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Bergson and His Philosophy

by John Alexander Gunn · English · Gutenberg #5717 · 374,250 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bergson and His Philosophy

Author: John Alexander Gunn


        
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BERGSON AND HIS PHILOSOPHY

By J. Alexander Gunn, M. A.,

Fellow of The University Of Liverpool

With An Introduction By Alexander Mair, M. A.,

Professor of Philosophy in The University Of Liverpool




CONTENTS


      PREFACE

      INTRODUCTION

   I. LIFE OF BERGSON

  II. THE REALITY OF CHANGE

 III. PERCEPTION

  IV. MEMORY

   V. THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY

  VI. TIME-TRUE AND FALSE

 VII. FREEDOM OF THE WILL

VIII. EVOLUTION

  IX. THE GOSPEL OF INTUITION

   X. ETHICAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

  XI. RELATION TO RELIGION AND THEOLOGY

 XII. REFLECTIONS

      APPENDIX: BIBLIOGRAPHY

      INDEX




PREFACE

The aim of this little work is practical, and it is put forth in the
hope that it may be useful to the general reader and to the student
of philosophy as an introduction and guide to the study of Bergson's
thought. The war has led many to an interest in philosophy and to
a study of its problems. Few modern thinkers will be found more
fascinating, more suggestive and stimulating than Bergson, and it is
hoped that perusal of the following pages will lead to a study of the
writings of the philosopher himself. This is a work whose primary aim is
the clear exposition of Bergson's ideas, and the arrangement of chapters
has been worked out strictly with that end in view. An account of his
life is prefixed. An up-to-date bibliography is given, mainly to meet
the needs of English readers; all the works of Bergson which have
appeared in England or America are given, and the comprehensive list
of articles is confined to English and American publications. The
concluding chapters endeavour to estimate the value of Bergson's thought
in relation to Politics (especially Syndicalism), Ethics, Religion, and
the development of thought generally.

My thanks are due to Professor Mair, Professor of Philosophy in the
University of Liverpool, for having read the MS. while in course of
preparation, for contributing an introduction, for giving some
helpful criticism and suggestions, and, what is more, for stimulus and
encouragement given over several years of student life.

Professor Bergson has himself expressed his approval of the general form
of treatment, and I am indebted to him for information on a number
of points. To Dr. Gillespie, Professor of Philosophy at Leeds, I am
indebted for a discussion of most of the MS. following the reading of
it. My thanks are also due to Miss Margaret Linn, whose energetic and
careful assistance in preparing the MS. for the press was invaluable.
I wish also to acknowledge kindness shown in supplying information
on certain points in connexion with the bibliography by Mr. F. C.
Nicholson, Librarian of the University of Edinburgh, by Mr. R. Rye,
Librarian to the University of London, and by the University of London
Press. I am grateful to Professor Bergson and to the Delegates of the
Oxford University Press for permission to quote from La Perception du
Changement, the lectures given at Oxford. Further I must acknowledge
permission accorded to me by the English publishers of Bergson's works
to quote passages directly from these authorized translations--To
Messrs. Geo. Allen & Unwin, Ltd. (Time and Free Will and Matter and
Memory), to Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd. (Creative Evolution, Laughter,
Introduction to Metaphysics), and to T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd. (Dreams).
Through the kindness of M. Louis Michaud, the Paris publisher, I have
been enabled to reproduce (from his volume of selections, Henri
Bergson: Choix de textes et etude de systeme philosophique, Gillouin) a
photograph of Bergson hitherto unpublished in this country.

J.A.G.

THE UNIVERSITY, LIVERPOOL March, 1920




INTRODUCTION

The stir caused in the civilized world by the writings of Bergson,
particularly during the past decade, is evidenced by the volume of the
stream of exposition and comment which has flowed and is still flowing.
If the French were to be tempted to set up, after the German manner, a
Bergson-Archiv they would be in no embarrassment for material, as the
Appendix to this book--limited though it wisely is--will show. Mr.
Gunn, undaunted by all this, makes a further, useful contribution in his
unassuming but workmanlike and well-documented account of the ideas
of the distinguished French thinker. It is designed to serve as an
introduction to Bergson's philosophy for those who are making their
first approach to it, and as such it can be commended.

The eager interest which has been manifested in the writings of
M. Bergson is one more indication, added to the many which history
provides, of the inextinguishable vitality of Philosophy. When the
man with some important thought which bears upon its problems is
forthcoming, the world is ready, indeed is anxious, to listen. Perhaps
there is no period in recorded time in which the thinker, with something
relevant to say on the fundamental questions, has had so large and so
prepared an audience as in our own day. The zest and expectancy with
which men welcome and listen to him is almost touching; it has its
dangerous as well as its admirable aspects. The fine enthusiasm for the
physical and biological sciences, which is so noble an attribute of the
modern mind, has far from exhausted itself, but the almost boundless
hope which for a time accompanied it has notably abated. The study of
the immediate problems centring round the concepts of matter, life, and
energy goes on with undiminished, nay, with intensified, zeal, but in
a more judicious perspective. It begins to be noticed that, far from
leading us to solutions which will bring us to the core of reality and
furnish us with a synthesis which can be taken as the key to experience,
it is carrying the scientific enquirer into places in which he feels the
pressing need of Philosophy rather than the old confidence that he is
on the verge of abolishing it as a superfluity. The former hearty and
self-assured empiricism of science is giving way before the outcome of
its own logic and a new and more promising spirit of reflection on its
own "categories" is abroad. Things are turning out to be very far from
what they seemed. The physicists have come to a point where, it may be
to their astonishment, they often find themselves talking in a way which
is suspiciously like that of the subjective idealist. They have made the
useful discovery that if you sink your shaft deep enough in your search
for reality you come upon Mind. Here they are in a somewhat unfamiliar
region, in which they may possibly find that other instruments and other
methods than those to which they have been accustomed are required. At
any rate, they and the large public which hangs upon their words show a
growing inclination to be respectful to the philosopher and an anxiety
(sometimes an uncritical anxiety) to hear what he has to say.

No one needs to be reminded of the ferment which is moving in the world
of social affairs, of the obscure but powerful tendencies which are
forcing society out of its grooves and leaving it, aspiring but dubious,
in new and uncharted regions. This may affect different minds in
different ways. Some regret it, others rejoice in it; but all are aware
of it. Time-honoured political and economic formulae are become "old
clothes" for an awakened and ardent generation, and before the new
garments are quite ready; the blessed word "reconstruction" is often
mentioned. Men are not satisfied that society has really developed so
successfully as it might have done; many believe that it finds itself in
a cul-de-sac. But what is to be done? The experienced can see that many
of the offered reforms are but the repetition of old mistakes which will
involve us in the unhappy cycle of disillusion and failure. It is not to
be wondered at, therefore, if men everywhere are seeking for a sign, a
glimpse of a scheme of life, a view of reality, a hint of human destiny
and the true outcome of human effort, to be an inspiration and a guide
to them in their pathetic struggle out of the morass in which they, too
obviously, are plunged. If Philosophy has anything to say which is to
the point, then let Philosophy by all means say it. They are ready to
attend. They may indeed expect too much from it, as those who best grasp
the measure of Philosophy's task would be the first to urge.

This is the opportunity of the charlatan. Puzzled and half-desperate, we
strongly feel the influence of the need to believe, are prone to
listen to any gospel. The greater its air of finality and assurance the
stronger is its appeal. But it is the opportunity also of the serious
and competent thinker, and it is fortunate for the world that one of
M. Bergson's quality is forthcoming. He is too wise a man, he knows the
history of human thought too well, he realizes too clearly the extent of
the problem to pretend that his is the last word or that he has in his
pocket the final solution of the puzzle of the universe and the one and
only panacea for human distresses. But he has one of the most subtle and
penetrating intellects acting in and upon the world at this moment,
and is more worthy of attention than all the charlatans. That he has
obtained for himself so great an audience is one of the most striking
and hopeful signs of the present time.

It is the more impressive inasmuch as Bergson cannot be said to be an
easy author. The originality and sweep of his conceptions, the fine and
delicate psychological analysis in which he is so adept and which is
necessary for the development of his ideas--e.g., in his exposition
of duree--make exacting demands upon those readers who wish to closely
follow his thought. An interesting fact is that this is realized most
of all by those who come to Bergson with a long process of philosophical
discipline behind them. It is not surprising when we remember what he
is trying to do, namely, to induce philosophical thought to run in
new channels. The general reader has here an advantage over the other,
inasmuch as he has less to unlearn. In the old words, unless we become
as little children we cannot enter into this kingdom; though it is true
that we do not remain as little children once entry is made. This is a
serious difficulty for the hard-bitten philosopher who at considerable
pains has formed conceptions, acquired a technique, and taken an
orientation towards life and the universe which he cannot dismiss in
a moment. It says much for the charitable spirit of Bergson's
fellow-philosophers that they have given so friendly and hospitable a
reception to his disturbing ideas, and so essentially humane a man as
he must have been touched by this. The Bahnbrecher has his troubles,
no doubt, but so also have those upon whose minds he is endeavouring to
operate. Reinhold, one of Kant's earliest disciples, ruefully stated,
according to Schopenhauer's story, that it was only after having gone
through the Critique of Pure Reason five times with the closest and
most scrupulous attention that he was able to get a grasp of Kant's real
meaning. Now, after the lapse of a century and a half, Kant to many is
child's play compared with Bergson, who differs more fundamentally from
Kant than the Scoto-German thinker did from Leibniz and Hume. But this
need not alarm the general reader who, innocent of any very articulate
philosophical preconceptions, may indeed find in the very "novelty" of
Bergson's teaching a powerful attraction, inasmuch as it gives effective
expression to thoughts and tendencies moving dimly and half-formed in
the consciousness of our own epoch, felt rather than thought. In this
sense Bergson may be said to have produced a "philosophy for the times."
In one respect Bergson has a marked advantage over Kant, and indeed over
most other philosophers, namely, in his recognized masterly control over
the instrument of language. There is a minimum of jargon, nothing
turgid or crabbed. He reminds us most, in the skill and charm of his
expression, of Plato and Berkeley among the philosophers. He does not
work with so fine and biting a point as his distinguished countryman and
fellow-philosopher, Anatole France, but he has, nevertheless, a burin
at command of remarkable quality. He is a master of the succinct and
memorable phrase in which an idea is etched out for us in a few strokes.
Already, in his lifetime, a number of terms stamped with the impress
of Bergson's thought have passed into international currency. In this
connexion, has it been remarked that while an Englishman gave to the
French the term "struggle for life," a Frenchman has given to us the
term elan vital? It is worthy of passing notice and gives rise to
reflections on the respective national temperaments, fanciful perhaps,
but interesting. It is not, however, under the figure of the etcher's
art or of the process of the mint that we can fully represent Bergson's
resources of style. These suggest staccato effects, hard outlines, and
that does not at all represent the prose of this writer. It is a fine,
delicately interwoven, tissue-like fabric, pliant and supple. If
one were in the secret of M. Bergson's private thoughts, it might be
discovered that he does not admire his style so much as others do, for
his whole manner of thought must, one suspects, have led him often to
attempt to express the inexpressible. The ocean of life, that fluide
bienfaisant in which we are immersed, has no doubt often proved too
fluid even for him. "Only the understanding has a language," he almost
ruefully declares in L'Evolution creatrice; and the understanding is,
for him, compared with intuition peu de chose. Yet we can say that in
what he has achieved his success is remarkable. The web of language
which he weaves seems to fit and follow the movements of his thought as
the skin ripples over the moving muscles of the thoroughbred. And this
is not an accidental or trivial fact. M. Bergson may possibly agree with
Seneca that "too much attention to style does not become a philosopher,"
but the quality of his thought and temperament does not allow him to
express himself otherwise than lucidly. Take this, almost at random, as
a characteristic example. It must be given, of course, in the original:

"L'intelligence humaine, telle que nous la representons, n'est point du
tout celle que nous montrait Platon dans l'allegorie de la caverne. Elle
n'a pas plus pour fonction de regarder passer des ombres vaines que de
contempler, en se retournant derriere elle, l'astre eblouissant. Elle
a autre chose a faire. Atteles comme des boeufs de labour, a une lourde
tache, nous sentons le jeu de nos muscles et de nos articulations, le
poids de la charrue et la resistance du sol: agir et se savoir agir,
entrer en contact avec la realite et meme la vivre, mais dans la measure
seulement ou elle interesse l'oeuvre qui s'accomplit et le sillon qui se
creuse, voila la fonction de l'intelligence humaine."

That is sufficiently clear; we may legitimately doubt whether it is
an adequate account of the function of the human intelligence, but we
cannot be in any doubt as to what the view is; and more than that, once
we have become acquainted with it, we are not likely to forget it.

For the student as yet unpractised in philosophical reflection,
Bergson's skill and clarity of statement, his fertility in illustration,
his frequent and picturesque use of analogy may be a pitfall. It all
sounds so convincing and right, as Bergson puts it, that the critical
faculty is put to sleep. There is peril in this, particularly here,
where we have to deal with so bold and even revolutionary a doctrine. If
we are able to retain our independence of judgment we are bound sooner
or later, in spite of Bergson's persuasiveness, to have our misgivings.
After all, we may begin to reflect, he has been too successful, he
has proved too much. In attempting to use, as he was bound to do, the
intelligence to discredit the intelligence he has been attempting the
impossible. He has only succeeded in demonstrating the authority, the
magisterial power, of the intelligence. No step in Philosophy can
be taken without it. What are Life, Consciousness, Evolution, even
Movement, as these terms are employed by Bergson, but the symbolization
of concepts which on his own showing are the peculiar products of the
human understanding or intelligence? It seems, indeed, on reflection,
the oddest thing that Philosophy should be employed in the service of
an anti-intellectual, or as it would be truer to call it a
supra-intellectual, attitude. Philosophy is a thinking view of things.
It represents the most persistent effort of the human intelligence to
satisfy its own needs, to attempt to solve the problems which it has
created: in the familiar phrase, to heal the wounds which it has itself
made. The intellect, therefore, telling itself that it is incompetent
for this purpose, is a strange, and not truly impressive, spectacle.

We are not enabled to recover from the sense of impotency thus created
by being referred to "intuition." Bergson is not the first to try this
way out. It would be misleading, no doubt, to identify him with the
members of the Scottish School of a hundred years ago or with Jacobi;
he reaches his conclusion in another way, and that conclusion is
differently framed; nevertheless, in essence there is a similarity, and
Hegel's comments [Footnote: Smaller Logic, Wallace's translation, c.
v.] on Bergson's forerunners will often be found to have point with
reference to Bergson himself.

It is hardly conceivable that any careful observer of human experience
would deny the presence and power of intuition in that experience. The
fact is too patent. Many who would not give the place to intuition which
is assigned to it by Bergson would be ready to say that there may be
more in the thrilling and passionate intuitive moments than Philosophy,
after an age-long and painful effort, has been able to express. All
knowledge, indeed, may be said to be rooted in intuition. Many a thinker
has been supported and inspired through weary years of inquiry and
reflection by a mother-idea which has come to him, if not unsought yet
uncompelled, in a flash of insight. But that is the beginning, not the
end, of his task. It is but the raw material of knowledge, knowledge in
potentia. To invert the order is to destroy Philosophy not to serve
it, is, indeed, a mere counsel of desperation. An intuitive Philosophy
so-called finds itself sooner or later, generally sooner, in a blind
alley. Practically, it gives rise to all kinds of crude and wasteful
effort. It is not an accident that Georges Sorel in his Reflexions sur
la Violence takes his "philosophy" from Bergson or, at least, leans on
him. There are intuitions and intuitions, as every wise man knows, as
William James once ruefully admitted after his adventures with nitrous
oxide, or as the eaters of hashish will confess. To follow all our
intuitions would lead us into the wildest dervish dance of thought and
action and leave us spent and disheartened at the end. "Agnosticism"
would be too mild a term for the result. Our intuitions have to be tried
and tested; there is a thorny and difficult path of criticism to be
traversed before we can philosophically endorse them and find peace of
mind. What Hoffding says is in a sense quite true: "When we pass into
intuition we pass into a state without problems." But that is, as
Hoffding intends us to understand, not because all problems are thereby
solved, but because they have not yet emerged. If we consent to remain
at that point, we refuse to make the acquaintance of Philosophy; if we
recognize the problems that are really latent there, we soon realize
that the business of Philosophy is yet to be transacted.

The fact is that in this part of his doctrine--and it is an important
part--the brilliant French writer, in his endeavours to make
philosophizing more concrete and practical, makes it too abstract.
Intuition is not a process over against and quite distinct from
conceptual thought. Both are moments in the total process of man's
attempt to come to terms with the universe, and too great emphasis on
either distorts and falsifies the situation in which we find ourselves
on this planet. The insistence on intuition is doubtless due, at bottom,
to Bergson's admiration for the activity in the creative artist. The
border-line between Art and Philosophy becomes almost an imaginary line
with him. In the one case as in the other we have, according to him,
to get inside the object by a sort of sympathy. True, there is this
difference, he says, that aesthetic intuition achieves only the
individual--which is doubtful--whereas the philosophic intuition is
to be conceived as a "recherche orientee dans la meme sens que l'art,
indeed, but qui prendrait pour objet la vie en general." He fails
to note, it may be observed, that the expression of the aesthetic
intuition, that is to say, Art, is always fixed and static. This in
view of other aspects of his doctrine is remarkable. But apart from
this attempt to practically identify Art and Philosophy--a hopeless
attempt--there is, of course, available as a means of explanation the
well-known and not entirely deplorable tendency of the protestant and
innovator to overstate his case, to bring out by strong emphasis the
aspect with which he is chiefly concerned and which he thinks has been
unduly neglected. This, as hinted, has its merits, and not only or
chiefly for Philosophy, but also, and perhaps primarily, for the conduct
of life. If he convinces men, should they need convincing, that they
cannot be saved by the discursive reason alone, he will have done a good
service to his generation, and to the philosophers among them who may
(though they ought not to) be tempted to ignore the intuitive element in
experience.

The same tendency to over-emphasis can be observed elsewhere. It is
noticeable, for instance, in his discussions of Change, which are so
marked and important a feature in his writings. His Philosophy has been
called, with his approval apparently, the Philosophy of Change, though
it might have been called, still more truly and suggestively, the
Philosophy of Creation. It is this latter phase of it which has so
enormously interested and stimulated the world. As to his treatment of
Change, it reveals Bergson in one of his happiest moods. It is difficult
to restrain one's praise in speaking of the subtle and resourceful
way in which he handles this tantalizing and elusive question. It is a
stroke of genius. The student of Philosophy, of course, at once thinks
of Heraclitus; but Bergson is not merely another Heraclitus any more
than he is just an echo of Jacobi. He places Change in a new light,
enables us to grasp its character with a success which, if he had no
other claim to remembrance, would ensure for him an honourable place
in the History of Philosophy. In the process he makes but a mouthful
of Zeno and his eternal puzzles. But, as Mr. Gunn also points
out,[Footnote: See p. 142.] Change cannot be the last word in our
characterization of Reality. Pure Change is not only unthinkable--that
perhaps Bergson would allow--but it is something which cannot be
experienced. There must be points of reference--a starting point and an
ending point at least. Pure Change, as is the way with "pure" anything,
turns into its contradictory. Paradoxical though it may seem, it ends
as static. It becomes the One and Indivisible. This, at least, was
recognized by Heraclitus and is expressed by him in his figure of the
Great Year.

