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 A CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF 
 BERGSON'S PHILOSOPHY
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
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 TORONTO
 
 A CRITICAL EXPOSITION 
 
 OF 
 
 BERGSON'S PHILOSOPHY 
 
 BY 
 
 J. M'KELLAR STEWART 
 
 B.A. (Melb.), D.Phil. (Edin.) 
 
 FINAL HONOUR SCHOLAR IN PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE 
 
 LATE LECTURER IN LOGIC AND PHILOSOPHY IN ORMOND COLLEGE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 
 
 1 9 1 1
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The purpose of this work is not exposition, but 
 criticism. Professor Bergson's thought is elaborated 
 only to such an extent as to ensure that the criticism 
 shall be intelligible. I am conscious that in outlining 
 the main ideas of his philosophy I have stripped 
 them of the brilliant metaphorical dress in which 
 Bergson himself has clothed them, and divorced them 
 from the charm of a peculiarly flexible and graceful 
 literary style. My only defence is that metaphor is 
 not always conducive to clearness, and that illustration 
 is apt to be confused with argument. My aim has 
 been to present clearly the root ideas of his philosophy, 
 so far as they appear in the work which he has made 
 public ; to examine their validity ; and to consider 
 their value as a contribution to modern philosophic 
 thought. 
 
 J. M'KELLAR STEWART. 
 
 London, 
 
 Oct. 1 8//1, i g 1 1 .
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 INTRO D UCTION 
 
 l-AGE 
 
 The Intuitive Method i 
 
 PART I EXPOSITION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The Intuition of Pure Duration in the Life of 
 the Self and its Spatialization in the In- 
 telligent Consciousness 
 
 i. The conception of time and its essential identity with 
 
 the idea of space - - - - - - - - 31 
 
 2. Duration or spirit 
 
 (a) Inscrutable to ordinary psychological analysis - 36 
 
 (b) Cannot be grasped by reflection - - - 38 
 
 (c) Apprehended by intuition 39 
 
 3. The notion of time formed by the mingling of elements 
 
 from duration and space respectively - - - - 41 
 
 4. Spatialization of pure duration or spirit 
 
 (a) On the perceptual level 50 
 
 (d) On the conceptual level 67 
 
 5. Bearing of the intuition of duration or spirit on the 
 
 antinomies raised with reference to the problem of 
 freedom 79
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Intuition of the Cosmical Elan, and its 
 Condensation into Intelligence 
 
 PAGE 
 
 i. Principle implied in the intuitive method - - - 89 
 
 2. Conceptual explanation of cosmic spirit, even when 
 
 teleological, issues in its mechanization - - - 92 
 
 Proved (a) by the actual achievement of science - 94 
 (6) by the consideration of the function of 
 
 intelligence 98 
 
 3. Mechanical explanation of life inadequate - - - 99 
 
 4. Intuition necessary, - - - - - - - 107 
 
 5. Intuition of matter and creation of matter - - -no 
 
 6. Differentiation of the clan origitiel into 
 
 (a) Intelligence — externalized, spatialized spirit - 117 
 
 (6) Instinct 132 
 
 7. The relation between intelligence and instinct - - 135 
 
 8. Evolution of life in our solar system - - - 139 
 
 PART //. CRITICISM 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Nature, Function and Genesis of Intelligence 
 
 1. Bergsonian philosophy an expression of the spirit of the 
 
 age 147 
 
 2. Bergson's view of the value of intellectual knowledge - 150
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 3. Relation of the form of intelligence to its function. 
 
 Assumptions involved in Bergson's view : VAG * 
 
 (a) Limitation of function - - - - - 157 
 
 (6) Possibility of deducing form from function - 159 
 
 4. Analysis of Bergson's argument that an empirical study 
 
 of evolution confirms his theory of the nature and 
 
 function of intellect - - - - - - - 167 
 
 5. The opposition between instinct and intelligence - - 176 
 
 6. Difficulties connected with the account of the ideal 
 
 genesis of intelligence 
 
 (a) Theory of matter 185 
 
 (b) View of the intellectual process - - - 188 
 
 (c) Relation between the two 195 
 
 7. Clue to Bergson's restriction of the province of reason 199 
 
 8. Germ of philosophical scepticism in Bergson's philosophy 210 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Need and Value of the Intuition of Time, 
 Matter and Freedom 
 
 1. Criticism of Bergson's theory of space - - - - 212 
 
 2. Criticism of his view of conceptual time. Is the human 
 
 intelligence incapable of conceiving a temporal order, 
 
 as distinct from a spatial order - - - - 217 
 
 3. Intuition of time demands a retrogressive step in know- 
 
 ledge — at the best it is a limiting conception - - 226 
 
 4. Intuition of matter not necessary ----- 236
 
 x CONTENTS 
 
 5. Difficulties connected with Bergson's theory of the PAGE 
 
 mingling of space and duration, matter and spirit - 238 
 
 6. Suggested explanation of his procedure here - - 245 
 
 7. Intuition of freedom 
 
 (a) Essential factor omitted 246 
 
 (0) Bergson compared with Kant - - - 255 
 
 (c) Not human freedom ------ 263 
 
 8. Criticism of Bergson's view of motived action and of 
 
 the principle of causality ------ 266 
 
 9. Intuition of freedom involves the elimination of the 
 
 knowledge of freedom 276 
 
 CONCL US ION 
 
 Estimate of the Value of the Intuitive Method 279
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant complains that 
 Metaphysics has not been able to enter into the sure 
 path of a science, and he sets himself the task of 
 expounding a method by means of which such an 
 entrance may be secured and progress achieved. 
 Bergson, too, is dissatisfied with the progress hitherto 
 made by philosophy, and also with the outlook even 
 from the Kantian and post-Kantian point of view. He, 
 too, has the desire to lead metaphysics into the sure 
 path of a science capable of indefinite progress, and 
 with this end in view he formulates his method. 
 
 It is necessary to emphasize from the beginning the 
 fact that Bergson's philosophy is essentially a method. 
 He himself has made certain applications of this 
 method, which it will be our task to examine, but 
 from the very nature of the method we should not 
 expect to find in his philosophy a definitely formulated 
 system. Bergson repeatedly draws attention to this 
 fact. The metaphysic which he has in view is " a 
 positive metaphysic, susceptible of a rectilinear and 
 indefinite progress:" 1 a metaphysic which shall not be 
 " a science analogous to mathematics, forced to maintain 
 the clear simplicity and trenchant dogmatism of that 
 
 1 " Le Parallelisme Psycho- Physique et la Meta. Positive" (Bull, de la 
 Soc. /ran. de Phil., Juin I901), p. 33.
 
 4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 science." * " On the contrary, the metaphysic of the 
 future will be a science empirical in its method, pro- 
 gressive, and restricted, like the other positive sciences, 
 in that it gives us only provisionally the last results 
 to which it has been led by an attentive study of the 
 real." 2 " It must break through the mathematical cate- 
 gories, and take account of the sciences of biology, 
 psychology, and sociology." 3 On this broader basis will 
 be raised " a metaphysic capable of mounting ever higher 
 and higher by means of the continuous, progressive, organ- 
 ized effort of all the philosophers associated in the same 
 deference to experience." 4 He admits that " a philo- 
 sophy of this kind is not made in a day. In contrast 
 with the systems, properly so-called, each of which was 
 the work of a man of genius and presented itself as a 
 whole, to be taken or left, it can be constituted only 
 by the collective and progressive effort of many thinkers, 
 and of many observers also, completing, correcting, 
 reforming one another." 5 
 
 Bergson desires to summon philosophers to the 
 employment of a method by means of which there 
 will be gradually formed a large philosophy, always 
 progressing and positive, " in which opinions shall 
 furnish their own proof, correct one another, and end 
 by agreeing with one another in contact with one and 
 the same experience." 6 No one single philosopher can 
 hope to complete the task of philosophy, any more than 
 any one scientist can expect to unravel the secrets of 
 nature, but every philosopher may employ the one 
 method by means of which the windings of reality in 
 its incessant movements may be marked. By an 
 
 1 " Le Parallelisme Psycho- Physique et la Meta. Positive, p. 50. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 50. 3 Ibid. p. 57. 
 
 4 Ibid. p. 57. 5 E.C. Introd. p. vii. 
 
 8 " Le Parallelisme Psycho- Physique et la Meta. Positive," p. 47.
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 5 
 
 indefinite series of efforts of the same kind under 
 the guidance of this method, a positive, ever-growing 
 system of philosophy will be formed, and the various 
 degrees of being stand revealed to our vision. 
 
 The foundation of Bergson's philosophy is his method 
 of intuition. " Philosophizing just consists in placing one's 
 self, by an effort of intuition, in the interior of concrete 
 reality." 1 By intuition is meant "that kind of intellectual 
 sympathy by means of which one transports one's self 
 to the interior of an object so as to coincide with that 
 which constitutes the very reality of the object, the 
 unique reality, consequently inexpressible " 2 (in con- 
 cepts). Briefly, to philosophize is to feel the palpitating 
 of the heart of reality. 
 
 When Kant was seeking a safe method for philo- 
 sophy he was guided by the methods which had 
 succeeded in scientific construction. He passed in 
 review the sciences of formal logic, mathematics, and 
 physics, and proceeded to extend to philosophy the 
 method of hypothesis which had been found successful 
 in physics. Hence his demand that objects should 
 conform to our faculty of knowledge ; hence his con- 
 stant proof by reference to the possibility of experience. 
 
 Kant was influenced in his dissection of the faculty 
 of knowledge by the state of science in his time. 
 Mathematics, physics, and, to a less extent, chemistry, 
 had attained to a high degree of perfection ; psychology 
 and biology were quite undeveloped. The application 
 of Kant's critical method consisted in discovering what 
 the nature of our mind must be, and what the con- 
 stitution of nature must be, if the pretensions of the 
 science of his time were justified ; but of these preten- 
 sions themselves he has not made any criticism. " He 
 accepted without discussion," says Bergson, " the idea 
 1 /./)/. p. 86. *lbid. p. 6.
 
 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of a single science, capable of binding with the same 
 cogency all parts of the given, and of co-ordinating 
 them in a system which should present in all its parts 
 an equal stability." l 
 
 Kant's categories are for him the conditions of all 
 possible knowledge, but these categories are the general 
 notions which form the foundation of science in one of 
 its stages — in the mechanical stage. That this is implicit 
 is Kant's system, though not intentionally so, we may 
 see from one of the later developments of his thought, 
 which issued in philosophical agnosticism, and in the 
 elevation to an exclusive validity of the physical and 
 mathematical sciences. Bergson's criticism of Kant is 
 that he did not realize, in the Critique of Pure Reason, 
 that science becomes less and less objective, more and 
 more symbolic, in proportion as it proceeds from the 
 physical to the vital, from the vital to the psychical. 
 Experience does not move, in his eyes, in two different 
 and perhaps opposed directions, the one conformable to 
 the direction of the intelligence, the other contrary to it. 
 There is, for him, only one experience, and intelligence 
 covers its whole ground. Kant expresses this by saying 
 that all our intuitions are sensuous, or, in other words, 
 infra-intellectual. And this would have to be admitted, 
 in fact, if our science presented in all its parts an equal 
 objectivity. But suppose, on the contrary, that science 
 is less and less objective, more and more symbolic, as it 
 proceeds from the physical to the psychical, passing 
 through the vital : then, as it is certainly necessary to 
 perceive a thing in some way in order to succeed in 
 symbolizing it, there would be an intuition of the 
 psychical, and, more generally, of the vital, which the 
 intelligence would doubtless transpose and translate, 
 but which would, none the less, transcend the intelli- 
 i£.C. p. 388 (Eng. Tr. p. 379).
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 7 
 
 gence. There would be, in other words, a supra-intel- 
 lectual intuition" a 
 
 Kant was landed in an opposition between under- 
 standing and reason, between categories and ideas, be- 
 tween phenomena and noumena, between nature and 
 spirit. Knowledge, for him, was confined to phenomena; 
 we may tJiink God, Freedom, Immortality, as limiting or 
 regulative " ideas," but we cannot know them. This 
 limitation of knowledge to the phenomenal, and this 
 problematic conception of noumenal reality arise from 
 the difficulty in which Kant involved himself by taking 
 his cue as to the nature of mind from the science of his 
 day. If it be true that " ofxoiov 6/j.o'lw alcrOdveTai," and 
 if the analysis which Kant has made of the universal 
 modes of synthesis, or the logical conditions of all 
 knowledge be correct, then it would seem to follow that 
 all which can be known is the material, the mechanical, 
 the mathematical. The nature of his categories pre- 
 cluded, made impossible, the knowledge of human 
 freedom, for example. The framework of intelligence 
 or understanding was such for Kant that freedom could 
 not be fitted into it. Freedom must be relegated to 
 the sphere of faith. "If one reads closely the Critique 
 of Pure Reason one sees that Kant has criticized, not 
 reason in general, but reason fashioned to the habits 
 and exigencies of the Cartesian mechanical theory or 
 of the Newtonian physics. If there be a single science 
 of nature (and Kant does not seem to doubt this), if all 
 phenomena and all objects are spread out on one and 
 the same plane, so that our knowledge of them will 
 be a single and continuous but entirely superficial 
 experience (and such is the constant hypothesis of the 
 Critique of Pure Reason), then there is only one sort of 
 causality in the world ; all phenomenal causality implies 
 
 1 /bid. pp. 38S-3S9 (Eng. Tr. p. 380).
 
 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 rigorous determination, and one must seek for liberty 
 outside of experience." 1 
 
 Bergson, so far as I can see, does not quarrel with 
 Kant's conception of the nature of the human under- 
 standing, nor does he contend for an extension of its 
 dominion. It is true that he repudiates with decision 
 any suggestion that intelligence-knowledge is relative, 
 and maintains that, while it may be limited knowledge, 
 it brings us, in a very true sense, into touch with the 
 " absolute," if we understand by that term no more than 
 reality in some one of its windings. In other words, 
 Bergson discards, in the first place, the distinction 
 between noumena and phenomena, and substitutes for 
 it the notion of two opposed movements constitutive of 
 reality — spirituality or duration on the one hand, and 
 materiality or matter on the other. In the second 
 instance, he replaces the distinction between under- 
 standing in the narrow sense as the faculty of 
 conceptions, and reason as the faculty of ideas, by the 
 distinction between two complementary but opposed 
 faculties of knowledge, intelligence and intuition. 
 Bergson will have nothing to do with " things-in-them- 
 selves," either with subjects in themselves or with 
 objects in themselves. He will not allow for a 
 moment that we are condemned to the phantom of an 
 incomprehensible " thing-in-itself," but insists that by 
 means of intelligence and intuition, complementary 
 faculties, we are introduced into the absolute. By 
 means of that which is material in ourselves we are 
 enabled to know matter ; and by means of that which 
 is vital and spiritual in ourselves we can come into 
 sympathy with life and spirit. The principle here 
 implied — that of " ontological affinity " between knower 
 and known — seems to be an unobjectionable one. The 
 
 1 " Le Parallelisme Psycho- Physique et la Meta. Positive," p. 63.
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 9 
 
 difficulty arises when we come to analyse the nature of 
 the knower. Kant illegitimately limited that nature, 
 and so limited the knovvable. Bergson seeks a more 
 accurate analysis, though in a way far removed from 
 Kant's deduction. He endeavours to establish the 
 position that the faculty of knowledge as Kant under- 
 stood it is a mere fragment of that faculty in its 
 entirety. 
 
 It is not by increasing the number of the categories 
 of understanding or intelligence by adding, for example, 
 such a one as that of " purpose " that mechanical limits 
 will be removed, and life and spirit brought within the 
 grasp of intelligence. In virtue of its very nature it is 
 incapable of seizing the meaning of life. Even when it 
 makes use of teleological conceptions it merely appears 
 to escape a mechanical theory of life, for the most 
 radical finalism is only an inverted mechanical theory. 
 In short, no multiplication of the conceptions of 
 intelligence will ever bring us into closer touch with 
 life and spirit, for the concept applies only to the static, 
 the inert, the permanent, whereas life is always going, 
 ever becoming. Intelligence is characterized by a 
 native inability to comprehend life. Its work is to 
 re-constitute, and to re-constitute with ready-made con- 
 ceptions, so that what is new in each moment of a 
 history escapes it, and still more the process itself from 
 moment to moment is beyond its grasp. If the 
 intelligence were capable of knowing reality in its 
 fulness then the assumption would be necessary that 
 reality is given, in its completeness, from all eternity. 
 This conception of reality is fundamentally opposed to 
 Bergson's view of life and mind; consequently he 
 insists on the limitations of intelligence as a faculty of 
 knowledge. 
 
 Must life and mind, then, be relegated to the sphere
 
 io INTRODUCTION 
 
 of unknowable realities ? Is life in its creative activity 
 incomprehensible ? Must man for ever remain deprived 
 of its secret ? Must he content himself with taking a 
 number of snap-shots of it as it glides by ; pictures 
 which show him only patches of its surface ? Must he 
 despair of entering into the sanctuary in which life 
 shows itself in the making ? Truly, if intelligence were 
 his only faculty of knowledge, and if intelligence were 
 such as Bergson holds it to be, the way of the knowledge 
 of life would be closed, and its secret remain hidden 
 from human eyes. But this is not the tragic conclusion 
 of Bergson's philosophy. Life may stubbornly refuse to 
 yield up its secret to intelligence, but it can be known 
 by a second faculty, which man possesses in germ, and 
 which he may develop — the faculty of intuition. It is 
 vague and discontinuous — " an almost extinguished lamp, 
 which flickers up only at intervals for a few instants." 
 Nevertheless, by a literally superhuman effort the philo- 
 sopher may transcend the point of view of intelligence, 
 and by a stroke of sympathetic insight perceive or feel 
 the impulsion at the heart of reality. Experience is not 
 confined within the bounds of rational experience ; 
 thought is wider than reasoned thought. Intelligence 
 is supplemented by intuition, and a perfect humanity 
 would be one in which intuition and intelligence were 
 both developed ; for intelligence, as it progresses, gives 
 us a clearer knowledge of matter, and so enables us to 
 adapt ourselves to our material environment ; and 
 intuition, as it develops, projects a flickering and feeble 
 light upon " our personality, our freedom, the place 
 which we occupy in the whole of nature, our origin, and 
 perhaps also our destiny." Thus the facts which Kant 
 has extruded from knowledge and relegated to faith 
 are brought again by Bergson within the sphere of 
 knowledge by means of intuition.
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD n 
 
 Intelligence and intuition are thus two opposed and 
 yet complementary ways of knowing reality, and the 
 boundary between the two marks the dividing line 
 between scientific and philosophic knowledge. Intelli- 
 gence finds its proper sphere of activity within the 
 positive sciences. In the mathematical sciences it is 
 perfectly at home, and since matter is ballasted, as it 
 were, with geometry, mathematics is not a game played 
 with concepts, but a veritable grappling with reality, 
 with the absolute — that is, in this case, with matter. 
 The physical sciences enunciate laws, " the form of 
 which would have been different if other variables 
 had been chosen, other units of measurement, and, above 
 all, if the problems had been propounded, chronologically, 
 in a different order." ! " De jure, however, physics grasps 
 the absolute, and it approaches this ideal limit more 
 and more as it advances. ... I am of opinion 
 that it is reality in itself, absolute reality, which the 
 mathematical and physical sciences reveal to us." 2 
 Intelligence succeeds in the sciences, because they 
 have ultimately a practical aim, and intelligence is 
 the instrument of action. What, Bergson asks, is 
 the essential object of science ? " It is to increase 
 our influence on things. Science may be speculative in 
 its form, disinterested in its immediate ends ; in other 
 words, we may give it credit as long as it wishes ; but 
 the day of reckoning cannot be indefinitely postponed, 
 some time or other payment must be made. It is then, 
 in short, always practical utility which science has in 
 view. Even when it launches itself into theory, science 
 is bound to adapt its procedure to the general configura- 
 tion of the practical. However high it makes its flight, 
 
 1 " Enquete sur l'Enseignement de la Phil." (Bull, de la Soc. fran. de 
 Phil., Janvier I9oS), p. 21. 
 
