the language,
either by speaking or reading it, though I may
only have acquired a few words and a slight
INTUITION.
63
knowledge of construction, I seem to enter into
it, and it seems to form itself round me. It
ceases to appear to me as arbitrary sounds and
rules ; it becomes a mode of expression which
continually, and as a whole, progresses to more
and more perfect expression, and not by the
mere addition to memory of words and rules.
And on the other hand my own language, which
I learnt in early childhood without difficulty,
because it formed itself round me and grew
with my growth— this language, which forms so
, natural a part of my life that I cannot even in
thought divest myself of it, for it is the vehicle
of my thought, I can, when I will, set before
myself and see it fall apart into sounds, com¬
binations, and rules. It is in the same way
that intuition and intellect are blended in our
life.
This applies to everything whatever that we
know. There is a difference in the knowledge
we have of anything which consists in the atti¬
tude towards it. When we are reading wre
hardly notice the sentences, words, letters, and
the spaces dividing them, that compose the page
and convey to us the author’s meaning. We
certainly do not notice that we have before us
64
HENRI BERGSON.
only black marks on a white ground. Yet i£
we will we can present these, and these only, as
the things we perceive. This very philosophy
may appear a set of very debatable proposi¬
tions, none of which separately would bring
conviction, and all of which in the aggregate
may seem to lack cohesion ; or we may enter
sympathetically into it, find ourself at its point
of view, find that it becomes the expression of
our own attitude, and that it throws light on
the whole problem of thought and existence.
One thing is certain — that if anyone is con¬
vinced by this or any other philosophy, it is
because he has entered into it by sympathy,
and not because he has weighed its arguments
as a set of abstract propositions.
But the clearest evidence of intuition is in
the works of great artists. What is it that
we call genius in great painters and poets and
musicians ? It is the power they have of see¬
ing more than we see, and of enabling us by
their expression to penetrate further into reality.
What they see is there to be seen, but they
alone see it because they are gifted with a
higher power than we. What is the more
which is revealed to them ? It is not scientific
INTUITION.
65
truth, nor is it technical skill, for this is a
consequence, not a cause, of genius. It is the
power to enter by sympathy into their subject.
Great art is inspiration, it is the artists
power of knowing by entering within the
object and living its life. What makes the
artist’s picture ? Not the colours which he
mixes on his palette and transfers to his canvas
— these are only his means of expression — not
the model which sits to give him direction in
his composition, nor the skill with which he
portrays the reality in his representation ; what
makes the picture is the artist’s vision, his
entry into the very life of his subject by sym¬
pathy, something he never succeeds in express¬
ing perfectly, though the imperfect expression
may reveal to us more than we could see
without it.
A symphony does not consist in the vibra¬
tion of strings and reeds and stretched skins
and tubes which give it expression, nor does
its interpretation consist in the skill with which
the performers manipulate the instruments that
produce the vibrations. The work is an indi¬
vidual, indivisible whole which the composer
has created and the performers apprehend, and
(2,000) 5
66
HENRI BERGSON.
not the aggregate of discrete sounds into which
it can at any time be decomposed. It is known
directly in one intuition. Intuition is the
entering into it as distinct from the standing
over against it and watching its successive parts
or selecting points of view of it.
What purpose, then, does the intellect serve ?
Why do we distort, or at least transform, reality ?
Or — if this seems, as indeed it is, an extreme
way of stating it — why does the intellect in¬
volve us in the illusion that the continuous is
discrete, that the moving and changing is at
rest ? What is the advantage that intellectual
frames give us ? Bergson in his answer to
these questions has shown us both why and
how these things can be. His answer is entirely
original. The problems are old enough, but
the solution now offered in this philosophy has
not been propounded before. It is the theory
of life that offers the solution of the problem
of knowledge. Clearly if the whole end and
purpose of our being were knowledge, if know¬
ledge were an end and not merely the means to
an end, these frames would not only be useless,
but a positive hindrance. If the end of know¬
ledge were the contemplation of eternal truth,
INTUITION.
67
it is intuition alone that would serve that end ;
the intellect would be a stumbling-block. But
our theory of life shows us knowing as a means,
not an end ; it is for the sake of acting. How,
then, does knowledge serve action, and in what
special way does intellectual knowledge serve
action better than intuitional knowledge ? The
illustrations we have already given may indicate
the answer. The intellect gives us the same
advantage over intuition that the material tool
gives to us as compared with the organical tool
j that the insect possesses. It opens a practically
unlimited range to our activity. It supplies us
with a symbolism, a language, a system of de-
: tached and detachable signs, which enables us
to use our experience to guide our present
action. It gives us the sciences. The sciences
are the organisation of experience into systems
of reality which serve the mind as tools serve
the body. We are continually confronted with
the need of action ; while we live there is this
unceasing demand to act. There seem to be
only two ways in which we may be qualified to
meet this demand : one is by a direct intuition,
which drives us to act in one path and one
only ; the other is by the intellect, which ranges
68
HENRI BERGSON.
before us our experience and enables us to
choose from many possible courses the one that
offers best hope of success. How could this be
unless our actions, accomplished and contem¬
plated, could be presented before us as indi¬
vidual unities, and the sphere of our activity
as ends and motives ? This the intellect does.
It articulates the living flow, makes the past
appear as successive events, the present as
simultaneous positions or situations of definite
things, and so enables us to search in the past
for identical situations to guide us, to recognise
similarities in the present, and to anticipate in
the future the results of our activity as actions
accomplished. And the articulations which the
intellect makes in the living flow are natural
articulations, because they follow the practical
needs of our nature ; but they are not absolute,
for with other needs there would be other
divisions. There is no absolutely formless
reality ; the presence of one form is the ab¬
sence of another, but the lines and divisions
are the necessities that human activity demands.
Without intellect our life would lack all that
order which appears to us in the form of suc¬
cessive events, all the divisions and lines that
INTUITION.
69
seem to us the actual articulations of the inert
material world ; but life would exist. Life, the
concrete reality, is not itself a formless chaos ;
it is not a manifold without order nor a unity
without form ; it is an absolute that holds in
itself the possibility of all form. We cannot
represent or imagine life without form, and for
the power to represent and imagine at all we
are dependent on the intellect ; but we can dis¬
tinguish the form that the intellect gives it,
and see in the purpose that the intellect serves
the reason of that form. And also we can
know life without intellectual frames, for con¬
sciousness of living; is the intuition of life.
But if reality is life, and if the solid things
and their relations are the order that the in¬
tellect discerns in this reality, what is the
nothing which stands opposed to this reality ;
what is the disorder which is the alternative
to this order ? It seems to us that when we
think that something exists we can equally
think that it does not exist, and when we think
of any arrangement or order we can equally
think of the absence of order. The opposite
of reality is nothing, the opposite of order is
disorder, and so we seem to have positive ideas
70
HENRI BERGSON.
of nothing and of disorder. Hence arise ques¬
tions that seem to touch the very depth of the
problem of existence. Why is there any reality
at all ? Why does something exist rather than
nothing ? Why is there order in reality rather
than disorder ? When we characterise reality
as life, the question seems so much more press¬
ing, for the subject of it seems so much fuller
of content than when we set over against one
another bare abstract categories, like the being
and the nothing which Hegel declared to be
identical. It seems easy to imagine that life
might cease and then nothing would remain.
In this way we come to picture to ourselves a
nought spread out beneath reality, a reality
which has come to be and which might cease
to be, when there would again be nought.
