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 Nature of the Soul, Bergson referred to the “Pathway of the evolutionary process” as being a “Way to Personality.” For on the line which leads to man liberation has been accomplished and thus personalities have been able to constitute themselves. If we could view this line of evolution it would appear to resemble a telegraph wire on which has travelled a dispatch sent off as long ago as the first beginnings of life, a message which was then confused, of which a part has been lost on the way, but which has at last found in the human race the appropriate instrument.
Humanity is one; we are members one of another. Bergson insists on this solidarity of man, and, indeed, of all living creatures. “As the smallest grain of dust is bound up with our entire solar system, drawn along with it in that undivided movement of descent which is materiality itself, so all organized beings, from the humblest to the highest, from the first origins of life to the time in which we are, and in all places as in all times, do but evidence a single impulsion, the inverse of the movement of matter, and in itself indivisible. All the living hold together and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us, in an overwhelming charge, able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.” [Footnote: Creative Evolution, pp. 285-286 (Fr. pp. 293-294).]
CHAPTER IX
THE GOSPEL OF INTUITION
Intelligence and Intuition not opposed–Intellectual sympathy–Synthesis and analysis. “Understanding as one loves”–Concepts–Intellect not final–Man’s spirit and intuitions–Joy, creative power and art–Value of Intuitive Philosophy.
We now approach the grand climax of Bergson’s philosophy, his doctrine of Intuition, which he preaches with all the vigour of an evangelist. Our study of his treatment of Change, of Perception, of la duree, and of Instinct, has prepared us for an investigation of what he means by Intuition, for in dealing with these subjects he has been laying the foundations of his doctrine of Intuition. He pointed out to us that Life is Change, but that our intellect does not really grasp the reality of Change, for it is adapted to solids and to concepts, it resembles the cinematograph film. Then he has tried to show us that in Perception there is really much more than we think, for our intellect carves out what is of practical interest, while the penumbra or vague fringes of perceptions which have no bearing on action are neglected. By his advocacy of a real psychological Time, in opposition to the physical abstraction which bears the name, he again brought out the inadequacy of intellect to grasp Life in its flow and has put before us the soul’s own appreciation of Time, which is a valuation rather than a magnitude, an intuition of our consciousness. Then, in examining the Evolution of Instinct and Intelligence, we found that Instinct, however blind intellectually, contained a wonderful and unique element of immediacy or direct insight. These are just preparatory indications of the direction of Bergson’s thought all the time.
It is admittedly difficult to determine with very great definiteness what Bergson’s view of Intuition really is, for he has made many statements regarding it which appear at first sight irreconcilable and, in his earlier writings, has not been sufficiently careful when speaking of the distinction between Intelligence and Intuition. Some of his early statements are reactionary and crude and give the impression of a purely anti-intellectualist position involving the condemnation of Intellect and all its work. [Footnote: E.g., the statement “To philosophize is to invert the habitual direction of the work of thought”–Introduction to Metaphysics p. 59.] In his later work, however, Bergson has made it more clear that he does not mean to throw Intellect overboard; it has its place, but is not final, nor is it the supreme human faculty which most philosophers have thought it to be. It must be lamented, however, that Bergson’s language was ever so ill defined as to encourage the many varied and conflicting views which are held regarding his doctrine of Intuition. Around this the greatest controversy has raged. Little is to be gained by heeding the shouts of either those who acclaim Bergson as a revolutionary against all use of the Intellect, or of those who regard him as no purely anti-intellectualist at all. We must turn to Bergson himself and study carefully what he has said and written, reserving our judgment until we have examined his own statements.
What is this “Intuition”? In what is now a locus classicus [Footnote: Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 7.] he says, “By Intuition is meant the kind of INTELLECTUAL SYMPATHY by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible. Analysis is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known, that is, to elements common to it and other objects. To analyse, therefore, is to express a thing as a function of something other than itself. All analysis is thus a translation, a development into symbols, a representation taken from successive points of view from which we note as many resemblances as possible between the new object which we are studying and others which we believe we know already. In its eternally unsatisfied desire to embrace the object around which it is compelled to turn, analysis multiplies without end the number of its points of view in order to complete its always incomplete representation, and ceaselessly varies its symbols that it may perfect the always imperfect translation. It goes on therefore to infinity. But Intuition, if Intuition be possible, is a simple act. It is an act directly opposed to analysis, for it is a viewing in totality, as an absolute; it is a synthesis, not an analysis, not an intellectual act, for it is an immediate, emotional synthesis.