 2 Ibid. p. 21.
 
 12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 it must be ready to come down again into the field of 
 action, and at once to get on its feet there. This would 
 not be possible for it, if its rhythm differed absolutely 
 from that of action itself." x The physical sciences 
 tend, then, to reveal to us the nature of matter, not in 
 any relative way, but as it really is. 
 
 "Science begins to become relative, or rather symbolic, 
 only when it attacks the problems of life and conscious- 
 ness from the side of physico-chemistry." 2 Provided 
 that we recognize physico-chemical knowledge of life 
 to be relative or symbolic, we may attribute a certain 
 value to biology, but this symbolic or relative knowledge 
 must be completed by " a study of another kind, which 
 is metaphysic," and which works by means of intuition. 
 Parallel to modern scientific knowledge " there ought 
 to be constituted a second kind of knowledge which 
 would retain what physics allows to escape. . . . One 
 must transport one's self by an effort of sympathy to 
 the interior of that which becomes," and attempt to 
 follow the flux itself of the real. In successive efforts 
 of intuition, philosophy must pursue its task. Philosophy 
 thus introduces us into spiritual life. That is its 
 domain. 
 
 In this way Bergson sees the possibility of bringing 
 about " a reconciliation between metaphysic and science, 
 and of supporting the one by the other, without the sacri- 
 fice of either, after having sharply distinguished between 
 them." 3 One may safely say that this is one of the 
 chief ends of his philosophic method. He says, in fact, 
 that his method has primarily in view " the removal of 
 the opposition which Kant established between meta- 
 
 l £.C. p. 356 (Eng. Tr. p. 348). 
 
 2 " Enquete sur l'Enseignement de la Philosophic," p. 21. 
 
 :; Ibid. pp. 2 1 and 22.
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 13 
 
 physic and science." * He sees also the possibility of 
 removing those antinomies which reason has to face by 
 causing the problems round which they range themselves 
 to disappear, by maintaining the thesis that they arise 
 only when intellect illegitimately extends its range so 
 as to include speculation, and that they vanish in the 
 intuition. 
 
 Bergson is openly opposed to that view of philosophy 
 which would restrict its task to criticism of the faculty 
 of knowledge, and to that view which would, in addition, 
 aim at the super-position, if possible (by means of in- 
 telligence), of a metaphysic upon the structure of the 
 sciences. According to such a view, knowledge itself, 
 in its materiality, that is, actual experiencing, would be 
 an affair of science and not of philosophy, whose work 
 would be reduced to " formulating, purely and simply, 
 in more precise terms, the unconscious and, therefore, 
 inconsistent metaphysic and critique which the very 
 attitude of science towards reality marks out. . . . He 
 who has begun by reserving to philosophy questions of 
 principle, and who aims at thereby placing philosophy 
 above the sciences, as a ' Cour de Cassation ' is above 
 the courts of assizes and of appeal, will be led, by degrees, 
 to make it no more than a simple court of registration, 
 the highest duty of which is to record, in more precise 
 terms, the irrevocably imposed sentences which are 
 brought to it." 2 The work of philosophy must be, in 
 a sense, independent of that of science. Science " treats 
 the living in the same way as the inert," consequently, 
 however fully it may succeed in dealing with matter, it 
 cannot, in the form of biology, meet with success, for 
 the science of biology " is merely an extension of 
 physics to an object of which we agree a priori to 
 
 1 " Le Parallelisme Psycho-Physique et la Meta. Positive," p. 63. 
 
 2 E.C. pp. 212 and 213 (Eng. Tr. pp. 205 and 206).
 
 14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 envisage only the external aspect. The duty of philo- 
 sophy would be, then, to intervene actively here, to 
 examine the living without arriere-pensee as to practical 
 utility, by disengaging itself from forms and habits 
 peculiarly intellectual. Its object is to speculate, that 
 is, to see ; its attitude towards the living should not be 
 that of science, which aims only at action, and which, 
 being able to act only by means of inert matter, en- 
 visages the rest of reality under this single aspect." x 
 The faculty of speculation is the intuition. If philosophy 
 is content to follow in the train of science, then, a priori, 
 its scope and nature are determined. If it receives 
 from positive science the laws of biology and psychology, 
 then it is compelled, from the outset, to a mechanical 
 conception of nature in its entirety ; for science is fun- 
 damentally practical in its aims ; its instrument of 
 knowledge is intelligence, and intelligence, on Bergson's 
 view, can apprehend only the inert, the spatial, the 
 mechanical. Such a philosophy will issue in the doc- 
 trine of the simple unity of knowledge and of the 
 abstract unity of nature. Bergson's argument, at this 
 point, involves the assumption that intelligence is bare 
 identity. In the nature of the case, then, a metaphysic 
 which is the highest product of intelligence will be 
 doomed to oscillate between a metaphysical dogmatism 
 which erects into an absolute the factitious unity of 
 science, and a scepticism or relativism in which is 
 generalized and extended to the whole domain of 
 science the artificial character of its results in the 
 spheres of biology and psychology, the facts of which 
 have refused to reduce themselves to identity or even 
 to enter into pre-determined categories. Intuition alone 
 cuts the knot. 
 
 From this point of view, philosophy has a definite 
 1 E.C. p. 214 (Eng. Tr. p. 207).
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 15 
 
 task assigned to it, has its boundaries definitely marked 
 out, and yet an open way of progress lies before it. 
 Within the realm of life and consciousness, or, generally, 
 where there is process or growth, science achieves 
 merely relative and symbolic knowledge. The task of 
 philosophy is to build a progressive knowledge of these 
 realities which shall be no longer symbolic. The philo- 
 sopher will range himself alongside the artist and the poet. 
 He will, like them, express himself through metaphor, 
 image, and symbol, clear conceptual expression being 
 reserved to the products of the scientific intelligence. 
 As metaphysician the philosopher will, like the poet 
 and the artist, live by flashes of inspiration ; he will 
 feel the passage of this " breath " through him and gain 
 a sympathetic insight into the heart of things. By 
 successive efforts of intuition or intellectual expansion, 
 he will follow the windings of life and consciousness in 
 all the movements of their qualitative processes. " Thus 
 all our knowledge, scientific or metaphysical, is raised. 
 In the absolute we live and move and have our being. 
 The knowledge of it which we have is, doubtless, incom- 
 plete, but not external or relative. It is being itself 
 in its inner nature which we grasp through the combined 
 and progressive development of science and philosophy." 1 
 The intuitive method is based on a negative view of 
 the validity of intelligence outside a strictly limited 
 domain. The limitations of intelligence are inherent 
 in its nature ; no extension of its categories will or can 
 remove them. Intelligence is constructed with a view 
 to action on inert matter ; it is, indeed, spirit insinuat- 
 ing itself into matter. That is its sphere, and any 
 extension of its use is illegitimate. Bergson is emphatic 
 about this. " The intelligence is not made to think 
 evolution, in the proper meaning of the word, that is, 
 
 1 E.C. p. 217 (Eng. Tr. p. 210).
 
 1 6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the continuity of a change which is pure movement." 1 
 It cannot possibly grasp it, for life, the psychical force 
 at the heart of the universe, overflows intelligence. 
 Intelligence is, as we shall see, the materialization of 
 that force, and one might as well seek to reconstruct a 
 living body by piecing together its dismembered parts 
 as attempt to reconstruct living reality with the spatial- 
 ized concepts which materialized spirit can furnish. 
 " Created by life, in determined circumstances, to act 
 upon determined things, how could it embrace life, of 
 which it is only an emanation or an aspect ? Deposited 
 by the evolutionary movement in the course of its way, 
 how could it comprehend that movement ? One might 
 as well claim that the part equals the whole, that the 
 effect can re-absorb its cause, or that the shingle left 
 upon the sea-shore outlines the form of the wave which 
 carried it there." x " When it is a question of treating 
 the life of the body or that of the mind, intelli- 
 gence proceeds with the rigour, the inflexibility, the 
 brutality of an instrument which was not designed for 
 such a use." 2 At a later stage it will be our duty to 
 follow Bergson in his attempts to show how intelligence 
 has been deposited by spirit. For the present it is 
 sufficient to observe that spirit has developed in two 
 diverging directions. At the end of one of these stands 
 man, the intelligent creature par excellence ; at the end 
 of the other are the insects, which are possessed most 
 perfectly of instinct. In order to become intelligence, 
 spirit had to let go, almost entirely, parts of its nature ; 
 consequently, intellect is not able to grasp spirit as a 
 whole, or even that which is its unique characteristic. 
 
 This metaphysical account of the inherent limitations 
 of intellect is confirmed when we consider its actual 
 achievements. In philosophy it is seen making its 
 
 1 £.C. Introd. p. ii. 2 Ibid. p. 179 (Eng. Tr. p. 173).
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 17 
 
 most perfect flights in Greek speculation, and in a 
 concise review of the course of ancient philosophy, 
 Bergson seeks to show that " the main lines of 
 the doctrine which was developed from Plato to 
 Plotinus, passing through Aristotle (and even, in a 
 certain measure, through the Stoics), have nothing 
 accidental, nothing contingent, nothing which one must 
 needs consider a philosopher's fancy. They delineate 
 the vision which a systematic intelligence obtains of 
 the universal becoming when regarding it by means 
 of views, taken at intervals, of its flowing. So that 
 to-day we shall philosophize in the manner of the 
 Greeks, we shall re-discover, without needing to know 
 them, such and such of their general conclusions, in the 
 exact proportion in which we trust the cinematographic 
 instincts of our thought." x Bergson emphasizes that 
 aspect of Greek philosophy in which the tendency is 
 manifest to make the universal the real, and he finds at 
 the foundation of the ancient systems of thought the 
 postulate that there is more in the immobile than in 
 the moving, more in permanence than in change, and 
 that the passage from immutability to becoming is by 
 way of diminution or attenuation of being. " The 
 ' forms ' are the constitutive elements of change ; they 
 represent what is positive in becoming. Eternity no 
 longer hovers over time as an abstraction ; it underlies 
 time as a reality." 2 These " forms " dwell in inexorable 
 steadfastness, free from limits of time and place. Such 
 was the conclusion to which the Greeks were driven. 
 Aristotle, for example, proceeding according to the 
 principle that movement is due to a degradation of the 
 immutable, had to postulate, somewhere, in order to 
 account for the movement in the sensible world, 
 " realized immutability," which he found in his " Form 
 
 l £.C. p. 341 (Eng. Tr. p. 333). 2 Ibid. p. 343 {Ibid, p. 335).
 
 1 8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of Forms," " Idea of Ideas," " Thought of Thoughts." 
 In order to pass thence to the changing world of sense- 
 perception, it was necessary to suppose matter — the 
 Platonic " non-being." This was somehow added to 
 the stable reality in order to produce change. It was 
 " a metaphysical zero which, joined to the Idea, like 
 the arithmetical zero to unity, multiplied it in space 
 and time." But the natural consummation of Greek 
 philosophy was achieved in the changeless " one " or 
 " being " of Plotinus. The conclusion which emerges 
 from consideration of this fact is that intellect is 
 dominated by the principle of identity. 
 
 Similarly, an investigation of the conquests of 
 modern science reveals, Bergson argues, the inherent 
 inability of intelligence to grasp the nature of anything 
 other than the mechanical and static. He recognizes 
 that modern science has attempted to take account of 
 change and time ; great transformations have taken 
 place in modern geometry by the introduction of move- 
 ment and time into the consideration of figures, for 
 example. Indeed it may be said in general that 
 " modern science is to be defined primarily by its 
 aspiration to take time as an independent variable." 
 But when we ask, — "What is the nature of this time?" 
 we discover that it is time emptied of all its movement 
 or change, of all that which is fluent in it. Modern 
 science considers always only " moments, virtual stop- 
 pages — in short, only immobilities." It is at the best 
 abstract time of which it takes account, and such time 
 is nothing more than a fourth dimension of space ; con- 
 sequently modern science deals, still, only with the 
 spatial, the static. "It confines itself to counting 
 simultaneities between the events constitutive of time 
 and the positions of a mobile, T, on its trajectory. It 
 detaches these events from the whole which assumes
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 19 
 
 at each instant a new form and which communicates to 
 them something of its novelty. It considers them in 
 the abstract state, such as they would be if separated 
 from the living whole, that is to say, in a time spread 
 out in space." This is not accidental ; it is due to the 
 inherent nature of intelligence as a faculty of action, 
 which must isolate and predict — which, indeed, must 
 isolate and eliminate differences in order to predict. 
 Here again, then, the domination of the principle of 
 identity is evident. 
 
 Besides intelligence, however, there is instinct. Un- 
 conscious instinct is sympathetic action ; conscious, 
 purified, extended instinct is sympathetic insight. It 
 is " deep calling unto deep." We men, though our 
 mental outfit is primarily an intellect, carry with us 
 something of this other element, instinct, with which 
 intelligence was fused in the original generative 
 force of all life. Not in entire forgetfulness have we 
 come ; intelligence has not separated itself absolutely 
 from instinct. As intelligences we have travelled away 
 from our home in an attempt to gain the victory over 
 matter, and we remember scarcely anything of the land 
 from which we have come. But this same intelligence, 
 coincidently with its conflict with matter, has gained a 
 light — the light of consciousness — which will illumine 
 that country if only we can get back again. And we 
 may return, since we are not irretrievably cut off; we 
 possess, in addition to intelligence, immature instincts 
 which, at intervals, reveal their presence. For example, 
 the aesthetic faculty signifies the presence of an instinct 
 by means of which, transcending intellect, we gain, 
 immediately, by an act of sympathy akin to the instinct 
 of the insect, an interior view of reality — a knowledge 
 no longer formal and superficial but full and internal. 
 "It is true that this aesthetic intuition grasps only the
 
 20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 individual. But we may conceive an enquiry turned 
 in the same direction as art, which would take for its 
 object life in general. . . . Certainly this philosophy 
 will never obtain a knowledge of its object comparable 
 to that which science gains of the material world. 
 Intelligence remains the luminous nucleus round which 
 instinct, even when amplified and purified into intuition, 
 forms only a vague nebulosity." x The task of philo- 
 sophy is to develop this faculty by successive efforts. 
 The philosopher who is to contribute anything to our 
 knowledge of life must use this method. He must 
 break the spell of matter, resist its hypnotizing power, 
 withdraw within himself, feel himself living, and by acts 
 of sympathetic insight, gain fleeting visions of the 
 internal movements of the universe. 
 
 We are now in a position to examine more closely 
 the nature of the intuitive method. One point must be 
 insisted upon. Bergson has no desire to oppose intelli- 
 gence to intuition with a view to the disparagement of 
 the former faculty. In fact, he claims to rid know- 
 ledge acquired by intelligence of the relativism with 
 which it has again and again been charged. He has 
 no desire, at any rate, to encourage intellectual scepti- 
 cism. Intelligence does tend to give us a knowledge 
 of absolute reality, but its range is limited. Intelligence 
 and intuition are complementary the one of the other, 
 when each is confined to its own sphere. It is true 
 that they move in directions the inverse of each other, 
 but reality displays just such opposing movements, and, 
 so long as intelligence is content to confine itself to 
 following the movement towards materiality, its know- 
 ledge, though incomplete, is not relative. In fact, as 
 we have already noted, Bergson wishes to break down 
 the barrier raised by Kant between " phenomenal " and 
 1 E.C. p. 192 (Eng. Tr. p. 186).
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 21 
 
 " metaphysical " knowledge ; his aim is to bring about 
 an agreement between science and metaphysic without 
 compromising either. " The realities of ' metaphysical ' 
 order are not," he says, " transcendent to the world of 
 1 phenomena.' They are internal to the phenomenal 
 life {i.e. the physiological or organic life), although 
 limited by it." : Kant had illegitimately introduced an 
 extra-intellectual element into his explanation of know- 
 ledge. As extra-intellectual, it was unknowable in 
 itself. Now Bergson holds that reality may be extra- 
 intellectual, that is to say, either infra-conceptual or 
 supra-conceptual, and yet knowable. We may instal 
 ourselves in this extra-intellectual real by an effort of 
 intuition. If this be possible, metaphysic and science, 
 though still two opposed ways of knowing, will be 
 complementary of each other. The one will be increas- 
 ingly dominated by the law of identity ; it will proceed 
 by means of concepts, in which space is always imma- 
 nent ; it will involve a distinction between the knower 
 and the known. The other will be dynamic, by 
 immediate intuition, in which the distinction between 
 the knower and the known is removed or has not yet 
 emerged ; in which the act of knowledge coincides with 
 the generative act of reality. " Science and metaphysic 
 are re-united in the intuition. A truly intuitive philo- 
 sophy would realize this so much desired union. At 
 the same time as it constituted metaphysic a positive 
 {i.e. progressive and indefinitely perfectible) science, it 
 would lead the sciences specifically called positive to 
 become aware of their true range, which is often greater 
 than scientists themselves imagine." 2 
 
 It is just here that Bergson disclaims all alliance 
 with or kinship to the mystics in their reaction against 
 
 1 " Le parallelisme psycho-physique et la Meta. positive," p. 63. 
 2 1.M. pp. 71-2.
 
 22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 positive science. " The doctrine which I hold," he 
 says, " is throughout a protest against mysticism, since 
 it proposes to reconstruct the bridge (broken since Kant) 
 between metaphysic and science." 1 Nevertheless, he 
 holds that if by mysticism one understands " a certain 
 appeal to the inner and profound life," his philosophy 
 is mystic, as all philosophy must needs be. But the 
 reality to which he rises or descends in his intuitive 
 efforts is not more abstract than that from which he 
 sets out. It is more concrete, and intelligible reality 
 is immanent in it. 
 
 Scientists sometimes rise above their method. In- 
 deed in every case of great scientific advance that is 
 just what happens. The fruitful ideas of science are 
 due to an intuitive metaphysical effort in which the 
 scientist or philosopher has, by a flash of genius, been 
 able to transport himself to the heart of reality, round 
 which he had hitherto been hovering, penetrate to its 
 depths, and like the poet " quaff the live current." At 
 that moment he transcends intelligence. Immediately, 
 however, the idea is immobilized in concepts, and the 
 attempt initiated to express the reality in fixed terms. 
 Every science has, ultimately, its basis of intuition, 
 which has been elaborated, in a sense degraded, by 
 dialectic or logical process, and the great aim of the 
 philosopher is to mount the slope down which science 
 has travelled in its immobilizing, that is, its jntelligizing 
 of the moving real, and by a violent reversal of the 
 procedure of science to instal himself once more in this 
 reality and feel the original impulsion at its source — an 
 extremely difficult operation, in which the mind " does 
 violence to itself," entirely reversing the manner in 
 which it habitually thinks. Divesting itself of all the 
 categories which are so many nets in which to imprison, 
 
 1 " Le parallelisme psycho-physique et la Meta. positive," p. 64.
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 23 
 
 immobilize, and intelligize living reality, it will see 
 reality, form, if any, " fluid " concepts which will differ 
 for each tendency or qualitative shade exhibited by 
 reality, and which will remain for ever inexpressible 
 in speech or image or fixed concept. It will thus 
 attain to disinterested, immediate knowledge — " im- 
 mediate " in the sense in which Bergson uses the 
 word in the title of his book, The Immediate Data of 
 Consciousness, that is, knowledge " emptied of all which 
 does not come from the object itself and, consequently, 
 infallible and perfect." 1 It is the perception of reality, "as 
 it would perceive itself if its apperception and its exist- 
 ence exactly coincided." It is consciousness illuminating 
 the throbbing heart of reality, but in no sense interfering 
 with or influencing it. With Wordsworth we feel 
 
 "A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 Science is this metaphysical intuition in logical dress. 
 Philosophy must remove the dress, lay bare the in- 
 tuition. 
 