It is not my purpose, however, to usurp the function of the author of
this useful handbook to Bergson. The extent of my introductory remarks
is an almost involuntary tribute to the material and provocative nature
of Bergson's discussions, just as the frequent use by the author of this
book of the actual words of Bergson are a tribute to the excellence
and essential rightness of his style. The Frenchman, himself a free and
candid spirit, would be the last to require unquestioning docility in
others. He knows that thereby is the philosophic breath choked out of
us. If we read him in the spirit in which he would wish to be read, we
shall find, however much we may diverge from him on particular issues,
that our labour has been far from wasted. He undoubtedly calls for
considerable effort from the student who takes him, as he ought to be
taken, seriously; but it is effort well worth while. He, perhaps, shines
even more as a psychologist than as a philosopher--at least in the
time-honoured sense. He has an almost uncanny introspective insight
and, as has been said, a power of rendering its result in language which
creates in the reader a sense of excitement and adventure not to be
excelled by the ablest romancer. Fadaises, which are to be met with in
philosophical works as elsewhere, are not to be frequently encountered
in his writings. There is always the fresh breeze of original thought
blowing here. He is by nature as well as by doctrine the sworn foe of
conventionality. Though he may not give us all we would wish, in our
haste to be all-wise, let us yet be grateful to him for this, that he
has the purpose and also the power to shake us out of complacency, to
compel us to recast our philosophical account. In this he is supremely
serviceable to his generation, and is deserving of the gratitude of all
who care for Philosophy. For, while Philosophy cannot die, it may be
allowed to fall into a comatose condition; and this is the unpardonable
sin.

ALEXANDER MAIR

LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY



This huge vision of time and motion, of a mighty world which is always
becoming, always changing, growing, striving, and wherein the word of
power is not law, but life, has captured the modern imagination no less
than the modern intellect. It lights with its splendour the patient
discoveries of science. It casts a new radiance on theology, ethics and
art. It gives meaning to some of our deepest instincts, our strangest
and least explicable tendencies. But above and beyond all this, it lifts
the awful weight which determinism had laid upon our spirits and fills
the future with hope; for beyond the struggle and suffering inseparable
from life's flux, as we know it, it reports to us, though we may not
hear them, "the thunder of new wings."

Evelyn Underhill




CHAPTER I

LIFE OF BERGSON


Birth and education--Teaches at Clermont-Ferrand--Les donnees immediates
de la conscience--Matiere et Memoire--Chair of Greek Philosophy,
then of Modern Philosophy, College de France--L'Evolution
creatrice--Relations with William James--Visits England and
America--Popularity--Neo-Catholics and Syndicalists--Election to
Academie francaise--War-work--

L'Energie spirituelle.


Bergson's life has been the quiet and uneventful one of a French
professor, the chief landmarks in it being the publication of his three
principal works, first, in 1889, the Essai sur les donnees immediates
de la conscience, then Matiere et Memoire in 1896, and L'Evolution
creatrice in 1907. On October 18th, 1859, Henri Louis Bergson was born
in Paris in the Rue Lamartine, not far from the Opera House.[Footnote:
He was not born in England as Albert Steenbergen erroneously states in
his work, Henri Bergsons Intuitive Philosophie, Jena, 1909, p. 2, nor
in 1852, the date given by Miss Stebbing in her Pragmatism and French
Voluntarism.] He is descended from a prominent Jewish family of Poland,
with a blend of Irish blood from his mother's side. His family lived
in London for a few years after his birth, and he obtained an early
familiarity with the English language from his mother. Before he was
nine years old his parents crossed the Channel and settled in France,
Henri becoming a naturalized citizen of the Republic.

In Paris from 1868 to 1878 he attended the Lycee Fontaine, now known as
the Lycee Condorcet. While there he obtained a prize for his scientific
work and also won a prize when he was eighteen for the solution of a
mathematical problem. This was in 1877, and his solution was published
the following year in Annales de Mathematiques. It is of interest as
being his first published work. After some hesitation over his career,
as to whether it should lie in the sphere of the sciences or that of
"the humanities," he decided in favour of the latter, and when nineteen
years of age, he entered the famous Ecole Normale Superieure. While
there he obtained the degree of Licencie-es-Lettres, and this was
followed by that of Agrege de philosophie in 1881.

The same year he received a teaching appointment at the Lycee in Angers,
the ancient capital of Anjou. Two years later he settled at the Lycee
Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, chief town of the Puy de Dome
department, whose name is more known to motorists than to philosophers.
The year after his arrival at Clermont-Ferrand he displayed his ability
in "the humanities" by the publication of an excellent edition of
extracts from Lucretius, with a critical study of the text and the
philosophy of the poet (1884), a work whose repeated editions are
sufficient evidence of its useful place in the promotion of classical
study among the youth of France. While teaching and lecturing in this
beautiful part of his country (the Auvergne region), Bergson found time
for private study and original work. He was engaged on his Essai sur les
donnees immediates de la conscience. This essay, which, in its English
translation, bears the more definite and descriptive title, Time and
Free Will, was submitted, along with a short Latin Thesis on Aristotle,
for the degree of Docteur-es-Lettres, to which he was admitted by the
University of Paris in 1889. The work was published in the same year
by Felix Alcan, the Paris publisher, in his series La Bibliotheque de
philosophie contemporaine.

It is interesting to note that Bergson dedicated this volume to Jules
Lachelier, then ministre de l'instruction publique, who was an ardent
disciple of Ravaisson and the author of a rather important philosophical
work Du fondement de l'Induction (1871), who in his view of things
endeavoured "to substitute everywhere force for inertia, life for
death, and liberty for fatalism." [Footnote: Lachelier was born in 1832,
Ravaisson in 1813. Bergson owed much to both of these teachers of the
Ecole Normale Superieure. Cf. his memorial address on Ravaisson, who
died in 1900. (See Bibliography under 1904.)]

Bergson now settled again in Paris, and after teaching for some months
at the Municipal College, known as the College Rollin, he received
an appointment at the Lycee Henri-Quatre, where he remained for eight
years. In 1896 he published his second large work, entitled Matiere et
Memoire. This rather difficult, but brilliant, work investigates the
function of the brain, undertakes an analysis of perception and memory,
leading up to a careful consideration of the problems of the relation
of body and mind. Bergson, we know, has spent years of research in
preparation for each of his three large works. This is especially
obvious in Matiere et Memoire, where he shows a very thorough
acquaintance with the extensive amount of pathological investigation
which has been carried out in recent years, and for which France is
justly entitled to very honourable mention.

In 1898 Bergson became Maitre de conferences at his Alma Mater, L'Ecole
Normale Superieure, and was later promoted to a Professorship. The year
1900 saw him installed as Professor at the College de France, where
he accepted the Chair of Greek Philosophy in succession to Charles
L'Eveque. The College de France, founded in 1530, by Francois I, is
less ancient, and until recent years has been less prominent in general
repute than the Sorbonne, which traces back its history to the middle
of the thirteenth century. Nevertheless, it is one of the intellectual
headquarters of France, indeed of the whole world. While the Sorbonne is
now the seat of the University of Paris, the College is an independent
institution under the control of the Ministre de l'Instruction
publique. The lectures given by the very eminent professors who fill
its forty-three chairs are free and open to the general public, and are
attended mainly by a large number of women students and by the senior
students from the University. The largest lecture room in the College
was given to Bergson, but this became quite inadequate to accommodate
his hearers.

At the First International Congress of Philosophy, which was held in
Paris, during the first five days of August, 1900, Bergson read a short,
but important, paper, Sur les origines psychologiques de notre croyance
a la loi de causalite. In 1901 Felix Alcan published in book form a work
which had just previously appeared in the Revue de Paris entitled Le
Rire, one of the most important of his minor productions. This essay on
the meaning of the Comic was based on a lecture which he had given
in his early days in the Auvergne. The study of it is essential to an
understanding of Bergson's views of life, and its passages dealing with
the place of the artistic in life are valuable. In 1901 he was elected
to the Academie des Sciences morales et politiques, and became a member
of the Institute. In 1903 he contributed to the Revue de metaphysique
et de morale a very important essay entitled Introduction a la
metaphysique, which is useful as a preface to the study of his three
large books.

On the death of Gabriel Tarde, the eminent sociologist, in 1904, Bergson
succeeded him in the Chair of Modern Philosophy. From the 4th to the
8th of September of that year he was at Geneva attending the Second
International Congress of Philosophy, when he lectured on Le Paralogisme
psycho-physiologique, or, to quote its new title, Le Cerveau et la
Pensee: une illusion philosophique. An illness prevented his visiting
Germany to attend the Third Congress held at Heidelberg.

His third large work--his greatest book--L'Evolution creatrice, appeared
in 1907, and is undoubtedly, of all his works, the one which is most
widely known and most discussed. It constitutes one of the most profound
and original contributions to the philosophical consideration of the
theory of Evolution. Un livre comme L'Evolution creatrice, remarks
Imbart de la Tour, n'est pas seulment une oeuvre, mais une date, celle
d'une direction nouvelle imprimee a la pensee. By 1918, Alcan, the
publisher, had issued twenty-one editions, making an average of two
editions per annum for ten years. Since the appearance of this book,
Bergson's popularity has increased enormously, not only in academic
circles, but among the general reading public.

He came to London in 1908 and visited William James, the American
philosopher of Harvard, who was Bergson's senior by seventeen years,
and who was instrumental in calling the attention of the Anglo-American
public to the work of the French professor. This was an interesting
meeting and we find James' impression of Bergson given in his Letters
under date of October 4, 1908. "So modest and unpretending a man but
such a genius intellectually! I have the strongest suspicions that the
tendency which he has brought to a focus, will end by prevailing, and
that the present epoch will be a sort of turning point in the history of
philosophy."

As in some quarters erroneous ideas prevail regarding both the
historical and intellectual relation between James and Bergson, it may
be useful to call attention to some of the facts here. As early as 1880
James contributed an article in French to the periodical La Critique
philosophique, of Renouvier and Pillon, entitled Le Sentiment de
l'Effort.[Footnote: Cf. his Principles of Psychology, Vol. II., chap
xxvi.] Four years later a couple of articles by him appeared in Mind:
What is an Emotion?[Footnote: Mind, 1884, pp. 188-205.] and On some
Omissions of Introspective Psychology.[Footnote: Mind, 1884, pp. 1-26.]
Of these articles the first two were quoted by Bergson in his work of
1889, Les donnees immediates de la conscience. In the following
years 1890-91 appeared the two volumes of James' monumental work,
The Principles of Psychology, in which he refers to a pathological
phenomenon observed by Bergson. Some writers taking merely these dates
into consideration, and overlooking the fact that James' investigations
had been proceeding since 1870, registered from time to time by various
articles which culminated in The Principles, have mistakenly assigned
to Bergson's ideas priority in time.[Footnote: For example A. Chaumeix:
William James (Revue des Deux Mondes, Oct, 1910), and J. Bourdeau:
Nouvelles modes en philosophie, Journal de Debats, Feb., 1907. Cf.
Flournoy: La philosophie de William James. (Eng. Trans. Holt and James,
pp. 198-206).] On the other hand insinuations have been made to the
effect that Bergson owes the germ-ideas of his first book to the 1884
article by James On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology, which
he neither refers to nor quotes. This particular article deals with
the conception of thought as a stream of consciousness, which intellect
distorts by framing into concepts. We must not be misled by parallels.
Bergson has replied to this insinuation by denying that he had any
knowledge of the article by James when he wrote Les donnees immediates
de la conscience.[Footnote: Relation a William James et a James Ward.
Art. in Revue philosophique, Aug., 1905, lx., p. 229.] The two thinkers
appear to have developed independently until almost the close of the
century. In truth they are much further apart in their intellectual
position than is frequently supposed.[Footnote: The reader who desires
to follow the various views of the relation of Bergson and James will
find the following works useful. Kallen (a pupil of James): William
James and Henri Bergson: a study in contrasting theories of life.
Stebbing: Pragmatism and French Voluntarism. Caldwell: Pragmatism and
Idealism (last chap). Perry: Present Philosophical Tendencies. Boutroux:
William James (Eng. Tr.). Flournoy: La philosophie de James (Eng. Tr.).
And J. E. Turner: An Examination of William James' Philosophy.] Both
have succeeded in appealing to audiences far beyond the purely academic
sphere, but only in their mutual rejection of "intellectualism" as final
is there real harmony or unanimity between them. It will not do to press
too closely analogies between the Radical Empiricism of the American
and the Doctrine of Intuition of the Frenchman. Although James obtains a
certain priority in point of time in the development and enunciation
of his ideas, we must remember that he confessed that he was baffled by
many of Bergson's notions. James certainly neglected many of the deeper
metaphysical aspects of Bergson's thought, which did not harmonize
with his own, and are even in direct contradiction. In addition to this
Bergson is no pragmatist, for him "utility," so far from being a test of
truth, is rather the reverse, a synonym for error.

Nevertheless, William James hailed Bergson as an ally very
enthusiastically. Early in the century (1903) we find him remarking in
his correspondence: "I have been re-reading Bergson's books, and nothing
that I have read since years has so excited and stimulated my thoughts.
I am sure that that philosophy has a great future, it breaks through old
cadres and brings things into a solution from which new crystals can
be got." The most noteworthy tributes paid by him to Bergson were those
made in the Hibbert Lectures (A Pluralistic Universe), which James
gave at Manchester College, Oxford, shortly after he and Bergson met in
London. He there remarked upon the encouragement he had received from
Bergson's thought, and referred to the confidence he had in being "able
to lean on Bergson's authority." [Footnote: A Pluralistic Universe, pp.
214-15. Cf. the whole of Lecture V. The Compounding of Consciousness,
pp. 181-221, and Lecture VI. Bergson and His Critique of
Intellectualism, pp. 225-273.] "Open Bergson, and new horizons loom on
every page you read. It is like the breath of the morning and the song
of birds. It tells of reality itself, instead of merely reiterating
what dusty-minded professors have written about what other previous
professors have thought. Nothing in Bergson is shop-worn or at
second-hand." [Footnote: Lecture VI., p. 265.] The influence of Bergson
had led him "to renounce the intellectualist method and the current
notion that logic is an adequate measure of what can or cannot be."
[Footnote: A Pluralistic Universe, p. 212.] It had induced him, he
continued, "TO GIVE UP THE LOGIC, squarely and irrevocably" as a method,
for he found that "reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy,
use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows, and surrounds it."
[Footnote: A Pluralistic Universe, p. 212.]

Naturally, these remarks, which appeared in book form in 1909, directed
many English and American readers to an investigation of Bergson's
philosophy for themselves. A certain handicap existed in that his
greatest work had not then been translated into English. James, however,
encouraged and assisted Dr. Arthur Mitchell in his preparation of the
English translation of L'Evolution creatrice. In August of 1910 James
died. It was his intention, had he lived to see the completion of
the translation, to introduce it to the English reading public by a
prefatory note of appreciation. In the following year the translation
was completed and still greater interest in Bergson and his work was the
result. By a coincidence, in that same year (1911), Bergson penned
for the French translation of James' book, Pragmatism,[Footnote: Le
Pragmatisme: Translated by Le Brun. Paris, Flammarion.] a preface
of sixteen pages, entitled Verite et Realite. In it he expressed
sympathetic appreciation of James' work, coupled with certain important
reservations.

In April (5th to 11th) Bergson attended the Fourth International
Congress of Philosophy held at Bologna, in Italy, where he gave
a brilliant address on L'Intuition philosophique. In response to
invitations received he came again to England in May of that year, and
has paid us several subsequent visits. These visits have always been
noteworthy events and have been marked by important deliverances. Many
of these contain important contributions to thought and shed new light
on many passages in his three large works, Time and Free Will,
Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution. Although necessarily brief
statements, they are of more recent date than his books, and thus show
how this acute thinker can develop and enrich his thought and take
advantage of such an opportunity to make clear to an English audience
the fundamental principles of his philosophy.

He visited Oxford and delivered at the University, on the 26th and 27th
of May, two lectures entitled La Perception du Changement, which were
published in French in the same year by the Clarendon Press. As Bergson
has a delightful gift of lucid and brief exposition, when the occasion
demands such treatment, these lectures on Change form a most valuable
synopsis or brief survey of the fundamental principles of his
thought, and serve the student or general reader alike as an excellent
introduction to the study of the larger volumes. Oxford honoured its
distinguished visitor by conferring upon him the degree of Doctor of
Science. Two days later he delivered the Huxley Lecture at Birmingham
University, taking for his subject Life and Consciousness. This
subsequently appeared in The Hibbert Journal (Oct., 1911), and since
revised, forms the first essay in the collected volume L'Energie
spirituelle or Mind-Energy. In October he was again in England, where
he had an enthusiastic reception, and delivered at London University
(University College) four lectures on La Nature de l'Ame. In 1913 he
visited the United States of America, at the invitation of Columbia
University, New York, and lectured in several American cities, where
he was welcomed by very large audiences. In February, at Columbia
University, he lectured both in French and English, taking as his
subjects: Spiritualite et Liberte and The Method of Philosophy. Being
again in England in May of the same year, he accepted the Presidency of
the British Society for Psychical Research, and delivered to the Society
an impressive address: Fantomes des Vivants et Recherche psychique.

Meanwhile, his popularity increased, and translations of his works began
to appear in a number of languages, English, German, Italian, Danish,
Swedish, Magyar, Polish and Russian. In 1914 he was honoured by
his fellow-countrymen in being elected as a member of the Academie
francaise. He was also made President of the Academie des Sciences
morales et politiques, and in addition he became Officier de la Legion
d'Honneur, and Officier de l'Instruction publique. He found disciples
of many varied types, and in France movements such as Neo-Catholicism or
Modernism on the one hand and Syndicalism on the other, endeavoured to
absorb and to appropriate for their own immediate use and propaganda
some of the central ideas of his teaching. That important continental
organ of socialist and syndicalist theory, Le Mouvement socialiste,
suggested that the realism of Karl Marx and Prudhon is hostile to all
forms of intellectualism, and that, therefore, supporters of Marxian
socialism should welcome a philosophy such as that of Bergson. Other
writers, in their eagerness, asserted the collaboration of the Chair of
Philosophy at the College de France with the aims of the Confederation
Generale du Travail and the Industrial Workers of the World. It
was claimed that there is harmony between the flute of personal
philosophical meditation and the trumpet of social revolution. These
statements are considered in the chapter dealing with the political
implications of Bergson's thought.

While social revolutionaries were endeavouring to make the most out
of Bergson, many leaders of religious thought, particularly the more
liberal-minded theologians of all creeds, e.g., the Modernists and
Neo-Catholic Party in his own country, showed a keen interest in
his writings, and many of them endeavoured to find encouragement and
stimulus in his work. The Roman Catholic Church, however, which still
believes that finality was reached in philosophy with the work of
Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, and consequently makes that
mediaeval philosophy her official, orthodox, and dogmatic view, took
the step of banning Bergson's three books by placing them upon the Index
(Decree of June 1, 1914).

It was arranged by the Scottish Universities that Bergson should deliver
in 1914 the famous Gifford Lectures, and one course was planned for
the spring and another for the autumn. The first course, consisting
of eleven lectures, under the title of The Problem of Personality, was
delivered at Edinburgh University in the Spring of that year.

Then came the War. The course of lectures planned for the autumn months
had to be abandoned. Bergson has not, however, been silent during
the conflict, and he has given some inspiring addresses. As early as
November 4th, 1914, he wrote an article entitled La force qui s'use et
celle qui ne s'use pas, which appeared in that unique and interesting
periodical of the poilus, Le Bulletin des Armees de la Republique
Francaise. A presidential address delivered in December, 1914, to
the Academie des sciences morales et politiques, had for its title La
Significance de la Guerre. This, together with the preceding article,
has been translated and published in England as The Meaning of the
War. Bergson contributed also to the publication arranged by The Daily
Telegraph in honour of the King of the Belgians, King Albert's Book
(Christmas, 1914). In 1915 he was succeeded in the office of President
of the Academie des Sciences morales et politiques by M. Alexandre
Ribot, and then delivered a discourse on The Evolution of German
Imperialism. Meanwhile he found time to issue at the request of the
Minister of Public Instruction a delightful little summary of French
Philosophy. Bergson did a large amount of travelling and lecturing in
America during the war. He was there when the French Mission under M.
Viviani paid a visit in April and May of 1917, following upon America's
entry into the conflict. M. Viviani's book La Mission francaise en
Amerique, 1917, contains a preface by Bergson.