Two illustrations, taken from the same essay, may serve to make this point clearer. A visitor in Paris, of an artistic temperament, makes some sketches of the city, writing underneath them, by way of memento, the word “Paris.” As he has actually seen Paris he is able, with the help of the original Intuition he has had of that unique whole which is Paris itself, to place his sketches therein, and synthesize them. But there is no way of performing the inverse operation. It is impossible, even with thousands of sketches, to achieve the Intuition, to give oneself the impression of what Paris is like, if one has never been there. Or again, as a second illustration, “Consider a character whose adventures are related to me in a novel. The author may multiply the traits of his hero’s character, may make him speak and act as much as he pleases, but all this can never be equivalent to the simple and indivisible feeling which I should experience if I were able, for an instant, to identify myself with the person of the hero himself. Out of that indivisible feeling, as from a spring, all the words, gestures, and actions of the man would appear to me to flow naturally. They would no longer be accidents which, added to the idea I had already formed of the character, continually enriched that idea without ever completing it. The character would be given to me all at once, in its entirety, and the thousand incidents which manifest it, instead of adding themselves to the idea and so enriching it, would seem to me, on the contrary, to detach themselves from it, without, however, exhausting it or impoverishing its essence. All the things I am told about the man provide me with so many points of view from which I can observe him. All the traits which describe him and which can make him known to me, only by so many comparisons with persons or things I know already, are signs by which he is expressed more or less symbolically. Symbols and points of view, therefore, place me outside him; they give me only what he has in common with others, and not what belongs to him, and to him alone. But that which is properly ‘himself,’ that which constitutes his essence, cannot be perceived from without, being internal by definition, nor be expressed by symbols, being incommensurable with everything else. Description, history, and analysis leave me here in the relative. Coincidence with the person himself would alone give me the absolute.” [Footnote: An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 3.] This, as Gaston Rageot puts it, is “to understand in the fashion in which one loves.” This statement is of suggestive interest in considering the practical problem of how we may be said to “know” other people, and has vital bearing on the revelation of one personality to another, urging, as it does, the value and necessity of some degree of sympathy and indeed of love, for the full understanding and knowledge of any personality.
In another place Bergson says: “When a poet reads me his verses, I can interest myself enough in him to enter into his thought, put myself into his feelings, live over again the simple state he has broken into phrases and words. I sympathize then with his inspiration, I follow it with a continuous movement which is, like the inspiration itself, an undivided act.” If this sympathy could extend its object and so reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to vital operations in the same way as Intelligence, developed and corrected, introduces us into Matter. Intelligence, by the intermediary of science, which is its work, tells more and more completely the secret of physical operations; of Life it gives and pretends only to give an expression in terms of inertia. We should be led into the very interior of Life by Intuition, that is, by Instinct become disinterested, conscious of itself, capable of reflecting on its object and enlarging it indefinitely.
In proclaiming the gospel of Intuition, Bergson’s main point is to show that man is capable of an experience and a knowledge deeper than that which the Intellect can possibly give. “At intervals a soul arises which seems to triumph… by dint of simplicity–the soul of an artist or a poet, which, remaining near its source, reconciles, in a harmony appreciable by the heart, terms irreconcilable by the intelligence” [Footnote: From the address on Ravaisson, delivered before the Academie des Sciences morales et politiques 1904.] His point of view is here akin to that of an earlier French thinker, Pascal, who said: “The heart hath reasons that the reason cannot know.” The Intellect is, by its nature, the fabricator of concepts, and concepts are, in Bergson’s view, mischievous. They are static, they leave out the flux of things, they omit too much of experience, they are framed at an expensive cost, the expense of vital contact with Life itself. Of course he admits a certain value in concepts, but he refuses to admit that they help us at all to grasp reality in its flux. “Metaphysics must transcend concepts in order to reach Intuition. Certainly concepts are necessary to it, for all the other sciences work, as a rule, with concepts, and Metaphysics cannot dispense with the other sciences. But it is only truly itself when it goes beyond the concept, or at least when it frees itself from rigid and ready-made concepts, in order to create a kind very different from those which we habitually use; I mean supple, mobile, and almost fluid representations, always ready to mould themselves on the fleeting forms of Intuition.” [Footnote: An Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 18.]
The true instrument of Metaphysics is intuition. We can only grasp ourselves, Bergson points out, by a metaphysical Intuition, for the soul eludes thought; we cannot place it among concepts or in a category. Intuition, however, reveals to us Real Time (la duree) and our real selves, changing and living as free personalities in a Time which, as it advances, creates.