 All knowledge, it may be admitted, implies a species 
 of " sympathetic insight." The scientist, for example, 
 seeks to tune himself as much as possible into harmony 
 with his object. He desires to eliminate, so far as he 
 can, the subjective factor. He approximates, as nearly 
 as is practicable, to a " mere " intelligence. Practical 
 considerations may have influenced him in the under- 
 
 1 " Vocabulaire philosophique" (Bull, de la Soc.fran. de Phil., Aoilt 1908), 
 P- 332.
 
 24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 taking of his task, a glow of enthusiasm appears again 
 and again as he finds nature yielding up her secrets to 
 him ; but these are sternly put out of mind in the 
 actual pursuit of his object, qua scientist. This sym- 
 pathy, however, is usually regarded as a condition, a 
 necessary presupposition, of insight. Insight is the 
 important thing when it is knowledge of the object that 
 is in question. Bergson appears to lay the greatest 
 stress on the effort of sympathy, the intellectual ex- 
 pansion which conditions the insight, the subjective 
 functioning which, accordingly as it is at a higher or 
 lower degree of tension, coincides with some one or 
 other of the rhythms of the reality in which we are 
 immersed. A first effort of dilatation or concentration 
 of the self is necessary for an insight into each different 
 qualitative tendency, or rhythm, of reality. This is 
 what Bergson means when he says that we must form 
 " fluid concepts, capable of following reality in all its 
 sinuosities." What he has in mind is the awareness of 
 the effort of expansion or tension necessary for sym- 
 pathy with one or other of the aspects of reality. In 
 this effort we ourselves are performing a pre-logical, if 
 not alogical, movement which has its counterpart, and 
 which we feel has its counterpart, in reality. Our act 
 of spirit coincides with the creative activity in the universe. 
 The intuition, then, is awareness of this activity of the 
 self, plus, necessarily, the awareness of something which 
 is not ourselves which has the same rhythm or move- 
 ment, the same degree of tension, the same perfection 
 of interpenetration of parts as we. Or more accurately, 
 perhaps, there is the feeling of a movement, originally in 
 the self, no longer, however, regarded as a movement of 
 the self, but simply as a real movement. The subjec- 
 tive factor has disappeared ; the distinction between 
 subject and object has vanished ; life, in that moment,
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 25 
 
 the life of the whole in one of its movements, is felt, as 
 it proceeds to new creation. 
 
 The position of Hegel is immediately suggested to 
 one's mind. He, in his Logic reaches the conception of 
 perfected knowledge as that in which the difference 
 between subject and object disappears. " If we suppose 
 cognition and volition, as finite activities, to have done 
 their work, then the matter, which at first has the 
 appearance of being extraneously received, will have 
 been thoroughly intelligized and reduced to law ; while 
 on the other hand, through volition, it will have become, 
 in all its parts, the vehicle or expression of rational 
 ends. In that case, it may be argued, the self-conscious 
 knower would recognise in the object nothing foreign, 
 but only, as it were, the realization of his own person- 
 ality." 1 But while for Hegel this ideal was capable of 
 realization through the perfect synthesis of intellectual 
 knowledge, for Bergson, though there is much in his 
 work which brings him into line with Hegel at this 
 point, the intuition is attainable only by undoing what 
 intelligence has performed. His thought, generally, 
 exhibits a closer affinity to that of Schopenhauer, who 
 says that all great scientific discoveries are works of 
 " immediate apprehension by the understanding." Each 
 one of them is " an immediate intuition and, as such, 
 the work of an instant, an apercu, a flash of insight. 
 It is not the result of a process of abstract reasoning, 
 which only serves to make the immediate knowledge of 
 the understanding permanent for thought by bringing 
 it under abstract concepts, that is, it makes knowledge 
 distinct, it puts us in a position to impart it and explain it 
 to others." 2 It may be noted, however, that while 
 
 1 Hegelianism and Personality (A. S. Pringle-Pattison), p. 99. 
 
 2 Die Welt ah Will una 1 Vorstcllnn^ (Schopenhauer, Trs. R. B. Haldane 
 and Kemp), pp. 26 and 27.
 
 26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Schopenhauer lays stress on the insight, Bergson 
 emphasizes, as we have seen, the sympathetic effort 
 which conditions the insight. Nevertheless, both are 
 equally emphatic in insisting that intuitive insight is not 
 gained by a synthesis or resume of conceptual know- 
 ledge ; nor is it achieved by perfecting such knowledge. 
 Bergson is never tired of reiterating that we can pass 
 from intuition to conceptual knowledge, but not from 
 conceptual knowledge to intuition. The metaphysical 
 intuition which is at the basis of every science, from 
 which, indeed, the science has arisen, must be released 
 from the trammels of concepts. The movement of 
 mind which was necessary in order that the scientific 
 genius might adopt the life of that which he studied 
 must be immediately grasped, for in that moment, he 
 was living the activity of his object. The intuition is 
 to be found, then, at the beginning, and not at the end, 
 of the process of scientific analysis. It constitutes the 
 basis of the science. Analysis, refraction, elimination 
 of the qualitative, begin when the genius himself and 
 the lesser men, his disciples, elaborate it in fixed 
 concepts. " The simple act which has set analysis in 
 motion, and dissimulates itself behind analysis, emanates 
 from a faculty quite other than that of analysis." 1 In 
 passages such as this, which are very numerous, the 
 underlying thought is that intelligence is bare identity. 
 There is, however, a sense in which the intuition may 
 be said to be arrived at after analysis. " One does not 
 obtain from reality an intuition, that is, an intellectual 
 sympathy with its more secret parts, unless its confi- 
 dence has been gained by a long comradeship with its 
 superficial manifestations." 2 But Bergson does not 
 admit, in this metaphor, that we have just to continue 
 the processes of logical synthesis, in order to gain an 
 
 W.Af. "Ibid.
 
 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 27 
 
 intuition. Such an admission would certainly clash 
 with the principle that intelligence is identity. But 
 Bergson proceeds to say : " It is a question of disengag- 
 ing the raw materiality of the known facts," and this is 
 not possible except by an expansion of mind akin to 
 that of the mind of the scientific genius who laid the 
 foundation of the science. " The metaphysical intuition, 
 although one can reach it only by means of material 
 knowledge, is quite different from the resume or syn- 
 thesis of such knowledge." l 
 
 The movement of mind which Bergson calls intuition 
 is an activity prior to or subsequent to what is usually 
 called knowledge. From one point of view it is that 
 out of which knowledge comes, from another point of 
 view it is that into which knowledge goes. In either 
 case knowledge, in the ordinary sense, vanishes. Meta- 
 physical knowledge consists in a series of actions, in 
 which we live the life of the universe in its various 
 rhythms. We are for the instant that which we know. 
 Conceptual representations are the outcome of our 
 attempt to translate this life in fixed symbols. The 
 psychical activity which is apprehended in metaphysical 
 knowledge is the ultimate subject of all predication, but 
 every predication made of it is symbolic. It is itself 
 simple and indivisible. 
 
 Finally, you do not exhaust the nature of reality in 
 one single effort of intuition. You do not, like the 
 mystic in his highest flight of ecstasy, gain in one flash 
 of insight " the eternal wisdom which abides above all." 
 In each effort of intuition the philosopher sympathizes 
 with reality in only one of its rhythms. Then meta- 
 physic becomes a progressive science, empirical and 
 positive, not completed by any one thinker, however 
 great his genius or untiring his labour. The effort 
 
 1 1.M.
 
 28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 demanded is extremely difficult, and it cannot be sus- 
 tained for more than an instant, but it " nevertheless 
 pierces the obscurity of the night in which intelligence 
 leaves us " with regard to the subjects which have 
 supremely vital importance for us, our personality, our 
 freedom, our origin, and our destiny. When it has 
 been achieved it is impossible to express it fully in con- 
 cepts or in words, or even to express it at all. Any 
 attempt to do so will result in eviscerating it of some of 
 its meaning. Thus in Bergson's pages we shall find 
 images piled upon images, metaphors innumerable, all 
 the resources of a charmingly flexible literary style and 
 a vivid, fertile imagination brought into requisition. 
 Edward Caird wrote of Plotinus : " The inmost experi- 
 ence of our being is an experience which can never be 
 uttered. To this difficulty Plotinus returns again and 
 again, from new points of view, as if driven by the 
 presence of a consciousness which masters him, which, 
 by its very nature, can never get itself uttered, but 
 which he cannot help striving to utter. He pursues it 
 with all the weapons of a subtle dialectic, endeavouring 
 to find some distinction which will fix it for his readers, 
 and he is endlessly fertile in metaphors and symbols by 
 which he seeks to flash some new light upon it. Yet in 
 all this struggle and almost agony of his expression he 
 is well aware that he can never find the last conclusive 
 word for it, and he has to fall back on the thought that 
 it is unspeakable, and that his words can only stimulate 
 the hearer to make the experience for himself." * Sub- 
 stitute the name of Bergson for that of Plotinus in this 
 deliverance, and we have an accurate description of his 
 brilliant, untiring, yet futile efforts to limn for his 
 readers the nature of the intuition. 
 
 1 Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (Ed. Caird), Vol. ii. 
 p. 226.
 
 PART I 
 EXPOSITION
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE INTUITION OF PURE DURATION IN THE 
 LIFE OF THE SELF AND ITS SPATIALIZA- 
 TION IN THE INTELLIGENT CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 BERGSON'S first application of his method is of supreme 
 importance, for it is scarcely saying too much to affirm 
 that all his later productions simply develop thoughts 
 which are contained in germ in the arguments and 
 efforts of imagination by which he seeks to arrive at an 
 intuition of the fundamental psychical life of the self. 
 Further, in the fulfilment of his task here he follows 
 a course of procedure which is frequently repeated 
 throughout his philosophy. He takes a well-defined 
 philosophic concept which has been formulated by the 
 traditional philosophy, developed hitherto by men who 
 were primarily mathematicians; he subjects this concept 
 to a searching critical analysis, and gradually, under his 
 skilful touch, we see the sharp contours disappear, and 
 the concept lose itself in a " fugitive and fluent " reality. 
 With the melting away of the clearly-defined concept 
 the antinomies which its introduction into speculative 
 thinking has brought about vanish too ; for immediate 
 intuition, in which reality is grasped as it is for itself, 
 carries us beyond that level on which alone concepts 
 have any right to exist. Consequently the antinomies 
 are resolved, for the problem, growing as it does out
 
 32 TIME AS CONCEIVED IN MECHANICS 
 
 of the concept, loses all meaning when the concept 
 disappears. 
 
 The concept which is first submitted to this process 
 of analysis is that of time. The negative result reached 
 is that time is not a conception which can stand alone. 
 It is fundamentally identical with space, and though it is 
 differentiated from space, that differentiation is capable 
 of explanation. The positive outcome of the discussion 
 is that something psychical, which Bergson terms dura- 
 tion, is substituted for time as it is represented in the 
 concept under investigation. 
 
 The concept of time with which Bergson is here 
 dealing is that which is to be found in mathematics 
 and the mechanical sciences. It has been thus described 
 by Newton : " Absolute, true, and mathematical time, 
 in itself, and from its own nature, flows equally, without 
 relation to anything external. The flow of absolute 
 time cannot change. . . . Duration . . . remains the same, 
 whether motions are swift or slow or none at all." Time 
 is conceived as infinite, homogeneous, of one dimension, 
 continuous and irreversible. Bergson lays particular 
 stress upon its homogeneity and its continuity. It is an 
 empty, qualityless or indifferent, homogeneous medium 
 in which points are distinguished as " now " and " hot- 
 now," as successive, or as first, second, third, etc., and 
 this homogeneous medium is distinguished from space, 
 another qualityless, infinite, and infinitely divisible 
 medium, homogeneous in all its parts, in which points 
 are distinguished as " here " and " not-here," as simul- 
 taneous, or as co-existing in one moment of time. 
 
 Is time, as conceived in mechanics, essentially 
 different from the conception of homogeneous space? 
 Bergson thinks that it is not. He ranges himself 
 alongside those philosophers who have held that the 
 idea of number presupposes the intuition of space.
 
 TIME AND SPACE 33 
 
 The idea of number, he argues, even of abstract 
 number, implies the simple intuition of a multiplicity of 
 parts or units exactly similar to each other, and yet 
 distinct from each other. These must all, at first, 
 be grasped as side by side, and then, by a synthesizing 
 act of mind, added together. It is in space that this 
 juxtaposition of units takes place. All explicit count- 
 ing, presumably whether it be numeral or ordinal, 
 involves the holding of a number of exactly similar 
 units in one moment, in a " now," before the mind — i.e. 
 it involves the idea of space. But time, as it is re- 
 presented by the reflective consciousness, is a medium 
 in which events, and more particularly our conscious 
 states, form a discrete series which admits of being 
 counted. Consequently, if the presupposition from 
 which Bergson sets out be correct, that is, if the 
 possibility of counting rests upon an intuition of space, 
 either time as represented in mathematics and the 
 mathematical sciences is fundamentally identical with 
 space, or it must be admitted that there are two forms 
 of homogeneous medium which can yet be distinguished 
 from each other — one medium in which the numerable 
 contents are regarded as co-existing, and a second, in 
 which the contents are regarded as following one another. 
 Since homogeneity means for Bergson " the absence of 
 every quality," it follows that the second alternative must 
 be rejected, and we are forced to the conclusion that time 
 and space, in so far as they are homogeneous, must be 
 regarded as identical. If this be so, then one of these 
 conceived media must be derived from the other. 
 Either time is space with an addition introduced from 
 some other quarter, or space is simply time with an 
 element omitted. Possibly these alternatives are not 
 mutually exclusive. 
 
 Mill, Bain, and others sought to derive the idea of 
 
 c
 
 34 CONCEPTION OF SPACE 
 
 infinite space from the experience of series of motor 
 sensations in time. Bergson clearly exposes the 
 futility of such an attempt, and he boldly propounds 
 the inverse theory that the concept of time which 
 appears in mechanics has as its fundamental basis the 
 idea of space. " Now," he says, " (mutual) 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 homo- 
 geneous, viz. time and space, is derived from the other, 
 we can surmise, a priori, that the idea of space is the 
 fundamental datum." l However, upon such a vital 
 question more certainty is required than that which is 
 afforded by an a priori surmise. If time is an impure 
 concept, one element of which is space, and the other 
 an element introduced from another part of our ex- 
 perience, the source of this intrusive factor must be 
 clearly shown, and the fact of its mingling with the 
 pure concept adequately accounted for. Even in 
 mechanics, although the homogeneity of mathematical 
 space and mathematical time is not only admitted, but 
 also maintained, these two conceptions are distinguished 
 from one another, and if such distinction is asserted 
 to be erroneous and groundless, the assertion must receive 
 full and complete substantiation. Bergson is prepared 
 to meet this demand. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance for the understanding 
 of Bergson's philosophy to grasp the implications con- 
 tained in the immediately subsequent line of thought. 
 Put very simply, his argument concerning the relation 
 between the conception of time and that of space 
 involves the supposition that the only valid conceptions 
 l Essai, p. 75 ; (Eng. Tr. p. 99).
 
 MEASUREMENT OF TIME 35 
 
 are quantitative. Since time, quantitatively conceived, 
 is identical with the conception of space, no peculiar 
 conception of time is possible. That is to say, intelli- 
 gence is capable, fundamentally, only of quantitative or 
 mechanical conceptions ; and if a non-quantitative or 
 non-mechanical reality is to be apprehended, that can be 
 accomplished only by a faculty other than intelligence. 
 This is the key to Bergson's philosophy. 
 
 He does not encounter great difficulty in showing 
 that any attempt to measure time quantitatively in- 
 volves the discarding of the succession which is 
 specifically its time aspect, and the consequent pro- 
 jection of time into space, in which the contents cease 
 to present themselves as successive, and are appre- 
 hended simply as co-existing. Any quantitative 
 measurement of time must be indirect, for all mea- 
 surement of this kind is possible only if two points, 
 originally a " before " and an " after," are held simul- 
 taneously before the mind. It is clear that they are 
 then no longer apprehended as " before " and " after," 
 but as co-existent — i.e. they are spatially conceived. 
 Bergson, at this stage in his thought, appears to regard 
 the material world as a reality which, in so far as 
 material, exists in a present which is ever renewed, 
 as identical, in fact, with Descartes' res extensa. Con- 
 sequently, any direct knowledge of it to which we may 
 attain will consist in the apprehension of co-existing, 
 mutually external objects. Quantitative measurement 
 is directly applicable to this spatial reality alone. 
 Further, if experience were confined most stringently 
 to knowledge of such a static, indifferent space, it is 
 difficult indeed to see how the knowledge of succession, 
 the differentiating characteristic of time, would ever 
 arise, and, therefore, how the idea of time itself could 
 possibly enter into experience. Our knowledge, if we
 
 36 SUCCESSION AND DURATION 
 
 had any, would be exhausted in a series of quantitative 
 conceptions, the basis of all being the conception of 
 space. The conclusion to which this points is that, if a 
 notion of time in which the idea of succession is an 
 essential element does form part of our experience, that 
 element must have been acquired in some other depart- 
 ment of experience than in our perception of the 
 external world which exists in an everlasting now. 
 
 If the conception of time as a homogeneous medium 
 which can be differentiated from space is an impure 
 one ; if it issues from the incursion of an entirely 
 foreign reality into space, or, conversely, from the 
 intrusion of space into this reality, then the question 
 at once arises — In what direction are we to seek this 
 entirely non-spatial reality ? Bergson's unhesitating 
 reply is that the inner psychical life alone will furnish 
 the type of such a reality. The nature and progress of 
 time are revealed, if anywhere, in the ambulations of the 
 purely spiritual force which lies at the heart of all life. 
 Can this force enter within the bounds of knowledge ? 
 