Early in 1918 he was officially received by the Academie francaise,
taking his seat among "The Select Forty" as successor to M. Emile
Ollivier, the author of the large and notable historical work L'Empire
liberal. A session was held in January in his honour at which he
delivered an address on Ollivier.

In the War, Bergson saw the conflict of Mind and Matter, or rather of
Life and Mechanism; and thus he shows us in action the central idea of
his own philosophy. To no other philosopher has it fallen, during
his lifetime, to have his philosophical principles so vividly and so
terribly tested. We are too close to the smoking crucible of war to be
aware of all that has been involved in it. Even those who have helped in
the making of history are too near to it to regard it historically, much
less philosophically. Yet one cannot help feeling that the defeat of
German militarism has been the proof in action of the validity of much
of Bergson's thought.

As many of Bergson's contributions to French periodicals are not readily
accessible, he agreed to the request of his friends that these should
be collected and published in two volumes. The first of these was being
planned when war broke out. The conclusion of strife has been marked
by the appearance of this delayed volume in 1919. It bears the title
L'Energie spirituelle: Essais et Conferences. The noted expounder
of Bergson's philosophy in England, Dr. Wildon Carr, has prepared an
English Translation under the title Mind-Energy. The volume opens
with the Huxley Memorial Lecture of 1911, Life and Consciousness, in a
revised and developed form under the title Consciousness and Life. Signs
of Bergson's growing interest in social ethics and in the idea of a
future life of personal survival are manifested. The lecture before the
Society for Psychical Research is included, as is also the one given
in France, L'Ame et le Corps, which contains the substance of the four
London lectures on the Soul. The seventh and last article is a reprint
of Bergson's famous lecture to the Congress of Philosophy at Geneva
in 1904, Le paralogisme psycho-physiologique, which now appears as Le
Cerveau et la Pensee: une illusion philosophique. Other articles are on
the False Recognition, on Dreams, and Intellectual Effort. The volume is
a most welcome production and serves to bring together what Bergson has
written on the concept of mental force, and on his view of "tension" and
"detension" as applied to the relation of matter and mind.

It is Bergson's intention to follow up this collection shortly by
another on the Method of Philosophy, dealing with the problems of
Intuition. For this he is preparing an important introduction, dealing
with recent developments in philosophy. This second volume will
include the Lectures on The Perception of Change given at Oxford, The
Introduction to Metaphysics, and the brilliant paper Philosophical
Intuition. In June, 1920, Cambridge honoured him with the degree of
Doctor of Letters. In order that he may be able to devote his full
time to the great new work he is preparing on ethics, religion, and
sociology, Bergson has been relieved of the duties attached to the
Chair of Modern Philosophy at the College de France. He still holds this
chair, but no longer delivers lectures, his place being taken by his
brilliant pupil Edouard Le Roy. Living with his wife and daughter in
a modest house in a quiet street near the Porte d'Auteuil in Paris,
Bergson is now working as keenly and vigorously as ever.




CHAPTER II

THE REALITY OF CHANGE


Fundamental in Bergson's philosophy. We are surrounded by changes--we
ourselves change--Belief in change--Simplicity of change--Immobility
is composite and relative--All movement is indivisible. The fallacy of
"states"--Intellect loves the static--Life is dynamic--Change, the very
stuff of life, constitutes reality.


Throughout the history of thought we find that the prevailing
philosophies have always reflected some of the characteristics of their
time. For instance, in those periods when, as historians tell us, the
tendency towards unity, conformity, system, order, and authority was
strong, we find philosophy reflecting these conditions by emphasizing
the unity of the universe; while in those periods in which established
order, system, and authority were disturbed, the philosophy of the
time emphasizes the idea of multiplicity as opposed to the unity of
the universe, laying stress on freedom, creative action, spontaneity of
effort, and the reality of change. There can be little doubt that this
is the chief reason why Bergson's philosophy has found such an amount of
acceptance in a comparatively short period. The response to his thought
may be explained very largely by this, that already his fundamental
ideas existed, although implicit, unexpressed, in the minds of a great
multitude of thoughtful people, to whom the static conceptions of the
universe were inadequate and false.

We must not, on the other hand, overlook the fact that Bergson's
statements have in their turn given an emphasis to all aspects of
thought which take account of the reality of change and which realize
its importance in all spheres. A writer on world politics very aptly
reminds us that "life is change, and a League of Peace that aimed at
preserving peace by forbidding change would be a tyranny as oppressive
as any Napoleonic dictatorship. These problems called for periodic
change. The peril of our future is that, while the need for change
is instinctively grasped by some peoples as the fundamental fact of
world-politics, to perceive it costs others a difficult effort of
thought." [Footnote: H. N. Brailsford on Peace and Change, Chap. 3 of
his Book A League of Nations.] However difficult it may be for some
individuals and for some nations to grasp it, the great fact is
there--the reality of change is undeniable.

Bergson himself would give to his philosophy the title, The Philosophy
of Change, and this for a very good reason, for the principle of
Change and an insistence on its reality lies at the root of his
thought.[Footnote: He suggested this as a sub-title to Dr. H. Wildon
Carr for his little work Henri Bergson (People's Books). Dr. Wildon
Carr's later and larger work bears this as its full title.] "We know
that everything changes," we find him saying in his London lectures,
"but it is mere words. From the earliest times recorded in the history
of philosophy, philosophers have never stopped saying that everything
changes; but, when the moment came for the practical application of this
proposition, they acted as if they believed that at the bottom of things
there is immobility and invariability. The greatest difficulties of
philosophy are due to not taking account of the fact that Change and
Movement are universal. It is not enough to say that everything changes
and moves--we must believe it." [Footnote: Second of the four lectures on
La Nature de l'Ame delivered at London University, Oct. 21, 1911. From
report in The Times for Oct. 23, 1911, p. 4.] In order to think Change
and to see it, a whole mass of prejudices must be swept aside--some
artificial, the products of speculative philosophy, and others the
natural product of common-sense. We tend to regard immobility as a
more simple affair than movement. But what we call immobility is really
composite and is merely relative, being a relation between movements.
If, for example, there are two trains running in the same direction on
parallel lines at exactly the same speed, opposite one another, then the
passengers in each train, when observing the other train, will regard
the trains as motionless. So, generally, immobility is only apparent,
Change is real. We tend to be misled by language; we speak, for
instance, of 'the state of things'; but what we call a state is the
appearance which a change assumes in the eyes of a being who, himself,
changes according to an identical or analogous rhythm. "Take, for
example," says Bergson, "a summer day. We are stretched on the grass, we
look around us--everything is at rest--there is absolute immobility--no
change. But the grass is growing, the leaves of the trees are developing
or decaying--we ourselves are growing older all the time. That which
seems rest, simplicity itself, is but a composite of our ageing with the
changes which takes place in the grass, in the leaves, in all that is
around us. Change, then, is simple, while 'the state of things' as
we call it, is composite. Every stable state is the result of the
co-existence between that change and the change of the person who
perceives it." [Footnote: La Nature de l'Ame, lecture 2.]

It is an axiom in the philosophy of Bergson that all change or
movement is indivisible. He asserts this expressly in Matter and
Memory,[Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 246 ff. (Fr. p. 207 ff).] and
again in the second lecture on The Perception of Change he deals with
the indivisibility of movement somewhat fully, submitting it to a
careful analysis, from which the following quotation is an extract--"My
hand is at the point A. I move it to the point B, traversing the
interval AB. I say that this movement from A to B is a simple
thing--each of us has the sensation of this, direct and immediate.
Doubtless, while we carry our hand over from A to B, we say to ourselves
that we could stop it at an intermediate point, but then that would no
longer be the same movement. There would then be two movements, with an
interval of rest. Neither from within, by the muscular sense, nor from
without, by sight, should we have the same perception. If we leave our
movement from A to B such as it is, we feel it undivided, and we must
declare it indivisible. It is true that when I look at my hand, going
from A to B, traversing the interval AB, I say to myself 'the interval
AB can be divided into as many parts as I wish, therefore the movement
from A to B can be divided into as many parts as I like, since this
movement covers this interval,' or, again, 'At each moment of its
passing, the moving object passes over a certain point, therefore we
can distinguish in the movement as many stopping-places as we
wish--therefore the movement is infinitely divisible.' But let us
reflect on this for a minute. How can the movement possibly coincide
with the space which it traverses? How can the moving coincide with the
motionless? How can the object which moves be said to 'be' at any point
in its path? It passes over, or, in other words, it could 'be' there. It
would 'be' there if it stopped there, but, if it stopped there, it is no
longer the same movement with which we are dealing. It is always at one
bound that a trajectory is traversed when, on its course, there is no
stoppage. The bound may last a few seconds, or it may last for weeks,
months, or years, but it is unique and cannot be decomposed. Only, when
once the passage has been made, as the path is in space, and space is
infinitely divisible, we picture to ourselves the movement itself as
infinitely divisible. We like to imagine it thus, because, in a movement
it is not the change of position which interests us, it is the positions
themselves which the moving object has left, which it will take up,
which it might assume if it were to stop in its course. We have need
of immobility, and the more we succeed in presenting to ourselves the
movement as coinciding with the space which it traverses, the better we
think we understand it. Really, there is no true immobility, if we
imply by that, an absence of movement." [Footnote: Translated from La
Perception du Changement, pp. 19-20.] This immobility of which we have
need for the purposes of action and of practical life, we erect into an
absolute reality. It is of course convenient to our sense of sight to
lay hold of objects in this way; as pioneer of the sense of touch,
it prepares our action on the external world. But, although for all
practical purposes we require the notion of immobility as part of our
mental equipment, it does not at all help us to grasp reality. Then we
habitually regard movement as something superadded to the motionless.
This is quite legitimate in the world of affairs; but when we bring this
habit into the world of speculation, we misconceive reality, we create
lightheartedly insoluble problems, and close our eyes to what is most
alive in the real world. For us movement is one position, then another
position, and so on indefinitely. It is true that we say there must
be something else, viz., the actual passing across the interval which
separates those positions. But such a conception of Change is quite
false. All true change or movement is indivisible. We, by constructing
fictitious states and trying to compose movement out of them, endeavour
to make a process coincide with a thing--a movement with an immobility.
This is the way to arrive at dilemmas, antinomies, and blind-alleys of
thought. The puzzles of Zeno about "Achilles and the Tortoise" and "The
Moving Arrow" are classical examples of the error involved in treating
movement as divisible.[Footnote: Bergson in Matter and Memory examines
Zeno's four puzzles: "The Dichotomy," "Achilles and the Tortoise," "The
Arrow" and "The Stadium."] If movement is not everything, it is nothing,
and if we postulate, to begin with, that the motionless is real, then
we shall be incapable of grasping reality. The philosophies of Plato, of
Aristotle, and of Plotinus were developed from the thesis that there
is more in the immutable than in the moving, and that it is by way of
diminution that we pass from the stable to the unstable.

The main reason why it is such a difficult matter for us to grasp
the reality of continuous change is owing to the limitations of our
intellectual nature. "We are made in order to act, as much as and more
than in order to think--or, rather, when we follow the bent of our
nature, it is in order to act that we think." [Footnote: Creative
Evolution, p. 313 (Fr. p. 321).] Intellect is always trying to carve out
for itself stable forms because it is primarily fitted for action, and
"is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life" and
grasp Change.[Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 174 (Fr. p. 179).]
Our intellect loves the solid and the static, but life itself is not
static--it is dynamic. We might say that the intellect takes views
across the ever-moving scene, snapshots of reality. It acts like the
camera of the cinematograph operator, which is capable only of producing
photographs, successive and static, in a series upon a ribbon. To grasp
reality, we have to do what the cinematograph does with the film--that
is, introduce or rather, re-introduce movement.[Footnote: Creative
Evolution, pp. 320-324 (Fr. pp. 328-332).] The stiff photograph is an
abstraction bereft of movement, so, too, our intellectual views of the
world and of our own nature are static instead of being dynamic. Human
life is not made up of childhood, adolescence, manhood, and old age as
"states," although we tend to speak of it in this way. Life is not a
thing, nor the state of a thing--it is a continuous movement or change.
The soul itself is a movement, not an entity. In the physical world,
light, when examined, proves itself to be a movement. Even physical
science, bound, as it would seem, to assert the fixity and rigidity of
matter, is now of the opinion that matter is not the solid thing we are
apt to think it. The experiments of Kelvin and Lodge and the
discovery of radium, have brought forward a new theory of matter; the
old-fashioned base, the atom, is now regarded as being essentially
movement; matter is as wonderful and mysterious in its character
as spirit. Further we must note that the researches of Einstein,
culminating in the formulation of his general Theory of Relativity and
his special Theory of Gravitation, which are arousing such interest at
the present time, threaten very seriously the older static views of
the universe and seem to frustrate any efforts to find and denote any
stability therein.[Footnote: Consult on this Dr. Einstein's own work of
which the translation by R. W. Lawson is just published: Relativity: The
Special and the General Theory. Methuen, 1920.] In the light of
these discoveries, Bergson's views on the reality of Change seem less
paradoxical than they might formerly have appeared. The reality of
Change is, for Bergson, absolute, and on this, as a fundamental point,
he constructs his thought. In conjunction with his study of Memory, it
leads up to his discussions of Real Time (la duree), of Freedom, and
of Creative Evolution. We must then, at the outset of any study of
Bergson's philosophy, obtain a grasp of this universal 'becoming'--a
vision of the reality of Change. Then we shall realize that Change is
substantial, that it constitutes the very stuff of life. "There are
changes, but there are not things that change; change does not need a
support. There are movements, but there are not, necessarily, constant
objects which are moved; movement does not imply something that is
movable." [Footnote: Translated from La Perception du Changement, Lecture
2, p. 24.]

To emphasize and to illustrate this point, so fundamental in his
thought, Bergson turns to music. "Let us listen," he says, "to a melody,
letting ourselves be swayed by it; do we not have the clear perception
of a movement which is not attached to any mobility--of a change devoid
of anything which changes? The change is self-sufficient, it is the
thing itself. It avails nothing to say that it takes time, for it is
indivisible; if the melody were to stop sooner, it would not be any
longer the same volume of sound, but another, equally indivisible.
Doubtless we have a tendency to divide it and to represent it to
ourselves as a linking together of distinct notes instead of the
uninterrupted continuity of the melody. But why? Simply because our
auditive perception has assumed the habit of saturating itself with
visual images. We hear the melody across the vision which the conductor
of the orchestra can have of it in looking at his score. We represent
to ourselves notes linked on to notes on an imaginary sheet of paper.
We think of a keyboard on which one plays, of the bow of a violin which
comes and goes, of the musicians, each one of whom plays his part in
conjunction with the others. Let us abstract these spatial images; there
remains pure change, self-sufficing, in no way attached to a 'thing'
which changes." [Footnote: Translated from La Perception du Changement,
pp. 24-25.]

We must conceive reality as a continual flux, then immobility will
seem a superficial abstraction hypostatized into states, concepts, and
substances, and the old difficulties raised by the ancients, in regard
to the problem of Change, will vanish, along with the problems attached
to the notion of "substance" in modern thought, because there is nothing
substantial but Change. Apart from Change there is no reality. We shall
see that all is movement, that we ourselves are movement--part of an
elan, a poussee formidable, which carries with it all things and all
creatures, and that in this eternity--not of immutability but of
life and Change--"we live and move and have our being." [Footnote: La
Perception du Changement, concluding paragraph, p. 37.]




CHAPTER III

PERCEPTION


Images as data--Nerves, afferent and efferent, cannot beget images, nor
can the brain give rise to representations--All our perception relative
to action. Denial of this involves the fallacies of Idealism or
of Realism--Perception and knowledge--Physiological data--Zone of
indetermination--"Pure" perception--Memory and Perception.


From the study of Change we are led on to a consideration of the
problems connected with our perception of the external world, which
has its roots in change. These problems have given rise to some very
opposing views--the classic warfare between Realism and Idealism.
Bergson is of neither school, but holds that they each rest on
misconceptions, a wrong emphasis on certain facts. He invites us to
follow him closely while he investigates the problems of Perception in
his own way.

"We will assume for the moment that we know nothing of theories of
matter and theories of spirit, nothing of the discussions as to the
reality or ideality of the external world. Here I am in the presence
of images, in the vaguest sense of the word, images perceived when my
senses are opened to them, unperceived when they are closed. ... Now of
these images there is ONE which is distinct from all the others, in that
I do not know it only from without by perceptions, but from within by
affections; it is my body." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 1 (Fr.
p. 1).] Further examination shows me that these affections "always
interpose themselves between the excitations from without and the
movement which I am about to execute." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 1
(Fr. p. 1).] Indeed all seems to take place as if, in this aggregate of
images which I call the universe, nothing really new could happen except
through the medium of certain particular images, the type of which is
furnished me by my body." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 3 (Fr. p. 2).]
Reference to physiology shows in the structure of human bodies afferent
nerves which transmit a disturbance to nerve centres, and also efferent
nerves which conduct from other centres movement to the periphery, thus
setting in motion the body in whole or in part. When we make enquiries
from the physiologist or the psychologist with regard to the origin of
these images and representations, we are sometimes told that, as the
centrifugal movements of the nervous system can evoke movement of the
body, so the centripetal movements--at least some of them--give rise to
the representation, mental picture, or perception of the external world.
Yet we must remember that the brain, the nerves, and the disturbance of
the nerves are, after all, only images among others. So it is absurd to
state that one image, say the brain, begets the others, for "the brain
is part of the material world, but the material world is not part of the
brain." Eliminate the image which bears the name 'material world,' and
you destroy, at the same time, the brain and the cerebral disturbances
which are parts of it. Suppose, on the contrary, that these two images,
the brain and the cerebral disturbance, vanish; ex hypothesi you efface
only these, that is to say, very little--an insignificant detail from an
immense picture--the picture in its totality, that is to say, the whole
universe remains. To make of the brain the condition on which the
whole image depends is a contradiction in terms, since the brain is,
by hypothesis, a part of this image." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p.
4 (Fr. pp. 3-4).] The data of perception are external images, then my
body, and changes brought about by my body in the surrounding images.
The external images transmit movement to my body, it gives back movement
to them. My body or part of my body, i.e., my brain, could not beget a
whole or part of my representation of the external world. "You may
say that my body is matter or that it is an image--the word is of no
importance. If it is matter, it is a part of the material world, and the
material world consequently exists around it and without it. If it is an
image--that image can give but what has been put into it, and since
it is, by hypothesis, the image of my body only, it would be absurd to
expect to get from it that of the whole universe. My body, an object
destined to move other objects, is then a centre of action; it cannot
give birth to a representation." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 5 (Fr.
p. 4).] The body, however, is privileged, since it appears to choose
within certain limits certain reactions from possible ones. It exercises
a real influence on other images, deciding which step to take among
several which may be possible. It judges which course is advantageous
or dangerous to itself, by the nature of the images which reach it. The
objects which surround my body reflect its possible action upon
them. All our perception has reference, primarily, to action, not to
speculation.[Footnote: Cf. Creative Evolution, p. 313 (Fr. p. 321).]
The brain centres are concerned with motor reaction rather than with
conscious perception, "the brain is an instrument of action and not
of representation." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 83 (Fr. p.
69).] Therefore, in the study of the problems of perception, the
starting-point should be action and not sensation. All the confusions,
inconsistencies and absurdities of statement, made in regard to
our knowledge of the external world, have here their origin. Many
philosophers and psychologists "show us a brain, analogous in its
essence to the rest of the material universe, consequently an image, if
the universe is an image. Then, since they want the internal movements
of this brain to create or determine the representation of the whole
material world--an image infinitely greater than that of the cerebral
vibrations--they maintain that these molecular movements, and movement
in general, are not images like others, but something which is either
more or less than an image--in any case is of another nature than an
image--and from which representation will issue as by a miracle. Thus
matter is made into something radically different from representation,
something of which, consequently, we have no image; over against it they
place a consciousness empty of images, of which we are unable to form
any idea. Lastly, to fill consciousness, they invent an incomprehensible
action of this formless matter upon this matterless thought." [Footnote:
Matter and Memory, p. 9 (Fr. pp. 7-8).]