This idea of an absolute nothing is a false idea,
arising from an illusion of the understanding.
Absolute nothing is unthinkable. The prob¬
lems which arise out of the idea we seem to
have of it are unmeaning. It is very important
to understand this point if we would grasp the
full meaning of the theory of knowledge. Be¬
hind the reality which we know there is no
non-being that we can think of as actually
INTUITION.
71
taking its place, and also there is no actual
chaos or confusion or disorder which we can
think of as taking the place of the order
which we know, and which would be the con¬
dition of reality without that order. Bergson
is not the first who has discovered that we
cannot have an idea of nothing, but no one has
exposed so forcibly and so clearly the misap¬
prehension that rests on this false idea. It is
very easy to see that it must be a false idea.
Every idea is an idea of something, every feel¬
ing is a feeling of something, nothing is not
something, and therefore to think of absolute
nothing is not to think, to feel nothing is not
to feel. But we think we are thinking of some¬
thing when we think of an actual nothing ;
what is it that we think of ? It is the absence
of something. We can think that any particu¬
lar existing thing might not exist ; what we
are then thinking of is the general reality with
•
this particular thing absent. We can extend
this thought to include the non-existence of all
that is, but what then ? We find that we are
thinking of all reality as absent and ourself
looking on at the void which we imagine. It
is not a positive nothing that is in our thought ;
1 2
HENRI BERGSON.
the present reality is in our thought, and with¬
out its presence we could not picture a void.
Absolute nought is unimaginable and inconceiv¬
able. This is of fundamental importance for
our theory. Reality is not a thing in itself
which exists, we know not why, and which
might equally well not exist. The living reality
which intuition reveals to us is absolute, its
non-existence cannot be imagined or conceived
So also with the order that we perceive in it :
it is the direction of our interest as individuals
of the human species, the articulation which
serves our activity. But the absence of this
order would be the presence of some other
order ; there is no positive disorder on which
order is imposed. When we see clearly that
the idea of the nought and the idea of dis¬
order are false ideas, we can dismiss as entirely
without meaning problems which have filled a
large place in philosophy and are persistent in
ordinary thought. Was creation out of noth¬
ing, or has matter existed from eternity ?
Was there an original formless matter on which
order had to be imposed ? Such questions
arise in false ideas, and have no answer because
they have no meaning.
INTUITION.
73
The perception that reality is that which we
cannot even in thought imagine non-existent,
that the only alternative to the order we re¬
cognise in this reality is not a positive disorder
hut some other order, alters profoundly the
whole problem of philosophy as it has hitherto
been presented. We have no longer to explain
a dualism. The intuition of reality which we
have in the consciousness of our own life is
not the apprehension of a kind of reality alto¬
gether different from that other reality which
we know when we perceive external things.
Space is not one reality and time another. It
is one identical reality that we know by in¬
tuition in life, by understanding in physical
science. The point of view at which matter
and mind appear to be two realities different
in their nature, impossible to reduce to an
identity, and yet in some mysterious way in
close relation — this view which has been the
starting-point of philosophy since Descartes,
and which has in one form or another given
its problem to philosophy ever since — is simply
superseded. The philosophy of Bergson is not
a reconciliation of this old problem of dualism ;
what it does is to offer us a point of view from
74
HENRI BERGSON.
which the problem does not and cannot arise ;
hence its peculiar significance and immense
importance. It is in very truth a new de¬
parture. It is not a new light on old prob¬
lems ; it is a new principle of interpretation,
suggested and made possible by the enormous
advance of the biological sciences in modern
times.
CHAPTER V
FREEDOM
The question of most vital interest to each of
us as individual living beings is the question
of freewill. It concerns us most intimately in
its practical as well as in its speculative interest.
Are we free agents, or only creatures of circum¬
stance ? Is the choice that seems at every
moment open to us real or only apparent ?
Could an omniscient mind, knowing the present
conditions of the universe, foretell the next
and every future state ? Or, is there in free
action something entirely undetermined, and
therefore unpredictable ? Am I actually free,
or is my liberty of action only ignorance of
conditions determining my actions even to the
minutest details ? The tremendous moral con¬
sequences which seem to be involved in this
problem of freewill have made it one of the
most debated controversies in philosophy. It
76
HENRI BERGSON.
is one of those problems the satisfactory solu¬
tion of which seems beyond the power of
human reason. The terms are simple enough,
and there is no question, so far as the main
controversy is concerned, of any ambiguity in
what is meant. Yet we may prove, as Jonathan
Edwards, the eighteenth-century American
theologian, did, by the most simple and un¬
answerable logic, and by an argument that
appeals with full force to both parties, that
freewill is impossible. It is no use — it is like
proving that Achilles cannot overtake the tor¬
toise — there rises up against the argument a
feeling that claims all the authority of fact,
and seems to turn the reasoning to foolishness.
Is it possible to explain the persistence of this
everlasting problem ? May it be that there is
a confusion in the meaning of the terms, a con¬
tradiction in the very heart of the problem ?
May it be that there is an illusion in our
common way of thinking of things, and that,
this illusion once removed, this and other
problems will lose their meaning and disappear ?
The problem of freewill or determinism is
generally stated in such a way that the case
for freewill is made impossible by the very
FREEDOM.
77
form of the question. We ask, can we choose
indifferently between two alternatives, or must
the strongest motive prevail ? But such a
question is unreal, for there is no other test
of the strongest motive but the fact that we
choose it. The freewill supposed in a choice
that is indifferent to motives is also absurd in
its ethical aspect, for the moral responsibility
of the agent which it is supposed to establish
is clearly destroyed. What do we really mean
when we ask, Are we free ? The alternatives
are, whether we really create when we act, or
whether creation is impossible ; not whether
any action may be undetermined, but whether
every action can be predicted beforehand as
certainly as its conditions can be determined
once it is carried out. The view of this philo¬
sophy is that life is creation, and that incessant
creation is the reality of the universe. This
conception of freedom as the power of creating
is the central idea towards which all Bergson’s
arguments converge.
The illusion that gives rise to the problem
of freewill is the mental picture we form of
time. The time that we ordinarily think about
is not real time, but a picture of space. In
78
HENRI BERGSON.
ordinary thought and language we represent
space and time as each a homogeneous medium
— that is to say, as two realities in which all the
parts are of exactly the same kind, in which
there are no qualitative differences and no
actual divisions between one part and another
part. Differences and divisions all belong to
the objects and events that fill them, not to
space and time themselves. In space, material
objects lie outside one another ; and in time,
conscious states succeed one another. The
time which we imagine as a medium in which
events happen, or, as we say (using a spatial
image), take place, is only a symbolical repre¬
sentation of space. When we think of states
succeeding one another, we are not thinking of
time at all, but of space. Real time, the true
duration, is entirely different : it is not a
succession ; it is, like life or consciousness, an
existence in which all reality is the actually
present, moving, changing, now. States of con¬
sciousness do not lie outside one another ; they
interpenetrate, and the whole undivided con¬
sciousness changes without ceasing. Whenever
we think of change as the succession of fixed
states, we think of these states as lying beside
FREEDOM.