Intuition is in no way mysterious, Bergson claims. Every one of us has had opportunities to exercise it in some degree, and anyone, for example, who has been engaged in literary work, knows perfectly well that after long study has been given to the subject, when all documents have been collected and necessary drafts worked out, one thing more is needful–an effort, a travail of soul, a setting of oneself in the heart of the subject; in short, the getting of inspiration. Metaphysical Intuition seems to be of this nature, and its relation to the empirical data contributed by the Intellect is parallel to the relation between the literary man’s inspiration and his collected material. Of course “it is impossible to have an Intuition of reality, that is, an intellectual sympathy, with its innermost nature, unless its confidence has been won by a long comradeship with its external manifestation.” In his study of Lucretius [Footnote: Extraits de Lucrece avec etude sur la poesie, la philosophie, la physique le texte et la langue de Lucrece (1884). Preface, p. xx.] he remarks that the chief value of the Latin poet- philosopher lay in his power of vision, in his insight into the beauty of nature, in his synthetic view, while at the same time he was able to exercise his keenly analytic intellect in discovering all he could about the facts of nature in their scientific aspect. At the same time, metaphysical Intuition, although only to be obtained through acquaintance with empirical data, is quite other than the mere summary of such knowledge. [Footnote: See protest: L’Intuition philosophique in Revue de metaphysique et de morale, 1911, p. 821.] It is distinct from these data, as the motor impulse is distinct from the path traversed by the moving body, as the tension of the spring is distinct from the visible movements of the pendulum. In this sense Metaphysics has nothing in common with a generalization of facts. It might, however, be defined as “integral experience.” Nevertheless Intuition, once attained, must find a mode of expression in well-defined concepts, for in itself it is incommunicable. Dialectic is necessary to put Intuition to the proof, necessary also in order that Intuition should break itself up into concepts and so be propagated to others. But when we use language and concepts to communicate it, we tend to make these in themselves mean something, whereas they are but counters or symbols used to express what is their inspiration–Intuition. Hence we often forget the metaphysical Intuitions from which science itself has sprung. What is relative in science is the symbolic knowledge, reached by pre-existing concepts which proceed from the fixed to the moving. A truly intuitive philosophy would bring science and metaphysics together. Modern science dates from the day when mobility was set up as an independent reality and studied as such by Galileo. But men of science have mainly fixed their attention on the concepts, the residual products of Intuition, the symbols which have lent a symbolic character to every kind of science. Metaphysicians, too, have done the same thing. Hence it was easy for Kant to show that our science is wholly relative and our metaphysics entirely artificial. For Kant, science was a universal mathematic and metaphysics a practically unaltered Platonism. The synthetic Intuition was hidden by the analysis to which it had given rise. For Kant, Intuition was infra- intellectual, but for Bergson it is supra-intellectual. Kant’s great error was in concluding that it is necessary for us, in order to attain Intuition, to leave the domain of the senses and of consciousness. This was because of his views of Time and Change. If Time and Change really were what he took them to be, then Metaphysics and Intuition alike are impossible. For Bergson, however, Time and Change lead up to Intuition; indeed it is by Intuition that we come to see all things, as he expresses it, sub specie durationis. This is the primary vision which an intuitive philosophy supplies. Such a philosophy will not be merely a unification of the sciences.
In an article contributed to the Revue de metaphysique et de morale in January of 1908, under the title L’Evolution de l’intelligence geometrique, we find Bergson remarking: “Nowhere have I claimed that we should replace intelligence by something else, or prefer instinct to it. I have tried to show merely that when we leave the region of physical and mathematical objects for the realm of life and consciousness, we have to depend on a certain sense of living, which has its origin in the same vital impulse that is the basis of instinct, although instinct, strictly speaking, is something quite different.”
Intellect and Intuition, Bergson says very emphatically, at the close of his Huxley Lecture on Life and Consciousness, are not opposed to one another. “How could there be a disharmony between our Intuitions and our Science, how, especially, could our Science make us renounce our Intuition, if these Intuitions are something like Instinct–an Instinct conscious, refined, spiritualized–and if Instinct is still nearer Life than Intellect and Science? Intuition and Intellect do not oppose each other, save where Intuition refuses to become more precise by coming into touch with facts, scientifically studied, and where Intellect, instead of confining itself to Science proper (that is, to what can be inferred from facts, or proved by reasoning), combines with this an unconscious and inconsistent metaphysic which in vain lays claim to scientific pretensions. The future seems to belong to a philosophy which will take into account the whole of what is given.” [Footnote: Life and Consciousness, as reported in The Hibbert Journal, Vol. X, Oct., 1911, pp. 24-44.] Intuition, to be fruitful, must interact with Intellect. It has the direct insight of Instinct, but its range is widened in proportion as it blends with Intellect. To imagine that the acceptance of the gospel of Intuition means the setting aside of all valuation in regard to the Intellect and its work would be preposterous. Bergson, however unguarded his language at times has been, does not mean this. He does not mean that we must return to the standpoint of the animal or that we must assume that the animal view, which is instinctive, is higher than the view which, through Intellect, gives it a meaning and value to the percipient. That would involve the rejection of all that our culture has accumulated, all our social heritage from the past, the overthrow of our civilization, the undoing of all that has developed in our world, since man’s Intelligence came into it. We cannot obtain Intuition without intellectual labour, for it must have an intellectual or scientific basis. Yet, however valuable Intellect is, it is not final. “It is reality itself, in the profoundest meaning of the word, that we reach by the combined and progressive development of science and philosophy.” [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 210 (Fr. p. 217).] We need, therefore, if we are to get into touch with the deeper aspects of reality, something more than bare science. We cannot live on its dry bread alone; we need philosophy–an intuitional philosophy.
In his brilliant paper L’Intuition philosophique Bergson shows us, by a splendid study of Berkeley and Spinoza, that the great Intuition underlying the thought of a philosopher is of more worth to the world than the logic and dialectic through the aid of which it is made manifest, and elaborated. [Footnote: He makes this clear in a letter to Dr. Mitchell in the latter’s Studies in Bergson’s Philosophy, p. 31.] Then in the Lectures La Perception du Changement and in his little work on Laughter he sets forth the meaning of Intuition in relation to Art. From time to time Nature raises up souls more or less detached from practical life, seers of visions and dreamers of dreams, men of Intuition, with powers of great poetry, great music, or great painting. The clearest evidence of Intuition comes to us from the works of these great artists. What is it that we call the “genius” of great painters, great musicians, and great poets? It is simply the power they have of seeing more than we see and of enabling us, by their expressions, to penetrate further into reality ourselves. What makes the picture is the artist’s vision, his entry into the subject by sympathy or Intuition, and however imperfectly he expresses this, yet he reveals to us more than we could otherwise have perceived.