 Bergson's contention is that it can be grasped, 
 though by neither psychological investigation nor 
 philosophic reflection. The chief method of the 
 empirical psychologist is that of introspection. All 
 introspection, however, is retrospective. This old ob- 
 jection assumes a new aspect in Bergson's formulation 
 of it. He does not argue that because introspection 
 is, and must be, retrospective, a psychology of the self 
 is therefore impossible. Psychology has its own 
 domain, and its conclusions are to be accepted as 
 true and valuable within that domain. Psychology of 
 introspection is possible, because the self does not live 
 a continuously free life. As it is obstructed by matter, 
 it is forced repeatedly to cease its forward progress 
 and literally reflect upon itself. The full significance of
 
 ANALYSIS OF DURATION 37 
 
 this position cannot be grasped until the nature of the 
 deeper self has been adequately set forth. Let a very 
 general statement suffice for the present. Bergson 
 makes a radical distinction between what we might 
 call the empirical or psychological personality of indi- 
 vidual men and the metaphysical reality which is the 
 spiritual basis of all conscious life, but which is itself 
 super-personal. A similar distinction will be found in 
 Hermann Graf von Keyserling's recent work, Unster- 
 blichkeit. In our most fundamental nature we are not 
 identical with our " personality," but with a supra- 
 individual synthesis, which is the basis of the moral 
 consciousness. The empirical, and even the reflective, 
 personality is a means to an end, and a means which 
 disappears when the end is achieved. Bergson's theory 
 is that this supra-individual psychical reality has, in its 
 opposition to matter, organized a body, that the body 
 so organized reacts upon the constructing force, and 
 that an individual, empirical, reflective personality is 
 produced through this interaction — a personality which 
 owes its origin to a partial materialization of spirit in 
 the interests of biological and sociological utility. The 
 psychology of introspection has as its subject-matter 
 the " states " of the reflective or (what is, for Bergson, 
 the same thing) spatialized self. There is such a self, 
 and empirical psychology has an important task in 
 investigating and classifying its aspects. But when 
 this science steps beyond its limits and claims to be 
 able exhaustively to represent the nature of the pro- 
 gressive, " living " self, its pretended explanations are 
 illusory. It seeks to reconstruct a living force, that 
 living force which carries the self to decision after 
 decision, by means of states which are more or less 
 the negation of it, an attempt which is doomed to 
 failure from the outset.
 
 38 DURATION AND REFLECTION 
 
 In the second place, the reality of which Bergson 
 is in pursuit evades all attempts to imprison it in 
 any one or in all of the concepts which reflection may 
 summon to its aid. Reflective knowledge can be 
 purchased only at the cost of a greater or less in- 
 terruption of the central energizing of the innermost 
 self, so that in the very effort which he makes to 
 grasp his inner life the reflective philosopher actually 
 destroys that which he seeks to know. It is con- 
 sequently with the interrupted, spatialized self that 
 reflection is condemned to deal. All the categories, 
 or fundamental principles of knowledge, which Kant 
 and those who have developed his method have laid 
 bare, have to do with this spatialized self. They 
 entirely fail to give any insight into the nature of the 
 soul as a living, choosing, progressing, creative reality. 
 They are arrived at by a dissecting process which 
 murders in the very act of dissection. 
 
 The most important feature of the era of modern 
 philosophy initiated by Descartes is the use of the 
 principle of self-consciousness in all attempts at philo- 
 sophic construction. But it has recently been questioned 
 in many quarters whether, by the emphasis which he 
 laid on the cogito of his principle, Descartes has not 
 caused the mere thinking aspect of self-consciousness 
 to assume undue prominence in the minds of modern 
 philosophers. The demand has, indeed, been made 
 that the activity of the subject, or, rather, the im- 
 mediate, indubitable awareness of that activity, should 
 be recognized as the ultimate starting-point. In the 
 great majority of cases, however, those who make this 
 demand are content to take the activity of thought — 
 rational thought — as a basis from which to construct, 
 and they have emphasized the value of reflection as 
 a means of revealing the nature of that activity.
 
 DURATION AND INTUITION 39 
 
 Bergson, however, goes much further. An immediate 
 grasp of the activity of intelligence or reason and 
 its reflective representation will not meet his demands. 
 He desires to show the driving or motor power which 
 makes any activity possible and real, — that which 
 makes reality go, the inner urgency which impels 
 us forward, which uses intelligence as a means towards 
 fuller, less restricted life. He is not thinking of Lotze's 
 " unconscious psychical mechanism," not of the passage 
 of mind from premisses to conclusion, or from particular 
 fact to general law. However paradoxical it may 
 sound, Bergson argues that these processes of deduction 
 and induction, far from constituting the fundamental 
 activity of the self, are due to a temporary interruption 
 or negation of that activity. The activity which he 
 has in view lies beyond the reach of intellect, for 
 intellect is but a means which it uses for its ends. 
 Intuition alone can unlock its secrets. 
 
 By an effort of deep introspection, an act of violent 
 abstraction, in which thought, as that process is usually 
 understood, is transcended, we must live our innermost 
 life, and feel ourselves doing so. It is only in the 
 rare and critical moments of free decision that our 
 soul achieves its truly spiritual activity, and it is con- 
 sequently only at such moments that opportunities for 
 the application to the self of the method of intuition 
 arise. Even when such opportunities occur, it is not 
 everyone who can perform the act of deep intro- 
 spection necessary for the apprehension of this almost 
 intangible, fleeting reality. A long period of special 
 training must first be undergone if consciousness is to 
 assume the " unique and well-determined attitude " 
 which it must adopt if it is "to appear to itself without 
 a veil." This attitude is one of extreme abstraction 
 from all that is external to the spirit itself, of attention
 
 40 INTENSITY OF STATES 
 
 concentrated inwards. Further, " the definite effort 
 of distinct intuition in which we apprehend the 
 ' ego ' would be impossible to any one who had not 
 arranged and combined or fused together a very great 
 number of psychological analyses." 
 
 When one succeeds in making this descent into one's 
 own psychical life, one finds that the boundaries of 
 " states " gradually melt away, the multiplicity of 
 definitely outlined feelings, volitions, images becomes 
 less definite, less a multiplicity. An examination of 
 the idea of intensity of mental states leads to the 
 conclusion that such intensity cannot be measured in 
 terms of quantity. It is not denied that the term is 
 applicable to these states, but it is contended that to 
 speak of one psychical state as more intense than 
 another, in any quantitative way, is erroneous. The 
 thesis is presented, and supported, that the changes 
 which take place in individual or isolated states of 
 mind, as well as those which occur in the concrete 
 multiplicity of mental life, are qualitative. The per- 
 ception of the intensity of those states which appear to 
 be self-sufficient, i.e. those which do not demand 
 attention to any external object, consists in the " larger 
 or smaller number of simple psychic phenomena which 
 we conjecture to be involved in the fundamental state ; 
 it is a confused perception " — the feeling of a multiplicity 
 of elements, confusedly distinguished. The perception 
 of the intensity of those states which represent an 
 external cause, as, e.g., sensations considered in their 
 cognitive aspect, consists in " a certain estimate of the 
 magnitude of the cause by means of a certain quality 
 in the effect — it is, as the Scottish philosophers say, an 
 acquired perception." This preliminary investigation 
 prepares the way for the comprehension of the nature 
 of the ego as it presents itself in intuition. There is
 
 TWO KINDS OF MULTIPLICITY 41 
 
 here foreshadowed the idea of a multiplicity of elements 
 which are yet not a multiplicity, in the ordinary sense 
 of the word. The multiplicity is, rather, an inferred 
 one : what is directly perceived is a mass which is felt 
 to change qualitatively. As the philosopher withdraws 
 into the depths of his own mind he becomes aware that 
 the states which, as a psychologist, he had isolated, 
 lose their appearance of disconnectedness, and inter- 
 penetrate, like the different members of an organism. 
 When he feels the inner activity on occasion of a free 
 decision, the interpenetration is complete. There is no 
 longer a multiplicity of juxtaposed states ; there is, 
 rather, a growing organism, in which all the tendencies 
 are perfectly unified in a forward movement. The 
 spiritual content or substance is seen to be a confused 
 multiplicity of tendencies, a fluid mass of memories and 
 feelings integrated by a conative elan. These ten- 
 dencies are such that any one of them represents 
 the whole personality. They suggest the thought of 
 the monads of Leibnitz, but they are never fixed — they 
 are pure fluidity and mobility. They are much more 
 supple than images. Always on the point of being 
 realized in a clearly-defined image, they yet remain 
 completely distinct from this image. They cannot be 
 said to constitute a multiplicity in the sense in which 
 distinctly outlined, isolated, persisting, material objects 
 are numerable ; the mass " contains number only 
 potentially." In an organism, for example, there is a 
 potential multiplicity of parts, but qua organism this is 
 a multiplicity in unity, and from this higher point of 
 view the idea of space necessary for counting is not 
 applicable at all to the organism. Similarly, the 
 continuous life of a person approximates to such a 
 multiplicity in unity. The life passes progressively 
 through various phases, but these are all phases of a
 
 42 QUALITATIVE INTENSITY 
 
 conatively unified whole. They may be counted 
 symbolically by the introduction of space into a non- 
 spatial reality. The progress of the innermost spiritual 
 life is the most perfect example of such a potential 
 multiplicity. Here consciousness immediately detects 
 changes, makes qualitative discriminations, without any 
 further thought of counting the changes or qualities. It 
 feels these differences, but the basis of comparison, so 
 to speak, is qualitative rather than spatial. The 
 difference is not between a " here " and a " not-here." 
 It is the qualitative change of a " this " becoming 
 something else. It is a felt difference, and the aware- 
 ness of it does not go beyond the stage of feeling. It 
 is necessary to bear in mind that the philosopher is 
 supposed to have transcended here the stage of thought 
 at which the living personality is conceived as a ration- 
 ally conative synthesis, the nature of which emerges 
 through reflection. Synthetic unity of apperception, 
 principle of consciousness, unity, one in many — each of 
 these and all together are left behind as merely 
 provisional, symbolic, practical, and utterly inadequate 
 reconstructions of the reality, reconstructions based 
 upon an inexhaustive and inexhaustible series of 
 ineffectual turnings about a reality whose nature can be 
 grasped only by entering into it, — a reality which " over- 
 flows and surrounds " all the concepts of logic. Indeed, 
 instead of helping us to an insight into the nature of the 
 spiritual life, these reflective constructions, in James' 
 phrase, " negate the inwardness of reality altogether " ; 
 they have no point of contact with "the inner doing" 
 of the self, which, when we enter into it and feel its 
 life, " buds and bourgeons, changes and creates." There 
 is nothing quantitative or spatial in it, consequently it 
 lies entirely beyond the grasp of intelligence. 
 
 Further consideration of the inter-penetrating
 
 CONTENT OF SPIRIT 43 
 
 tendencies which are fused together in this spiritual 
 content may throw some light upon its nature. They 
 are termed in another connection " pure memories," and, 
 in a third, " ideas." They are the epitomized form in 
 which all our past experiences, all that we have thought, 
 willed, and felt, exist in the depths of memory, and are 
 carried forward to meet and mingle with the fresh 
 experiences which arise. These pure memories are not, 
 according to Bergson, hypothetical constructions which 
 are arrived at by thinking away the permanent 
 characteristics of images so completely that the 
 characteristic of change alone remains. They fall 
 within the bounds of experience. In an essay entitled 
 L Effort Intellectuel, Bergson attempts to show that it is 
 possible to enter into the psychical life prior to its 
 direction towards external action, to instal oneself in 
 the " pure " memory, and pass thence, step by step, to 
 the precipitation of this " pure " memory into images, 
 and to its subsequent externalization in action. In this 
 intimate experience the " pure " memory is really 
 perceived as an existence, " fleeting, it is true, the 
 essential characteristic of which is that it cannot be 
 fixed under the regard of consciousness nor translated 
 into definite and precise terms, for it is pure fluidity 
 and mobility." But the very isolation, for a passing 
 glance, of one of these tendencies, implies an in- 
 cipient spatialization, and in the free decision, when 
 the spirit lives its unhindered life, these tendencies have 
 all so penetrated that there is not any consciousness of 
 this or that tendency, but a feeling of pure becoming in 
 which all the tendencies have merged into one another 
 in one great impulsion towards the creation of some- 
 thing absolutely new. 
 
 Whenever spirit comes to its own such unification of 
 tendencies occurs, and the present which is generated
 
 44 SPIRITUAL EXISTENCE 
 
 from the whole of the past inherits it all, while at the 
 same time something entirely new is elaborated. It is 
 just this pushing of the past into the present which 
 constitutes the continuity of the life of the inner self. 
 The past exists in the present, but, in virtue of its very 
 existence there, it is no longer what it was. This is the 
 extreme antithesis of a mechanical view of reality, 
 according to which the past and the future should be 
 explainable in terms of the present. In the process 
 of maturation which constitutes the spiritual life nothing 
 ever repeats itself. The past which is carried on into 
 the future was something; it is something else; no 
 element persists identical throughout. Spiritual life 
 means growth, evolution, change; all homogeneity 
 vanishes; a series of absolutely heterogeneous moments 
 remains. Yet there is a lived continuity of this inner 
 life, similar to that of a growing organism. Even when 
 one lives the life of reflection there is still a central 
 core, so to speak, or an undercurrent of this purely 
 spiritual life, although parts have dropped off and 
 become materialized into images. So the living con- 
 tinuity is preserved, and the intuition is the immediate 
 awareness of this act of continuing. 
 
 Since for this spiritual reality existence is identical 
 with growth, continuous elaboration of something not 
 partially but entirely new, it follows that its future is 
 wholly imprevisible. The possibility of prediction lies 
 in the actual persistence in time of identical elements, 
 in the fact of homogeneity. For example, the law of 
 causation has a practical value in enabling us to predict 
 the future only if certain conditions do recur. In the 
 material world this possibility is realized, for the 
 existence of matter, in so far at any rate as it is spatial, 
 means here an ever renewed creation of the present; 
 hence the future is essentially previsible. But in pure
 
 TIME AND SPIRIT 45 
 
 spirit there is an entire absence of homogeneity. Here 
 there can be only seeing, which, further, is coincident 
 with living. Consequently, to entertain the possibility 
 of foreseeing here is to contemplate the possibility of 
 living before we live — a sufficient reductio ad absurdum. 
 
 To sum up : pure spirit reveals itself in immediate 
 knowledge as non-spatial, as entirely disparate from a 
 reality to which number is applicable, and as devoid of 
 all homogeneity. In the fundamental psychical life 
 there is a constant accumulation of the past conserved 
 in memory ; the volume of the self — one cannot avoid 
 metaphors here — grows, and we have a feeling sai 
 generis, the feeling of a " larger," richer experience, 
 the feeling of the greater weight, so to speak, which 
 memory carries. This feeling may subsequently be 
 interpreted as the feeling of an increased multiplicity 
 of " states," but this is a spatialized interpretation of 
 a fact grasped in its true reality by immediate con- 
 sciousness. We feel directly growth, organic growth, 
 and the idea of multiplicity would never arise in a 
 consciousness which merely felt itself live the inner 
 life. 
 
 Now, it may readily be admitted that our conception 
 of time grows out of the immediate awareness of our 
 own conscious growth, whether, with Bergson, it be 
 contended that the spiritual life is a supra-rational 
 one, or whether the extremely opposite position be 
 assumed that the progress of the mental life is the 
 development of pure reason. It may be granted that 
 a being devoid of memory would have no conception 
 of time, for he would be confined to a " now " ever- 
 renewed, and awareness of " now " alone does not 
 imply consciousness of time. The awareness of 
 spiritual growth may be the germ out of which con- 
 sciousness of time develops. Finally, it must be
 
 46 IMPURE CONCEPTION OF TIME 
 
 admitted that a, indeed the, fundamental feature of 
 time is that when in a time series one " is," all 
 others are not. Either they, as such, exist no longer, 
 or they are not yet. The peculiar characteristic of 
 Bergson's position, however, is that he identifies time 
 with this spiritual growth. It is " pure duration." To 
 a person ignorant of space the feeling of evolving 
 experience would be the feeling of pure time. On 
 such a view time becomes identical with spiritual 
 existence. It is the very "stuff" of life. It is "the 
 continuous progress of the past, gnawing at the 
 future, and increasing in bulk as it advances." This 
 same sentence describes the existence of spirit. 
 
 It is now possible to see how the impure conception 
 which passes for the conception of time has arisen. A 
 consciousness which maintained itself ever intent on its 
 own internal activity would experience only the pure 
 qualitative succession of duration. Now, although the 
 needs of physiological and social life make this im- 
 possible, and although even a fleeting glimpse of the 
 inner life involves a violent effort of abstraction, 
 Bergson's theory demands the presupposition that every 
 mind which arrives at the ordinary conception of time 
 has at least a vague awareness of this pure duration, 
 for the conception of time which he is combating is, 
 I think he would hold, a universal possession of the 
 reflective consciousness, and develops independently 
 within each individual mind. But in addition to this 
 vague awareness of pure " succession without mutual 
 externality," the individual mind must be supposed to 
 be in possession of the idea of space, in which there 
 is " mutual externality of parts without succession," or 
 simultaneity of parts which do not succeed each other. 
 " Here " or " there," isolated points or parts, are simul- 
 taneously present in a " now."
 
 CAUSE OF IMPURITY 47 
 
 The impure conception of time which all minds 
 possess is due to an intermingling of these two extremes. 
 A set of simultaneities, points, or parts, is " contempo- 
 raneous " with each " heterogeneous moment " of con- 
 sciousness ; each of these sets is conserved in memory. 
 Next, they are placed side by side as distinct sets, 
 which yet are regarded as constituting a series — i.e. they 
 are endowed with an imaginary succession, succession in 
 general, which is borrowed from the awareness which 
 the mind has of its own inner movement or duration. 
 The " successive " element, then, in homogeneous time, 
 considered as a medium in which distinct external 
 events occur as a series, is an impure element intro- 
 duced from pure spirit into pure space. In a parallel 
 way it may be argued that the static element in 
 homogeneous time, considered as a medium in which 
 distinct internal states occur as a series, is due to the 
 incursion of space into the domain of pure conscious- 
 ness. An illustration which Bergson uses may throw 
 some light on this ingenious theory of the vagaries of 
 our faculty of knowledge. When we observe the 
 oscillations of a pendulum, " as the successive phases of 
 our conscious life, although they penetrate one another, 
 correspond each to an oscillation of the pendulum which 
 occurs at the same time as it, and as, moreover, these 
 oscillations are sharply distinguished from one another, 
 we get into the habit of setting up the same distinction 
 between the successive moments of our conscious life. 
 The oscillations of the pendulum break it up, so to 
 speak, into parts external to one another ; hence the 
 mistaken idea of a homogeneous inner duration similar 
 to space, the moments of which are identical, and follow 
 without penetrating one another. But, on the other 
 hand, the oscillations of the pendulum, which are 
 distinct only because one has vanished when the other
 
 4 8 CLEAVAGE IN REALITY 
 
 appears, profit as it were from the influence which they 
 have thus exercised over our conscious life. Owing to 
 the fact that our consciousness has organized them as a 
 whole in memory, they are conserved, then disposed 
 in a series. In short, we create for them a fourth 
 dimension which we call homogeneous time, and which 
 permits the movement of the pendulum, although 
 taking place at one spot, to be indefinitely set in 
 juxtaposition to itself." 1 Time, then, as a concept of 
 the ordinary intelligence, and also as a concept of 
 physics, is a " mongrel " conception born of the unholy 
 union between pure duration and pure space. It bears 
 marks of resemblance to each. From pure duration it 
 has derived the characteristic of succession, and the 
 impress of space upon it is seen in its feature of 
 homogeneity. 
 