79
one another, and change as the passing from
one to the other. This is not real change. It
is only in space that one thing is outside an¬
other thing, and when we represent states as
separate things, whether we imagine them to
exist side by side or to follow one another, we
are using a spatial symbol, and the succession
of states is only a picture of ourself passing
from one thing to another thing in space. In
real change there are no states at all ; every¬
thing is a living, moving present. Existence
in time is life. It is very important to grasp
this point clearly ; it is so fundamental that,
unless it is understood and accepted, it is little
likely that the subsequent arguments will carry
conviction. And it is not an easy doctrine to
explain or to understand, for the very language
in which alone we can express it is steeped in
spatial symbolism. Language seems to require
us to make the same sharp distinction between
our ideas that we make between material
objects. It is when we grasp the true nature
of our experience of time, and distinguish it
from the spatial representation of it — a repre¬
sentation both useful in practice and necessary
in science — that the real nature of freewill
80
HENRI BERGSON.
appears. It is spatial time which makes us
think of ourselves as made up of elements that
can be measured and counted like material
objects, and of our actions as the play of these
elements. When we see that life and con¬
sciousness are not measurable at all ; that it is
always something else we are measuring when
we think we are comparing or counting con¬
scious states ; that they are not quantities but
pure qualities, not outside of and distinct from
one another, but interpenetrating and per¬
meating the living individual who progresses
and develops ; — the old problem of determinism
disappears, and freewill is seen to be the
creative power of the individual who is one
and indivisible.
Freewill, as this philosophy affirms it, is
creative action. All the actions we perform,
all the actions that, taken together, make up
our individual lives, are not free actions. Our
free actions are very rare, and for the vast
mass of mankind may even not exist at all.
And, moreover, it is not possible to pick out of
our lives certain actions and say of them these
are, what the rest are not, free. When we
regard our individual actions and analyse them
FREEDOM.
81
into means and ends and purposes, the deter-
minist argument is inevitable. Whether we
regard only the physical causation that is in¬
volved in every action, or whether we think of
the psychical causation involved in the motives
and ends and purposes that constitute the
alternatives from which we choose, there is no
way of resisting the determinist conclusion that
all our actions can only be explained by their
conditions, and these conditions leave no place
for freewill, as determinists and indeterminists
alike have defined it. But what is true of the
parts viewed as parts is not necessarily true of
the whole. And so it may be that when we
regard our action as a chain of complementary
parts linked together, each action so viewed is
rigidly conditioned ; yet when we regard our
whole life as one and indivisible, it may be
free. So also with the life which we hold to
be the reality of the universe : when we view
it in its detail as the intellect presents it to
us, it appears as an order of real conditioning,
each separate state having its ground in an
antecedent state ; yet as a whole, as the living
impulse, it is free and creative. We are free
when our acts spring from our whole personality,
(2,000) 6
82
HENRI BERGSON.
when they express that personality. These
acts are not unconditioned ; but the conditions
are not external, they are in our character,
which is ourself.
Freewill, this power of free creative action,
is not the liberty of choice which indeter-
minists have asserted and determinists have
denied. It is not the feeling of liberty that we
have when we are set face to face with alter¬
native courses from which to choose, nor is it
the feeling we have when our choice has been
made and we look back on the action accom¬
plished, the feeling that we need not have acted
as we did and could have acted differently.
Freewill is the very nature of our lives as
individual wholes, the expression of the indi¬
viduality of life. Our actions, even our free
creative actions, follow from and depend upon
our character, and our character is formed by
circumstances ; but it is not external to us, it is
ourself. Free action in the full meaning is
only called forth in emergencies. Our ordinary
life is made up of actions largely automatic,
habits and conventions forming a crust
around our free expression ; it is only at
moments of crisis or when we are touched with
FREEDOM.
83
deep emotion that we seem to burst through
this crust and our whole self decides our action.
But further, as this philosophy shows, there is
that in the nature of life and consciousness
which is itself essentially freewilL Causality
is a scientific conception, and science is an in¬
tellectual view. Physical science is the order
which the intellect imposes on the flowing. The
intellect finds resemblances, binds like to like,
organises experience into systems in which
recognised antecedents have recognised conse¬
quents, and so makes prediction passible. And
it extends this view to the living world and to
the conscious world of thought and will. But
life itself, as we know it in intuition, is not like
this intellectual view of it ; life is a becoming
in which there is no repetition, in which, there¬
fore, prediction is impossible, for it is continual
new creation.
Freewill is only possible, therefore, if the
intellectual view is not absolute. There is no
place for it in the world as physical science
presents it. And consequently to prove that
the will is free is to prove that we have a
spiritual as distinct from a material nature ;
that we are not merely mechanical arrange-
84
HENRI BERGSON.
inents of parts in a block universe, but living
upholders of a universe which is open to our
creative activity.
But even so, is this liberty so very im¬
portant ? Do we not share it with everything
that lives ? If we have acquired an advantage
which has made us lords of the surface of this
planet, it is but a little difference that parts us
from the lower and less successful forms. If
the reality is the life which has evolved us,
and this life imparts to us a portion of its
own essential freedom, is it not imparted for a
purely practical reason, and does not everything
that lives share it in some degree ? Are not
the limitations so overwhelming that the con¬
sciousness of this rare freedom hardly counts
against the obstacles which block its exercise ?
Is not the superiority which seems to raise us
above all other living beings merely our point
of view and dependent upon the narrowness of
our outlook ? It may be so, but there is also
reason to think that our human life is some¬
thing more than the success of a species by
natural selection in the struggle for existence.
Humanity may be in a special sense the
triumph of the life impulse itself. I will give
FREEDOM.
85
this idea in Bergson’s own words : “ From our
point of view, life appears in its entirety as an
immense wave which, starting from a centre,
spreads outwards, and which on almost the
whole of its circumference is stopped and con¬
verted into oscillation ; at one single point the
obstacle has been forced — the impulsion has
passed freely. It is this freedom that the
human form registers. Everywhere but in
man consciousness has had to come to a stand ;
in man alone it has kept on its way. Man,
then, continues the vital movement indefinitely,
although he does not draw along with him all
that life carries in itself. On other lines of
evolution there have travelled other tendencies
which life implied, and of which, since every¬
thing interpenetrates, man has, doubtless, kept
something, but of which he has kept only very
little. It is as if a vague and formless being,
whom we may call, as we will, man or super¬
man, had sought to realise himself, and had
succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself
on the way” {Creative Evolution , p. 280).
CHAPTER VI
MIND AND BODY
There are two guiding principles in Bergson’s
philosophy : the one is that knowledge is for
the sake of action, and the other is that this
practical purpose of knowledge leads to habits
of thought which create fictitious problems.
We have seen that the problem of the freedom
of the will as it has been presented hitherto
in philosophy, alike by determinists and inde-
terminists, is one of these fictitious problems.
Another is the problem underlying the con¬
troversy between Idealism and Realism which
has had so large a place in philosophy, ancient
and modern. Impressions from the outer world
seem to come to us by our senses and to be
transmitted along our nerves to our brain, and
to be there in some way transformed into per¬
ceptions of things. And the problem of psy¬
chology has been to understand how this can
MIND AND BODY.