The original form of consciousness, Bergson asserts, was nearer to Intuition than to Intelligence. But man has found Intellect the more valuable faculty for practical use and so has used it for the solution of questions it was never intended to solve, by reason of its nature and origin. Yet “Intuition is there, but vague and, above all, discontinuous. It is a lamp almost extinguished which only glimmers now and then for a few moments at most. But it glimmers whenever a vital interest is at stake. On our personality, on our liberty, on the place we occupy in the whole of Nature, on our origin, and perhaps also on our destiny, it throws a light, feeble and vacillating, but which, none the less, pierces the darkness of the night in which the Intellect leaves us.” [Footnote: Creative Evolution, p. 282 (Fr. p. 290).]
Science promises us well-being, or, at the most, pleasure, but philosophy, through the Intuition to which it leads us, is capable of bestowing upon us Joy. The future belongs to such an intuitive philosophy, Bergson holds, for he considers that the whole progress of Evolution is towards the creation of a type of being whose Intuition will be equal to his Intelligence. Finally, by Intuition we shall find ourselves in–to invent a word–“intunation” with the elan vital, with the Evolution of the whole universe, and this absolute feeling of “at- one-ment” with the universe will result in that emotional synthesis which is deep Joy, which Wordsworth describes as:
“that blessed mood
In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:–that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,– Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony and the deep power of joy
We see into the life of things.”
CHAPTER X
ETHICAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS
Anti-intellectualism and the State–Syndicalism–Class war, “direct action.” Sorel advocates General Strike–Bergson cited in support– Unfair use of Bergson’s view of reality–His ethic–Value of Will and Creativeness; not a supporter of impulse. Development of personality. Intuitive mind of woman. Change and the moral life.
Bergson has not written explicitly upon Ethics. In some quarters, however, so much has been made of Bergson as a supporter of certain ethical tendencies and certain social movements, that we must examine this question of ethical and political implications and try to ascertain how far this use of Bergson is justified.
Both ethical and political thought to-day are deriving fresh stimulation from the revision of many formulae, the modification of many conceptions which the War has inevitably caused. At the same time the keen interest taken in studies like social psychology and political philosophy combines with a growing interest in movements such as Guild Socialism and Syndicalism. The current which in philosophy sets against intellectualism, in the political realm sets against the State. This political anti-intellectualism shows a definite tendency to belittle the State in comparison with economic or social groups. “If social psychology tends to base the State as it is, on other than intellectual grounds, Syndicalism is prone to expect that non-intellectual forces will suffice to achieve the State as it should be.” [Footnote: Ernest Barker in his Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the Present Day, p. 248.] Other tendencies of the same type are noticeable. For example, Mr. Bertrand Russell’s work on The Principles of Social Reconstruction is based on the view that impulse is a larger factor in our social life than conscious purpose.
The Syndicalists have been citing the philosophy of Bergson in support of their views, and it is most interesting to see how skilfully at times sayings of Bergson are quoted by them as authoritative, as justification for their actions, in a spirit akin to that of the devout man who quotes scripture texts as a guide to conduct.
In this country, Syndicalism has not been popular, and when it did show its head the government promptly prosecuted the editor and printers of its organ, The Syndicalist, and suppressed the paper owing to its aggressive anti-militarism. [Footnote: Imprisonment of Mr. Tom Mann] English Syndicalism has few supporters and it is a rather diluted form of French Syndicalism. To understand the movement, we must turn to its history in France or in America. Its history in Russia will be an object of research in the future, when more material and more news are available from that “distressful country.” In France local unions or syndicats were legalized as early as 1884 but 1895 is the important landmark, being the date of the foundation with which Syndicalism is associated to-day, the Confederation Generale du Travail, popularly known as the “C.G.T.,” the central trade-union organization in France. In the main, Syndicalism is an urban product, and has not many adherents among the agricultural population. In America a “Federation of Labour” was formed in 1886, but the Syndicalist organization there is the body known as “The Industrial Workers of the World.” In its declaration of policy, it looks forward to a union which is to embrace the whole working class and to adopt towards the capitalist class an unending warfare, until the latter is expropriated. “The working class and the employing class,” says the declaration, “have nothing in common. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the industrial field and take and hold that which they produce by their labour.” Among the leaders of Syndicalist thought on the Continent may be mentioned the names of three prominent Frenchmen, Berth, Lagardelle, and Sorel, together with that of the young Italian professor Labriola, who is leading the increasingly active party in his own country.