The problem at issue between Realists and Idealists turns on the fact
that there are two systems of images in existence. "Here is a system of
images which I term 'my perception of the universe,' and which may be
entirely altered by a very slight change in the privileged image--my
body. This image occupies the centre. By it all the others are
conditioned; at each of its movements everything changes as though by
a turn of a kaleidoscope. Here, on the other hand, are the same images,
but referred each one to itself, influencing each other no doubt, but in
such a manner that the effect is always in proportion to the cause; this
is what I term the 'universe.'" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 12 (Fr.
p. 10).] The question is, "How is it that the same images can belong
at the same time to two different systems--the one in which each image
varies for itself and in the well-defined measure that it is patient of
the real action of surrounding images--the other in which all change for
a single image and in the varying measure that they reflect the eventual
action of this privileged image?" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 13
(Fr. p. 11).] We may style one the system of science, the other the
system of consciousness. Now, Realism and Idealism are both incapable
of explaining why there are two such systems at all. Subjective
Idealism derives the system of science from that of consciousness, while
materialistic Realism derives the system of consciousness from that of
science. They have, however, this common meeting-place, that they both
regard Perception as speculative in character--for each of them "to
perceive" is to "know." Now this is just the postulate which Bergson
disputes. The office of perception, according to him, is to give us,
not knowledge, but the conditions necessary for action.[Footnote: Notre
croyance a la loi de causalite (Revue de metaphysique et de morale,
1900), p. 658.] A little examination shows us that distance stands for
the degree in which other bodies are protected, as it were, against the
action of my body against them, and equally too for the degree in which
my body is protected from them.[Footnote: Le Souvenir du present et
la fausse reconnaissance in L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 117-161
(Mind-Energy), or Revue philosophique, 1908, pp. 561-593.] Perception
is utilitarian in character and has reference to bodily action, and
we detach from all the images coming to us those which interest us
practically.

Bergson then examines the physiological aspects of the perceptual
process. Beginning with reflex actions and the development of the
nervous system, he goes on to discuss the functions of the spinal cord
and the brain. He finds in regard to these last two that "there is only
a difference of degree--there can be no difference in kind--between what
is called the perceptive faculty of the brain and the reflex functions
of the spinal cord. The cord transforms into movements the stimulation
received, the brain prolongs into reactions which are merely nascent,
but in the one case as in the other, the function of the nerve substance
is to conduct, to co-ordinate, or to inhibit movements.[Footnote: Matter
and Memory, pp. 10-11 (Fr. p. 9).] As we rise in the organic series
we find a division of physiological labour. Nerve cells appear, are
diversified and tend to group themselves into a system; at the same time
the animal reacts by more varied movements to external stimulation.
But even when the stimulation received is not at once prolonged
into movement, it appears merely to await its occasion; and the same
impression which makes the organism aware of changes in the environment,
determines it or prepares it to adapt itself to them. No doubt there is
in the higher vertebrates a radical distinction between pure automatism,
of which the seat is mainly in the spinal cord, and voluntary activity
which requires the intervention of the brain. It might be imagined
that the impression received, instead of expanding into more movements
spiritualizes itself into consciousness. But as soon as we compare the
structure of the spinal cord with that of the brain, we are bound to
infer that there is merely a difference of complication, and not a
difference in kind, between the functions of the brain and the reflex
activity of the medullary system." [Footnote: Matter and Memory,
pp. 17-18 (Fr. p. 15).] The brain is no more than a kind of central
telephone exchange, its office is to allow communication or to delay
it. It adds nothing to what it receives, it is simply a centre where
perceptions get into touch with motor mechanisms. Sometimes the function
of the brain is to conduct the movement received to a chosen organ of
reaction, while at other times it opens to the movement the totality
of the motor tracks. The brain appears as an instrument of analysis in
regard to movements received by it, but an instrument of selection in
regard to the movements executed. In either case, its office is limited
to the transmission and division of movements. In the lower organisms,
stimulation takes the form of immediate contact. For example, a
jelly-fish feels a danger when anything touches it, and reacts
immediately. The more immediate the reaction has to be, the more it
resembles simple contact. Higher up the scale, sight and hearing enable
the individual to enter into relation with a greater number of objects
and with objects at a distance. This gives rise to an amount of
uncertainty, "a zone of indetermination," where hesitation and choice
come into play. Hence, says Bergson: "Perception is master of space in
the exact measure in which action is master of time." [Footnote: Matter
and Memory, p. 23 (Fr. p. 19).]

In the paper read before the First International Congress of Philosophy
at Paris in 1900, on Our Belief in the Law of Causality,[Footnote: Notre
croyance a la loi de causalite (Revue de metaphysique et de morale,
Sept., 1900, pp. 655-660).] Bergson showed that it has its root in the
co-ordination of our tactile impressions with our visual impressions.
This co-ordination becomes a continuity which generates motor habits or
tendencies to action.

There now comes up for consideration the question as to why this
relation of the organism, to more or less distinct objects, takes
the particular form of conscious perception, and further, why does
everything happen as if this consciousness were born of the internal
movements of the cerebral substance? To answer this question, we must
turn to perceptual processes, as these occur in our everyday life. We
find at once that "there is no perception which is not full of memories.
With the immediate and present data of our senses, we mingle a thousand
details out of our past experience." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 24
(Fr. p. 20).] To such an extent is this true that the immediate data of
perception serve as a sign to bring much more to the mind. Psychological
experiments have conclusively proved that we never actually perceive all
that we imagine to be there. Hence arise illusions, examples of which
may be easily thought of--incorrect proof-reading is one, while another
common one is the mistake of taking one person for another because of
some similarity of dress. What is actually perceived is but a fraction
of what we are looking at and acts normally as a suggestion for the
whole. Now, although it is true that, in practice, Perception and Memory
are never found absolutely separate in their purity, yet it is necessary
to distinguish them from one another absolutely in any investigation
of a psychological nature. If, instead of a perception impregnated
with memory-images, nothing survived from the past, then we should have
"pure" perception, not coloured by anything in the individual's past
history, and so a kind of impersonal perception. However unreal it may
seem, such a perception is at the root of our knowledge of things and
individual accidents are merely grafted on to this impersonal or "pure"
perception. Just because philosophers have overlooked it, and because
they have failed to distinguish it from that which memory contributes to
it, they have regarded Perception as a kind of interior and subjective
vision, differing from Memory only by its greater intensity and not
differing in nature. In reality, however, Perception and Memory differ
fundamentally.

Our conscious perception is just our power of choice, reflected from
things as though by a mirror, so that representation arises from the
omission of that in the totality of matter which has no bearing on our
needs and consequently no interest for us. "There is for images merely
a difference of degree and not of kind between 'being' and 'being
consciously perceived.'" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 30 (Fr. p.
25).] Consciousness--in regard to external perception--is explained by
this indeterminateness and this choice. "But there is in this necessary
poverty of conscious perception, something that is positive, that
foretells spirit; it is, in the etymological sense of the word,
discernment.'" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 31 (Fr. p. 26).] The
chief difficulty in dealing with the problems of Perception, is to
explain "not how Perception arises, but how it is limited, since it
should be the image of the whole and is in fact reduced to the image of
that which interests you." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 34 (Fr. p.
29).] We only make an insuperable difficulty if we imagine Perception
to be a kind of photographic view of things, taken from a fixed point
by that special apparatus which is called an organ of perception--a
photograph which would then be developed in the brain-matter by some
unknown chemical and psychical process. "Everything happens as though
your perception were a result of the internal motions of the brain and
issued in some sort from the cortical centres. It could not actually
come from them since the brain is an image like others, enveloped in the
mass of other images, and it would be absurd that the container should
issue from the content. But since the structure of the brain is like
the detailed plan of the movements among which you have the choice,
and since that part of the external images which appears to return upon
itself, in order to constitute perception, includes precisely all the
points of the universe which these movements could affect, conscious
perception and cerebral movement are in strict correspondence. The
reciprocal dependence of these two terms is therefore simply due to the
fact that both are functions of a third, which is the indetermination of
the Will." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 35 (Fr. p. 29).]

Moreover, we must recognize that the image is formed and perceived in
the object, not in the brain, even although it would seem that rays
of light coming from a point P are perceived along the path of the
sensori-motor processes in the brain and are afterwards projected into
P. There is not, however, an unextended image which forms itself in
consciousness and then projects itself into the position P. Really,
the point P, and the rays which it emits, together with the retina
and nervous elements affected in the process of perception, all form a
single whole. The point P is an indispensable factor in this whole and
it is really in P and not anywhere else that the image of P is formed
and perceived.[Footnote: Cf. Matter and Memory, p. 37 (Fr p. 31), also
paper entitled Notre croyance a la loi de causalite in the Revue de
metaphysique et de morale, 1900, p. 658.]

In the field of "pure" perception, that is to say, perception
unadulterated by the addition of memory-images, there can arise no image
without an object. "Sensation is essentially due to what is actually
present." [Footnote: Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance,
p. 579 of Revue philosophique, Dec., 1908; also L'Energie spirituelle,
p. 141 (Mind-Energy).] Exactly how external stimuli, such as rays of
a certain speed and length, come to give us a certain image, e.g., the
sensation "red" or the sound of "middle C," we shall never understand.
"No trace of the movements themselves can be actually perceived in the
sensation which translates them." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, pp.
34-35 (Fr. p. 26).] We only make trouble by regarding sensations in an
isolated manner and attempting to construct Perception from them. "Our
sensations are to our perceptions, that which the real action of our
body is to its possible or virtual action." [Footnote: Matter and Memory,
p. 58 (Fr. p. 48).] Thus, everything happens as if the external images
were reflected by our body into surrounding space. This is why the
surface of the body, which forms the common limit of the external and
internal, is the only portion of space which is both perceived and
felt. Just as external objects are perceived by me where they are, in
themselves and not in me, so my affective states (e.g. pains--which are
local, unavailing efforts) are experienced where they occur, in my body.
Consider the system of images which we term the "external world." My
body is one of them and around it is grouped the representation, i.e.,
its eventual influence on others. Within it occurs affection, i.e., its
actual effort upon itself. It is because of this distinction between
images and sensations that we affirm that the totality of perceived
images subsists, even if our body disappears, whereas we cannot
annihilate our body without destroying our sensations. In practice,
our "pure" perception is adulterated with affection, as well as with
memories. To understand Perception, however, we must--as previously
insisted upon--study it with reference to action. It is false to suppose
"that perception and sensation exist for their own sake; the philosopher
ascribes to them an entirely speculative function," [Footnote: Matter
and Memory, p. 311 (Fr p. 261).] a proceeding which gives rise to the
fallacies of Realism and Idealism.

It has been said that the choice of perceptions from among images in
general is the effect of a "discernment" which foreshadows spirit. But
to touch the reality of spirit, we must place ourselves at the point
where an individual consciousness continues and retains the past in
a present, enriched by it.[Footnote: See Chapter VI on la duree.
Time--True and False.] Perception we never meet in its pure state; it
is always mingled with memories. The rose has a different scent for you
from that which it has for me, just because the scent of the rose bears
with it all the memories of all the roses we have ever experienced, each
of us individually.[Footnote: Time and Free Will, pp. 161-162 (Fr.
p. 124).] Memory, however mingled with Perception, is nevertheless
fundamentally different in character.[Footnote: Le Souvenir du present
et la fausse reconnaissance, Revue philosophique, Dec., 1908, p. 580;
also L'Effort intellectuel, Revue philosophique, Jan., 1902, p. 23;
L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 141 and 197 (Mind-Energy).] "When we pass
from 'pure' Perception to Memory, we definitely abandon matter for
spirit." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 313 (Fr. p. 263).]




CHAPTER IV

MEMORY


Definition--Two forms--memorizing power related to habit; recalling
power or "pure" memory. Is memory a function of the brain?--Pathological
Phenomena. Memory something other than merely a function of the brain.
The "Box" theory--Memory records everything--Dreams--The well-balanced
mind--Memory a manifestation of spirit.


The importance of Memory is recognized by all persons--whether
psychologists or not. At the present time there is a growing interest
in systems of memory-training offered to the public, which aim at mental
efficiency as a means to success in life. Indeed, from the tone of some
advertisements seen in the press, one might be prompted to think that
Memory itself was the sole factor determining success in either a
professional or a business career. Yet, although we are likely to regard
this as a somewhat exaggerated statement, nevertheless we cannot deny
the very great importance of the power of Memory. How often, in everyday
life, we hear people excuse themselves by remarking "My memory failed
me" or "played me false" or, more bluntly, "I forgot all about that."
Without doubt, Memory is a most vital factor, though not the only one
in mental efficiency.[Footnote: The true ideal of mental efficiency must
include power of Will as well as of Memory.] It is an element in mental
life which puzzles both the specialist in psychology and the layman.
"What is this wonderfully subtle power of mind?" "How do we remember?"
Even the mind, untrained in psychological investigation, cannot help
asking such questions in moments of reflection; but for the psychologist
they are questions of very vital significance in his science. For
Bergson, as psychologist, Memory is naturally, a subject of great
importance. We must note, however, that for Bergson, as metaphysician,
it plays an even more important role, since his study of Memory and
conclusions as to its nature lead him on to a discussion of the relation
of soul and body, spirit and matter. His second large work, which
appeared in 1896, bears the title Matiere et Memoire. For him, Memory
is a pivot on which turns a whole scheme of relationships--material
and spiritual. He wrote in 1910 a new introduction for the English
Translation of this work. He there says that "among all the facts
capable of throwing light on the psycho-physiological relation, those
which concern Memory, whether in the normal or the pathological state,
hold a privileged position." [Footnote: Introduction to Matter and
Memory, p. xii.] Let us then, prior to passing on to the consideration
of the problem of the relation of soul and body, examine what Bergson
has to say on the subject of Memory.

At the outset, we may define Memory as the return to consciousness of
some experience, accompanied by the awareness that it has been present
earlier at a definite time and place.[Footnote: The above is to be taken
as a definition of the normal memory. In a subtle psychological analysis
in the paper entitled Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance
in L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 117-161 (Mind-Energy), Bergson considers
cases of an abnormal or fictitious memory, coinciding with perception in
rather a strange manner. This does not, however, affect the validity
of the above definition.] Bergson first of all draws attention to a
distinction between two different forms of Memory, the nature of which
will be best brought out by considering two examples. We are fond of
giving to children or young persons at school selections from the plays
of Shakespeare, "to be learned by heart," as we say. We praise the boy
or girl who can repeat a long passage perfectly, and we regard that
scholar as gifted with a good memory. To illustrate the second type of
case, suppose a question to be put to that boy asking him what he saw on
the last half-holiday when he took a ramble in the country. He may, or
may not, be able to tell us much of his adventures on that occasion,
for whatever he can recall is due to a mental operation of a different
character from that which enabled him to learn his lesson. There is
here no question of learning by rote, of memorizing, but of capacity to
recall to mind a past experience. The boy who is clever at memorizing a
passage from Shakespeare may not have a good memory at all for recalling
past events. To understand why this is so we must examine these two
forms of Memory more closely and refer to Bergson's own words: "I study
a lesson, and in order to learn it by heart I read it a first time,
accentuating every line; I then repeat it a certain number of times. At
each repetition there is progress; the words are more and more linked
together, and at last make a continuous whole. When that moment comes,
it is said that I know my lesson by heart, that it is imprinted on my
memory. I consider now how the lesson has been learnt and picture to
myself the successive phases of the process. Each several reading then
recurs to me with its own individuality. It is distinguished from those
which preceded or followed it, by the place which it occupied in time;
in short, each reading stands out before my mind as a definite event in
my history. Again it will be said that these images are recollections,
that they are imprinted on my Memory. The same words then are used in
both cases. Do they mean the same thing? The memory of the lesson which
is remembered, in the sense of learned by heart, has ALL the marks of
a habit. Like a habit, it is acquired by the repetition of the same
effort. Like every habitual bodily exercise, it is stored up in a
mechanism which is set in motion as a whole by an initial impulse, in
a closed system of automatic movements, which succeed each other in the
same order and together take the same length of time. The memory of each
several reading, on the contrary, has NONE of the marks of a habit, it
is like an event in my life; it is a case of spontaneous recollection as
distinct from mere learnt recollection. Now a learnt recollection passes
out of time in the measure that the lesson is better known; it
becomes more and more impersonal, more and more foreign to our past
life." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp. 89-90 (Fr. pp. 75-76).] This
quotation makes clear that of these two forms of Memory, it is the
power of spontaneous recollection which is Memory par excellence and
constitutes "real" Memory. The other, to which psychologists usually
have devoted most of their attention in discussing the problem of
Memory, is habit interpreted as Memory, rather than Memory itself.
Having thus made clear this valuable and fundamental distinction--"one
of the best things in Bergson" [Footnote: Bertrand Russell's remark in
his Philosophy of Bergson, p. 7.]--and having shown that in practical
life the automatic memory necessarily plays an important part, often
inhibiting "pure" Memory, Bergson proceeds to examine and criticize
certain views of Memory itself, and endeavours finally to demonstrate to
us what he himself considers it to be.

He takes up the cudgels to attack the view which aims at blending Memory
with Perception, as being of like kind. Memory, he argues, must be
distinguished from Perception, however much we admit (and rightly)
that memories enter into and colour all our perceptions. They are quite
different in their nature. A remembrance is the representation of an
absent object. We distinguish between hearing a faint tap at the door,
and the faint memory of a loud one. We cannot admit the validity of
the statement that there is only a difference of intensity between
Perception and Recollection. "As our perception of a present object
is something of that object itself, our representation of the absent
object, as in Memory, must be a phenomenon of quite other order than
Perception, since between presence and absence there are no degrees, no
intermediate stages." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 315 (Fr. p. 264).]
If we maintain that recollection is merely a weakened form of Perception
we must note the consequences of such a thesis. "If recollection is only
a weakened Perception, inversely, Perception must be something like an
intenser Memory. Now, the germ of English Idealism is to be found here.
This Idealism consists in finding only a difference of degree and not of
kind, between the reality of the object perceived, and the ideality
of the object conceived." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 318 (Fr.
p. 267).] The maintenance of such a doctrine involves the further
remarkable contention that "we construct matter from our own interior
states and that perception is only a true hallucination." [Footnote:
Matter and Memory, p 318 (Fr. p. 267).] Such a theory will not
harmonize with the experienced difference between Perceptions and
Memories.[Footnote: Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance,
Revue philosophique, Dec., 1908, p. 568; also L'Energie spirituelle
(Mind-Energy).] We do not mistake the perception of a slight sound for
the recollection of a loud noise, as has already been remarked. The
consciousness of a recollection "never occurs as a weak state which we
try to relegate to the past so soon as we become aware of its weakness.
How indeed, unless we already possess the representation of a past,
previously lived, could we relegate to it the less intense psychical
states, when it would be so simple to set them alongside of strong
states as a present experience more confused, beside a present
experience more distinct?" [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 319 (Fr. p.
268).] The truth is that Memory does not consist in a regression from
the present into the past, but on the contrary, in a progress from the
past to the present. Memory is radically distinct from Perception, in
its character.