87
be. The idealist, insisting on the fact that the
only actual reality is the perception in the
mind, holds that the mind must in some way
project these perceptions outside itself, and so
build up what we call the external world. The
realist, on the other hand, insists that the object
is an independent thing of which the mind has
a perception ; but he cannot explain how a per¬
ception formed in the mind, or it may be in
the brain, can agree with a real object entirely
independent of the mind and the brain. He is
led to propound theories of which that known
as the “ epiphenomenon ” may be quoted as an
example, in which it is supposed that the vibra¬
tions transmitted through the molecules of the
brain-cells produce a kind of phosphorescence
or luminous trail, which is the perception of
things. Now idealism and realism alike rest
on the view that the brain is in some sort of
way a manufactory in which perceptions are
produced, notwithstanding that the idealist is
bound to regard the brain and the movements
in the brain as themselves perceptions, and the
realist is bound to regard the brain as only
one among other objects, and can give no reason
why it should, or how it can, have the power
88
HENRI BERGSON.
or function of reproducing or representing all
other objects. Both idealists and realists regard
memories as a kind of perception, and consider
one of the functions of the brain is to store the
perceptions it has given rise to, and reproduce
them as recollections on occasion. In Bergson’s
view this whole conception of the function of the
brain is false. The brain is not a manufactory
of ideas nor a storehouse of memories. It is
a kind of telephonic exchange. The body is
organised for action, the impressions which pass
into the body are already perceptions, they are
incentives to action, and the function of the
brain is to respond to them by setting going
the appropriate action.
I will now try to explain, as simply and
concisely as I can, what, for this philosophy,
perception is and what memory is, what the
body is and what the mind is, what is matter
and what is spirit, and what is the function
the body performs.
When we are conscious we perceive and we
recollect. We never perceive anything without
at the same time remembering ; but though per¬
ception and memory always exist together in
conscious experience, they are different in kind
MIND AND BODY.
89
from one another, and must be dissociated to
be understood. A memory is not a weaker
kind of perception, and a perception is not an
intenser memory. A pure perception, if there
were such a thing, would be the immediate and
instantaneous vision of matter that I might
imagine myself to have if I were living entirely
in the present without any memory. If I dis¬
regard all philosophical theories, and try to
represent the universe as it appears to me, I
shall describe it as consisting of a great variety
of objects, one of which is my body. My body
differs from the other objects in this, that while
the other objects act and react on one another
according to constant laws which I call laws of
nature, it seems to have the power of perform¬
ing new and original actions. My body is a
centre of action. It receives the movements
which radiate from physical objects propagated
to me through intervening space, and it re¬
sponds to them by action. It performs these
functions by its nervous system, the chief con¬
trol of which is a highly complex structure, the
great brain. All the sensorimotor arcs do not
pass through the great brain ; some pass only
through the lower centres of the spinal cord, and
90
HENRI BERGSON.
are immediately and automatically converted
into actions ; some of those that pass through
the great brain are perceived before they are
converted into actions. And so it has come to
be thought that the great brain is the organ
by and in which perceptions are produced. But
the function of the brain is simply to transmit
movement, and its great complexity is to give
choice of movement. In order to choose,
consciousness must perceive ; but perceptions
would not serve action if they were manu¬
factured in the brain. To be of use to me
perceptions must come to me from the objects
round me and among which my action is to
take place. I perceive in the world around
me not the whole of reality, but the part of it
which interests me on account of my possible
action, the action that my body, having received
the stimulus, will eventually perform. Per¬
ceptions, therefore, are always eventual actions,
in the sense that they fall within, and are
conditioned by, the range of a creature’s activity.
If the physical universe be as we conceive it
to be, a complete system of interacting forces,
then my body, being within that system and a
part of it, is, at every moment, acted on by, and
MIND AND BODY.
91
reacting to, all influences. Why, then, are some
influences perceived and the rest not ? Percep¬
tions are selected. Selection gives them the
form of images. The function of the body in
regard to perception is the selection of images,
the principle of the selection is the eventual
action, and consciousness, implied in perception,
is to serve the purpose of the body, which is the
performance of the action. Influences which
do not concern eventual action — that is, actions
which fall outside the range of possible activity
— are unselected ; they form no images. I may
indeed conceive their existence, but they are
unperceived.
Perception is my actual present contact with
the world in which my actions are taking place.
In conscious experience there is no perception
without memory. However instantaneous per¬
ception may seem it has some duration, and all
duration is the existence of the past in the
present. Pure perception, which exists in
theory only, is what the present would be if
it retained nothing of the past. Its reality is
its activity. The past is idea, the present is
movement. In perception we touch and pene¬
trate and live the reality of things. When
92
HENRI BERGSON.
we perceive, we do not, as the idealist sup¬
poses, construct things, nor do we, as the
realist supposes, discern them ; we represent in
images eventual actions.
As pure perception is wholly in the present,
so pure memory is wholly in the past. The
past is that which has ceased to act ; it has not
ceased to exist. The whole of our past con¬
scious experience survives in the living present,
preserving the order and the circumstance of
its acted occurrence ; for there is no part of our
past experience which, theoretically at least if
not practically, is beyond recall. The mind
plays in regard to this time existence an exactly
similar part to that which the body plays in
regard to the perception of present images in
space. It enables us to forget. It shuts out
from consciousness all past recollections which
do not interest the present action, and it brings
into consciousness those recollections which
serve the purpose of present activity. These
blend with and interpret and become one with
the present action, and therefore it is that in
actual experience neither present perception nor
memory is ever pure. There is no past per¬
ception which may not be, under some necessity,
MIND AND "BODY.
93
brought by the mind into present conscious¬
ness ; but because we are not conscious of a
recollection until it is present, we think that
it is only when we are conscious of it that it
exists. We think, therefore, that it is a new
and different existence, and not something that
already existed in the unconscious.
This theory of pure memory is an essential
doctrine in Bergson’s philosophy, and it is the
most revolutionary compared with hitherto
accepted psychological theory. The very affir¬
mation of the existence of unconscious psychical
states seems to involve a contradiction in terms,
for consciousness is generally held to be an
essential property of psychical states. We have
fallen into error, Bergson tells us, because we
have come to regard consciousness as an endow¬
ment, intended to give us pure knowledge, and
only accidentally practical. We have come to
think, therefore, that there can be no psychical
reality of which we are not actually conscious.
A recollection, we suppose, comes into existence
when it comes to consciousness. But the un¬
conscious plays in memory an exactly similar
part to that which it plays in perception.
When I perceive any object, I am unconscious
94
HENRI BERGSON.
of all but a very small part of the existence
which I perceive. All these things that I am
unconscious of form part of the present exist¬
ence which I perceive. So also when I re¬
collect any past event, I am unconscious of all
but a very small part of the existence which
seems to be spread out behind me in the
past.
It is this refusal to recognise the existence
©
of unconscious psychical states, to recognise the
reality of what Bergson names spirit, which
compels us to suppose that memories are pre¬
served in the matter of the brain, either by
being stored up in cells, or by being the molec¬
ular paths perception has traced. A large
part of Matter and Memory is devoted to an
examination and criticism of the various forms
of this theory, and also to an account of
recent actual experimental research which dis¬
proves the theory in any form on strictly
scientific grounds.
The theory of pure memory is the affirma¬
tion that mind or spirit is an existing fact
which cannot be reduced to, or explained as, a
function of matter. But there are two forms
of memory ; only one of them is pure memory.
MIND AND BODY.
95
When I have learnt a poem or a musical com¬
position by heart, I say that I remember it.
But memory in this case refers to the present
and the future, and not to the past ; that which
I remember has become a whole for me that
I retain and can repeat when I will. It is
true that I have had to learn it, and those
efforts are past, but the memory is a present
possession. Each of those efforts, however,
is a personal memory, a picture image with its
particular outline, colour, and place in time,
individual and unique, and not to be repeated.