 The vital presupposition of this argument is that 
 there is an absolute cleavage in reality. The Cartesian 
 res extensa and Bergson's pure duration are set over 
 against each other as two forms of reality which have 
 nothing whatever in common. Within the external 
 world there is no real activity, change, or mobility ; 
 what we primarily perceive in that world is fixity, 
 immobility, simultaneity of parts. In pure duration, on 
 the contrary, there is nothing but real activity, change, 
 mobility ; the primary object of immediate apprehension 
 here is change, movement, pure succession. This is 
 Bergson's standpoint in his earliest work. It is openly 
 dualistic. Such a position, however, raises all the 
 difficulties which confronted Cartesian dualism, and in 
 the progress of Bergson's thought this radical cleavage 
 between the external and the internal world is super- 
 seded, dualism giving place to a species of spiritual 
 monism according to which reality and duration are 
 
 1 Essai, p. 83 (Eng. Tr. p. 109),
 
 TIME AND INTELLECT 49 
 
 identical, although there is a movement within reality 
 which prevents it from becoming pure duration, pure 
 spirit. In the individual mind this retarding move- 
 ment is reflection ; in the universe as a whole it is 
 materiality. The normal, unsophisticated individual 
 mind moves between pure intuition and pure intelli- 
 gence, and reality as a whole occupies a plane between 
 pure duration and pure matter. If that be so, the 
 supreme difficulty with which Bergson is faced consists 
 not so much in explaining the origin of the idea of 
 time, but in accounting for the universal prevalence 
 of the idea of space in reflective consciousness. Before 
 the process of osmosis can take place the idea of space 
 must be accounted for, but as Bergson's metaphysic of 
 reality develops, it becomes increasingly difficult to see 
 how the conception of space becomes a possession of 
 the mind at all. This difficulty will have to be con- 
 sidered at a later stage. It must be noted here, 
 however, because, probably under the stress of this 
 difficulty, Bergson ceases in his later productions to 
 refer to the strange theory just elaborated of the 
 filtering through of space into time, and connects the 
 development of the idea of homogeneous time more 
 directly with the utilitarian function of intelligence. 
 In this latter case he sets out with the postulate of 
 the continuous flow of reality in a manner similar to 
 the movement of our own inner psychical life. Reflective 
 consciousness, by means of memory, " solidifies into 
 sensible qualities " this continuous flow. Sensible 
 qualities, he says, as they are found in our perception 
 (combined, as it always is, with memory), are the 
 successive moments obtained by a solidification of the 
 real. But in order to distinguish these moments, and 
 also to bind them together by a thread which shall be 
 common alike to our existence and to that of things, 
 
 D
 
 50 SPATIALIZATION OF SPIRIT 
 
 we are impelled to imagine an abstract diagrammatic 
 representation of succession in general, a homogeneous 
 and indifferent medium which is to the flow of matter 
 in the sense of length what space is in the sense of 
 breadth. Herein consists homogeneous time. Accord- 
 ing to this explanation there is no need to appeal to 
 the idea of space for the homogeneous element in the 
 conception of time ; space and time develop contempo- 
 raneously within the reflective consciousness. On either 
 explanation, however, the concept of time has no know- 
 ledge value. In the one case it is an impure concept ; 
 in the other it is an illusion to which the intelligence 
 subjects itself in its activity devoted to practical ends — 
 it is a representation which we are " impelled to imagine!" 
 Real time is identical with the progress of spirit. 
 
 In the foregoing consideration of Bergson's theory of 
 the nature of time, in the course of which it has been 
 necessary to examine the structure of the inner self, the 
 fact has been more than once suggested that a clear 
 distinction is to be drawn between that inner self and 
 the personal or reflective consciousness. This distinc- 
 tion is full of significance, and its clear comprehension 
 is essential to the grasp of Bergson's metaphysic. When 
 it is argued that empirical psychology, and, more 
 generally, reflective thought, is incapable of coming to 
 grips with the living self, it must be borne in mind 
 what that means, and two possible misunderstandings 
 must be avoided. It does not imply that psychology 
 is, as the leaders of the present movement in Oxford 
 against that science contend, to be regarded as a pre- 
 tender, without title to rank amongst the sciences, nor 
 does it mean that the empirical self is a construction of 
 bad psychology ; for there actually is a self the nature 
 of which psychological analysis, together with reflection, 
 is quite capable of investigating. In other words, the
 
 BIOLOGICAL NEEDS 51 
 
 mechanizing and spatialization of spirit are not due, in 
 the first instance, to the fact that men in general have 
 constituted themselves reflective psychologists. It may 
 be, indeed, that the premeditated reflection of the psy- 
 chologist and the philosopher emphasize, ipso facto, this 
 spatialization, but natural retrospection and reflection 
 in the interest of action is the main cause of the precipi- 
 tation of inner duration into space, since the very act of 
 reflection involves an actual, not a theoretic, interruption 
 of the progress of that inner reality. Men are reflective 
 primarily in the interests of action. They may become 
 avowed psychologists from purely theoretical motives, 
 but as psychologists they merely carry further a method 
 which had its origin in the practical needs of existence, 
 and so they will, by pursuing this method, throw light 
 only on the processes of a self which is turned towards 
 action on matter, and by that very fact more or less 
 mechanized. Man is not pure spirit. He pursues his 
 existence in a spatial world, and the practical necessity 
 of finding his way about in his material environment 
 involves a compromise, temporary at least, between pure 
 spirit and complete mechanism. The normal mental 
 life which psychology and reflection investigate moves 
 between two extreme limits — pure spiritual freedom on 
 the one hand, sheer automatism on the other. This 
 fact cannot be over-emphasized. It is one of the anchor 
 thoughts of Bergson's metaphysic. It may be expressed 
 in another way by saying that life in the body brings 
 limitations to spirit. Our " thought," which is our very 
 substance, is obliged, in the interests of biological needs, 
 to externalize itself in action, and reflective conscious- 
 ness is an integral part of our present organic life only. 
 It arises when a partial spatialization of duration takes 
 place. 
 
 For the better understanding of this fundamental
 
 52 THE BODY AND THE SPIRIT 
 
 postulate, it is necessary to consider generally some 
 aspects of Bergson's thought which will require to be 
 dealt with in greater detail at a later stage. In the 
 first place, then, the body (and more particularly the 
 brain) has been organized by cosmic spirit as a means 
 by which it seeks to regain its free unhindered activity, 
 which has been interrupted by matter. Our present 
 life is " a gigantic effort of thought {i.e. spirit) to obtain 
 from matter something which matter does not wish to 
 yield to it. Matter is inert ; necessity is inherent in it ; 
 it proceeds mechanically. It seems as if thought seeks 
 to take advantage of this essential mechanism of matter, 
 and to utilize it for action, to convert thus into con- 
 tingent movements in space and into imprevisible events 
 in time all the creative energy which is present in it — 
 in so far at least as that energy is actable, and lends 
 itself to externalization. Cunningly and laboriously 
 spirit accumulates complication upon complication in 
 its attempt to transform necessity into freedom, and so 
 compose a matter so subtle, so mobile, that freedom is 
 enabled to hold itself in equilibrium by a veritable 
 physical paradox and by means of an effort which 
 could be sustained for a moment only on this mobility 
 itself." l This return of spirit to its own free life has 
 been achieved, partially at least, by the construction 
 of the human brain, which is a veritable " centre of 
 indetermination." In a quite unorganized material world 
 there would be perfect equilibrium, universal, automatic 
 and equal action and reaction of part with part. But 
 the human body occupies a privileged place in the 
 material world in that it is a kind of telephonic 
 " Central " in which movement is switched off along 
 certain chosen lines. By its means the necessity of 
 matter is broken through, and an increasing precision, 
 
 x Bulletin de la Soc. Fran, de Phil., Jan. 1901, pp. 55 and 56.
 
 CONSCIOUSNESS 53 
 
 variety, independence and efficaciousness secured for 
 the psychical force which is the cause of its organization. 
 This leads to the second consideration — viz. that 
 consciousness, discernment, is another means which 
 spirit uses in order to secure its own essential progress. 
 Spirit itself is supra-conscious, and matter, it may be 
 said, is infra-conscious. Consciousness is a feature of 
 the middle stage, and is conceived of as vanishing when 
 it has served its purpose in providing a free passage for 
 spiritual activity. In other words, activity is a higher 
 category than consciousness. Bergson thinks it neces- 
 sary, in any theory of perception, to assume the 
 existence of a material world which exists independently 
 of any individual percipient. The nature of this reality 
 is, he sometimes contends, to be apprehended as a com- 
 promise between Descartes' theory, according to which 
 matter is identified with geometrical extension, and 
 Berkeley's contention that esse est percipii, i.e. that matter 
 exists only within the mind. In the external world there 
 is throughout action and reaction of part on part, con- 
 sequently a distinction is necessary between matter and 
 absolutely static geometrical extension. Yet the creation 
 of something new forms no part of the existence of 
 matter. It simply acts its past, therefore it must be 
 differentiated from spirit, which issues at every moment 
 in the creation of something absolutely new. Now, 
 within this material reality spirit is immanent. An 
 impersonal, impotent, annulled, potential consciousness 
 is striving within matter itself. If that were not so, 
 matter would dissolve into space as all activity van- 
 ished from the material world. As it is, each " image " 
 or part of matter, like the monad of Leibnitz, has an 
 " unconscious " perception of all other images, since the 
 elements of all act and re-act mutually. " Nature 
 might be regarded as a neutralized, and consequently a
 
 54 CONSCIOUSNESS AND PERCEPTION 
 
 latent consciousness, a consciousness of which the 
 eventual manifestations hold each other reciprocally in 
 check, and annul one another precisely at the moment 
 when they might appear." 1 It is similar, that is to say, 
 to the consciousness of an automaton. This position 
 is intelligible only if we bear in mind that spirit, for 
 Bergson, is primarily activity. The conscious aspect is 
 not fundamental, the active aspect is. Not only so ; 
 all activity is spiritual. Consequently he feels war- 
 ranted in speaking of unconscious perception, meaning 
 by that an action. The fact that it is unconscious does 
 not preclude it from being fundamentally a spiritual 
 fact. While perception remains at the unconscious 
 stage, however, spirit is exactly balanced by matter 
 and is able only to maintain itself at equilibrium in 
 automatic and equal action and reaction. It cannot 
 pursue its fundamental activity, which is to break 
 through automatism and attain movement, spontaneous 
 and unforeseen. This, therefore, is possible only if 
 perception can become conscious perception. Such a 
 consummation is reached when, within the aggregate of 
 material images, one image is so cunningly organized 
 that the action received by it from other images does 
 not evoke on its part an automatic and immediate 
 reaction. Instead, certain actions received are reflected, 
 so to speak, upon their source, and the potential action 
 of the body upon this source is outlined there. Con- 
 temporaneously, consciousness awakes, and discerns this 
 outline of the eventual action of the body upon that 
 part of its material environment. The automatic 
 reaction which is a feature of the material world has 
 been, at a certain point, broken through. At the same 
 time, perception, hitherto unconscious, has become con- 
 scious. Consciousness has emerged in the interests of 
 1 M. et ill. p. 228 (Eng. Tr. p. 331).
 
 RATIONAL SELF A MEANS 55 
 
 the activity of spirit, which has to some extent overcome 
 the opposition of matter, in so far as it has constructed 
 a body, and more particularly a brain, which conditions 
 chosen activity. But if chosen activity is to become a 
 fact, the possibilities between which the choice lies must 
 be discerned^ i.e. consciousness must arise. 
 
 This consciousness, it is important to observe, is, at 
 the outset, strictly impersonal. Bergson speaks of the 
 aggregate of images as " posited to begin with. ' If it 
 be asked to whom or to what is this aggregate given, 
 no reply is forthcoming, except that it is given to an 
 impersonal consciousness. Indeed, the fact is emphasized 
 that " pure " perception is " impersonal," and that 
 ordinary perception consists mainly in grafting elements 
 derived from memory (and therefore personal), on to 
 this impersonal basis. Finally, Bergson holds that it is 
 not difficult to trace the process by which consciousness 
 passes from the impersonal to the personal form. 
 
 This brings us to a third consideration, viz. that 
 selves, individual personalities, are also means to the end 
 of supra-personal spirit. They too are constructions of 
 the middle state. Pure spirit is impersonal, or supra- 
 personal ; matter is likewise impersonal — infra- 
 personal, one might say. The ordinary reflective 
 conscious personality occupies a " mean " position. It 
 disappears, at one extreme, in a material reality, for 
 which existence means an ever- renewed present, and at 
 the other in a supra-human spiritual force, which lives 
 its own inherent life of continuous new creation. How, 
 then, does personalization take place ? We have seen 
 that a " pure " perception is the outline in matter of our 
 eventual action upon it. At the same time as this 
 practical discernment takes place, two other things 
 happen. In the first place, the perception is reflected 
 in memory. This reflection occurs simultaneously with
 
 56 IMPERSONAL SUBSTANCE 
 
 the perception, not subsequently to it. The reflected 
 image is thus caught up in the life of spirit, and is 
 dissolved into it, so that it no longer exists as a separate 
 image, but, as such, falls below the level of conscious- 
 ness. In the second place, contemporaneously with 
 the perception, a reaction on the part of the body 
 commences, a motor response which, in brainless animals, 
 is continued in automatic reaction, but which, in the 
 higher animals, and most particularly in man, is, or 
 may be, inhibited. This incipient but suppressed 
 reaction is an invariable accompaniment of perception. 
 Consciousness is aware of the nascent reaction of the 
 body, and aware of it as something very different from 
 the outline in matter of a possible action of the body 
 upon it. In the one case, what is perceived is merely 
 the outside, the contours, of an object — contours which 
 indicate the body's eventual action upon the object. 
 In the other case, real action— not external contours, 
 but inward, real movement — is perceived. That is to 
 say, there is one material image, the body, which is 
 apprehended in a way entirely different from that in 
 which all other images are perceived, for in sensation 
 consciousness is aware of internal cerebral movements 
 actually commenced. It is true that in developed 
 perception the sensations are translated into eventual 
 data of sight, touch, and muscular sense, and that when 
 the translation is made the original pales, but unless 
 the outlines of the object perceived had been traced out 
 in the original sensation, the translation would never 
 have taken place. Now, since these nascent movements 
 accompany all perception, it is plain that this image, dis- 
 cerned from within, and no longer from without, plays a 
 peculiar part in a certain group of variable perceptions. 
 It is a permanent and unique factor in that group 
 of images which interest its needs. Hence, Bergson
 
 PERSONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 57 
 
 argues, consciousness gradually attaches itself to it as a 
 centre. " It is led to do so precisely by experience 
 of the double faculty which this body possesses of 
 performing actions and feeling affections — in a word, by 
 experience of the sensori-motor power of a certain image 
 privileged above other images. For, on the one hand, 
 this image always occupies the centre of representation, 
 so that the other images range themselves round it in 
 the very order in which they might be subject to its 
 action. On the other hand, I know it from within 
 by sensations which I term affective, instead of knowing 
 only, as in the case of the other images, its outer skin. 
 There is, then, in the aggregate of images, a privileged 
 image, perceived in its depths, and no longer only on 
 the surface — the seat of affection, and, at the same time, 
 the source of action. It is this particular image which 
 I adopt as the centre of my universe and as the physical 
 basis of my personality." 
 
 This is not the place for considering whether the 
 explanation put forward is adequate to account for the 
 transition from impersonal substance to a personal con- 
 sciousness. What must be noted is that from one point 
 of view the consciousness of personality is, in the lan- 
 guage of Spinoza, " the idea of the body." This is 
 the permanent element in the life of personality, and 
 constitutes the ever-recurring present of the empirical 
 psychical life. If a consciousness were confined to 
 awareness of the body (which, along with the rest of 
 the material universe, constitutes " an ever-renewed 
 section of universal becoming ") its existence would 
 have as essential characteristic the fundamental attri- 
 bute of matter — i.e. it would consist in a present 
 which was renewed at every instant. The life of the 
 humblest conscious automaton approaches nearly to 
 this level.
 
 58 MEMORY AND ACTION 
 
 But consciousness, in the case of man at least, is not 
 restricted to the perception of the motor reactions 
 which commence in the body and eventually become 
 signs of external objects. Memory is an undeniable 
 factor in the mental life of human individuals, and if the 
 idea of the body constitutes the material element in the 
 psychical life the spiritual factor is to be found in 
 memory. As already mentioned, simultaneously with 
 the perception a memory image is formed which is the 
 reflection of the perception. Our past is thus " con- 
 served of itself, automatically " ; the memory " doubles 
 the perception right through, arises with it, develops 
 simultaneously with it, and survives it because it is of 
 an entirely different nature from it." Thus each body 
 carries attached to it, as it were, a condensation of the 
 history which it has lived since its birth. Apart from 
 the practical exigencies of biological and social life, 
 these memories would never reappear as distinct images 
 within the illuminated field of consciousness. They 
 would melt into one another, and constitute the content 
 of the liquid lapse of pure duration. But the mass of 
 memories of the past is connected with the sensori-motor 
 mechanism of the body, attached to them, so to speak, 
 and the representations capable of guiding these motor 
 mechanisms in their task by conferring on them the 
 benefit of lessons learned in prior experience, reappear 
 in consciousness in response to the demands of the body 
 for guidance. Thus the present of the personal life is 
 not merely the ever-renewed idea of the body ; it is 
 also the awareness of the materialized memories which 
 have reappeared in order to guide the body in its 
 practical activity. That is to say, the conscious life of 
 an intellectual individual consists normally in a know- 
 ledge of the body, of the images derived from memory, 
 of the reasonings which take place in connection with
 
 SPATIALIZATION OF SPIRIT 59 
 
 these images, and of the effort which accompanies their 
 materialization. The continuity of individuality de- 
 pends on the persistence of the body, for it is the body 
 which continually recalls, for its guidance, images from 
 the depths of the unconscious. 
 
 It is clear now that personality arises as a result of 
 and depends for its continuance upon interaction 
 between the contents of spirit, that ever-flowing mass of 
 " pure " memories, and the body which spirit has 
 organized. The intelligent self is a partially spatial 
 reality. It is the supreme means to the end which 
 spirit has ever before it, viz. to triumph over the 
 necessity of matter. The body, consciousness, memory, 
 personality, are all means to this one end. 
 
 We are now in a position first, to understand how 
 life in the body conditions limitation of spiritual life ; 
 second, to grasp the consequent essential difference 
 between the reflective personality and the fundamental 
 psychical life ; finally, and above all, to comprehend the 
 process of spatialization of spirit. That process must 
 now be considered. 
 
 The fundamental characteristic of matter as Bergson 
 conceives it, is necessity, automatically reciprocal and 
 equal action and reaction. It is not difficult to show 
 that the danger of a similar mechanical automatism 
 continually menaces the mental life. The power to form 
 habits, a marvellous provision for the conservation of 
 the psychical energy, carries with it this danger. The 
 experience of each individual goes to confirm the ease 
 with which one degenerates into a mere creature of 
 habit, a conscious automaton. But in so far as our 
 activity, mental or bodily, is automatic, mechanical, in 
 so far is it materialized. The associated ideas and the 
 immediate reactions may be deposits of mind, but they 
 are no longer elements in a truly mental life, and
 
 60 SPATIALIZATION OF SPIRIT 
 
 associationist psychology and physiology are quite 
 capable of dealing with them. 
 