Bergson then passes on to discuss other views of Memory, and in
particular, those which deal with the nature of Memory and its relation
to the brain. It is stated dogmatically by some that Memory is a
function of the brain. Others claim, in opposition to this, that Memory
is something other than a function of the brain. Between two such
statements as these, compromise or reconciliation is obviously
impossible. It is then for experience to decide between these two
conflicting views. This empirical appeal Bergson does not shirk. He has
made a most comprehensive and intensive study of pathological phenomena
relating to the mental malady known as aphasia. This particular type of
disorder belongs to a whole class of mental diseases known as amnesia.
Now amnesia (in Greek, "forgetfulness") is literally any loss or defect
of the Memory. Aphasia (in Greek "absence of speech") is a total or
partial loss of the power of speech, either in its spoken or written
form. The term covers the loss of the power of expression by spoken
words, but is often extended to include both word-deafness, i.e., the
misunderstanding of what is said, and word-blindness--the inability to
read words. An inability to execute the movements necessary to express
oneself, either by gesture, writing, or speech, is styled "motor
aphasia," to distinguish it from the inability to understand
familiar gestures and written or spoken words, which is known as
"sensory-aphasia." The commonest causes of this disease are lesions,
affecting the special nerve centres, due to haemorrhage or the
development of tumours, being in the one case rapid, in the other a
gradual development. Of course any severe excitement, fright or illness,
involving a disturbance of the normal circulation in the cerebral
centres, may produce asphasia. During the war, it has been one of the
afflictions of a large number of the victims of "shell-shock." But,
whatever be the cause, the patient is reduced mentally to an elementary
state, resembling that of a child, and needs re-educating in the
elements of language.

Now, from his careful study of the pathological phenomena, manifested in
these cases, Bergson draws some very important conclusions in regard
to the nature of Memory and its relation to the brain. In 1896, when he
brought out his work Matiere et Memoire, in Paris, the general view
was against his conclusions and his opinions were ridiculed. By 1910, a
marked change had come about and he was able to refer to this in the
new introduction.[Footnote: See Bibliography, p. 158.] His view was
no longer considered paradoxical. The conception of aphasia, once
classical, universally admitted, believed to be unshakeable, had been
considerably shaken in that period of fourteen years. Localization,
and reference to centres would not, it was found, explain things
sufficiently.[Footnote: The work of Pierre Janet was largely influential
also in bringing about this change of view.] This involved a too rigid
and mechanical conception of the brain as a mere "box," and Bergson
attacks it very forcibly under the name of "the box theory." "All the
arguments," he says, "from fact which may be invoked in favour of a
probable accumulation of memories in the cortical substance, are
drawn from local disorders of memory. But if recollections were really
deposited in the brain, to definite gaps in memory characteristic
lesions of the brain would correspond. Now in those forms of amnesia in
which a whole period of our past existence, for example, is abruptly and
entirely obliterated from memory, we do not observe any precise cerebral
lesion; and on the contrary, in those disorders of memory where cerebral
localization is distinct and certain, that is to say, in the different
types of aphasia, and in the diseases of visual or auditory recognition,
we do not find that certain definite recollections are, as it were, torn
from their seat, but that it is the whole faculty of remembering that is
more or less diminished in vitality, as if the subject had more or less
difficulty in bringing his recollections into contact with the present
situation." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 315 (Fr. pp. 264-265).] But
as it is a fact that the past survives under two distinct forms, viz.,
"motor mechanisms" and "independent recollections," we find that this
explains why "in all cases where a lesion of the brain attacks a certain
category of recollections, the affected recollections do not resemble
each other by all belonging to the same period, or by any logical
relationship to one another, but simply in that they are all auditive or
all visual or all motor. That which is damaged appears to be the various
sensorial or motor areas, or more often still, those appendages which
permit of their being set going from within the cortex rather than the
recollections themselves." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 317 (Fr. p.
266).] Going even further than this, by the study of the recognition of
words, and of sensory-aphasia, Bergson shows that "recognition is in no
way affected by a mechanical awakening of memories that are asleep in
the brain. It implies, on the contrary, a more or less high degree of
tension in consciousness, which goes to fetch pure recollections in pure
memory, in order to materialize them progressively, by contact with the
present perception." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 317 (Fr. p. 266).]

In the face of all this mass of evidence and thoroughness of argument
which Bergson brings forward, we are led to conclude that Memory is
indeed something other than a function of the brain. Criticizing
Wundt's view,[Footnote: As expressed in his Grundzuge der physiologische
psychologie, vol. I., pp. 320-327. See Matter and Memory, p. 164 (Fr.
p. 137).]Bergson contends that no trace of an image can remain in the
substance of the brain and no centre of apperception can exist. "There
is not in the brain a region in which memories congeal and accumulate.
The alleged destruction of memories by an injury to the brain is but
a break in the continuous progress by which they actualize
themselves." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 160 (Fr. p. 134).] It is
then futile to ask in what spot past memories are stored. To look for
them in any place would be as meaningless as asking to see traces of the
telephonic message upon the telephone wire.

"Memory," it has been said, "is a faculty which loses nothing and
records everything." [Footnote: Ball, quoted by Rouillard, Les Amnesies,
Paris, 1885, p. 25; Matter and Memory, p. 201 (Fr. p. 168).] This is
only too true, although normally we do not recognize it. But we can
never be sure that we have absolutely forgotten anything. Illness,
producing delirium, may provoke us to speak of things we had thought
were gone beyond recall and which perhaps we even wish were beyond
recall. A somnambulistic state or even a dream may show us memory
extending far further back than we could ordinarily imagine. The facing
of death in battle, we know, recalls to many, with extreme vividness,
scenes of early childhood which they had deemed long since forgotten.
"There is nothing," says Bergson, "more instructive in this regard than
what happens in cases of sudden suffocation--in men drowned or hanged.
The man, when brought to life again, states that he saw in a very short
time all the forgotten events of his life, passing before him with great
rapidity, with their smallest circumstances, and in the very order in
which they occurred." [Footnote: La Perception du Changement, pp.
30-31, and Matter and Memory, p 200 (Fr p 168).] Hence we can never be
absolutely sure that we have forgotten anything although at any given
time we may be unable to recall it to mind. There is an unconscious
memory.[Footnote: Cf. Samuel Butler's Unconscious Memory.] Speaking
of the profound and yet undeniable reality of the unconscious, Bergson
says,[Footnote: Matter and Memory, pp 181-182 (Fr. pp. 152-153).
See also Le Souvenir du present et la fausse reconnaissance, Revue
philosophique, Dec., 1908, p. 592, and L'Energie spirituelle, pp.
159-161 (Mind-Energy).] "Our unwillingness to conceive unconscious
psychical states, is due, above all, to the fact that we hold
consciousness to be the essential property of psychical states, so
that a psychical state cannot, it seems, cease to be conscious without
ceasing to exist. But if consciousness is but the characteristic note
of the present, that is to say, of the actually lived, in short, of
the active, then that which does not act may cease to belong to
consciousness without therefore ceasing to exist in some manner. In
other words, in the psychological domain, consciousness may not be the
synonym of existence, but only of real action or of immediate efficacy;
limiting thus the meaning of the term, we shall have less difficulty in
representing to ourselves a psychical state which is unconscious, that
is to say, ineffective. Whatever idea we may frame of consciousness in
itself, such as it would be if it could work untrammelled, we cannot
deny that in a being which has bodily functions, the chief office
of consciousness is to preside over action and to enlighten choice.
Therefore it throws light on the immediate antecedents of the decision
and on those past recollections which can usefully combine with it; all
else remains in shadow." But we have no more right to say that the
past effaces itself as soon as perceived than to suppose that material
objects cease to exist when we cease to perceive them. Memory, to use
a geometrical illustration which Bergson himself employs, comes into
action like the point of a cone pressing against a plane. The plane
denotes the present need, particularly in relation to bodily action,
while the cone stands for all our total past. Much of this past, indeed
most of it, only endures as unconscious Memory, but it is always capable
of coming to the apex of the cone, i.e., coming into consciousness. So
we may say that there are different planes of Memory, conic sections, if
we keep up the original metaphor, and the largest of these contains all
our past. This may be well described as "the plane of dream." [Footnote:
See Matter and Memory, p. 222 (Fr. p. 186) and the paper L'Effort
intellectuel, Revue philosophique, Jan., 1902, pp. 2 and 25, L'Energie
spirituelle, pp. 165 and 199 (Mind-Energy).]

This connexion of Memory with dreams is more fully brought out by
Bergson in his lecture before the Institut psychologique international,
five years after the publication of Matiere et Memoire, entitled Le
Reve. [Footnote: Delivered March 26, 1901. See Bibliography, p. 153.]
The following is a brief summary of the view there set forth. Memories,
and only memories, weave the web of our dreams. They are "such stuff as
dreams are made on." Often we do not recognize them. They may be very
old memories, forgotten during waking hours, drawn from the most
obscure depths of our past, or memories of objects we have perceived
distractedly, almost unconsciously, while awake. They may be fragments
of broken memories, composing an incoherent and unrecognizable whole.
In a waking state our memories are closely connected with our present
situation (unless we be given to day-dreams!). In an animal memory
serves to recall to him the advantageous or injurious consequences
which have formerly arisen in a like situation, and so aids his present
action. In man, memory forms a solid whole, a pyramid whose point is
inserted precisely into our present action. But behind the memories
which are involved in our occupations, there are others, thousands of
others, stored below the scene illuminated by consciousness. "Yes,
I believe indeed," says Bergson, "that all our past life is there,
preserved even to the most infinitesimal details, and that we forget
nothing and that all that we have ever felt, perceived, thought, willed,
from the first awakening of our consciousness, survives indestructibly."
[Footnote: Dreams, p. 37. For this discussion in full, see pages 34-39,
or see L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 100-103 (Mind-Energy).] Of course, in
action I have something else to do than occupy myself with these.
But suppose I become disinterested in present action--that I fall
asleep--then the obstacle (my attention to action) removed, these
memories try to raise the trap-door--they all want to get through. From
the multitude which are called, which will be chosen? When I was awake,
only those were admitted which bore on the present situation. Now, in
sleep, more vague images occupy my vision, more indecisive sounds
reach my ear, more indistinct touches come to my body, and more vague
sensations come from my internal organs. Hence those memories which
can assimilate themselves to some element in this vague mass of
very indistinct sensations manage to get through. When such union is
effected, between memory and sensation, we have a dream.

In order that a recollection should be brought to mind, it is necessary
that it should descend from the height of pure memory to the precise
point where action is taking place. Such a power is the mark of the
well-balanced mind, pursuing a via media between impulsiveness on the
one hand, and dreaminess on the other. "The characteristic of the man of
action," says Bergson in this connexion, "is the promptitude with which
he summons to the help of a given situation all the memories which have
reference to it. To live only in the present, to respond to a stimulus
by the immediate reaction which prolongs it, is the mark of the lower
animals; the man who proceeds in this way is a man of impulse. But he
who lives in the past, for the mere pleasure of living there, and in
whom recollections emerge into the light of consciousness, without any
advantage for the present situation, is hardly better fitted for
action; here we have no man of impulse, but a dreamer. Between these two
extremes lies the happy disposition of a memory docile enough to follow
with precision all the outlines of the present situation, but energetic
enough to resist all other appeal. Good sense or practical sense, is
probably nothing but this." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 198 (Fr. pp.
166-167).]

In the paper L'Effort intellectuel, contributed in 1902 to the Revue
philosophique, and now reprinted in L'Energie spirituelle,[Footnote:
Pp. 163-202. See also Mind-Energy.]Bergson gives an analysis of what is
involved in intellectual effort. There is at first, he shows, something
conceived quite generally, an idea vague and abstract, a schema which
has to be completed by distinct images. In thought there is a movement
of the mind from the plane of the schema to the plane of the concrete
image. Various images endeavour to fit themselves into the schema, or
the schema may adapt itself to the reception of the images. These
double efforts to secure adaptation and cooperation may both encounter
resistance from the other, a situation which is known to us as
hesitation, accompanied by the awareness of obstacles, thus involving
intellectual effort.

Memory then, Bergson wishes us to realize, in response to his treatment
of it, is no mere function of the brain; it is something infinitely more
subtle, infinitely more elusive, and more wondrous. Our memories are not
stored in the brain like letters in a filing cabinet, and all our
past survives indestructibly as Memory, even though in the form of
unconscious memory. We must recognize Memory to be a spiritual fact
and so regard it as a pivot on which turn many discussions of vital
importance when we come to investigate the problem of the relation of
soul and body. For "Memory must be, in principle, a power absolutely
independent of matter. If then, spirit is a reality, it is here, in
the phenomenon of Memory that we may come into touch with it
experimentally." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 81 (Fr. p. 68).]
"Memory," he would remind us finally, "is just the intersection of mind
and matter." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, Introduction, p. xii.] "A
remembrance cannot be the result of a state of the brain. The state of
the brain continues the remembrance; it gives it a hold on the present
by the materiality which it confers upon it, but pure memory is a
spiritual manifestation. With Memory, we are, in very truth, in the
domain of spirit." [Footnote: Matter and Memory, p. 320 (Fr. p. 268).]




CHAPTER V

THE RELATION OF SOUL AND BODY


The hypothesis of Psycho-physical Parallelism--Not to be accepted
uncritically--Bergson opposes it, and shows the hypothesis to rest on a
confusion of terms. Bergson against Epiphenomenalism--Soul-life unique
and wider than the brain--Telepathy, subconscious action and psychical
research--Souls and survival.


For philosophy in general, and for psychology in particular, the problem
of the relation of soul and body has prime significance, and moreover,
it is a problem with which each of us is acquainted intimately
and practically, even if we know little or nothing of the academic
discussions, or of the technical terms representing various views. It is
very frequently the terminology which turns the plain man away from the
consideration of philosophical problems; but he has some conception,
however crude it may be, of his soul or his mind and of his body.
These terms are familiar to him, but the sight of a phrase like
"psycho-physical parallelism" rather daunts him. Really, it stands for
quite a simple thing, and is just the official label used to designate
the theory commonly held by scientific men of all kinds, to describe the
relation of soul and body. Put more precisely, it is just the assertion
that brain and consciousness work on parallel lines.

Bergson does not accept the hypothesis of psycho-physical parallelism.
In the first of his four lectures on La Nature de l'Ame, given at
London University in 1911, we find him criticizing the notion that
consciousness has no independence of its own, that it merely expresses
certain states of the brain, that the content of a fact of consciousness
is to be found wholly in the corresponding cerebral state. It is true
that we should not find many physiologists or philosophers who would
tell us now that "the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes
bile." [Footnote: Cabanis (1757-1808). Rapports du physique et du morale
de l'homme, 1802. See quotation by William James in Human Immortality.
Note (4) in his Appendix.] But there was an idea that, if we could see
through the skull and observe what takes place in the brain, if we had
an enormously powerful microscope which would permit us to follow the
movements of the molecules, atoms, electrons, of the brain, and if we
had the key to the correspondence between these phenomena and the mind,
we should know all the thoughts and wishes of the person to whom
the brain belonged--we should see what took place in his soul, as a
telegraph operator could read by the oscillation of his needles the
meaning of a message which was sent through his instrument. The notion
of an equality or parallelism between conscious activity and cerebral
activity, was commonly adopted by modern physiology, and it was
adopted without discussion as a scientific notion by the majority of
philosophers. Yet the experimental basis of this theory is extremely
slight, indeed altogether insufficient, and in reality the theory is
a metaphysical conception, resulting from the views of the seventeenth
century thinkers who had hopes of "a universal mathematic." The idea had
been accepted that all was capable of determination in the psychical as
well as the physical world, inasmuch as the psychical was only a reflex
of the physical. Parallelism was adopted by science because of its
convenience.[Footnote: See The Times of Oct. 21, 1911.] Bergson,
however, pointed out that philosophy ought not to accept it without
criticism, and maintained, moreover, that it could not stand the
criticism that might be brought against it. Relation of soul and body
was undeniable, but that it was a parallel or equivalent relation he
denied most emphatically. That criticism he had launched himself
with great vigour in 1901 at a Meeting of the Societe francaise
de philosophie,[Footnote: See Bibliography, p. 153.] and on a more
memorable occasion, at the International Congress of Philosophy
at Geneva in 1904.[Footnote: See Bibliography, p. 154.] Before the
Philosophical Society he lectured on Le Parallelisme psycho-physique et
la Metaphysique positive, and propounded the following propositions:

1. If psycho-physical parallelism is neither rigorous nor complete,
if to every determined thought there does not correspond an absolutely
determined state (si a toute pensee determinee ne correspond pas un etat
cerebral determine absolument), it will be the business of experience
to mark with increasing accuracy the precise points at which parallelism
begins and ends.

2. If this empirical inquiry is possible, it will measure more and more
exactly the separation between the thought and the physical conditions
in which this thought is exercised. In other words, it will give us a
progressive knowledge of the relation of man as a thinking being to man
as a living being, and therefore of what may be termed "the meaning of
Life."

3. If this meaning of Life can be empirically determined more and more
exactly, and completely, a positive metaphysic is possible: that is to
say, a metaphysic which cannot be contested and which will admit of
a direct and indefinite progress; such a metaphysic would escape the
objections urged against a transcendental metaphysic, and would be
strictly scientific in form.

After having propounded these propositions, he defended them by
recalling much of the data considered in his work Matiere et Memoire
which he had published five years previously and which has been examined
in the previous chapter. The onus of proof lay, said Bergson, with
the upholders of parallelism. It is a purely metaphysical hypothesis
unwarrantable in his opinion as a dogma. He distinguishes between
correspondence--which he of course admits--and parallelism, to which
he is opposed. We never think without a certain substratum of cerebral
activity, but what the relation is precisely, between brain and
consciousness, is one for long and patient research: it cannot be
determined a priori and asserted dogmatically. Until such investigation
has been carried out, it behoves us to be undogmatic and not to allege
more than the facts absolutely warrant, that is to say, a relation of
correspondence. Parallelism is far too simple an explanation to be a
true one. Before the International Congress, Bergson launched another
attack on parallelism which caused quite a little sensation among those
present. Says M. E. Chartier, in his report: La lecture de ce memoire,
lecture qui commandait l'attention a provoque chez presque tous les
auditeurs un mouvement de surprise et d'inquietude. [Footnote: The paper
Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique is given in Revue de metaphysique
et de morale, Nov., 1904, pp. 895-908. The Discussion in the Congress is
given on pp. 1027-1037. This was reissued under the title Le Cerveau et
la Pensee: une illusion philosophique in the collected volume of essays
and lectures, published in 1919, L'Energie spirituelle, pp. 203-223
(Mind-Energy).] He there set out to show that Parallelism cannot be
consistently stated from any point of view, for it rests on a fallacious
argument--on a fundamental contradiction. To grasp Bergson's points in
this argument, the reading of this paper in the original, as a whole,
is necessary. It is difficult to condense it and keep its clearness
of thought. Briefly, it amounts to this, that the formulation of the
doctrine of Parallelism rests on an ambiguity in the terms employed in
its statement, that it contains a subtle dialectical artifice by which
we pass surreptitiously from one system of notation to another ignoring
the substitution: logically, we ought to keep to one system of notation
throughout. The two systems are: Idealism and Realism. Bergson attempts
to show that neither of these separately can admit Parallelism, and that
Parallelism cannot be formulated except by a confusion of the two--by
a process of mental see-sawing as it were, which of course we are
not entitled to perform, Idealism and Realism being two opposed and
contradictory views of reality. For the Idealist, things external to the
mind are images, and of these the brain is one. Yet the images are in
the brain. This amounts to saying that the whole is contained in the
part. We tend, however, to avoid this by passing to a pseudo-realistic
position by saying that the brain is a thing and not an image. This is
passing over to the other system of notation. For the Realist it is
the essence of reality to suppose that there are things behind
representations. Some Realists maintain that the brain actually creates
the representation, which is the doctrine of Epiphenomenalism: while
others hold the view of the Occasionalists, and others posit one reality
underlying both. All however agree in upholding Parallelism. In the
hands of the Realist, the theory is equivalent to asserting that a
relation between two terms is equal to one of them. This involves
contradiction and Realism then crosses over to the other system of
notation. It cannot do without Idealism: science itself oscillates from
the one system to the other. We cannot admit Parallelism as a dogma--as
a metaphysical truth--however useful it may be as a working hypothesis.