These two forms of memory always exist to¬
gether in our experience, but they are radically
different from one another : the one is a formed
motor habit, a mechanism, a habit interpreted
by memory ; the other is true memory, an
existence in time.
Perception affirms the reality of matter ;
memory affirms the reality of spirit. Are we
not then confronted with the problems and
difficulties which have always seemed insepar¬
able from dualism ? No, because both percep¬
tion and memory serve a practical purpose :
they prepare us for and direct our actions ; they
unite in the reality of the movement that is
96
HENRI BERGSON.
life. We have not, on the one hand, a series
of mechanical movements, and, on the other,
a series of psychical states with no common
measure between them. We have not, as in
idealist and realist theories, two realities, the
only function of one of which is to know the
other. Quite different is Bergsons view of the
function of the body in the life of the spirit.
Our body is the exact actual present point
at which our action is taking place, the point
at which perception marks out our eventual
actions, and memory brings the weight, as it
were, of the past to push us forward as we
advance into the future. The body is our
instrument of action ; it is the point of the knife
which is cutting into the future. At every
moment it may be said to perish and to be
born again. It is the moving point pressing
forward, the present moment in which con¬
sciousness makes that instantaneous section
across the universal becoming which takes for
us the form of solid matter spread out in
space. This is why we experience it in two
ways — by external sensations which present it
as an object among other objects, and by in¬
ternal feelings, pleasure and pain, which make
MIND AND BODY.
97
it for us a privileged object known from
within.
What, then, is the reality we perceive ? The
reality is movement, indivisible duration, uni¬
versal becoming. Our life is an active centre
of this universal becoming, and our activity
requires us to take views of the reality within
which we are acting. In perception we select
and fix certain aspects of the universal move¬
ment, and these images become for our con¬
sciousness things, just as in the consciousness of
a flash of light we condense into one sensation
billions of successive vibrations. Our body is
at the actual point where the present advan¬
cing into the future is becoming the past, and
at this point perception makes a cut across the
universal flow. Matter is this section. It is
the image we form of a simultaneous existence
at every moment of actual perception, and as the
centre of perception moves onward the whole
section seems to move with it. Space is the
way in which we represent it. Space is the
continuity which seems to underlie matter. It
is the symbol which makes it possible for the
mind to represent to itself this section. And
so space seems not to perish and be born again
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98
HENRI BERGSON.
with each new moment, but to be an independent,
indestructible reality underlying the universe.
And the past and the future we represent by
a similar symbol which we call time. We rep¬
resent time as a continuity which underlies
the succession of our states ; and it seems to be
an independent reality spread out like space,
only that it is behind us and before us instead
of around us.
The things into which external perception
divides matter are the lines that mark out our
possible actions. There is no absolute form in
the sense of a fixity of things. The reality
flows. Change is continuous and unceasing.
Our individual lives are indivisible movements,
each with its own quality, and around us are
movements also indivisible and qualitative, and
all form one reality of a becoming which
endures and grows in the manner of a con¬
sciousness. The outlines of things that exter¬
nal perception presents to us are not absolute,
but relative to our bodily needs and functions.
The fundamental conditions of perception con¬
cern the uses to be made of things, the practical
advantage to be drawn from them.
What, then, is spirit ? It is the progress,
MIND AND BODY.
99
the evolution, the prolonging of the past into
the present. It is a pure time existence. It
unites with matter in the act of perception, but
the union can only be expressed in terms of
time and not in terms of space. It is memory
which holds the past and unites it with the
present in the living reality.
CHAPTER VII
CREATIVE EVOLUTION
In the latter half of last century, and following
the formulation of the great scientific general¬
isation of the evolution of living species, the
philosophy of Herbert Spencer seemed to pro
mise to found on the principle of evolution a
new synthesis of knowledge. Whatever our
view of the permanent value of Herbert
Spencer’s work, it cannot be denied that the
wonderful promise it seemed to contain was not
fulfilled, and the hope and enthusiasm it in
spired was followed by disappointment. And
now again evolution is the principle of a new
construction and the basis of a philosophy.
But this philosophy is not a mere classification
and generalisation of the results of the sciences ;
it explains the sciences by showing the genesis
of matter in the reality of life. What is the
difference between the two methods ? It may
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
101
be summed up in the word “ creative.” In this
is revealed the true nature of evolution.
Spencer recognised the fact that the world and
the living forms it contained were the result
of evolution, and he thought it was sufficient to
break up and dissociate into simpler elements
the world that had been evolved in order to
show its evolution. His method was to cut
up the present evolved reality into little bits,
though the little bits must themselves have
been evolved, and then recompose the reality
with the fragments. In so doing he did not
see that he was positing in advance the prin¬
ciple that had to be explained. The principle
of evolution which is to satisfy philosophy
must explain the genesis of nature and of
mind. It is not permitted to take anything
for granted. Herbert Spencer’s principle of
evolution never freed itself from the vice of
mechanical explanation. The future and the
past could all be calculated from the present.
All is given. Time does nothing, and therefore
is nothing. This is essentially the scientific
method of explanation. And the attempt to
interpret it by adding the idea of purpose or
final cause does not alter its character. It in-
102
HENRI BERGSON.
troduces a psychological element, but it remains
essentially a mechanical explanation, except that
the conditions of present existence are placed
partly in the future instead of wholly in the past.
True evolution is creative. We have seen
that life and consciousness have no meaning
unless time is real. The same is true of evolu¬
tion. If time is a succession of real things
and not itself a reality, if the continued creation
of the world means that it dies and is re-born
at every instant, there is no evolution. Evolu¬
tion implies a real persistence of the past in
the present, a duration which is not an interval
between two states, but which links them to¬
gether. The principle then of this philosophy
is that reality is time ; that it can only be ex¬
pressed in terms of time ; that there is no stuff
more resistant or more substantial than time ;
that it is the very stuff of which life and con¬
sciousness are made. Evolution is creative ; in
organic evolution as in consciousness the past
presses against the present and causes the up-
springing of a new form incommensurable with
its antecedents. In the primitive impulse must
be sought the solution of the problem of organic
evolution.
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
103
The problem is to account for the variations
of living beings together with the persistence
of their type — the origin, in a word, of species.
There are three present forms of evolutionist
theory — the neo-Darwinian, according to which
the essential causes of variation are the dif¬
ferences inherent in the germ borne by the
individual, and not the experience or behaviour
of the individual in the course of his career ;
the theory known as Orthogenesis, according to
which there is a continual changing in a definite
direction from generation to generation ; and
the neo-Lamarckian theory, according to which
the cause of variation is the conscious effort of
the individual, an effort passed on to descend¬
ants. Each of these theories may be true to
the extent that it explains certain facts, but
there are two difficulties that no one of the
theories nor all together can surmount. One
of these is the fact that the development of
exactly similar organs is found on quite distinct
and widely separated lines of evolution. There
is a striking example of this in the Pecten, the
common mollusc we call the scallop, which has
eyes the structure of which is identical with that
of the vertebrate eye in its minutest details;
104
HENRI BERGSON.
yet the eye of the mollusc and the eye of the
vertebrate must have been developed quite
independently of one another, and ages after
each had left the parent stock. The other
difficulty is that in all organic evolution an
infinite complexity of structure is combined
with an absolute simplicity of function. Thus
the variation of an organ like the eye cannot
be a single variation, but must involve the
simultaneous occurrence of an infinite number
of variations all co-ordinated to the single
purpose of vision, which is a simple function.