 Apart, however, from this complete materialization 
 of spirit, a partial process in the same direction is 
 continually taking place. This is due, in the first 
 instance, to reflection in the interests of action, but 
 once it has acquired the habit of looking back, mind 
 reflects upon its past merely for the sake of doing 
 so. We have already seen that, de jure, perception 
 is the discernment in matter of the possible action 
 of the body upon it, that this discernment is invariably 
 accompanied by an incipient movement on the part 
 of the body to realize this action, and that the con- 
 sciousness of this nascent movement eventually becomes 
 a symbol of the perception itself, so that when the 
 sensation (awareness of the nascent movement) occurs, 
 the mind immediately leaves it in the background and 
 gives its attention to the object which has provoked the 
 reaction on the part of the body. Further, there is 
 attached to each organized body a fluid mass of 
 " pure " memories which constitute the contents of 
 spirit, and which are perfectly unextended and so 
 radically different from sensation, which is essentially 
 extended and localized, being, in fact, the commenced 
 real action of a definite part of the body. We are 
 vaguely conscious of this nebulous conglomerate, the 
 concentrated volume of our past experience. As in- 
 dividual experiences, past images have sunk below the 
 level of consciousness, dissolved into the flow of pure 
 duration, ready to reappear in all their detail when 
 the call comes. In this sense they exist as uncon- 
 scious states. During a discussion on unconscious 
 states of mind at a meeting of the French Philo- 
 sophical Society in 1909, Bergson argued that the 
 unconscious was a reality. He held that certain
 
 SPATIALIZATION OF SPIRIT 61 
 
 psychical states, taken in their entirety, carry with 
 them the feeling of an obscurity and the vague per- 
 ception of a lacuna, and, at the same time, the con- 
 viction that this lacuna could be filled and this obscurity 
 dissipated without anything new and external to the 
 state being super-added to it. Something exists in 
 the state without rising above the level of the uncon- 
 scious, and this something will appear in all its 
 particularity of detail when the magnifying instrument 
 of reflective attention is directed upon it. " The whole 
 of our past psychical life conditions our present state 
 without being its necessary determinant, while also 
 it reveals itself in our character, although one of its 
 past states is manifested explicitly in character." 1 
 
 If the facts just mentioned are kept in view it will 
 not be difficult to follow Bergson's account of the 
 materialization of this spiritual content. Let it be 
 supposed that the motor activity which normally 
 accompanies perception foregoes its practical end and 
 that its arrest is followed by subtle movements of the 
 body which combine to mark out the prominent features 
 of the perceived object. This is no arbitrary hypo- 
 thesis ; this preliminary inhibition and these subsequent 
 movements of imitation actually occur. Into the bodily 
 attitude thus induced, into the motor diagram of the 
 object of perception thus outlined, images of past 
 experience may, by an act of voluntary attention or 
 reflection, be brought to insert themselves, and thus 
 give flesh to the skeleton of the object outlined in 
 the motor diagram. " While external perceptions pro- 
 voke on our part movements which trace its main 
 lines, our memory directs upon the perception received 
 the memory images which resemble it and which are 
 already sketched out by the movements themselves." 2 
 l M. et M. (Eng, Tr. p. 191). * Ibid. (Eng. Tr. p. 123).
 
 62 SPATIALIZATION OF SPIRIT 
 
 The mental life of man consists normally in a go 
 and come between " pure " memory and movement in 
 response to stimulus, in referring for guidance, in the 
 ever-varying circumstances of practical living, to past 
 experience, which is gathered up in spirit and may 
 reappear in memory. His body gives his mind some 
 purchase on the material world of which it forms a 
 part, and memory furnishes the means of introducing 
 real chosen action into that material world. It is 
 necessary to examine this matter closely, for it is just 
 here that the materialization of spirit and the con- 
 sequent birth of intelligent selves is seen. 
 
 It is almost universally agreed in psychological circles 
 that perception is a synthesis of presentative or imme- 
 diately given, and representative or ideal elements, the 
 latter being contributed from past experience. Bergson's 
 account of perception agrees so far with the generally 
 accepted version. But while in many quarters a great 
 deal of confused writing has been produced regarding 
 the nature of the presentation continuum, Bergson 
 makes it perfectly clear that in attentive perception, on 
 his view, this is constituted fundamentally by the con- 
 sciousness of incipient movements of imitation which 
 take place in the body. Our body is that part of the 
 material world of which we "directly feel the flux. In 
 its actual state lies the actuality of our present." Fur- 
 ther, while the representative element is usually regarded 
 as a concept which is particularized, it is, according to 
 Bergson, derived entirely from memory, i.e. it is not 
 conceptual. When attentive perception takes place, first 
 of all, as we saw above, a bodily attitude is assumed or 
 set of movements inaugurated which makes us aware of 
 the outer shell of the object of perception. (This outline 
 is distinctly present to consciousness in the phenomenon 
 of the after-image.) But this is merely a temporary
 
 "PURE" MEMORIES AND "IMAGES" 63 
 
 phase, for the activity which would normally follow is 
 inhibited only until such guidance can be secured from 
 the experience of the past as will ensure its greater pre- 
 cision and efficacy. The mind then turns round and 
 enters into its past in order to provide the needful 
 direction. Setting out from a " pure " memory, it pro- 
 ceeds, under the guidance of the motor diagram furnished 
 by the body, to precipitate this pure memory into images 
 which will fit into the diagram and so complete the 
 representation of the object of perception and finally 
 induce activity. This may require many tentative 
 efforts, and of course the operation may go on indefi- 
 nitely, the representation becoming more rich with each 
 successive addition from memory. 
 
 With that consummate skill in psychological analysis 
 which is Bergson's supreme talent, he follows step by 
 step the gradual passage of the fluent " pure " memory 
 into memory-images, with the concomitant sensations or 
 awareness of nascent bodily movements of reaction, and 
 finally into bodily movement. 1 An example will serve 
 to bring out the general plan. In the case of hearing, 
 the brain almost automatically breaks up the confused 
 flow of sound which is mediated to it through the ear, 
 and it accomplishes this only if it is able to commence 
 to repeat internally the main articulations of the words 
 which compose the sound. This means that a certain 
 bodily attitude is assumed, or that a motor diagram of 
 the words heard is organized. But at the same time a 
 mental attitude is adopted. " The hearer at once places 
 himself in the midst of the corresponding ideas and then 
 develops them into acoustic memories which go out to 
 overlie the crude sounds perceived, while fitting them- 
 selves into the motor diagram." 2 More definitely, we 
 
 1 V. Matiire et Mimoire, pp. 134-169, and V Effort Intellectuel. 
 *M. et M. (Eng. Tr. p. 145).
 
 64 "PURE" MEMORIES AND "IMAGES" 
 
 start from the " idea " or " pure memory," and a " con- 
 tinuous movement begins by which its nebulosity is 
 condensed into distinct auditory images which, still fluid, 
 will be finally solidified as they coalesce with the sounds 
 materially perceived." l 
 
 The end of perception is action, and action is 
 brought about by the release of energy along certain 
 nerve fibres through special motor mechanisms. These 
 motor mechanisms may receive their stimulus to action 
 directly through the end-organ of sense acted upon 
 by a real object, as in automatic action, or they may 
 receive it through an internal cerebral organ which 
 corresponds inwardly to the end-organ. This cere- 
 bral organ is not acted upon by a " real " object, but 
 by an " image " which comes from the direction of pure 
 memory. That is to say, in this second case " pure 
 memories, as they become actual, tend to bring about 
 within the body all the corresponding sensations. . . . 
 The progress by which the virtual image realizes itself is 
 nothing else than the series of stages by which this 
 image gradually obtains from the body useful actions or 
 useful attitudes. . . . The virtual image evolves towards 
 the virtual sensation {i.e. incipient bodily movement), and 
 the virtual sensation towards real movement : this move- 
 ment, in realizing itself, realizes both the sensation of 
 which it might have been the natural continuation and 
 the image which has tried to embody itself in the sensa- 
 tion." 2 What is important for us at this juncture is the 
 fact that spiritual content {i.e. pure memories) is actually 
 materialized into images which are " identical with or 
 similar to the object on which they mould themselves." 
 They actually " abide with the perception in space." 
 
 This part of Bergson's thought can be thoroughly 
 understood only if it be borne in mind that for him 
 
 l M. ct M. (Eng. Tr. p. 154). "Ibid. (Ibid, pp. 168 and 169).
 
 « IMAGES " 65 
 
 the subjective state of mind which psychologists call a 
 percept, and the objective reality of which this percept 
 is considered to be the mental representation, do not 
 differ in that one is a mental, non-extended fact and 
 the other material and extended. There is no meaning, 
 Bergson holds, in asking whether " images " are within 
 or without the mind. The difference between matter 
 and our representation of it lies in the difference be- 
 tween the whole and the part, and (what is of primary 
 importance for our present consideration) between 
 rhythms of duration. The moments of the existence 
 of matter are so homogeneous that it can scarcely be 
 said to endure at all. The moments of spiritual 
 existence are so heterogeneous that they constitute 
 pure duration. Now, our representation or percept of 
 matter lies midway between the two. In the act of 
 reflection which takes place in attentive perception the 
 spiritual content ceases to pursue its own rhythm of 
 duration and gradually approaches the rhythm of 
 matter so that it may enter into the outline of the 
 object perceived, and issue in action. It does not 
 actually coincide with the material object, for memory 
 plays a part in every perception, which means that the 
 rhythm of spirit is to some extent imposed on that of 
 matter, and that the " present " perception is, so far, a 
 history, not an immediate grasp of the present of matter. 
 Bergson explains this by saying that the difference 
 between subject and object is not to be stated in terms 
 of space but of time. 
 
 In this mere outline of Bergson's extremely complex 
 explanation of the process by which the content of 
 spirit is materialized in the interests of practical life, 
 the important fact to be noted is that the inner life 
 actually does become spatialized through the demands 
 of the body for guidance. The interpenetrating
 
 66 SELF MATERIALIZED SPIRIT 
 
 " ideas " actually become more or less definitely juxta- 
 posed, temporarily, no doubt, but none the less truly. 
 
 It was observed above that a fundamental postulate 
 of Bergson's thought is that the spiritual life is limited 
 by the organic or physiological life. The manner of 
 that limitation is now plain. It comes about by means 
 of the body, and more particularly the brain. Man's 
 psychical life consists normally in putting " ideas " into 
 action, and this translation is achieved only when the 
 idea touches present reality on some side, i.e. only 
 when " it is able gradually, and by progressive diminu- 
 tions or contractions of itself, to be more or less acted 
 by the body at the same time as it is thought by the 
 mind. Our body, with, on the one hand, the sensations 
 which it receives, and, on the other, the movements 
 which it is capable of executing, is that which fixes 
 our mind, gives it ballast and poise." x The perceptual 
 representation appears in the interval between the pure 
 idea divorced from bodily activity and bodily activity 
 independent of pure ideas. It arises from the inter- 
 penetration of the two, the rough diagram contributed 
 by the activity of the brain and the filling provided 
 from the spiritual content. It is a temporary stage in 
 the progress from arrested automatic action to a move- 
 ment which is chosen or free. 
 
 We have now reached the point towards which the 
 last few pages of exposition have been directed. A 
 sharp line of distinction has to be drawn between the 
 progress of the inner self, which is that of pure duration, 
 and this spatialized spiritual substance which is due to 
 reflection upon our past — reflection which is necessary 
 if our bodily activity is to acquire the greatest possible 
 precision and efficaciousness. If the psychologist con- 
 fines his investigations to " images," " perceptions," 
 
 1 M. et M. p. 189 (Eng. Tr. p. 226). See also Eng. Tr. p. 197.
 
 SPIRIT AND CONCEPTION 67 
 
 " ideas," etc., as distinct self-sufficing wholes, as parts 
 of the psychical life, it is obvious that he is not entitled 
 to pronounce any judgment upon the living process 
 itself. All that he does is to analyse a mind which, 
 through reflection, is already more or less spatialized. 
 But Bergson holds that this is just what scientific psycho- 
 logists are prone to do. They lose sight of the fact 
 that mental life is a process, a development, and they 
 " arrest and solidify into finished things the principal 
 phases of this development." Thus they seek to recon- 
 struct the living self with these dismembered limbs. 
 Or they turn upon the inner life that reflective intro- 
 spection which, by the very act of reflection, spatializes 
 the purely psychical life which is free from all exten- 
 sion, and instead of revealing the nature of the living 
 self they dissect a substance from which the life has flown. 
 
 The spatialization of the self has been followed on 
 the lower levels. But in addition to images, concepts 
 or general ideas are facts of which the psychologist 
 seeks to give an account. Bergson argues that these, 
 too, are due to a partial spatialization of duration. If 
 a consciousness had a fixed backward look, if it 
 uninterruptedly reflected or mused, it seems that it 
 would never arrive at the formation of a concept. It 
 would contemplate each event of the past as a distinct 
 particular, with its date and peculiar details. If, on the 
 other hand, consciousness were confined strictly to 
 the present, it would live always in the universal, for 
 the body acts the past, " habit being to action what 
 generality is to thought." Such a mind would be 
 conscious only of an identity of reaction, it would feel 
 this identity. 
 
 But practical consciousness, it must be repeated, 
 is not confined to either extreme. It moves between 
 the two, and the general idea or concept, considered
 
 6S BODILY MOVEMENTS 
 
 as a universal particularized, arises from the in- 
 termingling of factors introduced from these ideal 
 limits. The body first acts a resemblance, i.e. an un- 
 impeded motor reaction accompanies an oft-repeated 
 perception. The similarity of the objects perceived 
 " acts objectively like a force, and provokes reactions 
 that are identical in virtue of the purely physical law 
 which requires that the same general effects should 
 follow the same profound causes." This similarity of 
 reaction in a variety of circumstances is " the germ 
 which human consciousness develops into general 
 ideas." It is as yet only a felt generalization acted 
 by the body — how does it become a represented idea 
 or concept ? In the first place, memory supplies a 
 filling to the motor outline, the consciousness of which 
 is the consciousness of generality, and through the 
 combination of the two the idea of an individual is 
 produced, its general attributes coming from the side of 
 the body, and its peculiar details from the side of 
 memory. Emphasis on the element derived from 
 memory brings before consciousness the particularity 
 of the individual ; stress upon the factor contributed by 
 the body brings prominently before the mind the 
 universality of the individual. Disregard of one or 
 other element issues in conceptualism on the one hand, 
 in nominalism on the other. But practical thought 
 combines "just enough image and just enough idea" to 
 form a general notion which will " lend useful aid to the 
 present action." 
 
 The next step in the process seems obvious. It 
 appears necessary only to carry reflection a little 
 further, to isolate the conceptual framework from its 
 contents, to posit the possibility of reflection upon these 
 isolated universals, and immediately the whole apparatus 
 of intelligence which has first been acted by the body
 
 GENESIS OF INTELLIGENCE 69 
 
 comes within the scope of representation. The animal 
 acts intelligently. Its activity " outlines roughly the 
 diagram of the human intelligence " ; it takes place 
 according to principles upon which man also acts, but 
 which in the case of man, who has achieved the power 
 of reflection, reveal themselves to consciousness. 
 
 The evolution of the intellectual individuality may 
 now be completed if it be possible to trace the origin 
 of intelligence. Bergson maintains that it is impossible 
 to explain the genesis of intelligence after the manner 
 of the comparative psychologist, who attempts to follow 
 its progressive development through the ascending 
 animal series. Since the activity of the animal out- 
 lines broadly the diagram of the human intelligence, 
 " to explain the intelligence of man by that of the 
 animal consists simply in developing an embryo of 
 humanity into a human being." He equally condemns 
 Spencer's effort to show that consciousness gradually 
 receives the imprint of constant relations which subsist 
 in matter, that it thus slowly adopts the general con- 
 figuration of matter, and finally issues in intelligence. 
 In positing a material world of objects and facts Spencer 
 has presupposed intelligence. In the last place, Bergson 
 opposes Fichte's attempt to deduce a priori the cate- 
 gories of thought. No philosopher who proceeds upon 
 the assumption that our faculty of knowledge is one, 
 and that it is co-extensive with the field of experience, 
 can with any meaning put to himself the problem of 
 the engendering of the intelligence, for the very possi- 
 bility of stating the problem implies the possibility of 
 his assuming a point of view outside his own experi- 
 ence. The thought at once suggests itself that we 
 must trust our faculty of knowledge, make it our 
 starting-point, content ourselves with a critical and 
 exhaustive analysis of its nature, and by that very
 
 ;o INTELLIGENCE AND SPACE 
 
 analysis point the way to an expansion of experience 
 in all its possible directions. 
 
 But a vital factor in Bergson's thought is that 
 intelligence is not co-extensive with experience, and 
 that this primary act of faith is not only not necessary, 
 but also mistaken, for, by entering into a wider 
 experience by means of intuition, it is possible to follow 
 the progressive, or rather, regressive development of the 
 narrower faculty of intelligence, and thus arrive at a 
 clear comprehension of its limited sphere of application. 
 Intelligence, Bergson urges, realizes itself most perfectly 
 in the form of the geometrical intelligence. " All the 
 operations of intelligence tend towards geometry as the 
 goal of their perfect achievement." Now, the geometrical 
 intelligence deals with space emptied of all content. In 
 other words, space is a pure universal. Knowledge of 
 this pure universal is arrived at by a double process of 
 reflection. Firstly, on the level of ordinary attentive 
 practical perception, pure memories are refracted into 
 images which are inserted into an acted universal. 
 Secondly, on the level of conceptual thought, the acted 
 universal emptied of content may become an object of 
 representation, and, if the abstraction be carried far 
 enough, the represented universal may be emptied of all 
 content. The illuminated moment of consciousness 
 which is called the present is fundamentally the aware- 
 ness of the body. At each successive present we 
 experience an elementary identity of motor reaction on 
 the part of the body. The continuous recurrence of 
 this identical element is the basis of possible conscious- 
 ness of space, for we have only to disregard the variable 
 elements and we are left with a present which un- 
 ceasingly repeats itself, which is, then, pure homogeneity, 
 and the knowledge of space is nothing else. From a 
 slightly different point of view it might be said that the
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND SPACE 71 
 
 idea of space is arrived at by pushing to the extreme 
 the work of reflection which has begun in perception. 
 We can imagine the images becoming more and more 
 clearly defined, and gradually the parts even of the 
 images falling asunder and becoming more and more 
 homogeneous, and at the utmost limit an indefinite 
 multitude of qualityless points comes into view — that 
 is the idea of space. Space is thus the most refined of 
 all the concepts, and is the supreme intellectual con- 
 ception. All other less refined concepts or general 
 ideas arise on the path of the mind's movement 
 towards space. As facts of mind these general ideas 
 are a mixture of pure spirit and space ; or, they owe 
 their existence to the partial spatialization of time. 
 
 From this point of view a precise meaning may be 
 attached to Bergson's description of intelligence as the 
 original consciousness " insinuating itself into matter," 
 "adopting the rhythm of matter," "concentrating itself 
 on matter." Further, it is possible to follow in out- 
 line at least, the attempt which he makes to indicate 
 the ideal genesis of intelligence. He asks us to make 
 an effort of abstraction, by means of which we may be 
 able to instal ourselves in the free elan which pulses in 
 us, but which extends indefinitely beyond our own 
 finite self. Next, we must relax the tension of the 
 will, and gradually we pass towards the extreme limit 
 of relaxation at which our mental life should consist in 
 the awareness of the identical motor reactions of the 
 body. We have passed from a spiritual life of free 
 creative activity towards an existence which is ideally 
 that of space — pure repetition, pure homogeneity. All 
 distinction between past, present, and future has 
 disappeared. 
 
 This intellectualization of spirit or spatialization of 
 time is being continuously repeated in the life history of
 
 72 PROCESS OF THOUGHT 
 
 every individual. The whole process of intellectual 
 thought is one of elimination. At each successive step 
 of scientific explanation we let something go, and in the 
 supreme instance we have let everything go except a 
 mere form, that of space. To begin with, in perception 
 we disregard that which does not interest our functions, 
 and are thus led to isolate particular objects. In the 
 next place, in dealing with movement, science discards 
 mobility, and considers only points on an imaginary 
 line which subtends it. Pure mathematics exhibits the 
 most extreme case of elimination, for all quality has 
 disappeared from its object. It has to do with ideal 
 figures in an ideal space. Physics investigates energy 
 in its various forms, but it omits from its purview all 
 but the quantitative aspect of its subject-matter. It 
 does not touch the qualitative differences between one 
 form of energy and another ; it is content to express all 
 these in terms of a quantitative unit of measurement. 
 Chemistry deals with matter, but it, too, eliminates, for 
 it studies bodies rather than matter, and it is impossible 
 by investigating isolated bodies ever to explain the 
 simple properties of matter. " At most chemistry can 
 follow out into corpuscles as artificial as the corpus — the 
 body itself — the actions and reactions of this body in 
 relation to all other bodies." Physico-chemistry has 
 for its subject-matter living tissue, but what is living in 
 the tissue is left out of account, and the object with 
 which this science deals is really something dead. The 
 biological aspects of organism are resolved into physico- 
 chemical factors. It is thought to be within the bounds 
 of possibility to construct unforeseen forms by a re- 
 arrangement of old elements. Thus the essence of life 
 — creation of imprevisible forms— is eliminated and 
 neglected. Psychology professes to deal with the life 
 of the self, but it is a self devoid of activity which it
 
 SCIENTIFIC REASON 73 
 
 investigates. Thus in science, from psychology to pure 
 mathematics, there is elimination all along the line. 
 