In France, Italy, and America alike, Syndicalism stands for the class- war. Its central feature is the idea of a General Strike. It manifests a hatred of the State, which makes it bitterly opposed to State Socialism, which it regards as centralized and tyrannical, or to a Labour-party of any kind in Parliament. [Footnote: Attempts at carrying out a General Strike, in France, Sweden, Italy, and Spain have failed. The greatest Strikes have been: Railwaymen in Italy, in 1907; Postal Workers in France, in 1909. Miners in New South Wales, in 1909, and in Sweden, 1909; Miners and Railwaymen in England; Textile Workers in Massachusetts, 1912; Railwaymen in England, 1919, in France, 1920.] It regards the State as fixed, rigid, and intellectual, and adopts all the Bergsonian anathemas it can find which condemn intellectual constructions, concepts, and thought in general. Its war-cry is not only “Down with Capitalism” but also, in a great number of cases, “Down with Intellectualism”! Instinct and impulse alone are to be guides. Syndicalism, unlike Socialism, has no programme–it does not believe in a prearranged plan. Reality, it says, quoting Bersgon, has no plan. It says, “Let us act, act instinctively and impulsively against what we feel to be wrong, and the future will grow out of our acting.” We find Georges Sorel, the philosopher of Syndicalism, talking about what he terms the INTUITION of Socialism, and he talks emphatically about the tremendous moral value of strikes, apart from any material gain achieved by them. He believes religiously in a General Strike as the great ideal, but considers it a myth capable of rousing enthusiasm in the workers, an ideal to which they must strive, a myth as inspiring as the belief of the early Christians in the Second Coming of Christ, which, although quite a false belief, contributed largely to the success of the early Church. “Strikes,” says Sorel, “have engendered in the proletariat the most noble, the most profound, the most moving sentiments they possess. The General Strike groups these in a composite picture, and by bringing together, gives to each its maximum intensity; appealing to the most acute memories of particular conflicts, it colours with an intense life all the details of the composition presented to the mind. We obtain thus an intuition of Socialism which language cannot clearly express and we obtain it in a symbol instantly perceived, such as is maintained in the Bergsonian philosophy.” [Footnote: Quoted by C. Bougle, in an interesting article Syndicalistes et Bergsoniens, Revue du mois, April 10, 1909. And by Rev. Rhondda Williams in Syndicalism in France and its Relation to the Philosophy of Bergson, Hibbert Journal, 1914. Also by J. W. Scott in his book Syndicalism and Philosophical Realism, 1919, pp. 39-40, and by Harley in Syndicalism.] In England, although the idea of the General Strike has not been so prominent, yet in recent years Strikes have assumed an aspect different from those of former years. Workers who had “struck” before for definite objects, for wages or hours, or reformed workshop conditions, now seem to be seeking after something vaster–a fundamental alteration in industrial conditions or the total abolition of the present system. The spirit of unrest is on the increase; no doubt War conditions have, in many cases, intensified it, but there is in the whole industrial world an instinctive impulse showing itself, which is issuing in Syndicalist and Bolshevist [Footnote: “Bolshevik”–simply the Russian word for majority party as distinct from Mensheviks or minority.] activities of various kinds. Syndicalism is undoubtedly revolutionary. There are Les Syndicats rouges and Les Syndicats jaunes, of which the “Reds” are by far the most revolutionary. [Footnote: See article Des Ouvriers syndiques et le Syndicalisme jaune, Revue de metaphysique et morale, 1912] The C.G.T. and the Industrial Workers of the World are out for what they call “direct action.” Their anarchy is really an organization directed against organization, at least against that organization we know as the modern State. They have no hope of salvation for themselves coming about through the State in any way. It has become somewhat natural for us to think of the social reformer as a Member of Parliament and of the revolutionary socialist as a “strike-agitator.” The cries of “Don’t vote!” “Don’t enlist!” are heard, and care is taken to keep the workman from ceasing to quarrel with his employer. Any discussion of the rights or wrongs of any Strike is condemned at once. [Footnote: Ramsay MacDonald was condemned by the Syndicalists for claiming that a strike MIGHT be wrong.] All Strikes are regarded as right and as an approach to the ideal of the General Strike. Sorel cites Bergson as calling us to turn from traditional thought, to seek reality in the dynamic, rather than the static. He claims that the Professor of Philosophy at the College de France really co-operates with the C.G.T. An unexpected harmony arises “between the flute of personal meditation, and the trumpet of social revolution, and the workman is inspired by being made to feel that the elan ouvrier est frere de l’elan vital.” [Footnote: Quoted by C. Bougie in the article previously mentioned.] As Bergson speaks of all movement as unique and indivisible, so the triumphant movement of the General Strike is to be regarded as a whole, no analysis is to be made of its parts. As the portals of the future stand wide open, as the future is being made, so Bergson tells us, that is deemed an excuse by the Syndicalists for having no prearranged plan of the conduct of the General Strike, and no conception of what is to be done afterwards. It is unforeseen and unforeseeable. All industries, however, are to be in the hands of those who work them, the present industrial system is to be swept away. The new order which is to follow will have entirely new moral codes. Sorel justifies violence to be used against the existing order, but says he wishes to avoid unnecessary blood-shed or brutality. [Footnote: Reflections on Violence. It is interesting to note that Bergson refers briefly to Sorel as an original thinker whom it is impossible to place in any category or class, in La Philosophie, p. 13.] He remarks however, in this connexion, that ancient society, with all its brutality, compares favourably with modern society which has replaced ferocity by cunning. The ancient peoples had less hypocrisy than we have; this, in his opinion, justifies violence in the overthrow of the modern system and the creation of a nobler ethic than that on which the modern State is based. For this reason, he disagrees with most of his Syndicalist colleagues, and condemns sabotage and also the ca canny policy, both of which are a kind of revenge upon the employer, based on the principle of “bad work for bad pay.” He would have the workers produce well now, and urges that moral progress is to be aimed at no less than material progress.