These are facts which can only be explained by
the hypothesis of an original impetus retaining
its direction in channels far removed and
divided from their common source. This vital
impulse is the theory which Bergson has ex¬
pounded in Creative Evolution.
Life is an original impetus. It is not the
mere name of the class of living things. We
may picture life as a visible current, taking its
rise at a certain moment, in a certain point of
space, passing from generation to generation,
dividing and diverging, losing nothing of its
force, but intensifying in proportion to its
advance. If now we continue this simile, and
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
105
try to picture the course of evolution on the
surface of this planet, it seems to us that it
must have begun in a very humble effort,
life stooping, as it were, to insinuate itself
into the interstices of resisting matter, for
the earliest forms of life appear to have been
very lowly. Yet from the first life bore within
it the tremendous push which was destined to
carry it to the highest forms. Its progress
seems to have been always by dissociation, by
dividing, by diverging, by parting with some
of its powers in order to emphasise others, but
always retaining something of the whole in
every part. So we see the first great sub¬
division into the vegetable and the animal, each
distinguished not so much by positive charac¬
teristics as by divergent tendencies — the one a
tendency towards immobility and unconscious
torpor, the other towards mobility and con¬
sciousness, and both at the same time com¬
plementary as well as opposed to one another.
In the development of animal life we see this
same continual divergence. On many lines the
progress has been arrested or even turned back,
but along two main lines it has found free
way — the line of the vertebrates, at the end of
106
HENRI BERGSON.
which we ourselves stand ; and the line of the
arthropods, which has found its highest ex¬
pression in the ants and the bees. In these
two lines of evolution we find the perfecting
of two modes of activity, instinct and intelli¬
gence. In the vital impulsion that from the
first early simple form of a living cell has de¬
veloped the multitude of forms which have
been and now are existing on our planet we
may distinguish three elements, elements that
coincided in the common impetus, but have been
dissociated by the very fact of their growth.
These are the unconscious sleep of the vegetable,
and the instinct and intelligence of the animal.
They are not, as common opinion has repre¬
sented them, three successive degrees of the
development of one tendency, but three diver¬
gent directions of an activity which grows by
dividing.
From this standpoint of the ordinary obser¬
vation of life we see that these modes of the
vital activity are not things produced for their
own sake, the final realisations of a purpose.
They are not things nor ends, but tendencies.
They are an intimate part of the vital activity,
the means by which it pushes on its ceaseless
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
107
movement. Intelligence and instinct are not
separated by sharply drawn distinctions. They
are different tendencies, entirely different in
the mode of their activity, but they exist
together, commingled and interpenetrating.
Neither one nor the other exists for the sake
of pure speculative knowledge. Each yields a
knowledge subservient to life, and that know¬
ledge is directed to giving the living creature
command over the matter which seems to resist
and oppose its progress. Such, in brief, is the
conclusion which we reach when we sirtidy the
evolution of life as it appears to ordinary
observation and to science. It suggests a
certain conception of knowledge, and this again
implies a metaphysics, and thus we are brought
to philosophy.
Ordinary observation therefore without any
philosophical presuppositions shows us that
there is a current of life which from lowly be¬
ginnings has pushed on its course, creating ever
new forms in its passage from generation to
generation, and this current seems to have had
to meet and overcome a resisting current, which
to our view seems immense in comparison and
overwhelming — a universe of solid matter spread
108
HENRI BERGSON.
out in a boundless space. And in this current
of life we may distinguish in particular two
modes of conscious activity, instinct and intel¬
ligence, which stand out as different directions
of activity from a background of conscious¬
ness in general. What we call in distinction
to matter, mind, is larger than intellect, larger
also than instinct.
We now come to the special task of philos¬
ophy, which is to show the genesis of intel¬
lectuality and of materiality in the one reality
of life ; to show that the two currents, the
advancing current and the resisting or opposing
current, are one movement, the difference being
in their direction alone ; to show how this
movement is brought about by the interruption
of the one movement. To accomplish this task
the work of philosophy is twofold : it must
combine with a criticism of knowledge a meta¬
physic — that is to say, a mental grasp or con¬
ception of the reality which transcends the
intellect.
Never surely was so tremendous an under¬
taking entered upon with such direct simplicity
as Bergson has done in the third chapter of
Creative Evolution. The attempt to engender
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
109
the intellect itself may appear more daring
than the boldest speculations of metaphysicians,
but it is in reality much more modest. So he
describes the work, and truly he is right. It
is because philosophers have taken intelligence
as already given, and by it or from it have
sought to explain, or even to construct, the
whole of reality, that their efforts have been
unavailing. It is by abasing the claims of
reason, by stooping, that we conquer.
Instinct and intelligence give us the clue.
They stand out from a background which
we may call consciousness in general, and
which in the view of this philosophy is co¬
extensive with universal life. To show the
genesis of consciousness we must set out from
this general consciousness which embraces it.
The intellect marks out to us the general form
of our action on matter, and the detail of
matter is ruled by the requirements of our
action. Hence there is a reciprocal adaptation ;
both intellect and matter are derived from a
higher and wider existence.
But here an initial difficulty has probably
already occurred to the reader. How is it pos¬
sible for the intellect to discover the genesis
110
HENRI BERGSON.
of the intellect ? Does it not involve us in a
vicious circle ? Even if there be a wider con¬
sciousness, I cannot divest myself of my in¬
tellectual apprehension in order to view my
intellect from some other standpoint. The
vicious circle is only in appearance, however ; it
is not real, because the intellect is not different
from the wider consciousness. It is a nucleus,
a condensation, a focusing, and the wider con¬
sciousness which surrounds it is of the same
nature as itself. But, on the other hand, the
vicious circle is real for every method in philos¬
ophy which regards the intellect as absolute and
as given. For all such there is, as Kant most
clearly proved, no metaphysic possible — that is
to say, no grasp of a reality wider than the
intellect. This is of such fundamental impor¬
tance for the appreciation of Bergsons method
that I must try to illustrate it. In the evolu¬
tionist philosophy of Herbert Spencer we are
shown matter obeying laws, objects and facts
connected by constant relations, and conscious¬
ness receiving the imprint of these laws and
relations, and so shaping itself into intellect.
But clearly the intellect which is supposed to
arise in this way is already presupposed in the
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
Ill
matter we speak of as objects and facts. What
are objects and facts but our concepts of
matter ? Instead of showing how intelligence
arises, we assume it in the very conception of
the nature from which we seek to derive it.
The same holds true of those philosophies which
start with consciousness and construct nature
out of the categories of thought. All suppose
that the faculty of knowing is co-extensive
with the whole of experience, and they must
therefore explain away matter, or explain away
mind, or accept a dualism of two substances.
This philosophy, on the contrary, can accept
the reality of both matter and mind, and it
shows how intellect and matter arise by mutual
adaptation, each presupposing the other.
The evolution of life suggests to us, then, a
certain theory of knowledge and also a certain
metaphysic, which imply each other. The
theory of knowledge is that the intellect which
knows matter, and the matter which the in¬
tellect knows, are a mutual adaptation. The
intellect is a special function of the mind
formed in the process of evolution to know
reality in its material form. The intellect is,
as it were, moulded on matter. Matter, on the
112
HENRI BERGSON.
other hand, is not absolute ; imposing its form on
the intellect, it is a progressive and mutual
adaptation of reality to the intellectual form of
apprehension. And both intellect and matter
are thus adapted, not by any external action
or by any pre-established harmony, but by a
creative evolution which has realised a form of
practical activity. And the metaphysical theory
is that the intellectuality of the mind and the
materiality of things are not due to separate
substances, mind and matter, nor are they even
distinct movements, but two processes in one
movement. Each is an opposite direction of
the identical movement that is the other.