Bergson then proceeds to state and to criticize some of the mischievous
ideas which arise from Parallelism. There is the idea of a brain-soul,
of a spot where the soul lives or where the brain thinks--which we have
not quite abandoned since Descartes named the pineal gland as the
seat of the soul. Then there is the false idea that all causality is
mechanistic and that there is nothing in the universe which is not
mathematically calculable. There is the confusion of representations
and of things. There is the false notion that we may argue that if two
wholes are bound together there must be an equivalent relation of the
parts. Bergson points out in this connexion that the absence or the
presence of a screw can stop a machine or keep it going, but the parts
of the screw do not correspond to the parts of the machine. In his new
introduction to Matiere et Memoire, he said, "There is a close connexion
between a state of consciousness and the brain: this we do not dispute.
But there is also a close connexion between a coat and the nail on which
it hangs, for if the nail is pulled out the coat falls to the ground.
Shall we say then that the shape of the nail gives us the shape of
the coat or in any way corresponds to it? No more are we entitled to
conclude because the psychical fact is hung on to a cerebral state
that there is any parallelism between the two series psychical and
physiological." [Footnote: There must be an awkward misprint "physical"
for "psychical" in the English translation, p. xi.] Our observation and
experience, and science itself, strictly speaking, do not allow us to
assert more than that there exists a certain CORRESPONDENCE
between brain and consciousness. The psychical and the physical are
inter-dependent but not parallel.

Bergson however has more to assert than merely the inadequacy and
falsity of Parallelism or Epiphenomenalism. This last theory merely
adds consciousness to physical facts as a kind of phosphorescent
gleam, resembling, in Bergson's words, a "streak of light following the
movement of a match rubbed along a wall in the dark." [Footnote: L'Ame
et le Corps, pp. 12-13, in Le Materialisme actuel, or pp. 35-36 of
L'Energie spirituelle (Mind-Energy).] He maintains, as against all
this, the irreducibility of the mental, our utter inability to interpret
consciousness in terms of anything else, the life of the soul being
unique. He further claims that this psychical life is wider and richer
than we commonly suppose. The brain is the organ of attention to life.
What was said in regard to memory and the brain is applicable to all
our mental life. The mind or soul is wider than the brain in every
direction, and the brain's activity corresponds to no more than an
infinitesimal part of the activity of the mind. [Footnote: L'Ame et le
Corps, Le Materialisme actuel, p. 45, L'Energie spirituelle, p. 61.]
This is expressed more clearly in his Presidential Address to the
British Society for Psychical Research at the Aeolian Hall, London,
1913, where he remarked, "The cerebral life is to the mental life
what the movements of the baton of a conductor are to the symphony."
[Footnote: The Times, May 29, 1913.] Such a remark contains fruitful
suggestions to all engaged in Psychical Research, and to all persons
interested in the fascinating study of telepathy. Bergson is of the
opinion that we are far less definitely cut off from each other, soul
from soul, than we are body from body. "It is space," he says, "which
creates multiplicity and distinction. It is by their bodies that the
different human personalities are radically distinct. But if it is
demonstrated that human consciousness is partially independent of the
human brain, since the cerebral life represents only a small part of the
mental life, it is very possible that the separation between the various
human consciousnesses or souls, may not be so radical as it seems to
be." [Footnote: The Times, May 29, 1913.] There may be, he suggests,
in the psychical world, a process analogous to what is known in the
physical world as "endosmosis." Pleading for an impartial and frank
investigation of telepathy, he pointed out that it was probable, or
at least possible, that it was taking place constantly as a subtle and
sub-conscious influence of soul on soul, but too feebly to be noticed
by active consciousness, or it was neutralized by certain obstacles.
We have no right to deny its possibility on the plea of its being
supernatural, or against natural law, for our ignorance does not entitle
us to say what may be natural or not. If telepathy does not square at
all well with our preconceived notions, it may be more true that our
preconceived notions are false than that telepathy is fictitious;
especially will this be so if our notion of the relation of soul and
body be based on Parallelism. We must overcome this prejudice and seek
to make others set it aside. Telepathy and the sub-conscious mental life
combine to make us realize the wonder of the soul. It is not spatial,
it is spiritual. Bergson insists strongly on the unity of our conscious
life. Merely associationist theories are vicious in this respect: they
try to resolve the whole into parts, and then neglect the whole in their
concentration on the parts. All psychological investigation incurs this
risk of dealing with abstractions. "Psychology, in fact, proceeds like
all the other sciences by analysis. It resolves the self which has been
given to it at first in a simple intuition, into sensations, feelings,
ideas, etc., which it studies separately. It substitutes then for the
self a series of elements which form the facts of psychology. But are
these elements really parts? That is the whole question, and it is
because it has been evaded that the problem of human personality has
so often been stated in insoluble terms." [Footnote: Introduction to
Metaphysics, p. 21.] "Personality cannot be composed of psychical states
even if there be added to them a kind of thread for the purpose of
joining the states together." [Footnote: Introduction to Metaphysics,
p. 25.] We shall never make the soul fit into a category or succeed in
applying concepts to our inner life. The life of the soul is wider than
the brain and wider than all intellectual constructions or moulds we may
attempt to form. It is a creative force capable of producing novelty in
the world: it creates actions and can, in addition, create itself.

Philosophy shows us "the life of the body just where it really is, on
the road that leads to the life of the spirit"; our powers of sense
impression and of intelligence are both instruments in the service of
the will. With a little will one can do much if one places the will in
the right direction. For this force of will which is the essence of
the soul or personality has these exceptional characteristics, that its
intensity depends on its direction, and that its quality may become the
creator of quantity. [Footnote: See the lectures La Nature de l'Ame.]
The brain and the body in general are instruments of the soul. The brain
orients the mind toward action, it is the point of attachment between
the spirit and its material environment. It is like the point of a knife
to the blade--it enables it to penetrate into the realm of action or,
to give another of Bergson's metaphors, it is like the prow of the ship,
enabling the soul to penetrate the billows of reality. Yet, for all
that, it limits and confines the life of the spirit; it narrows vision
as do the blinkers which we put on horses. We must, however, abandon the
notion of any rigid and determined parallelism between soul and body and
accustom ourselves to the fact that the life of the mind is wider
than the limits of cerebral activity. And further, there is this to
consider--"The more we become accustomed to this idea of a consciousness
which overflows the organ we call the brain, then the more natural and
probable we find the hypothesis that the soul survives the body. For
were the mental exactly modelled on the cerebral, we might have to admit
that consciousness must share the fate of the body and die with
it." [Footnote: New York Times, Sept. 27, 1914.] "But the destiny of
consciousness is not bound up with the destiny of cerebral matter."
[Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 285 (Fr. p. 293).] "Although the
data is not yet sufficient to warrant more than an affirmation of high
probability," [Footnote: Louis Levine's interview with Bergson, New York
Times, Feb. 22, 1914. Quoted by Miller, Bergson and Religion, p. 268.]
yet it leaves the way open for a belief in a future life and creates a
presumption in favour of a faith in immortality. "Humanity," as Bergson
remarks, "may, in its evolution, overcome the most formidable of its
obstacles, perhaps even death." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 286
(Fr. p. 294). In Life and Consciousness he says we may admit that in man
at any rate "Consciousness pursues its path beyond this earthly life"
Cf. also conclusion to La Conscience el la Vie in L'Energie spirituelle,
p. 29, and to L'Ame et le Corps, in the same vol., p. 63.]

The great error of the spiritual philosophers has been the idea that
by isolating the spiritual life from all the rest, by suspending it in
space, as high as possible above the earth, they were placing it beyond
attack; as if they were not, thereby, simply exposing it to be taken as
an effect of mirage! Certainly they are right to believe in the absolute
reality of the person and in his independence of matter: but science is
there which shows the inter-dependence of conscious life and cerebral
activity. When a strong instinct assures the probability of personal
survival, they are right not to close their ears to its voice; but if
there exist "souls" capable of an independent life, whence do they come?
When, how, and why do they enter into this body which we see arise quite
naturally from a mixed cell derived from the bodies of its two parents?
[Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 283 (Fr. p. 291).] At the close of
the Lectures on La Nature de l'Ame, Bergson suggests, by referring to
an allegory of Plotinus, in regard to the origin of souls, that in
the beginning there was a general interpenetration of souls which was
equivalent to the very principle of life, and that the history of the
evolution of life on this planet shows this principle striving until
man's consciousness has been developed, and thus personalities have
been able to constitute themselves. "Souls are being created which, in
a sense, pre-existed. They are nothing else but the little rills into
which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the great
body of humanity." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 284 (Fr. p. 292).]




CHAPTER VI

TIME--TRUE AND FALSE


Our ordinary conception of Time false because it is spatial and
homogeneous--Real Time (la duree) not spatial or homogeneous--Flow of
consciousness a qualitative multiplicity--The real self and the external
self. La duree and the life of the self--No repetition--Personality and
the accumulation of experience-Change and la duree as vital elements in
the universe.


For any proper understanding of Bergson's thought, it is necessary to
grasp his views regarding Time, for they are fundamental factors in his
philosophy and serve to distinguish it specially from that of previous
thinkers. It is interesting to note however, in passing, that Dr. Ward,
in his Realm of Ends, claims to have anticipated Bergson's view of
Concrete Time. In discussing the relation of such Time to the conception
of God, he says, "I think I may fairly claim to have anticipated him
(Bergson) to some extent. In 1886 I had written a long paragraph on this
topic." [Footnote: See The Realm of Ends' foot-note on pp. 306-7. Ward
is referring to his famous article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
eleventh edition, Psychology, p. 577 (now revised and issued in book
form as Psychological Principles).] Be this as it may, no philosopher
has made so much of this view of Time as Bergson. One might say it is
the corner-stone of his philosophy, for practically the whole of it is
built upon his conception of Time. His first large work, Essai sur les
donnees immediates de la conscience, or, to give it its better title, in
English, Time and Free Will, appeared in 1889.

Our ordinary conception of Time, that which comes to us from the
physical sciences, is, Bergson maintains, a false one. It is false
because so far from being temporal in character, it is spatial. We look
upon space as a homogeneous medium without boundaries; yet we look on
Time too, as just such another medium, homogeneous and unlimited. Now
here is an obvious difficulty, for since homogeneity consists in being
without qualities, it is difficult to see how one homogeneity can be
distinguished from another. This difficulty is usually avoided by the
assertion that homogeneity takes two forms, one in which its contents
co-exist, and another in which they follow one another. Space, then,
we say, is that homogeneous medium in which we are aware of
side-by-sideness, Time--that homogeneous medium in which we are aware
of an element of succession. But this surely we are not entitled to
maintain, for we are then distinguishing two supposed homogeneities
by asserting a difference of quality in them. To do so is to take away
homogeneity. We must think again and seek a way out of this difficulty.
Let us admit space to be a homogeneous medium without bounds. Then every
homogeneous medium without bounds must be space. What, then, becomes of
Time?--for on this showing, Time becomes space. Yes, says Bergson, that
is so, for our common view of Time is a false one, being really a hybrid
conception, a spurious concept due to the illicit introduction of the
idea of space, and to our application of the notion of space, which is
applicable to physical objects, to states of consciousness, to which
it is really inapplicable. Objects occupying space are marked out as
external to one another, but this cannot be said of conscious states.
Yet, in our ordinary speech and conventional view of things, we think
of conscious states as separated from one another and as spread out like
"things," in a fictitious, homogeneous medium to which we give the name
Time. Bergson says, "At any rate, we cannot finally admit two forms of
the homogeneous, Time and Space, without first seeking whether one
of them cannot be reduced to the other. Now, externality is the
distinguishing mark of things which occupy space, while states of
consciousness are not essentially external to one another and become so
only by being spread out in Time regarded as a homogeneous medium. If,
then, one of these two supposed forms of the homogeneous, viz., Time and
Space, is derived from the other, we can surmise a priori that the idea
of space is the fundamental datum. Time, conceived under the form of
an unbounded and homogeneous medium, is nothing but the ghost of space,
haunting the reflective consciousness." [Footnote: Time and Free Will,
p. 98 (Fr. p. 75).] Bergson remarks that Kant's great mistake was to
take Time as a homogeneous medium. [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 232
(Fr. p. 178).]

Having asserted the falsity of the view of Time ordinarily held,
Bergson proceeds to make clear to us his view of what Real Time is--an
undertaking by no means easy for him, endeavouring to lay before us the
subtleties of this problem, nor for us who endeavour to interpret his
language and grasp his meaning. We are indeed here face to face with
what is one of the most difficult sections of his philosophy. An initial
difficulty meets us in giving a definite name to the Time which Bergson
regards as so real, as opposed to the spatial falsity, masquerading as
Time, whose true colours he has revealed. In the original French text
Bergson employs the term duree to convey his meaning. But for the
translation of this into English there is no term which will suffice and
which will adequately convey to the reader, without further exposition,
the wealth of meaning intended to be conveyed. "Duration" is usually
employed by translators as the nearest approach possible in English. The
inadequacy of language is never more keenly felt than in dealing
with fundamental problems of thought. Its chief mischief is its
all-too-frequent ambiguity. In the following remarks the original French
term la duree will be used in preference to the English word "Duration."

The distinction between the false Time and true Time may be regarded
as a distinction between mathematical Time and living Time, or between
abstract and concrete Time. This living, concrete Time is that true Time
of which Bergson endeavours to give us a conception as la duree. He has
criticized the abstract mathematical Time, his attack having been made
to open up the way for a treatment of what he really considers Time to
be. Now, from the arguments previously mentioned, it follows that
Time, Real Time, which is radically different from space, cannot be any
homogeneous medium. It is heterogeneous in character. We are aware of it
in relation to ourselves, for it has reference not to the existence of
a multiplicity of material objects in space, but to a multiplicity of
a quite different nature, entirely non-spatial, viz., that of conscious
states. Being non-spatial, such a multiplicity cannot be composed of
elements which are external to one another as are the objects existing
in space. States of consciousness are not in any way external to one
another. Indeed, they interpenetrate to such a degree that even the use
of the word "state" is apt to be misleading. As we saw in the chapter on
The Reality of Change, there can be strictly no states of consciousness,
for consciousness is not static but dynamic. Language and conventional
figures of speech, of which the word "state" itself is a good example,
serve to cut up consciousness artificially, but, in reality, it is,
as William James termed it, "a stream" and herein lies the essence of
Bergson's duree--the Real as opposed to the False Time. "Pure Duration"
(la duree pure), he says, "is the form which the succession of our
conscious states assumes when our Ego lets itself live, when it refrains
from separating its present state from its former states. For this
purpose, it need not be entirely absorbed in the passing sensation or
idea, for then, on the contrary, it would no longer 'endure.' Nor
need it forget its former states; it is enough that in recalling these
states, it does not set them alongside its actual state as one point
alongside another, but forms both the past and the present states
into an organic whole, as happens when we recall the notes of a tune,
melting, so to speak, into one another. Might it not be said that
even if these notes succeed one another, yet, we perceive them in one
another, and that their totality may be compared to a living being whose
parts, although distinct, permeate one another just because they are so
closely connected?" [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 100 (Fr. p. 76).]
Such a duration is Real Time. Unfortunately, we, obsessed by the idea of
space, introduce it unwittingly and set our states of consciousness side
by side in such a way as to perceive them alongside one another; in
a word, we project them into space and we express duree in terms of
extensity and succession thus takes the form of a continuous line or a
chain--the parts of which touch without interpenetrating one another.
[Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 100 (Fr. p. 76).] Thus is brought to
birth that mongrel form, that hybrid conception of False Time criticized
above. Real Time, la duree, is not, however, susceptible like False
Time to measurement, for it is, strictly speaking, not quantitative in
character, but is rather a qualitative multiplicity. "Real Duration (la
duree reele) is just what has always been called Time, but it is Time
perceived as indivisible." [Footnote: La Perception du Changement, p.
26. Cf. the whole of the Second Lecture.] Certainly pure consciousness
does not perceive Time as a sum of units of duration, for, left to
itself, it has no means and even no reason to measure Time, but a
feeling which lasted only half the number of days, for example, would
no longer be the same feeling for it. It is true that when we give this
feeling a certain name, when we treat it as a thing, we believe that
we can diminish its duration by half, for example, and also halve the
duration of all the rest of our history. It seems that it would still
be the same life only on a reduced scale. But we forget that states
of consciousness are processes and not things; that they are alive
and therefore constantly changing, and that, in consequence, it is
impossible to cut off a moment from them without making them poorer by
the loss of some impression and thus altering their quality. [Footnote:
Time and Free Will, p. 196 (Fr. p. 150).] La duree appears as a "wholly
qualitative multiplicity, an absolute heterogeneity of elements which
pass over into one another." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 229 (Fr.
p. 176).] Such a time cannot be measured by clocks or dials but only
by conscious beings, for "it is the very stuff of which life and
consciousness are made." Intellect does not grasp Real Time--we can
only have an intuition of it. "We do not think Real Time--but we live it
because life transcends intellect."

In order to bring out the distinctly qualitative character of such a
conception of Time, Bergson says, "When we hear a series of blows of a
hammer, the sounds form an indivisible melody in so far as they are pure
sensations, and here again give rise to a dynamic progress; but, knowing
that the same objective cause is at work, we cut up this progress into
phases which we then regard as identical; and this multiplicity
of elements no longer being conceivable except by being set out in
space--since they have now become identical--we are, necessarily, led
to the idea of a homogeneous Time, the symbolical image of la duree."
[Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 125 (Fr. pp. 94-95).] "Whilst I am
writing these lines," he continues, "the hour strikes on a neighbouring
clock, but my inattentive ear does not perceive it until several strokes
have made themselves heard. Hence, I have not counted them and yet I
only have to turn my attention backwards, to count up the four strokes
which have already sounded, and add them to those which I hear. If,
then, I question myself carefully on what has just taken place, I
perceive that the first four sounds had struck my ear and even affected
my consciousness, but that the sensations produced by each one of them,
instead of being set side by side, had melted into one another in such
a way as to give the whole a peculiar quality, to make a kind of musical
phrase out of it. In order, then, to estimate retrospectively, the
number of strokes sounded, I tried to reconstruct this phrase in
thought; my imagination made one stroke, then two, then three, and
as long as it did not reach the exact number, four, my feeling, when
consulted, was qualitatively different. It had thus ascertained, in its
own way, the succession of four strokes, but quite otherwise than by a
process of addition and without bringing in the image of a juxtaposition
of distinct terms. In a word, the number of strokes was perceived as a
quality and not as a quantity; it is thus that la duree is presented to
immediate consciousness and it retains this form so long as it does
not give place to a symbolical representation, derived from extensity."
[Footnote: Time and Free Will, pp. 127-8 (Fr. pp. 96-97).] In these
words Bergson endeavours to drive home his contention that la duree is
essentially qualitative. He is well aware of the results of "the breach
between quality and quantity," between true duration and pure extensity.
He sees its implications in regard to vital problems of the self,
of causality and of freedom. Its specific bearing on the problems of
freedom and causality we shall discuss in the following chapter. As
regards the self, Bergson recognizes that we have much to gain by
keeping up the illusion through which we make our conscious states share
in the reciprocal externality of outer things, because this distinctness
and solidification enables us to give them fixed names in spite of their
instability, and distinct names in spite of their interpenetration.
Above all it enables us to objectify them, to throw them out into the
current of social life. But just for this very reason we are in danger
of living our lives superficially and of covering up our real self.
We are generally content with what is but a shadow of the real self,
projected into space. Consciousness, goaded on by an insatiable desire
to separate, substitutes the symbol for the reality or perceives the
reality only through the symbol. As the self thus refracted and thereby
broken in pieces, is much better adapted to the requirements of social
life in general, and of language in particular, consciousness prefers it
and gradually loses sight of the fundamental self which is a qualitative
multiplicity of conscious states flowing, interpenetrating, melting
into one another, and forming an organic whole, a living unity or
personality. It is through a consideration of la duree and what it
implies that Bergson is led on to the distinction of two selves in each
of us.