It certainly seems, however, that the Syndicalists are making an unfair use of Bergson. They have got hold of three or four points rather out of relation to their context, and are making the most of them. These points are, chiefly, his remarks against the Intellect, his appreciation of Instinct and Intuition, his insistence on Freedom and on the Indeterminateness of the Future. In the hands of the Syndicalists these become in effect: “Never mind what you think, rouse up your feeling intensely; act as you feel and then see what you think.” Briefly this amounts to saying: “Act on impulse, behave instinctively and not rationally.” In too many cases, as we know, this is equivalent to a merely selfish “Down tools if you feel like it.” Now so far from Bergson really giving any countenance to capricious behaviour, or mere impulse, he expressly condemns such action. Although the future is being made, he does not admit that it will be merely CAPRICIOUSLY made, and he condemns the man of mere impulse along with the dreamer, in a fine passage where he speaks of the value of an intelligent memory in practical life.[Footnote: See p. 48 of the present work.] When the Syndicalists assert that elan, instinct, impulse, or intuition are a better guide than intelligence and reasoned principles, and cite Bergson as their authority, they omit an important qualification which upsets their theory entirely, for Bergson’s anti-intellectualism is not at all of the type which they advocate. He does not intend to rule Intellect out of practical affairs. Indeed it is just the opposite that he asserts, for, in his view, the Intellect is pre-eminently fitted for practical life, for action, and it is for this very reason that he maintains it does not give us insight into reality itself, which Intuition alone can do. He does not wish, however, to decrease the small element of rationality manifested in ethical and political life, least of all to make men less rational, in the sense that they are to become mere creatures of Impulse.
Nevertheless, Bergson’s great emphasis on Will and Creativeness condemns any laissez-faire type of political theory. It would be wrong for us to accept the social order which is felt to be imperfect and unjust in so many ways, simply because we find ourselves in it and fear we cannot work a way out. WE HAVE GREAT POWER OF CREATION, AND IN LARGE MEASURE WE CAN CREATE WHAT WE WILL IN THE WORLD OF POLITICS AND SOCIAL LIFE, and it is good that men generally should be made to see this. But it is of very vital importance that we should will the right thing. This we are not likely to do impulsively and without reflection. Even if we admit Mr. Russell’s contention that “impulse has more effect than conscious purpose in moulding men’s lives” [Footnote: Principles of Social Reconstruction, Preface, p. 5.] and agree that “it is not the weakening of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction of impulse toward life and growth,” [Footnote: p. 18. Cf. the whole of the first chapter on The Principle of Growth.] yet, we none the less assert that instinct is an insufficient guide in the determination of social behaviour, and ask how the direction of impulse, of which Mr. Russell himself speaks, is to be arrived at? Surely our only hope lies in striving to make men not less, but more rational in order that they may grasp–however dimly- -something of what is implied in ethical and political ideals, that they may recognize in society some embodiment of will and purpose and come to look upon Thought and Reason as the unifying and organizing principles of human society.
We cannot help wishing that Bergson had given us some contribution to the study of Ethics. In one of his letters to Father de Tonquedec regarding the relation of his philosophy to Theology, we find him remarking that “Before these conclusions [theological statements] can be set out with greater precision, or considered at greater length, certain problems of quite another kind would have to be attacked–the problems of Ethics. I am not sure that I shall ever publish anything on this subject. I shall do so only if I attain the results that appear to me as demonstrable or as clearly to be shown as those of my other books.” [Footnote: In Etudes (Revue des Peres de Jesus), Vol. CXXX, pp. 514, 515, 1912.] Prior to the War, however, we know that Bergson was taking up the problem of working out the implications of his philosophy in the sphere of social ethics, with particular reference to the meaning of “Duty” and the significance of “Personality.” Although his investigations of these supremely important problems have not yet been completed or made public, nevertheless certain ethical implications which have an important bearing on personal and social life seem to be contained in what he has already written.
In its application to social life, Bergson’s philosophy would involve the laying of greater stress upon the need for all members of society having larger opportunities of being more fully themselves, of being self-creative and having fuller powers of self-expression as free creative agents. It would lay emphasis upon the value of the personality of the worker and would combat the systematic converting of him into a mere “hand.” Thus would be set in clearer light the claims of human personality to create and to enjoy a good life in the widest sense, to enter into fuller sympathy and fellowship with other personalities, and so develop a fuller and richer form of existence than is possible under present social and industrial conditions. It would mean a transvaluation of all social values, an esteeming of personality before property, a recognition of material goods as means to a good life, when employed in the social service of the spirit of man. It would involve a denunciation of the enslavement of man’s spirit to the production of material wealth. Each man would be a member of a community of personalities, each of unique value, treating each other, not as means to their own particular selfish ends, but as ends in themselves. At the same time it would involve the putting of the personality of the citizen in the foremost place in our social and political life, instead of a development of a purely class consciousness with its mischievous distinctions.