 Now, grant a principle which must be assumed here, 
 if Bergson's argument is to have any validity whatever, 
 viz. the principle that mind must become, or at least 
 coincide with, that which it knows. Imagine a mind 
 which is, on the occasion of a free decision, living its 
 own unhindered life. At this point the act of know- 
 ledge coincides with the act generative of reality ; the 
 faculty of seeing is for an instant identical with the act 
 of willing. The soul is in perfect sympathy with 
 itself and with the profound life which pulses in it. 
 Next imagine that the mind has relaxed into sympathy 
 with a mode of reality which is not coincident with that 
 of pure spirit, but partially spatialized. The very fact 
 of this " sympathy " implies a correspondingly partial 
 spatialization of the spirit which has attained to " sym- 
 pathy," implies, i.e. a partial negation of spirit or time, 
 a partial elimination from time. This negation may 
 proceed until the mind gets into sympathy with space. 
 
 Something of this kind happens in all scientific 
 investigation. The mind, by a painful effort of intel- 
 lectual expansion, may gain an intuition of the inner 
 nature of life or time. At this point intelligence is 
 transcended. But mind cannot maintain itself in that 
 state of expansion. It has for so long adapted itself 
 to the form of matter that it has, in a sense, become a 
 slave to its own practical needs. It immediately lets 
 go the essential element in this living activity, and 
 analyses it into psychological or physico-chemical ele- 
 ments, which in their turn are reduced to quantitative 
 physical and chemical factors and ultimately expressed 
 in mathematical terms. This intellectualization of spirit 
 was originally a necessity if spirit was to overcome 
 matter. Having encountered matter it was impelled,
 
 74 DEDUCTION 
 
 before it could hope to conquer it, first to insinuate 
 itself into matter, adopt its form, so to speak. But 
 once it has acquired the faculty of intellectualizing, 
 mind extends the sphere of this function beyond the 
 merely practical purposes for which it was originally 
 gained, and performs its intelligizing operations on all 
 metaphysical reality. This is what happens in scientific 
 investigations. It is thought that a purely theoretic 
 knowledge of reality is being gained, and that, too, by 
 means of intelligence, but Bergson argues that intelli- 
 gence, because of its original function, is incapable of 
 apprehending the real nature of anything except that 
 which is ballasted with geometry, and that the so-called 
 laws of nature have nothing positive in them, but are 
 simply partial negations of the inwardness of reality. 
 They express the nature of the absolute only when they 
 are refined into mathematical laws, i.e. they are true 
 only in so far as they are capable of being expressed in 
 mathematical equations. In the more concrete form 
 which they generally assume as laws of nature they are 
 simply provisional stopping-places on the way to mathe- 
 matical expression. They are conventional, mind-con- 
 structed, and have no counterpart in reality. 
 
 In accordance with this theory, the two essential 
 functions of intelligence, deduction and induction, 
 emerge in the course of the mind's progress towards 
 perfect intellectualization. Bergson points out that 
 deduction plays but a feeble part in psychological 
 and ethical sciences, whereas in geometry, astronomy, 
 physics — sciences in which we have to do with material 
 things, things most unlike ourselves— deduction is all- 
 powerful. He finds in these facts confirmation of the 
 view that the deductive function of intelligence is held 
 in abeyance so long as the mind remains in sympathy 
 with living reality, coming into requisition only when
 
 INDUCTION 75 
 
 the mind attempts to gain an insight into material 
 reality, and reaching perfection in pure mathematics. 
 What appears, in the deductive process of intelligence, 
 to be an effort is really an abandon, an inversion of the 
 movement of spirit, a degradation of time towards 
 space, of spirit towards an intelligence which is simple 
 identity. 
 
 In the case of induction, Bergson's argument is 
 essentially similar to that employed by Hume. In- 
 duction rests upon the belief that there are causes 
 and effects, and that the same effects follow the same 
 causes. But this belief implies that reality is " decom- 
 posable into groups which may be practically held to 
 be isolated and independent," and that these groups 
 repeat themselves in the course of nature's progress. 
 But in concrete nature we can never be sure that 
 particular events will repeat themselves. In fact, we 
 may be sure that they will not do so. Bergson 
 argues that inductions based upon this assumption have 
 in them an element of uncertainty, except when the 
 subject-matter is purely quantitative. Then only do 
 our inductions become absolutely certain. That is to 
 say, induction, as well as deduction, arrives at univer- 
 sally true conclusions only when it has to do with 
 purely spatial determinations. Induction implies that 
 time does not count, since it is assumed that a past 
 event may be repeated. The essence of time is its 
 irreversibility, and this peculiar feature must be elimi- 
 nated from a sphere of reality in which inductions 
 resting on the law of causation can be regarded as 
 universally true. Again, induction implies that qualities 
 may be superimposed on each other like quantities. It 
 is only by measuring the incommensurable, to use a 
 Lotzian phrase, that inductions can gain any purchase 
 on concrete reality. "Our inductions are certain to
 
 76 CONCEPT OF CAUSATION 
 
 our eyes, in the exact proportion in which we sink 
 qualitative differences in the homogeneity of the space 
 which subtends them, so that geometry is the ideal 
 limit of our inductions, as well as of our deductions. 
 The movement which issues in spatiality deposits along 
 its route the faculty of induction as well as that of 
 deduction — i.e. intellectuality in its entirety. It creates 
 them in the mind." l So long as thought in its widest 
 sense — not logical thought — follows the windings of 
 nature in its qualitative changes, it does not pause to 
 measure. If thought measures, counts, performs de- 
 ductive and inductive operations, it ceases to follow 
 nature. That is to say, its progress is interrupted, 
 and at this point, on the occasion of an interruption 
 of its real causal progress, inductions and deductions 
 are formed. We come back, then, to the point from 
 which we set out. The processes of intellect, in the 
 narrow sense of intelligence, far from being activities 
 of spirit, arise only when that activity is interrupted, 
 and have their source in the spatialization of time, the 
 materialization of spirit. The intuition of pure space 
 is intellect's final goal, and its operations of induction 
 and deduction are but temporary stages in its progress 
 towards perfection. 
 
 The law of causation is usually regarded as a regula- 
 tive principle of all our thinking, as a principle accord- 
 ing to which all thought proceeds, and which, as soon 
 as it is understood, is at once admitted to be true. 
 Has Bergson any account to give of the genesis of this 
 principle? He has. It, too, appears in the course of 
 the degradation of spirit into pure intelligence. It is 
 a principle of the mind in the middle state inter- 
 mediate between pure spirit and pure intelligence. Con- 
 sidered as a " necessary " principle, the nerve of the 
 l E.C. p. 236 (Eng. Tr. p. 228).
 
 CAUSATION AND IDENTITY 77 
 
 law of physical causation is conceived by Bergson to 
 lie in the fact that in the material world identical 
 elementary conditions repeat themselves. To say that 
 the law of causation has universal validity within the 
 sphere of physical phenomena is to affirm not only that 
 the same causes produce the same effects, but that the 
 same causes do recur. A causal law is certain, that is 
 to say, only when you can affirm not simply a relation 
 between A and B of the form All A is B, but when 
 you can affirm that A can actually appear a second 
 time, and an indefinite number of times. That amounts 
 to saying that the law of causality expresses the per- 
 manence and reliability of the universe — not in the 
 sense that it affirms uniformity of connection through- 
 out, but in the sense that it affirms the absolute change- 
 lessness of the universe. Certainly, causal laws would 
 be of very little, if any, value to us were we inhabitants 
 of a world in which conditions never repeated them- 
 selves, but Bergson goes much further than this, for he 
 undoubtedly proceeds upon the assumption that in such 
 a world causality would lose all significance, not only 
 as a practical concept, but as a necessary principle. It 
 assumes, he argues, a higher degree of necessity in 
 proportion as it is more perfectly identifiable with the 
 principle of identity. The law of identity, which is the 
 absolute law of our consciousness, asserts that what is 
 thought is thought at the moment we think it, and it 
 derives its absolutely necessary character from the fact 
 that it does not bind the future to the present, but 
 the present to the present. As the law of causality 
 approaches the principle of identity, i.e. as it is regarded 
 as the principle of a world in which all distinction 
 between present and future disappears, a world for 
 which existence means an ever-renewed creation, it 
 assumes a similar necessary character. In the extreme,
 
 78 LAW OF CAUSATION 
 
 in such a system as that of Spinoza, for example, 
 causality is identified with identity in the absolute, and 
 relations of succession are transformed into relations of 
 inherence. The law of causality would become merged 
 in the law of identity in an intelligence which had 
 arrived at its goal, and only then would it become a 
 necessary principle. 
 
 In the ordinary human intelligence, however, this 
 identification has not been consummated, and causality 
 is regarded as in some sense the principle of change. 
 It is only when we " conceive clearly the idea of a 
 mathematical mechanism " or when " some subtle meta- 
 physic removes our very legitimate scruples on the 
 point " that the coincidence of causality and identity is 
 regarded as complete. The law of causation, as a 
 principle of the " middle " state, is the result of a com- 
 promise. There is in every human mind the latent or 
 potential conception of space, on the one hand, and on 
 the other the vague awareness of its own creative activity. 
 The law of causation, as ordinarily understood, issues 
 from a mingling of these two factors. We feel our- 
 selves immediately as a free force ; we attribute necessity 
 to the spatial world. Necessity and force thus company 
 together, and each is corrupted by the presence of the 
 other, so that when force is again attributed to the 
 mental life it is impregnated with the idea of necessity, 
 and the present mental state is regarded as a cause 
 determining with strict necessity the effects which flow 
 from it. On the other hand, one's consciousness of one- 
 self as a free force is always accompanied by a vague 
 premonition of possible activity, and the passage from 
 the present to the future takes the form of an effort 
 which does not always lead to the realization of the 
 conceived possibility. Now, " common sense anthropo- 
 morphically interprets objective events," and the ordinary
 
 GENERAL CONCLUSION 79 
 
 practical consciousness conceives effects in nature " as 
 prefigured in the cause in the same way as our action 
 is prefigured in the mental state which precedes it," 
 and regards the cause as changing into the effect as one 
 state of mind changes into another. In either case, 
 then, the so-called causal relation is an impure relation. 
 Purified in one direction, it becomes coincident with the 
 principle of identity ; purified in the other direction, it 
 is absorbed in the only real causality — the creative 
 activity of the inner spiritual life. 
 
 The general conclusion may now be formulated. 
 The structure of intelligence is directly due to the 
 spatialization of time or the materialization of spirit. 
 In the next chapter it will be necessary to follow 
 Bergson in his account of this process in the evolution 
 of the race : so far the origin of intelligence in the 
 mental life of individuals has been considered, and it 
 has been seen that in perception there is a necessary 
 materialization of spirit in the interests of action, that 
 in conceptual thought this degradation of spirit into 
 intelligence is continued, and that at the farthest ex- 
 tremity the form of intelligence becomes identical with 
 the form of space. All concepts or categories of the 
 understanding are practical aids which belong to the 
 stage of knowledge intermediate between the intuition 
 of spirit on the one hand and the intuition of space on 
 the other. They are the constituent factors of intellect, 
 which is itself a provisional stage of the existence of 
 spirit. Spatial intuition {i.e. intelligence, the supreme 
 law of which is the law of identity) and spiritual in- 
 tuition alone are faculties of pure knowledge. They 
 attain to knowledge of the absolute. The great mass 
 of intermediate conceptual knowledge is an incomplete, 
 provisional, practical representation of reality. 
 
 Now, the antinomies connected with the nature of
 
 8o INTELLECT AND FREEDOM 
 
 the self are due, ultimately, to the fact that this pro- 
 visional, practical form of spirit is treated as if it were 
 spirit in its pure state. For example, men have the 
 immediate feeling of their own inner freedom. But 
 when they reflect upon it, they either proceed to search 
 for its explanation in their intellectual nature, or they 
 attempt to show how, from the structure of the rational 
 self, freedom is impossible and the feeling of freedom a 
 delusion. We should have been spared the ages of 
 controversy between advocates of free will and deter- 
 minists if the initial mistake of looking for freedom 
 within intelligence rather than in pure spirit had been 
 avoided. Freedom is not a characteristic of spirit so 
 far as it is intellectual, but only so far as it is supra- 
 intellectual. All attempts to prove or disprove freedom 
 have, however, confined themselves to the intelligence 
 level, and so have been doomed to unfruitfulness, inter- 
 minability, and self-contradiction. Neither introspective 
 psychology nor the philosophy of reflection is competent 
 to decide the question of freedom. Both of these are, 
 in fact, exclusively concerned with the nature of the 
 intermediate self, which is a degradation of spirit into 
 matter, of time into space, of freedom into necessity. 
 The psychology of introspection has to do with spirit 
 turned towards action, i.e. spirit partially materialized, 
 the philosophy of reflection is concerned with the intelli- 
 gent ego y which is, so far as intelligent, the negation of 
 spirit. If freedom, then, is an attribute of the inner 
 life, both this psychology and this philosophy arc 
 utterly incapable of ever proving or disproving it. 
 
 A rapid survey of his criticism of the arguments 
 used by determinists and defenders of freedom respec- 
 tively will serve to make Bergson's position clearer. 
 The argument of physical determinists is based upon 
 the principle of the conservation of energy, Bergson's
 
 PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERMINISM Si 
 
 contention is that this principle can be recognized as of 
 universal application, and therefore as relevant to the 
 problem of freedom, only on condition of the psycho- 
 logical hypothesis that the mental life is a system 
 similar to physical systems in respect that in the life of 
 the self predicaments do recur, that the same motives 
 act afresh on the same person, that the history of the 
 self is that of a series of states set side by side, which 
 repeat themselves indefinitely in a homogeneous time. 
 But this condition is fulfilled only in the case of those 
 actions which have become automatic, i.e. only in the 
 case of materialized spirit. 
 
 The argument of psychological determinism implies 
 an associationist conception of mind. Every state of 
 mind is held to be determined, necessitated, caused by 
 antecedent states. We are familiar with associationism 
 in Mill and Bain, according to whom a motive is a 
 definite state with clear-cut outlines. There may be a 
 conflict of such motives, and the strongest will ultimate- 
 ly prevail. Bergson argues, however, that these clearly 
 defined states do not exist in any living mind in the 
 actual process of a free decision. The states which the 
 psychological determinist has in view, are, generally, 
 such constant motives as, e.g. fear, particular kinds of 
 sympathy, aversion, hate, conceived as so many forces 
 which act upon the soul, compelling and determining it. 
 These constitute, in Windelband's phrase, das dauernde 
 Wesen of the choosing will, by which he means that 
 they are the psychical deposits of a rationally auto- 
 nomous will. Bergson would say that they are the 
 materialized elements of spirit, and that any behaviour 
 conditioned by them springs from a psychical mechanism. 
 Such actions do indeed take place on the intellectual 
 level, but if the attempt is made to explain the living 
 process in terms of these states, then the error is 
 
 F
 
 82 FREEDOM AND CHOICE 
 
 committed of substituting materialized deposits for a 
 living activity, an artificial mechanical reconstruction 
 for the concrete phenomenon. It is not competent to 
 speak of states or motives as in any sense, by any 
 association or conjunction, causes of a free decision, 
 since, far from forming elements in the process of spirit, 
 they constitute factors in a simple psychical mechanism, 
 which may have been constructed by spirit, but which 
 is now left to itself, and acts quite automatically. Such 
 habitual or automatic actions do not directly bring into 
 requisition the forces of spirit at all. Associationism 
 adequately explains them by referring them to clearly 
 defined psychic states, separated from one another, but it is 
 incapable of either affirming or denying the freedom of 
 the fundamental self. It never gets into touch with it 
 so long as it keeps to the " states " level ; it deals 
 always with a more or less mechanized, spatialized self, 
 which is to that extent the negation of the inner self. 
 
 Once more, the determinist may hold that any so- 
 called choice is absolutely determined, since in the cir- 
 cumstances no other course of action is possible. Given 
 the particular antecedents, only one resultant action can 
 follow ; there is nothing contingent in the choice. The 
 champion of free-will attempts to meet his opponent 
 on his own ground. He asserts that when the self 
 chose one course of action another course was open to 
 it, and that consequently its choice was free. " To be 
 conscious of free-will must mean to be conscious, before 
 I have decided, that I am able to decide either way." 
 Now, both disputants conceive that the self has reached 
 a point at which two distinct courses of action lie open 
 before it : it hesitates, deliberates, and finally chooses 
 one of those ways — necessarily, one says, freely, con- 
 tends the other. But here again the argument does 
 not maintain itself in touch with the process in question.
 
 FREEDOM AND CHOICE 83 
 
 Both disputants have adopted the position of spectator 
 of a process already accomplished, have substituted 
 their mechanical reconstruction for the living activity, 
 and have then proceeded to argue about the symbolic 
 spatial representation as if it were the free act in its 
 essential movement. It is quite true, however, that 
 hesitations do take place. We are all aware of that. 
 But these hesitations are interruptions of the innerspiritual 
 life, and are peculiar to the history of a consciousness 
 which occupies the intellectual level. In the case of 
 the life of the inner self it is meaningless to speak 
 of divergent open ways presenting themselves to its 
 hesitating activity. In the act of intuition in which 
 the nature of the fundamental self is immediately 
 grasped, the flux of a confused multiplicity of states is felt, 
 and it is true that in the awareness of this becoming 
 there is included a dim consciousness of the direction in 
 which the living process is moving. But the conscious- 
 ness of direction is, in James' phrase, " the dawn of a 
 brightness which we feel to be dawn fulfilled." It is 
 not, in any sense, to be identified with the path of our 
 disputants, which stands open before a hesitating will 
 compelled to make some decision before it can enter 
 into it. After the dawn has been fulfilled we may, as 
 reconstructors, isolate and fix in the process of fulfil- 
 ment a number of successive phases, which we term 
 " the conception of opposite motives, hesitation, and 
 choice," but in doing so we merely hide the fundamental 
 mechanical symbolism which this reconstruction involves 
 under " a kind of verbal crystallization." The terms 
 are borrowed from the life of a partially spatialized self, 
 and the attempt to give them meaning when applied to 
 the dynamic progress of pure spirit is utterly futile : 
 they have, and can have, no point of application there. 
 The argument of the determinist may assume another
 
 84 FREEDOM AND PREDICTION 
 
 form. He may hold that complete and perfect know- 
 ledge of all the antecedents of an action without any 
 exception would enable one to make an infallibly true 
 forecast of that action — i.e. one could predict the act in 
 the totality of its features, with the peculiar qualitative 
 shades which it, as the act of a particular person, 
 possesses. Bergson replies that this statement of the 
 argument is meaningless. He proceeds upon the prin- 
 ciple that the true nature of the cause reveals itself only 
 in the effect, so that if one is to know all the antecedents 
 one must already have lived through them, and arrived 
 at the effect. It is devoid of meaning to speak of 
 knowing all the antecedents without any exception, and 
 so of being able to predict. The smallest "antecedents " 
 can be known in their fulness only after the completion 
 of the act. Not even the person himself who is acting 
 can predict, if by prediction is meant the anticipation, 
 in all its detail, of the result of the act, for the realiza- 
 tion of an ideal always differs, however slightly, from 
 our anticipation, and there are not two identical moments 
 in the same conscious being. Prediction of human 
 action is possible only in so far as elements repeat 
 themselves in the mental life. But as soon as homo- 
 geneous elements appear in the mental life it is to that 
 extent materialized. Prediction of the action of an 
 intelligent being is admittedly possible, but in so far as 
 intelligent, he is de-spiritualized, and prediction is con- 
 fined to those impersonal factors " common to him with 
 others, and not properly belonging to himself." These 
 factors are not constituents of the spiritual progress, but 
 immobilizations, materializations, of it. Here again, 
 then, the contrast is fundamental between the spiritual 
 self, the future of which is entirely imprevisible, and the 
 intelligent self, the actions of which, just so far as they 
 are rational, may be foreseen.
 