Towards the close of his essay on Time and Free Will, he points out that
there are finally two different selves, a fundamental self and a social
self. We reach the former by deep introspection which leads us to grasp
our inner states as living things, constantly becoming, never amenable
to measure, which permeate one another and of which the succession in
la duree has nothing in common with side-by-sideness. But the moments at
which we thus grasp ourselves are rare; the greater part of our time we
live outside ourselves, hardly perceiving anything of ourselves but our
own ghost--a colourless shadow which is but the social representation
of the real and largely concealed Ego. Hence our life unfolds in space
rather than in time. We live for the external world rather than for
ourselves, we speak rather than think, we are "acted" rather than "act"
ourselves. To act freely, however, is to recover possession of one's
real self and to get back into la duree reele. [Footnote: Time and Free
Will, p. 232 (Fr. p. 178).]

Real Time, then, is a living reality, not discrete, not spatial in
character--an utter contrast to that fictitious Time with which so many
thinkers have busied themselves, setting up "as concrete reality the
distinct moments of a Time which they have reduced to powder, while the
unity which enables us to call the grains 'powder' they hold to be much
more artificial. Others place themselves in the eternal. But as their
eternity remains, notwithstanding, abstract since it is empty, being
the eternity of a concept which by hypothesis excludes from itself the
opposing concept, one does not see how this eternity would permit of an
indefinite number of moments co-existing in it, an eternity of death,
since it is nothing else than the movement emptied of the mobility which
made its life." [Footnote: An Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 51-54.]
The true view of Time, as la duree, would make us see it as a duration
which expands, contracts, and intensifies itself more and more; at the
limit would be eternity, no longer conceptual eternity, which is an
eternity of death, but an eternity of life and change--a living, and
therefore still moving, eternity in which our own particular duree
would be included as the vibrations are in light, [Footnote: Speaking in
Matter and Memory on the Tension of la duree, Bergson calls attention
to the "trillions of vibrations" which give rise to our sensation of
red light, p. 272 (Fr. p. 229) Cf. La Conscience et la Vie in L'Energie
spirituelle, p. 16.] an eternity which would be the concentration of
all duree. Altering the old classical phrase sub specie aeternitatis,
to suit his special view of Time, Bergson urges us to strive to
perceive all things sub specie durationis. [Footnote: La Perception du
Changement, p. 36.]

Finally, Bergson reminds us that if our existence were composed of
separate states, with an impassive Ego to unite them, for us there would
be no duration, for an Ego which does not change, does not endure. La
duree, however, is the foundation of our being and is, as we feel, the
very substance of the world in which we live. Associating his view of
Real Time with the reality of change, he points out that nothing is more
resistant or more substantial than la duree, for our duree is not merely
one instant replacing another--if it were there would never be anything
but the present, no prolonging of the past into the actual, no growth
of personality, and no evolution of the universe. La duree is the
continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which
swells as it advances, leaving on all things its bite, or the mark of
its tooth. This being so, consciousness cannot go through the same state
twice; history does never really repeat itself. Our personality is being
built up each instant with its accumulated experience; it shoots, grows,
and ripens without ceasing. We are reminded of George Eliot's lines:

     "Our past still travels with us from afar
      And what we have been makes us what we are."

For our consciousness this is what we mean by the term "exist." "For a
conscious being, to exist is to change, to change is to mature, and to
go on creating oneself endlessly." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p.
8 (Fr. p. 8).] Real Time has, then, a very vital meaning for us as
conscious beings, indeed for all that lives, for the organism which
lives is a thing that "endures." "Wherever anything lives," says
Bergson, "there is a register in which Time is being inscribed. This, it
will be said, is only a metaphor. It is of the very essence of mechanism
in fact, to consider as metaphorical every expression which attributes
to Time an effective action and a reality of its own. In vain does
immediate experience show us that the very basis of our conscious
existence is Memory--that is to say, the prolongation of the past into
the present, or in a word, duree, acting and irreversible." [Footnote:
Creative Evolution, p. 17 (Fr. pp. 17-18).] Time is falsely assumed to
have just as much reality for a living being as for an hour-glass. But
if Time does nothing, it is nothing. It is, however, in Bergson's view,
vital to the whole of the universe. He expressly denies that la duree is
merely subjective; the universe "endures" as a whole. In Time and Free
Will it did not seem to matter whether we regarded our inner life as
having duree or as actually being duree. In the first instance, if we
have duree it is then only an aspect of reality, but if our personality
itself is duree, then Time is reality itself. He develops this last
point of view more explicitly in his later works, and la duree is
identified not only with the reality of change, but with memory and with
spirit. [Footnote: La Perception du Changement, Lecture 2.] In it he
finds the substance of a universe whose reality is change. "God," said
Plato, "being unable to make the world eternal, gave it Time--a moving
image of reality." Bergson himself quotes this remark of Plato, and
seems to have a vision like that of Rosetti's "Blessed Damozel," who        ...... "saw
      Time like a pulse shake fierce
      Through all the worlds."

The more we study Time, the more we may grasp this vision ourselves, and
then we shall comprehend that la duree implies invention, the creation
of new forms, the continual elaboration of the absolutely new--in short,
an evolution which is creative.




CHAPTER VII

FREEDOM OF THE WILL


Spirit of man revolts from physical and psychological
determinism--Former examined and rejected--The latter more subtle--Vice
of "associationism"--Psychology without a self. Condemnation
of psychological determinism--Room for freedom--The self in
action--Astronomical forecasts--Foreseeableness of any human action
impossible--Human wills centres of indetermination--Not all our acts
free--True freedom, self-determination.


Before passing on to an examination of Bergson's treatment of Evolution,
we must consider his discussion of the problem of Freedom of the Will.
Few problems which have occupied the attention of philosophers have
been more discussed or have given rise to more controversy than that of
Freedom. This is, of course, natural as the question at issue is one of
very great importance, not merely as speculative, but also in the realm
of action. We ask ourselves: "Are we really free?" Can we will either
of two or more possibilities which are put before us, or, on the other
hand, is everything fixed, predestined in such a way that an all-knowing
consciousness could foretell from our past what course our future action
would take?

The study of the physical sciences has led to a general acceptance of a
principle of causality which is of such a kind that there seems no
place in the universe for human freedom. Further, there is a type of
psychology which gives rise to the belief that even mental occurrences
are as determined as those of the physical world, thus leaving no room
for autonomy of the Will. But even when presented with the arguments
which make up the case for physical or psychological determinism,
the spirit of man revolts from it, refuses to accept it as final,
and believes that, in some way or other, the case for Freedom may be
maintained. It is at this point that Bergson offers us some help in the
solution of the problem, by his Essai sur les donnees immediates de la
conscience, better described by its English title Time and Free Will.

The arguments for physical determinism are based on the view that
Freedom is incompatible with the fundamental properties of matter, and
in particular, with the principle of the conservation of energy. This
principle "has been assumed to admit of no exception; there is not an
atom either in the nervous system or in the whole of the universe whose
position is not determined by the sum of the mechanical actions which
the other atoms exert upon it. And the mathematician who knew the
position of the molecules or atoms of a human organism at a given
moment, as well as the position and motion of all the atoms in the
universe, capable of influencing it, could calculate with unfailing
certainty the past, present, and future actions of the person to
whom this organism belonged, just as one predicts an astronomical
phenomenon." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 144 (Fr. p. 110).] Now,
it follows that if we admit the universal applicability of such a theory
as that of the conservation of energy, we are maintaining that the whole
universe is capable of explanation on purely mechanical principles,
inherent in the units of which the universe is composed. Hence, the
relative position of all units at a given moment, whatever be their
nature, strictly determines what their position will be in the
succeeding moments, and this mechanistic succession goes on like a
Juggernaut car with crushing unrelentlessness, giving rise to a rigid
fatalism:

     "The moving finger writes; and having writ
      Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
      Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
      Nor all thy tears wash out a Word of it."

Is there no way out of this cramping circle? We feel vaguely,
intuitively, that there is. Bergson points out to us a way. Even if we
admit, he says, that the direction and the velocity of every atom of
matter in the universe (including cerebral matter, i.e., the brain,
which is a material thing) are strictly determined, it would not at
all follow from the acceptance of this theorem that our mental life is
subject to the same necessity. For that to be the case, we should
have to show absolutely that a strictly determined psychical state
corresponds to a definite cerebral state. This, as we have seen, has not
been proved. It is admitted that to some psychical states of a limited
kind certain cerebral states do correspond, but we have no warrant
whatever for concluding that, because the physiological and the
psychological series exhibit some corresponding terms, the two series
are absolutely parallel. "To extend this parallelism to the series
themselves, in their totality, is to settle a priori the problem of
freedom." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 147 (Fr. pp. 112-113).]
How far the two series do run parallel is a question--as we saw in the
chapter on the relation of Soul and Body--for experience, observation,
and experiment to decide. The cases which are parallel are limited, and
involve facts which are independent of the power of the Will.

Bergson then proceeds to an examination of the more subtle and plausible
case for psychological determinism. A very large number of our actions
are due to some motive. There you have it, says the psychological
determinist. Your so-called Freedom of the Will is a fiction; in reality
it is merely the strongest motive which prevails and you imagine that
you "freely willed it." But then we must ask him to define "strongest,"
and here is the fallacy of his argument, for there is no other test
of which is the strongest motive, than that it has prevailed. Such
statements do not help to solve the difficulty at all, for they avoid it
and attempt to conceal it; they are due to a conception of mind which is
both false and mischievous, viz., Associationism. This view regards
the self as a collection of psychical states. The existing state of
consciousness is regarded as necessitated by the preceding states. As,
however, even the associationist is aware that these states differ from
one another in quality, he cannot attempt to deduce any one of them a
priori from its predecessors. He therefore endeavours to find a link
connecting the two states. That there is such a link as the simple
"association of ideas" Bergson would not think of denying. What he does
deny however, very emphatically, is the associationist statement that
this relation which explains the transition is the cause of it. Even
when admitting a certain truth in the associationist view, it is
difficult to maintain that an act is absolutely determined by its
motive, and our conscious states by one another. The real mischief of
this view lies, however, in the fact, that it misrepresents the self
by making it merely a collection of psychical states. John Stuart Mill
says, in his Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: "I could
have abstained from murder if my aversion to the crime and my dread of
its consequences had been weaker than the temptation which impelled me
to commit it." [Footnote: Quoted by Bergson, Time and Free Will, p. 159
(Fr. p. 122).] Here desire, aversion, fear, and temptation are regarded
as clear cut phenomena, external to the self which experiences them,
and this leads to a curious balancing of pain and pleasure on purely
utilitarian lines, turning the mind into a calculating machine such as
one might find in a shop or counting-house, and taking no account of the
character of the self that "wills." There is, really, in such a system
of psychology, no room for self-expression, indeed, no meaning left
for the term "self." It is only an inaccurate psychology, misled by
language, which tries to show us the soul determined by sympathy,
aversion, or hate, as though by so many forces pressing upon it from
without. These feelings, provided that they go deep enough, make up the
whole soul; in them the character of the individual expresses itself,
since the whole content of the personality or soul is reflected in each
of them. Then my character is "me." "To say that the soul is determined
under the influence of any one of these feelings, is thus to recognize
that it is self-determined. The associationist reduces the self to an
aggregate of conscious states, sensations, feelings, and ideas. But if
he sees in these various states no more than is expressed in their name,
if he retains only their impersonal aspect, he may set them side by side
for ever without getting anything but a phantom self, the shadow of the
Ego, projecting itself into space. If, on the contrary, he takes these
psychical states with the particular colouring which they assume in the
case of a definite person, and which comes to each of them by reflection
from all the others, then there is no need to associate a number
of conscious states in order to rebuild the person, for the whole
personality is in a single one of them, provided that we know how to
choose it. And the outward manifestation of this inner state will be
just what is called a free act, since the self alone will have been
the author of it and since it will express the whole of the self."
[Footnote: Time and Free Will, pp. 165-166 (Fr. pp. 126-127).] There is
then room in the universe for a Freedom of the human Will, a definite
creative activity, delivering us from the bonds of grim necessity and
fate in which the physical sciences and the associationist psychology
alike would bind us. Freedom, then, is a fact, and among the facts which
we observe, asserts Bergson, there is none clearer. [Footnote: Time and
Free Will, p. 221 (Fr. p. 169).] There are, however, one or two things
which bear vitally upon the question of Freedom and which tend to
obscure the issue. Of these, the foremost is that once we have acted
in a particular manner we look back upon our actions and try to explain
them with particular reference to their immediate antecedents. Here is
where the mischief which gives rise to the whole controversy has its
origin. We make static what is essentially dynamic in character. We call
a process a thing. There is no such "thing" as Freedom; it is a relation
between the self and its action. Indeed, it is only characteristic of a
self IN ACTION, and so is really indefinable. Viewed after the action,
it presents a different aspect; it has then become historical, an event
in the past, and so we try to explain it as being caused by former
events or conditions. This casting of it on to a fixed, rigid plan,
gives action the appearance of having characteristics related to space
rather than to time, in the real sense. As already shown in the previous
chapter, this is due entirely to our intellectual habit of thinking in
terms of space, by mathematical time, rather than in terms of living
time or la duree.

Another point which causes serious confusion in the controversy is the
notion that because, when an act has been performed, its antecedents
may be reckoned up and their value and relative importance or influence
assigned, this is equivalent to saying the actor could not have acted in
any other way than he did, and, further, that his final act could have
been foretold from the events which led up to it. It is a fact that in
the realm of physical science we can foretell the future with accuracy.
The astronomer predicts the precise moment and place in which Halley's
comet will become visible from our earth. It is also a fact that we say
of men and women who are our intimate friends: "I knew he (or she) would
do such and such a thing" or "It's just like him." We base our judgment
on our intimate acquaintance with the character of our friend, but this,
as Bergson points out, "is not so much to predict the future conduct of
our friend as to pass a judgment on his present character--that is to
say, on his past." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 184 (Fr. p. 140).]
For, although our feelings and our ideas are constantly changing, yet
we feel warranted in regarding our friend's character as stable, as
reliable. But, as Mill remarked in his Logic: "There can be no science
of human nature," because, although we trust in the reliability of our
friend, although we have faith in his future actions, we do not, and can
not, know them. "Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner." To say that, if
we knew all the conditions, motives, fears, and temptations which led up
to the actions of another, we could foretell what he would do, amounts
to saying that, to do so, we should have actually to become that other
person, and so arrive at the point where we act as he did because we are
him. For Paul to foretell Peter's act, Paul would simply have to become
Peter. [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 187 (Fr. p. 144).] The very
reasons which render it possible to foretell an astronomical phenomenon
are the very ones which prevent us from determining in advance an act
which springs from our free activity. For the future of the material
universe, although contemporaneous with the future of a conscious being,
has no analogy to it. The astronomer regards time from the point of
view of mathematics. He is concerned with points placed in a homogeneous
time, points which mark the beginning or end of certain intervals. He
does not concern himself with the interval in its actual duration. This
is proved by the fact that, could all velocities in the universe be
doubled, the astronomical formulae would remain unaffected, for the
coincidences with which that science deals would still take place, but
at intervals half as long. To the astronomer as such, this would make no
difference, but we, in ourselves, would find that our day did not
give us the full experience. Situations which arose as a result of the
introduction of "summer time" serve to make this point clear. As then
we find that time means two different things for the astronomer and the
psychologist, the one being concerned with the points at the extremities
of intervals, and the other with the enduring reality of the intervals
themselves, we can see why astronomical phenomena are capable of
prediction and see too that, for the same reason, events in the realm
of human action cannot be so predicted and therefore the future is not
predetermined but is being made.

Upon exactly parallel lines lie the references to causality in the
controversy. In the physical realm events may recur, but in the mental
realm the same thing can never happen again because we are living in
real, flowing time, or la duree, and our conscious states are
changing. Admitting that there is that in experience which warrants the
application of the principle of causality, taking that principle as the
statement that physical phenomena once perceived can recur, and that a
given phenomenon, happening only after certain conditions, will recur
when those precise conditions are repeated, [Footnote: See the brief
paper Notre croyance a la loi de causalite, Revue de metaphysique et
de morale, 1900.] still it remains open whether such a regularity of
succession is ever possible in the human consciousness, and so the
assertion of the principle of causality proves nothing against Freedom.
We may admit that the principle is based on experience--but what kind of
experience? Consideration of this question leads us to assert that the
principle of causality only tends to accentuate the difference between
objects in a realm wherein regular succession may be observed and
predicted and a realm where it may not be observed or predicted, the
realm of the self. Just because I endure and change I do not necessarily
act to-day as I acted yesterday, when under like conditions. We do
expect, however, that this will not be the case in the physical realm;
for example, we expect that a flame applied to dry paper will always
set it alight. Indeed, the more we realize the causal relation as one of
necessary determination, we come to see that things do not exist as
we do ourselves, and distinction between physical and psychical events
becomes clear. We perceive that we, in ourselves, are centres of
indetermination enjoying Freedom, and capable of creative activity.

We must, however, be careful to observe that such Freedom as we have is
not absolute at all and that it admits of degrees. All our acts are by
no means free. Indeed, Free Will is exceptional, and many live and die
without having known true Freedom. Our everyday life consists in the
performance of actions which are largely habitual or, indeed, automatic,
being determined not by Free Will, but by custom and convention. Our
Freedom is the exception and not the rule. Through sluggishness or
indolence, we jog on in the even tenor of a way towards which habit has
directed us. Even at times when our whole personality ought to vibrate,
finding itself at the cross-roads, it fails to rise to the occasion.
But, says Bergson, "it is at the great and solemn crises, decisive of
our reputation with others, and yet more with ourselves, that we choose
in defiance of what is conventionally called a motive, and this absence
of any tangible reason, is the more striking the deeper our Freedom
goes." [Footnote: Time and Free Will, p. 170 (Fr. p. 130).] At such
times the self feels itself free and says so, for it feels itself to be
creative. "All determinism will thus be refuted by experience, but every
attempt to define Freedom will open the way to determinism." [Footnote:
Time and Free Will, p. 330 (Fr. p. 177).]