Articles have been written dealing with Bergson’s message to Feminism. This point is not without its importance in our modern life. It must be admitted that the present system of civilization with its scientific campaign of conquest of the material environment has been the work of man’s intellect. In the ruder stages of existence women’s subordination to men may have been necessary and justifiable. But in the development of society it has become increasingly less necessary, and humanity is now at a stage where the contributions of women to society are absolutely vital to its welfare and progress. Woman is proverbially and rightly regarded as more intuitive than man. This need not be taken to mean that, given the opportunity of intellectual development (until now practically denied to her), woman would not show as great ability in this direction as man. But it is an undeniable fact that woman has kept more closely to the forces of the great life-principle, both by the fact that in her rests the creative power for the continuation of the human family and also by the fact that the development of the personalities of children has been her function. The subjection in which women have been largely kept until now has not only hindered them from taking part in the work of society as a whole and from expressing their point of view, but has meant that many of them have little or no knowledge of their capacities and abilities in wider directions. However, with their increasing realization of their own powers, with the granting of increased opportunities to them, and an adequate recognition of their personality side by side with that of men, achievements of supreme value for humanity as a whole may be expected from them. In certain spheres they may be found much better adapted than are men to achieve a vision which will raise human life to a higher plane and give it greater worth. More especially in the realms of ethical development, of social science, problems of sex, of war and peace, of child welfare, health, and education, of religion and philosophy we may hope to have valuable contributions from the more intuitive mind of woman. “It is not in the fighting male of the race: it is in Woman that we have the future centre of Power in civilization.” [Footnote: Benjamin Kidd in The Science of Power, p. 195. This is more fully shown in his chapters, Woman the Psychic Centre of Power in the Social Integration, and The Mind of Woman, pp. 192-257.] The wandering Dante required for his guidance not only the intellectual faculties of a Vergil but in addition the intuitive woman-soul of a Beatrice to lead him upward and on.
In La Conscience et la Vie [Footnote: L’Energie spirituelle, p. 27 (Mind-Energy).] Bergson indicates slightly his views on SOCIAL evolution–c’est a la vie sociale que l’evolution aboutit, comme si le besoin s’en etait fait sentir des le debut, ou plutot comme si quelque aspiration originelle et essentielle de la vie ne pouvait trouver que dans la societe sa pleine satisfaction. He seems inclined to turn his attention to the unity of life, not simply as due to an identity of original impulse but to a common aspiration. There is involved a process of subordination and initiative on the part of the individual. The existence of society necessitates a certain subordination, while its progress depends on the free initiative of the individual. It is extremely dangerous for any society, whether it be an International League, a State, either Communistic or Capitalistic, a Trade Union, or a Church, to suppress individual liberty in the interests of greater social efficiency or of increased production or rigid uniformity of doctrine. With the sacrifice of individual initiative will go the loss of all “soul,” and the result will be degeneration to a mechanical type of existence, a merely stagnant institution expressing nothing of man’s spirit. This personal power of initiative Bergson appeals to each one to maintain. In an important passage of his little work on Laughter he makes a personal moral appeal.
“What life and society require of each of us is a constantly alert attention, that discerns the outlines of the present situation, together with a certain elasticity of mind and body to enable us to adapt ourselves in consequence.”[Footnote: Laughter, p. 18 (Fr. p. 18).] The lack of tension and elasticity gives rise to mental deficiency and to grave inadaptability which produces misery and crime. Society demands not only that we live but that we live well. This means that we must be truly alive; for Bergson, the moral ideal is to keep spiritually alert. We must be our real, living selves, and not hide behind the social self of hypocrisy and habit. We must avoid being the victims of mechanism or automatism. We must avoid at all costs “getting into a rut” morally or spiritually. Change and vision are both necessary to our welfare. Where there is no vision, no undying fire of idealism, the people perish.
Resistance to change is the sin against the Holy Spirit. Bergson is opposed to the conventional view of morality as equivalent to rigidity, and grasps the important truth that if morality is to be of worth at all it must lie not in a fixed set of rules, habits, or conventions, but in a spirit of living. This is of very great ethical importance indeed, as it means that we must revise many of our standards of character. For example, how often do we hear of one who, holding an obviously false view long and obstinately, is praised as consistent, whereas a mind which moves and develops with the times, attempting always to adjust itself to changing conditions in its intellectual or material environment, is contemptuously dubbed as “changeable” by the moralists of rigidity. We must, however, learn that consistency of character does not mean lack of change. Stanchness of character is too often mere obstinate resistance to change. We must therefore be on our guard against those who would run ethics into rigid moulds, and so raise up static concepts and infallible dogmas for beliefs or action. Change must be accepted as a principle which it is both futile and immoral to ignore, even in the moral life. This does not mean setting up caprice or impulsiveness, for in so far as our change of character expresses the development of the single movement of our own inner life it will be quite other than capricious, but it will be change, and a change which is quite consistent, a creative evolution of our personality.