Let us first try to see what exactly matter
is in direct experience. When we concentrate
our attention on our innermost experience, we
perceive the reality of our life as a pure dura¬
tion in which the past as memory exists in the
present and presses forward with the whole
activity of our will into the future. There is
one point, one sharp point, in our existence
which marks the actually present moment. If
we try to concentrate our being on that point,
to think away all memory and all will, we can
never quite succeed, but in the effort we may
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
113
catch a glimpse of that pure present reality
into which all actuality is gathered. It will
appear, when no memory links it to the past,
no will impels it to the future, as a momentary
existence which dies and is re-born endlessly.
It is at this point that matter exists as fixed,
external, timeless states. If we could see this
momentary existence, it is pure materiality that
we should see. Life materialises at the point
at which it is acting. At that point the
changing flow assumes the form of solid ex¬
ternal states, and the essential function of the
intellect, the function for which it is peculiarly
adapted, is to apprehend the reality in that
form.
Our intellect, then, is our mind adapted to
a particular mode of knowing reality as exter¬
nal matter, spatially extended. Spatialising is
the intellect’s peculiar work. In geometry its
success is most complete, for geometry deals
with pure space. The operations of the in¬
tellect tend to geometry ; they are a kind of
natural geometry. We see this even in logic,
which is the pure science of thought itself.
An ordered world of fixed states and constant
laws is essential to the special form of our
(2,000) 8
114
HENRI BERGSON.
activity. The intellect shows us this order by
apprehending reality in concepts which are the
frames or moulds in which it fixes the flowing.
It classifies and divides, cuts out systems in
which causes are followed by effects, and in
which the same effects are the result of the
same causes. With unorganised matter it is
completely successful, and we only perceive its
limitations when we deal with the sciences of
life. The positive sciences when they treat
unorganised matter are in touch with actual
reality. The order that the intellect shows us
in nature is a real order, not a subjectively
imposed order existing only in our mind. It
is an order that it finds, not merely an order
that it gives, by saying which we affirm that
the adaptation is mutual. The reality is both
a material order and an intellectual order.
The difficulty we find in accepting this im¬
portant conclusion is due to an illusion of
thought. We persist in thinking that order is
something imposed on reality, and that with¬
out an imposed order there would be a dis¬
order. The idea of disorder is purely relative
to our interest; it is the absence of the order
we are seeking. The absence of an order
CREATIVE EVOLUTION. 1 1 5
we expect to find is the presence of a different
order.
I will now try to make clear in a few words
the most difficult, but at the same time the
most important, idea in this philosophy — the
idea that takes us to the very depth of the
metaphysical problem. How can the ultimate
reality be one movement ? How can one move¬
ment give rise to infinite diversity ? How can
dead matter be the same movement as life ? I
can only indicate the nature of the argument,
and try to give a picture of the way in which
the ultimate reality is conceived. The argu¬
ment is that the inversion of a movement may
be brought about by simple interruption of the
movement, and that if a movement, such as the
creative act of will, a movement concentrated
on a purpose, be conceived as a tension, its in¬
terruption, in whatever way brought about, is a
detension. The word detension, the meaning
of which is clearly expressed in its form, is
employed because we have no exact word in
ordinary use equivalent to it. It is meant to
express that extension is really the de-tension
of a tension. Matter, extension in space, is the
interruption which is an inversion of the move-
116
HENRI BERGSON.
ment which in life is a pure duration in time.
Everyday experience affords abundant illustra¬
tion. If I am listening to some one reciting
poetry, my attitude of attention enables me to
enter into the poets meaning, his real creation.
Let me, however, only relax my attention ; all
that I then have is the form of his expression,
which may become for me words or sounds or
even the pictures of the letters that compose the
words. Or again, if I am bent on some purpose,
my whole self seems gathered up into one
point ; let me relax a moment, and my self is
scattered into memories, dreams, wandering
thoughts. And more than this, the very dis¬
persion may act as an opposing movement
thwarting my purpose. It is in this way that
the genesis of matter may be said to be in¬
volved in the very nature of the movement of
life. It is indeed in this way that science tends
to represent matter. It is a descending move¬
ment, a dispersion, a degradation of energy, and
life in contrast is an ascending or at least arrest-
ing or retarding movement. Vital activity is
a reality making itself in a reality which is
unmaking itself.
Creation is not a mystery, for we experience
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
117
it in ourselves. We are confined to a very
limited outlook ; our actual experience of life is
narrowed to the view we may obtain of what
it is and what it has effected on the surface of
this small planet. But just as all that we
know of other planets and other solar systems
seems to lead us to the conclusion that they do
not differ essentially from our own, so we may
conclude that the principle of reality is every¬
where the same. This principle is life or con¬
sciousness, and it is manifested in a need of
creation. If we would call the ultimate reality,
the universal principle underlying worlds and
systems of worlds, God, then we must say that
God is unceasing life, action, freedom. And
creation is a simple process, “ an action that is
making itself across an action that is unmaking
itself, like the fiery path of a rocket through
the black cinders of spent rockets that are
falling dead.”
Can we say then what evolution means ?
Does it reveal to us the purpose and destiny of
humanity ? Yes, to a limited extent. It shows
us that in one very special sense we are the end
and purpose of evolution. Not that we existed
beforehand as its purpose or final cause, for
118
HENRI BERGSON.
there is no pre-existent plan, the impetus lies
behind us ; not that we are the successful out¬
come of the impetus, the end of its striving,
for we are only the result of one divergent
tendency, and doubtless many accidents have
helped to determine the position in which we
stand ; but that whereas everywhere else the
current of life has been turned back by weight
of the dead matter that confronted it, in man
it has won free way. If we picture this im¬
petus of life as a need of creation, an effort to
achieve freedom, met by matter which is the
opposite direction of its own movement, and
which stands to it as necessity to freedom ;
if we see in the struggle the striving of life
to introduce into matter the largest possible
amount of freedom ; then it is in man alone,
capable of free creative action, that success has
been attained. But the success has not been
attained without sacrifice, and the success is
very limited. It is only one form of conscious
activity which has reached in us a full develop¬
ment. We are pre-eminently intellectual. A
different evolution might have led to a more
intuitive consciousness, or even to a full develop¬
ment of intellect and intuition in a more perfect
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
119
humanity. In us intuition is almost completely
sacrificed to intellect, but it is this intuition
that philosophy seizes in order to reveal to us
the unity of the spiritual life, the life that is
wider than the intellect and the materiality to
which it is bound. Philosophy shows us the
life of the body on the road to the life of the
spirit. “ Life as a whole, from the initial im¬
pulsion that thrusts it into the world, appears
as a wave which rises, and which is opposed by
the descending movement of matter. On the
greater part of its surface, at different heights,
the current is converted by matter into a
vortex. At one point alone it passes freely,
dragging with it the obstacle which will weigh
on its progress but will not stop it. At that
point is humanity ; it is our privileged situa¬
tion/’ Shall we always drag the obstacle ?
Perhaps not. Humanity may be able to beat
down every resistance and overcome even
death.