It has been urged that, although Bergson is a stanch upholder of
Freedom, it is Freedom of such a kind that it must be distinguished from
Free Will, that is, from the liberty of choice which indeterminists have
asserted and which determinists have denied; and that the Freedom for
which he holds the brief is not the feeling of liberty that we have when
confronted with alternative courses of action, or the feeling we have
when we look back upon a choice made and an action accomplished, that we
need not have acted as we did, and that we could have acted differently.
Such Freedom it has been further maintained, is of little importance to
us, for it is merely a free, creative activity which is the essence of
life, which we share with all that lives and so cannot be styled "human"
Freedom. Now, although many of Bergson's expressions, in regard to
free, creative activity in general, lead to a connexion of this with
the problem of "human" Freedom, such an identification would seem to be
unfair. This seems specially so when we read over carefully his remarks
about the coup d'etat of the fundamental self in times of grave crisis.
We cannot equate this with a purely biological freedom or vitality, or
spontaneity. But in the light of the criticism which has been made, it
will be well to consider, in concluding this chapter, the statements
made by Bergson in his article on Liberty in the work in connexion with
the Vocabulaire philosophique for the Societe francaise de philosophie:
[Footnote: Quoted by Le Roy in his Une nouvelle philosophie: Henri
Bergson, English Translation (Benson), Williams and Norgate, p. 192.]
"The word Liberty has for me a sense intermediate between those which
we assign, as a rule, to the two terms 'Liberty' and 'Free Will.' On
one hand I believe that 'Liberty' consists in being entirely oneself,
in acting in conformity with oneself; it is then to a certain degree
the 'moral liberty' of philosophers, the independence of the person
with regard to everything other than itself. But that is not quite this
Liberty, since the independence I am describing has not always a moral
character. Further, it does not consist in depending on oneself as an
effect depends on the cause which, of necessity, determines it. In this,
I should come back to the sense of 'Free Will.'" And yet, he continues,
"I do not accept this sense either, since Free Will, in the usual
meaning of the term, implies the equal possibility of two contraries,
and, on my theory, we cannot formulate or even conceive, in this case,
the thesis of the equal possibility of the two contraries, without
falling into grave error about the nature of Time. The object of my
thesis has been precisely to find a position intermediate between 'moral
Liberty' and 'Free Will.' Liberty, such as I understand it, is situated
between these two terms, but not at equal distances from both; if I were
obliged to blend it with one of the two, I should select 'Free-Will.'"
Nor is Liberty to be reduced to spontaneity. "At most, this would be
the case in the animal world where the psychological life is principally
that of the affections. But in the case of a man, a thinking being,
the free act can be called a synthesis of feelings and ideas, and the
evolution which leads to it, a reasonable evolution." [Footnote: Matter
and Memory, p. 243 (Fr. p. 205).] "In a word, if it is agreed to call
every act free, which springs from the self, and from the self alone,
the act which bears the mark of our personality is truly free, for our
self alone will lay claim to its paternity." [Footnote: Time and Free
Will, p. 172 (Fr. p. 132). It is interesting to compare with this
the remark by Nietzsche in Also sprach Zarathustra, Thus Spake
Zarathustra,--"Let your Ego be in relation to your acts that which the
mother is in relation to the child."] The secret of the solution lies
surely here, and in the words given above: "Liberty consists in being
entirely oneself." If we act rightly we shall act freely, and yet be
determined. Yet here there will be no contradiction, for we shall be
self-determined. It is only the man who is self-determined that can
in any sense be said to know the meaning of "human" Freedom. "We call
free," said Spinoza, "that which exists in virtue of the necessities of
its own nature, and which is determined by itself alone." Liberty is not
absolute, for then we ourselves would be at the beck and call of every
external excitation, desire, passion, or temptation. Our salvation
consists in self-determination, so we shall avoid licence but preserve
Freedom. We can only repeat the Socratic maxim--"Know thyself"--and
resolve to take to heart the appeal of our own Shakespeare:

    "To thine own self be true!"




CHAPTER VIII

EVOLUTION


Work of Darwin and Spencer--Bergson's L'Evolution
creatrice--Life--L'elan vital--Evolution not progress in a straight
line--Adaptation an insufficient explanation--Falsity of mechanistic
view--Finalist conception of reality as fulfilling a plan false--Success
along certain lines only--Torpor, Instinct, and Intelligence--Genesis
of matter--Humanity the crown of evolution--Contingency and Freedom--The
Future is being created.


Since the publication of Darwin's famous work on The Origin of Species
in 1859, the conception of Evolution has become familiar and has won
general acceptance in all thinking minds. Evolution is now a household
word, but the actual study of evolutionary process has been the work of
comparatively few. Science nowadays has become such a highly specialized
affair, that few men cover a large enough field of study to enable them
to deal effectively with this tremendous subject. What is more, those
who shouted so loudly about Evolution as explaining all things have
come to see that, in a sense, Evolution explains nothing by itself. Mere
description of facts undoubtedly does serve a very useful purpose and
may help to demolish some of the stanchly conservative theories still
held in some quarters by those who prefer to take Hebrew conceptions as
a basis of their cosmology however irreconcilable with fact these may
prove to be. Mere description, however, is not ultimate, some philosophy
of Evolution must be forthcoming. "Nowadays," remarks Hoffding, "every
philosopher has to take up a position with respect to the concept
of Evolution. It has now achieved its place among the categories or
essential forms of thought by the fact of its providing indications
whence new problems proceed. We must ask regarding every event, and
every phenomenon, by what stages it has passed into its actual state.
It is a special form of the general concept of cause. A philosophy
is essentially characterized by the position which it accords to
this concept and by the way in which it applies it." [Footnote: The
Philosophy of Evolution--lecture IV, of Lectures on Bergson, in Modern
Philosophers, Translated by Mason (MacMillan), p. 270.]

No one has done more to make familiar to English minds the notion of
Evolution than Herbert Spencer. His Synthetic Philosophy had a grand
aim, but it was manifestly unsatisfactory. The high hopes it had raised
were followed by mingled disappointment and distrust. The secret of the
unsatisfactoriness of Spencer is to be found in his method, which is an
elaborate and plausible attempt to explain the evolution of the universe
by referring the complex to the simple, the more highly organized to
the less organized. His principle of Evolution never freed itself from
bondage to mechanical conceptions.

Bergson's Creative Evolution, his largest and best known work, appeared
in 1907. It has been regarded not only as a magnificent book, but as
a date in the history of thought. Two of the leading students of
evolutionary process in England, Professors Geddes and Thomson, refer to
the book as "one of the most profound and original contributions to the
philosophical consideration of the theory of Evolution." [Footnote: In
the Bibliography in their volume Evolution.]

For some time there had been growing a need for an expression of
evolutionary theory in terms other than those of Spencer, or of
Haeckel--the German monistic philosopher. The advance in the study of
biology and the rise of Neo-Vitalism, occasioned by an appreciation of
the inadequacy of any explanation of life in terms purely physical and
chemical, made the demand for a new statement, in greater harmony with
these views, imperative. To satisfy this demand is the task to which
Bergson has applied himself. He sounds the note of departure from
the older conceptions right at the commencement by his very title,
'Creative' Evolution. For this, his views on Change, on Time, and on
Freedom, have in some degree prepared us. We have seen set forth
the fact of Freedom, the recognition of human beings as centres of
indetermination, not mere units in a machine, "a block universe" where
all is "given," but creatures capable of creative activity. Then by
a consideration of Time, as la duree, we found that the history of an
individual can never repeat itself; "For a conscious being, to exist
is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating
oneself endlessly. Should the same be said," Bergson asks, "of existence
in general?" [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 8 (Fr. p. 8).]

So he proceeds to portray with a wealth of analogy and brilliance of
style, more akin to the language of a poet than a philosopher, the
stupendous drama of Evolution, the mystery of being, the wonders of
life. He makes the great fact of life his starting point. Is life
susceptible to definition? We feel that, by the very nature of the case,
it is not. A definition is an intellectual operation, while life is
wider, richer, more fundamental than intellect. Indeed Bergson shows us
that intellect is only one of the manifestations or adaptations of life
in its progress. To define life, being strictly impossible, Bergson
attempts to describe it. He would have us picture it as a great current
emerging from some central point, radiating in all directions, but
diverted into eddies and backwaters. Life is an original impetus, une
poussee formidable, not the mere heading affixed to a class of objects
which live. We must not speak any longer of life in general as an
abstraction or a category in which we may place all living beings. Life,
or the vital impulse, consists in a demand for creation, we might almost
say "a will to create." It appears to be a current passing from one germ
to another through the medium of a developed organism, "an internal
push that has carried life by more and more complex forms, to higher
and higher destinies." It is a dynamic continuity, a continuity of
qualitative progress, a duration which leaves its bite on things.
[Footnote: For these descriptions of life, see Creative Evolution,
pp. 27-29 and 93-94 (Fr. pp. 28-30 and 95-96).] We shall be absolutely
wrong, however, if we attempt to view the evolutionary process as
progressive in a straight line. The facts contradict such a facile
and shallow view. Some of the stock phrases of the earlier writers
on Evolution were: "adaptation to environment," "selection" and
"variation," and a grave problem was presented by this last. How are
we to account for the variations of living beings, together with the
persistence of their type? Herein lies the problem of the origin of
species. Three different solutions have been put forward. There is
the "Neo-Darwinian" view which attributes variation to the differences
inherent in the germ borne by the individual, and not to the experience
or behaviour of the individual in the course of his existence. Then
there is the theory known as "Orthogenesis" which maintains that there
is a continual changing in a definite direction from generation
to generation. Thirdly, there is the "Neo-Lamarckian" theory which
attributes the cause of variation to the conscious effort of the
individual, an effort passed on to descendants. [Footnote: Concerning
Lamarck (1744-1829) Bergson remarks in La Philosophie (1915) that
without diminishing Darwin's merit Lamarck is to be regarded as the
founder of evolutionary biology.] Now each one of these theories
explains a certain group of facts, of a limited kind, but two
difficulties confront them. We find that on quite distinct and
widely separated lines of Evolution, exactly similar organs have been
developed. Bergson points out to us, in this connexion, the Pecten genus
of molluscs, which have an eye identical in structure with that of
the eye of vertebrates. [Footnote: The common edible scallop (Pecten
maximus) has several eyes of brilliant blue and of very complex
structure.] It is obvious, however, that the eye of this mollusc and
the eye of the vertebrate must have developed quite independently, ages
after each had been separated from the parent stock. Again, we find that
in all organic evolution, infinite complexity of structure accompanies
the utmost simplicity of function. The variation of an organ so highly
complex as the eye must involve the simultaneous occurrence of an
infinite number of variations all co-ordinated to the simple end of
vision. Such facts as these are incapable of explanation by reference to
any or all of the three theories of adaptation and variation mentioned.
Indeed they seem capable of explanation only by reference to a single
original impetus retaining its direction in courses far removed from
the common origin. "That adaptation to environment is the necessary
condition of Evolution we do not question for a moment. It is quite
evident that a species would disappear, should it fail to bend to the
conditions of existence which are imposed on it. But it is one thing
to recognize that outer circumstances are forces Evolution must reckon
with, another to claim that they are the directing causes of Evolution."
[Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 107 (Fr. p. 111).]

"The truth is that adaptation explains the sinuosities of the movement
of Evolution, but not the general directions of the movement, still
less the movement itself. The road which leads to the town is obliged to
follow the ups and downs of the hills; it adapts itself to the accidents
of the ground, but the accidents of the ground are not the cause of
the road nor have they given it its direction." [Footnote: Creative
Evolution, p. 108 (Fr. p. 112).] The evolution of life cannot be
explained as merely a series of adaptations to accidental circumstances.
Moreover, the mechanistic view, where all is "given," is quite
inadequate to explain the facts. The finalist or teleological conception
is not any more tenable, for Evolution is not simply the realization
of a plan. "A plan is given in advance. It is represented or at least
representable, before its realization. The complete execution of it may
be put off to a distant future or even indefinitely, but the idea is
none the less formulable at the present time, in terms actually given.
If, on the contrary, Evolution is a creation unceasingly renewed, it
creates as it goes on, not only the forms of life but the ideas that
enable the intellect to understand it. Its future overflows its present
and cannot be sketched out therein, in an idea. There is the first error
of finalism. It involves another yet more serious. If life realizes a
plan it ought to manifest a greater harmony the further it advances,
just as the house shows better and better the idea of the architect as
stone is set upon stone." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 108 (Fr. p.
112).] Such finalism is really reversed mechanism. If, on the contrary,
the unity of life is to be found solely in the impetus (poussee
formidable) that pushes it along the road of Time, the harmony is not in
front but behind. The unity is derived from a vis a tergo: it is given
at the start as an impulsion, not placed at the end as an attraction, as
a kind of

     "... far-off divine event
      To which the whole creation moves."

"In communicating itself the impetus splits up more and more. Life,
in proportion to its progress, is scattered in manifestations
which undoubtedly owe to their common origin the fact that they are
complementary to each other in certain aspects, but which are none the
less mutually incompatible and antagonistic. So that the discord between
species will go on increasing." "There are species which are arrested,
there are some that retrogress. Evolution is not only a movement
forward; in many cases we observe a marking-time, and still more often
a deviation or turning back. Thence results an increasing disorder. No
doubt there is progress, if progress means a continual advance in the
general direction determined by a first impulsion; but this progress is
accomplished only on the two or three great lines of Evolution on which
forms ever more and more complex, ever more and more high, appear;
between these lines run a crowd of minor paths in which deviations,
arrests, and set-backs are multiplied." [Footnote: Creative Evolution,
pp. 107-110 (Fr. pp. 111-114).] Evolution would be a very simple and
easy process to understand if it followed one straight path. To describe
it, Bergson uses, in one place, this metaphor: "We are here dealing
with a shell which has immediately burst into fragments, which, being
themselves species of shells, have again burst into fragments, destined
to burst again, and so on." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 103 (Fr.
p. 107).]

A study of the facts shows us three very marked tendencies which may
be denoted by the terms "Torpor," "Instinct," and "Intelligence." These
are, in a sense "terminal points" in the evolutionary process. Hence
arises the distinction of plant and animal, one showing a tendency to
unconscious torpor, the other manifesting a tendency towards movement
and consciousness. Then again arises another divergence which gives rise
to two paths or tendencies, one along the line of the arthropods, at the
end of which come the ants and the bees with their instincts, and the
other along the line of the vertebrates, at the end of which is man with
his intelligence. These three, Torpor, Instinct, and Intelligence, must
not, however, be looked upon as three successive stages in the linear
development of one tendency, but as three diverging directions of a
common activity, which split up as it went on its way. Instinct and
Intelligence are the two important terminal points in Evolution. They
are not two stages of which one is higher than the other, they are
at the end of two different roads. The wonders of Instinct are a
commonplace to students of animal and insect life. [Footnote: See the
interesting books by the French writer, Henri Fabre.] Men, with their
intellect, make tools, while Instinct is tied to its tool. There is
a wondrous immediacy, however, about Instinct, in the way it achieves
ends, and its operations are often quite unconsciously performed. The
insect or animal could not possibly "know" all that was involved in its
action. Instinct, then, is one form of adaptation, while Intellect is
quite another. In man--the grown man--Intellect is seen at its best. Yet
we are not without Instincts; by them we are bound to the race and to
the whole animal creation. But in ants and bees and such like creatures,
Instinct is the sole guide of life, and it is often a highly organized
life. The following example clearly shows the contrast between Instinct
and Intelligence. A cat knows how to manage her new-born kittens, how to
bring them up and teach them; a human mother does not know how to manage
her baby unless she is trained either directly or by her own quick
observation of other mothers. A cat performs her simple duties by
Instinct, a human mother has to make use of her Intelligence in order to
fulfil her very complex duties. We must observe, however, the relative
value of Instinct and Intelligence. Each is a psychical activity, but
while Instinct is far more perfect, far more complete in its insight, it
is confined within narrow limits. Intelligence, while far less perfect
in accomplishing its work, less complete in insight, is not limited
in such a way. But while Intellect is external, looking on reality as
different from life, Instinct is an inner sympathy with reality; it is
deeper than any intellectual bond which binds the conscious creature to
reality, for it is a vital bond.

Bergson now turns to a consideration of Life and Matter in the
evolutionary process, and their precise relation to one another. Life is
free, spontaneous, incalculable, not out of relation to Matter, but
its direction is not entirely determined by Matter nor has its initial
impulse Matter as its source. Although Bergson denies that Will and
Consciousness, as we know them, are mere functions of the material
organism, yet they do depend upon it as a workman depends upon his tool.
We are fond of insinuating that a bad workman always blames his tools.
A good workman, however, cannot be expected to do the best work with bad
tools. The tool, although he uses it, at the same time limits him. So
it is with the material organism at our disposal, our body, and so,
too, with spirit and matter in general. Spirit and Matter are not to
be regarded as independent or as ranged against one another from all
eternity. Matter is a product of Spirit or Consciousness, the underlying
psychic force. "For want of a better word," says Bergson, "we have
called it Consciousness. But we do not mean the narrowed consciousness
that functions in each of us." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 250
(Fr. p. 258).] It is rather super-Consciousness than a consciousness
like ours. Matter is a flux rather than a thing, but its flow is in the
opposite direction to that of Spirit. The flow of Spirit shows itself
in the creativeness of the evolutionary process; Matter is the inverse
movement towards stability. Bergson adheres to the view of Spirit as
fundamental, while Matter, he says, is due to a lessening of the tension
of the spiritual force which is the initial elan. Now, of course, Matter
and Spirit have come to be two opposing forces, for one is determined
and the other free. Yet Bergson has to make out that there must have
been some indetermination in Matter, however small, to give Spirit an
opening to "insinuate itself" into Matter and thus use it for its own
ends. It always seems, however, as if Spirit were trying to free itself
from material limitations. It evolved the Intellect to cope with Matter.
This is why Reason is at home, not in life and freedom, but in solid
Matter, in mechanical and spatial distinctions. There is thus an eternal
conflict in progress between Spirit and Matter. The latter is always
tending to automatism, to the sacrifice of the Spirit with its creative
power. In his little book on The Meaning of the War Bergson claims
that here we have an instance of Life and Matter in conflict--Germany
representing a mechanical and materialistic force. In quite another way
he illustrates the same truth, in his book on Laughter, where he shows
us that "rigidity, automatism, absent-mindedness, and unsociability, are
all inextricably entwined, and all serve as ingredients to the making up
of the comic in character," [Footnote: Laughter, p. 147 (Fr. p. 151).]
for "the comic is that side of a person which reveals his likeness to
a thing, that aspect of human events which, through its peculiar
inelasticity, conveys the impression of pure mechanism, of automatism,
of movement without life." [Footnote: Laughter, p. 87 (Fr. p. 89).]

Finally, in reviewing the evolutionary process as a whole, Bergson
asserts that it manifests a radical contingency. The forms of life
created, also the proportion of Intuition to Intelligence, in man, and
the physique and morality of man, are all of them contingent. Life
might have stored up energy in a different way through plants selecting
different chemical elements. The whole of organic chemistry would then
have been different. Then, too, it is probable that Life manifests
itself in other planets, in other solar systems also, in forms of which
we have no idea. He points out that between the perfect humanity and
ours one may conceive many possible intermediaries, corresponding to all
the degrees imaginable of Intelligence and Intuition. Another solution
might have issued in a humanity either more intelligent or more
intuitive. Man has warred like the other species, he has warred
against the other species. If the evolution of life had been opposed by
different accidents en route, if the current of life had been divided
otherwise, we should have been, in physique and in morality, very
different from what we are. [Footnote: Creative Evolution, pp. 280-282
(Fr. p. 288-290).] We cannot regard humanity as prefigured in the
evolutionary process, nor look on man as the ultimate outcome of the
whole of Evolution. The rest of Nature does not exist simply for
the sake of man. Certainly man stands highest, for only in man has
consciousness succeeded, but man has, as it were, lost much in coming
to this position. The whole process of Evolution "IS AS IF A VAGUE AND
FORMLESS BEING, WHOM WE MAY CALL, AS WE WILL, man OR super-man, HAD
SOUGHT TO REALIZE HIMSELF AND HAD SUCCEEDED ONLY BY ABANDONING A PART OF
HIMSELF ON THE WAY." [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 281 (Fr. p. 289).
(Italics are Bergson's.)]

In the lectures on The

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