No merely materialistic ethic can breathe in the atmosphere of Bergson’s thought, which sets human consciousness in a high place and insists upon the fact of Freedom. He maintains a point of view far removed from the old naturalistic ethic; he does take some account of “values,” freedom, creativeness, and joy (as distinct from pleasure). He points out that Matter, although to a degree the tool of Spirit, is nevertheless the enemy who threatens us with a lapse into mere automatism which is only the parody of true life. The eternal conflict of Matter and Spirit in Evolution demands that we place ourselves on the side of spiritual rather than merely material values. We must not be like “the man with the muck rake.” Our conceptions of goodness must be not merely static but dynamic, for the moral life is essentially an evolution–“a growth in grace.” It means a constant “putting on of the new man,” never “counting oneself to have attained,” for spirituality is a progress to ever new creations, the spiritual life is an unending adventure, and is, moreover, one which is hampered and crushed by all refusals to recognize that Change is the fundamental feature of the universe. Nothing can be more mischievous, more detrimental to moral progress–which is ultimately the only progress of value and significance to humanity–than the deification of the status quo either in the individual or in society as a whole.
CHAPTER XI
RELATION TO RELIGION AND THEOLOGY
Avoidance of theological terms–Intuition and faith–God and Change– Deity not omnipotent but creative and immanent–God as “Creator of creators”–Problem of teleology–Stimulus to theology–The need for restatements of the nature of God–Men as products and instruments of divine activity–Immortality.
We have seen that Bergson holds no special brief for science, for, as has been shown, he opposes many of the hypotheses to which science clings. Consequently, some persons possessing only a superficial acquaintance with Bergson, and having minds which still think in the exclusive and opposing terms of the conflict of science and religion of a generation past, have enthusiastically hailed him as an ally of their religion. We must examine carefully how far this is justifiable. It is perfectly natural and just that many people, unable to devote time or energy to the study of his works, want to know, in regard to Bergson, as about every other great thinker, what is the bearing of his thought on their practical theory of life, upon their ideals of existence, upon the courage, faith, and hope which enable them to work and live, feeling that life is worth while. We must, however, guard against misuse of Bergson, particularly such misuse of him as that made in another sphere, by the Syndicalists. We find that in France he has been welcomed by the Modernists of the Roman Catholic Church as an ally, and by not a few liberal and progressive Christian theologians in this country.
At the outset, we must note that Bergson avoids theological forms of expression, because he is well aware that these–especially in a philosophical treatise–may give rise to misconceptions. He does not, like Kant, attack any specific or traditional argument for Theism; he does not enter into theological controversy. He has not formulated, with any strictness, his conception of God; for he has recognized that an examination of Theism would be of little or no value, which was not prefaced by a refutation of mechanism and materialism, and by the assertion of some spiritual value in the universe. It is to such a labour that Bergson has applied himself; it is only incidentally that we find him making remarks on religious or theological conceptions. His whole philosophy, however, involves some very important religious conceptions and theological standpoints. In France, Bergson has had a considerable amount of discussion on the theological implications of his philosophy with the Jesuit Fathers, notably Father de Tonquedec. These arise particularly from his views concerning Change, Time, Freedom, Evolution and Intuition.
Bergson has been cited as a “Mystic” because he preaches a doctrine of Intuition. But his metaphysical Intuition bears no relation to the mysticism of the saint or of the fervid religious mind. He expressly says, “The doctrine I hold is a protest against mysticism since it professes to reconstruct the bridge (broken since Kant) between metaphysics and science.” Yet, if by mysticism one means a certain appeal to the inner and profound life, then his philosophy is mystical– but so is all philosophy. We must beware of any attempts to run Bergson’s thought into moulds for which it was never intended, and guard against its being strained and falsely interpreted in the interests of some special form of religious belief. Intuition is not what the religious mind means by Faith, in the accepted sense of belief in a doctrine or a deity, which is to be neither criticized nor reasoned about. Religion demands “what passeth knowledge.” Furthermore, it seeks a reality that abides above the world of Change, “The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,” to which it appeals. The religious consciousness finds itself most reluctant to admit the reality of Change, and this, we must remember, is the fundamental principle of Bergson’s thought. Faber, one of the noblest hymn writers, well expresses this attitude:
“O, Lord, my heart is sick,
Sick of this everlasting change, And Life runs tediously quick
Through its unresting race and varied range. Change finds no likeness of itself in Thee, And makes no echo in Thy mute eternity.”
For Bergson, God reveals Himself in the world of Time, in the very principle of Change. He is not “a Father of lights in Whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning.”
It has been said that the Idea of God is one of the objects of philosophy, and this is true, if, by God, we agree to mean the principle of the universe, or the Absolute. Unity is essential to the Idea of God. For the religious consciousness, of course, God’s existence is a necessary one, not merely contingent. It views Him as eternal and unchangeable. But if we accept the Bergsonian philosophy, God cannot be regarded as “timeless,” or as “perfect” in the sense of being “eternal” and “complete.” He is, so to speak, realizing Himself in the universe, and is not merely a unity which sums up the multiplicity of time existence. Further, He must be a God who acts freely and creatively and who is in time. Trouble has arisen in the past over the relation of “temporal” and “eternal”–the former being regarded as appearance. For Bergson, this difficulty does not arise; there is, for him, no such