Thus philosophy introduces us into the
spiritual life. It shows us in the intuition of
our own personal life the true duration in
which memory and will form one free acting
present. It shows us the exact point at which
120
HENRI BERGSON.
matter exists, the sharp incisive point at which
the past is entering the future, a point which
in abstraction from memory and will has no
existence. By sympathetic insight we realise
that our duration is one with the whole reality
of the universe, vast as we conceive it to be.
We see that if the universe is real it can only
mean that it lives as a consciousness which
endures and becomes unceasingly. We see that
for this universal life, as for every individual
life, matter is the momentary point without
duration existing only where the movement is
creating. And so the whole seeming dead¬
weight of matter is a view only of universal
life. It is nothing to us, therefore, that the life
which has evolved on this planet is small and
weak compared to the mass of the dead matter
it has moved within ; that it is confined to the
surface, and that the energy it has arrested is
derived from the sun ; for the life that is
manifest in this creative evolution is one in
principle with universal life. The descending
movement may be here more powerful than the
ascending movement, so that life on this planet
may be only arresting a descent. In other
worlds it may be otherwise, for even in the
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
121
universe that science reveals worlds are being
born.
Why is it then that the appearance is so
different to the reality ? Why is this view of
the ceaseless living, the continual becoming, the
free creating activity, so difficult to realise, so
counter to all our habits of thought, so contrary
to what daily experience seems to teach ?
Why, if this philosophy reveals simple truth, is
it only at rare moments and by intellectual
effort that we are able to realise it, and then
only in passing glimpses ? Why at ordinary
times does it seem so certain that it is material
things that endure, and that time is a mechanical
play of things that themselves do not change ?
It is due to two illusions of the human mind.
They are fundamental illusions, for they bring
to us so essential an advantage in the practical
direction of our activity that without them we
should be different beings from what we are.
In our practical life we only observe in move¬
ment the moving thing ; in becoming, the differ¬
ent states ; in duration, the succeeding instants.
This is necessary for our action, but it leads
to an illusion when we try to think what real
movement, real becoming, and real duration
122
HENRI BERGSON.
are, for it leads us to suppose that we are
thinking of movement when we are in fact
thinking of states which neither move nor
change. This is the first illusion, that we can
think the moving by means of the immobile.
The second illusion is that we think there is
a real unreality. In all our action we aim at
getting something we feel we want, at creat¬
ing something that does not exist, and so we
represent this need as a void, this not-yet-
existing something as an absence, an unreality,
nothing. There is no unreality, no nothing.
It is an illusion to imagine that we can pass
out of reality. Unreality, nothing, means not
the absolute non-existence of everything, but
the absence of an order we want by reason
of the presence of an order that does not
interest us.
Philosophy reveals to us a reality that is
consistent with the satisfaction of our highest
ideals. It discloses the life of the spirit. It
may give us neither God nor immortality in
the old theological meaning of those terms, and
it does not show us human life and individual
conduct as the chief end, purpose, and centre
of interest of the universe. But the reality of
CREATIVE EVOLUTION.
123
life is essentially freedom. Philosophy delivers
us from the crushing feeling of necessity which
the scientific conception of a closed mechanical
universe has imposed on modern thought. Life
is a free activity in an open universe. We
may be of little account in the great whole.
Humanity itself and the planet on which it has
won its success may be an infinitesimal part
of the universal life, but it is one and identical
with that life, and our struggle and striving is
the impetus of life. And this above all our
spiritual life means to us : the past has not
perished, the future is being made.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bkrgson’s philosophical works consist of three im¬
portant treatises, and many occasional articles and
lectures in reviews. A collection of these articles,
with a special introduction, was being prepared at the
time of the outbreak of the war, but, together with
other philosophical work, has had to be set aside.
Monsieur Bergson revises and supervises the English
translations of his works, and as he speaks and writes
our language with perfect facility, they may be re¬
garded as authoritative expressions of his thought.
The following are the philosophical treatises : —
Essai sur les donne'es immediates de la conscience.
Paris: Alcan. 1888.
Time and Freewill: an Essay on the Immediate
Data of Consciousness. Translated by F. L.
Pogson. Sonnenschein & Co. 1910.
The essay is Monsieur Bergson’s thesis for the De¬
gree of Docteur es Lettres, conferred upon him by
the University of Paris in 1889. It deals with the
problem of Freewill. This is expressed in the title of
the English edition, in the preface to which the author
says : “ What I attempt to prove is that all discussion
between the determinists and their opponents implies
a previous confusion of duration with extensity, of
succession with simultaneity, of quality with quantity :
this confusion once dispelled, we may perhaps witness
the disappearance of the objections raised against free¬
will, of the definitions given of it, and, in a certain
sense, of the problem of freewill itself.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
125
Matiere et Memoire. Essai sur la relation du
corps d V esprit. Paris: Alcan. 1896.
Matter a7ul Memory. Translated by Nancy Mar¬
garet Paul and W. Scott Palmer. Sonnen-
schein k Co. 1911.
The purpose of this book is to expound a new
theory of the precise function of the brain in the
mental processes of perception and memory. It is
based on a careful study of recent physiological and
pathological investigations. It is the most difficult
of Bergson’s books, but it has a special importance in
relation to the theory of practical psychiatry.
L' Involution creatrice. Paris : Alcan. 1907.
Creative Evolution. Macmillan & Co. 1911.
This is the most widely known of Bergson’s works.
Its purpose is to expound the theory that the evolu¬
tion of living forms is the expression of an original
impulse. It is the doctrine of the e'lari vital , the im¬
pulse of life. It contains also the fullest exposition
of the metaphysical theory.
The following are the principal minor works : —
Le Eire. Essai sur la signification du comique.
Paris : Alcan. 1 900.
Laughter : an Essay on the Meaning of the Cormc.
Translated by Cloudesley Breretonand Fred
Roth well. Macmillan & Co. 1912.
Originally published as an article in the Revue de
Paris in 1900, it is mainly illustrative of the general
metaphysical theory of the nature of intellect. It is
of special importance in its relation to ^Esthetic, and
it contains the clearest exposition of Bergson’s theory
of Art.
An Introduction to Metaphysics. Macmillan k Co.
1912.
This is a translation by T. E. Hulme of an article
126
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
in the Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale. It is a
very clear and forcible exposition of Bergson’s con¬
ception of the scope and method of philosophy.
Dreams. Translated, with an Introduction, by
Edwin E. Slosson. T. Fisher Unwin.
1914.
(A Lecture delivered at the Institut Psychologique
International in 1901.)
The Meaning of the War. Translated, with an
Introduction, by H. Wildon Carr. T.
Fisher Unwin. 1915.
This is a little book primarily and in a special
sense a tract for the times. It was originally an
article in the Bulletin des Armees at the beginning
of the Great War, called forth by the events then
unfolding. It is most valuable as an illustration of
the practical aspect, in the full political sense, of
Bergson’s philosophy. It is an application of the
theory of the vital impulse to the life and freedom
of nations.
The following are some of the principal expositions
of Bergson’s philosophy : —
The Philosophy of Change: a Study of the Fun¬
damental Principle of the Philosophy of
Bergson. By H. Wildon Carr. Macmillan
& Co. 1914.
Henri Bergson : an Account of his Life and Philos¬
ophy. By Algot Ruhe and Nancy Margaret
Paul. Macmillan & Co. 1914.
The Philosophy of Bergson. By A. D. Lindsay
J. M. Dent. 1911.
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