 FREEDOM AND CAUSALITY 85 
 
 Finally, the determinist founds his supreme argument 
 upon the principle of causation. But Bergson's answer 
 is, in the first place, that if the principle of causality is 
 what the empiricists assert it to be, viz. " the summing | 
 up of the uniform and unconditional successions ob- 
 served in the past"; if, that is to say, the cause is simply 
 an antecedent which is unvarying within our experience, 
 then it is incompetent to employ this principle to dis- 
 prove freedom, because of the simple fact that it can 
 find no point of application to the inner life of the self, 
 seeing that within that life " no regular succession has 
 ever been discovered," no antecedent ever recurs. In 
 the second place, we have seen that the principle of 
 causality, as ordinarily understood, is the result of a 
 compromise between the principle of identity on the 
 one hand and true causal activity on the other. As its 
 coincidence with the principle of identity becomes more 
 perfect, the causal relation becomes a necessary relation. 
 Observe then the bearing of that fact upon the present 
 consideration. As this coincidence becomes complete 
 the law of causation becomes strictly applicable only 
 to a purely mechanical universe, in which the future 
 may be said to inhere in the present and to be deduced 
 from it. Consequently the law of causality, considered 
 as a principle of necessary determination, does not touch 
 our freedom, for freedom, if it is a fact, is an attribute 
 of our spiritual life, and this has no mechanical or 
 homogeneous element in it — it is pure duration. The 
 law of causality, however, considered as a principle of 
 necessary determination, does apply strictly to those 
 modes of human behaviour which are the result of bodily 
 or psychical automatism, for in these cases the necessary 
 conditions for its application are fulfilled — antecedents 
 do recur. But here once more we are in the realm not 
 of spirit, but of the material deposits of spirit.
 
 86 SOUL AND RATIONAL EGO 
 
 Similarly, if causality be developed in the opposite 
 direction, and regarded as a dynamic principle, i.e. if 
 the causal relation be apprehended in accordance with 
 the clue gained from the immediate consciousness of 
 our own activity, then such a conception, it is plain, 
 does not involve the necessary determination of the 
 effect by the cause, since in the mental activity as it is 
 immediately perceived the future exists in the present 
 only as a possibility, and the passage from the present 
 to the future or from cause to effect takes the form of 
 an effort which does not always lead to the realization 
 of the dimly perceived possibility. If then causality 
 be conceived in this second sense, the fact of freedom 
 remains untouched. 
 
 Throughout this discussion a fact towards the 
 elucidation of which this exposition has been directed as 
 one of its ends has received emphasis again and again. 
 The self with which empirical psychology and reflective 
 philosophy deal, the self which Kant, for example, 
 sought to dissect, is opposed to the deeper self which 
 is revealed to intuition, a self which has no permanent 
 element in it, in the life of which there are not two 
 identical moments, the very existence of which means 
 free activity, continuous elaboration of something new. 
 The fact of freedom belongs to this second self, and to 
 it alone. The first self comes into being only through 
 the negation of the free activity of the second. Free- 
 dom is not an attribute of the self of the middle state. 
 That self, qua intelligent, is not free. Nor can the 
 fact of freedom be grasped by intelligence. The 
 knowing faculty can acquaint us of those features of 
 reality which have ontological affinity with it ; it can, 
 at the most, refind itself in reality. Intelligence, the 
 supreme principle of which is identity, 'is by its very 
 nature incapable of apprehending freedom. If it
 
 CONCEPTION OF FREEDOM 87 
 
 attempts to grasp the fact it mutilates it. It cannot 
 set to itself the problem of freedom without implicit 
 contradictions, and if we were purely rational beings 
 the fact of freedom would never come within our ken. 
 Freedom is immediately apprehended in intuition. 
 
 It must be admitted that our sense of freedom has 
 its ground in an immediate awareness of the activity 
 of our own inmost personal being, an activity which 
 must be lived before it can be grasped in thought. 
 Further, the distinction is valid and important between 
 the progress of the living consciousness and our reflective 
 reconstruction of that progress. Bergson, however, goes 
 so far as to assert that the difference between the 
 progress of active consciousness and our reflective 
 construction of it is absolute, that the two do not 
 touch at any point, that, indeed, the one is the negation 
 of the other. He speaks of the fundamental illusions 
 of the reflective consciousness, of its incapacity to think 
 time except as identical with space, of the necessary 
 contradictions and insoluble difficulties into which it 
 falls when it attempts to deal with the living and 
 active. He substitutes for it an immediate conscious- 
 ness, in which these oppositions and contradictions 
 disappear. He sets over against each other, as con- 
 trasted, the conceptual apparatus on the one hand, 
 and the functioning inner self on the other. The 
 immediate experience in which we are aware of our 
 own free activity, and the most thorough-going con- 
 ceptual representation of that reality are ways of 
 knowing which differ in kind, and not, as Professor 
 Henry Jones says somewhere, in " completeness of 
 articulation." 
 
 Bergson's position here may be compared with that of 
 Kant. Kant sought to conserve freedom by considering 
 it as a fact of an " intelligible " or super-sensible world,
 
 88 BERGSON AND KANT 
 
 in which the categories of pure reason have no applica- 
 tion. For Bergson, too, free activity is a characteristic 
 only of super-intelligent reality. But though intelli- 
 gence is inherently incapable of grasping, much less 
 of explaining, freedom, it does not follow that Kant's 
 solution is the only possible one. Bergson does not 
 relegate freedom to the noumenal sphere. It is a 
 fact, indeed one of the most indubitable facts, of 
 knowledge, though not of conceptual knowledge. He, 
 however, goes so far as to maintain that the feeling 
 of activity is mere feeling. He will not admit that 
 it is in the least degree determined by thought. This 
 is very disconcerting. The ultimate force which con- 
 stitutes individuality may have to be acknowledged as, 
 in the last resort, " something inexpressible, something 
 incalculable, withstanding all analysis." Still, it may 
 be contended that although it may never be com- 
 pletely determined, it is not wholly indetermined, 
 entirely undifferentiated. 
 
 The question will have to be faced at a later stage 
 whether by thus confining metaphysical knowledge 
 of time and freedom to intuition Bergson does not 
 invite us to enter a morass of feeling in which clear 
 consciousness of self-identity, of the distinction be- 
 tween subject and object, of time, and of freedom, 
 is dissolved in a vague, undifferentiated awareness of 
 living which, as such, is never realized in experience ; 
 and whether Bergson's " becoming " is not only another 
 name for Kant's " noumenal " world or for the " pure 
 beiner " of Plotinus.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE INTUITION OF THE COSMICAL ELAN, AND 
 ITS CONDENSATION INTO INTELLIGENCE 
 
 In the previous chapter it was seen that by developing 
 the constituent factors of the human mind in two 
 directions we reach, at one extremity, unalloyed spirit, 
 which is identical with pure duration, and, at the other 
 extremity, intelligence in its most rigid form, which is 
 not to be differentiated from pure space. The question 
 at once presents itself : Is it possible to extend the 
 range of application of the intuitional method, or must 
 the philosopher who adopts this method resign himself 
 to the exclusive contemplation of the expansions and 
 contractions of his own mind ? 
 
 Reference has already been made to a principle 
 which is fundamental in Bergson's procedure, the prin- 
 ciple, viz., that in all cases of real knowing, the act of 
 knowledge must " coincide with the generative act of 
 reality." In some passages, indeed, he speaks as if 
 coincidence and identity were regarded by him as 
 synonymous terms. In the next place, he postulates 
 as a necessary presupposition of metaphysical knowledge 
 a species of " intellectual sympathy " between the know- 
 ing mind and the object known ; a kind of " intellectual 
 auscultation," in which the heart of reality is felt to 
 palpitate ; a process of intellectual dilatation, by which
 
 90 EXTENSION OF INTUITION 
 
 one places oneself in the thing which one is studying. 
 It is a familiar doctrine of Idealism that there must be 
 " ontological affinity " between the mind and the reality 
 which it knows, that, indeed, the primary and also the 
 ultimate assertion that can be made by the mind con- 
 cerning the reality which enters into its experience is — 
 " This is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh." If reality 
 yields up its secrets to intelligence, for example, a 
 necessary presupposition is that reality is intelligible. 
 But this is not Bergson's position. He maintains that 
 mind actually becomes that which it knows. " To 
 philosophize consists in placing oneself in the object 
 itself." In the act of knowing spatial reality mind is 
 literally spatialized, and so long as it is to retain its 
 knowledge of that reality it must remain spatialized. 
 " Strictly speaking," he says, " no other duration than 
 our own can exist, but . . . the intuition of our duration, 
 far from leaving us suspended in the void, . . . puts us in 
 touch with a whole continuity of durations, which we 
 must try to follow, whether it be towards the depths or 
 towards the heights. In either case we can dilate our- 
 selves indefinitely by increasingly violent effort ; in 
 either case we transcend ourselves." * That is to say, 
 in the operation of knowing a duration inferior or a 
 duration superior to its own the human mind disappears. 
 It is more than human, Bergson asserts in another 
 place, to grasp the living mobility of things. We must, 
 if we are to pursue the intuitional method of philosophy, 
 transcend the " middle," " human " state in two direc- 
 tions. We must pass beyond ordinary conceptual 
 thought in the one direction to gain an ultra- or supra- 
 conceptual knowledge, and in the other to gain an 
 infra-conceptual or purely mathematical intuitional 
 knowledge. In both cases, at the extreme, we leave 
 
 1 " Introduction a la Metaphysique" (AVz>. de JMita. et de Morale. Jan. IQ03).
 
 CONCEPTUAL INTUITION 91 
 
 the human level, and become that which is the object 
 of knowledge. 
 
 It will be remembered that Kant assumed a given 
 raw material which was received into the forms of space 
 and time, and woven into the categories. Now, the 
 act by means of which this raw material was grasped 
 might be said to be an infra-conceptual intuition. 
 Bergson presupposes such an intuition, but with this 
 difference, that " there is not any essential distinction 
 between intelligence and this intuition." There is no 
 need to suppose a formless raw material upon which 
 order is imposed, for the intuition is possible only if the 
 matter grasped and the intelligence grasping can enter 
 into " sympathy " — i.e. only if intelligence and matter 
 are identical in nature. 
 
 Similarly, corresponding to Kant's " intelligible," or 
 super-sensible, reality, there is for Bergson a supra- 
 conceptual psychical, or, more generally, vital reality, 
 which is grasped in an effort of supra-intellectual 
 intuition. In the first effort of intuition, the human 
 mind " proceeds to an increasingly scattered duration, 
 the palpitations of which are more rapid than ours, and 
 divide our simple sensation, diluting its quality into 
 quantity. At the limit we should find pure homo- 
 geneity, pure repetition, by which materiality is to be 
 defined." x In the second effort of intuition we achieve 
 " a duration which increases in tension, which contracts 
 more and more, becomes more intensified. At the 
 limit would be eternity — not conceptual eternity, which 
 is an eternity of death, but an eternity of life ; a living, 
 and consequently always moving eternity, in which our 
 duration would find itself again in us as the vibrations 
 in the light, and which would be the concretion of all 
 duration, as materiality is the scattering of it." 2 The 
 l LM.p.6l. '/did.
 
 92 INTUITION OF LIFE 
 
 two conditions of metaphysical knowledge of the 
 universe are, then, a certain tension of the mind, and a 
 faculty of sympathetic insight. 
 
 In the present chapter the two supreme efforts of 
 intuition claim attention — first, the intuition of cosmic 
 life, or spirit ; second, the intuition of matter. We shall 
 see not only that, but also why, the intelligence alone 
 is incapable of apprehending life, but approaches in 
 certainty, compass, and insight to the intuition in its 
 knowledge of matter. 
 
 First, then, the intuition of life. One of the objects 
 of Bergson's famous work, L 'Evolution Creatrice, is to 
 show that the universe in its entirety is of the same 
 nature as the personal mind, that in it two movements 
 similar to those which are found in human minds 
 reveal themselves — the one towards growth, creation, 
 continuous elaboration of something new, the other in 
 the direction of homogeneity and repetition. The 
 universe is a great individual akin to ourselves. It 
 endures as we do. Just as our self is made up of a 
 number of inter-penetrating tendencies, so the universal 
 self is composed of systems which, in their turn, contain 
 organisms of various kinds. There may be a tendency 
 in this great cosmical self for the systems to fall apart 
 or to isolate themselves. Science seizes upon and 
 emphasizes this tendency. But an underlying elan, 
 akin to the will in us, directs them to unity, keeps them 
 in a continual state of greater or less inter-penetration, 
 and, in the course of its free activity, incessantly creates 
 new worlds. This power is God. He is " concrete 
 eternity,'' or " the concretion of all durations." In 
 Him all the tendencies of the universe are perfectly 
 unified. He is that creative activity which is the 
 fundamental basis of all life, and which is not exhausted 
 in the finite impetus which constitutes the life in our
 
 THE COSMIC SPIRIT 93 
 
 solar system. He is " incessant life, action, freedom." 
 Each personality is, fundamentally, akin to Him ; each 
 individual is, so to speak, one tendency, one idea, 
 in the onward moving life of the whole ; every single 
 will is a pulsation in that life. The theory of the 
 existence of the self as a separate individuality radi- 
 cally distinct from other individualities, human and 
 divine, is, it would appear, not held by Bergson. 
 All are united — not in a common aim which, by an 
 act of will, individuals have rationally chosen as their 
 own ; not by a reasonable submission of individuals 
 who still retain their individuality to the Divine 
 Will ; but in that all yield to " the same formidable 
 impetus." 
 
 In the first place, if it be true that the universe is 
 such a dynamic whole in which a creative force ener- 
 gizes, this activity cannot be apprehended in the cate- 
 gories of intelligence, any more than the time aspect of 
 the self, immediately perceived in intuition, can enter 
 into those categories. The concepts of intelligence are 
 mechanical, the supreme one, as we have seen, being 
 space. Now, Bergson argues that a mechanical con- 
 struction of the universe is approximated only as 
 the active elements are omitted from consideration. 
 " Mechanical explanations," he says, " are valuable for 
 the systems which our thought detaches artificially from 
 the whole. But of the whole itself, and of the systems 
 which, in this whole, are naturally constituted in its 
 image, one cannot admit a priori that they are mechani- 
 cally explicable, for then time would be useless, and even 
 unreal. The essence of mechanical explanations is, in 
 fact, to consider the future and the past as calculable 
 functions of the present, and to submit that all is given. 
 On this hypothesis, past, present and future would be 
 visible at a glance for a super-human intelligence capable
 
 94 CONCEPTUAL EXPLANATIONS 
 
 of making the calculation." a But if a mechanical recon- 
 struction could exhaust its nature it is clear that change, 
 growth, evolution, transmutation, would be utterly foreign 
 to the universe. They would be illusory ideas. What 
 appeared to be change would be, in fact, an appearance 
 only, due to our limited point of view. Real activity, 
 pure spontaneity, can have no place in a system which 
 is interpretable without remainder in mechanical con- 
 cepts. The important point to be observed is that, 
 according to Bergson, intelligence is inherently in- 
 capable of any other than a mechanical interpretation 
 of the universe as a whole, and this may be proved 
 from two different points of view. In the first place, it 
 may be demonstrated that all attempts of the intelli- 
 gence to interpret or to explain life have been funda- 
 mentally mechanical interpretations or explanations. In 
 the second place, it may be shown that the form of 
 intelligence has evolved with the purpose of fulfilling a 
 definite function, and that in order to fulfil that function 
 it must be fundamentally mechanical. 
 
 Firstly, all attempts at conceptual explanations of 
 life have issued in the mechanizing of life. Bergson 
 accepts the theory of transmutation as a sufficiently 
 exact and precise translation of the known facts of 
 biology. This hypothesis, he thinks, is showing itself 
 more and more as at least an approximate expression of 
 the truth. It is not rigorously demonstrable, but, short 
 of the certitude which theoretic or experimental demon- 
 stration gives, it possesses the indefinitely increasing 
 probability which evidence supplies, and which tends to 
 certainty as to a limit. Every conceptual explanation 
 of the facts of transmutation, however, has assumed 
 either a frankly mechanical form, or a teleological form 
 which, ostensibly not merely mechanical, turns out to be 
 
 1 B.C. p. 40 (Eng. Tr. pp. 39-40).
 
 PHYSICO-CHEMISTRY 95 
 
 fundamentally so. In certain quarters the recent develop- 
 ments of physico-chemistry afford some ground for 
 the hope that living processes are not beyond the scope 
 of explanation on the purely intellectual level. Bergson 
 argues, however, that although the physico-chemist may 
 discover in the processes of organic creation an increas- 
 ing number of physico-chemical phenomena, and may 
 even succeed in reproducing artificially an external out- 
 line of certain facts of organization, such as the indirect 
 division of the cell and protoplasmic circulation, it does 
 not follow that he is approaching any nearer to a revela- 
 tion of the secret of life. In fact, the deeper study of 
 histological phenomena discourages rather than fortifies 
 the tendency to explain everything by physics and 
 chemistry, and it is a noteworthy fact that while physio- 
 logists, who deal only with the functional activity of the 
 living being, are hopeful of a physico-chemical explana- 
 tion of life, embryologists, histologists, and naturalists, 
 who concentrate attention on the fine structure of living 
 tissues, are far from sharing this willing belief in the 
 physico-chemical quality of vital activities. The explana- 
 tions furnished in the name of physico-chemistry are 
 valid for the mechanical aspects of vital activities, for 
 the elements which are unceasingly repeated in the 
 living being, for the facts of catagenetic order. That is 
 to say, these interpretations do not rise above purely 
 mechanical explanations of strictly mechanical facts. 
 
 If this be admitted, it may, nevertheless, be con- 
 tended that by making use of the concept of teleology 
 intelligence may rise above the purely mechanical level, 
 and so is not, when faced with living activity, in the 
 desperate case in which it would be were it bound down 
 to strictly mechanical categories. We could have 
 anticipated, however, from Bergson's argument, stated 
 in the previous chapter, that free activity of the self i
 
 96 TELEOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS 
 
 not explicable by motives or ends, that pretended 
 teleological explanations of the cosmic organism qud 
 active are quite futile. The concept of teleology, as 
 formulated by intelligence, does not carry one beyond 
 the limits of a purely mechanical theory of the processes 
 of life. According to the extremest form of this 
 doctrine, a teleological system is one in which beings 
 and things realize a cut-and-dried programme, and the 
 progress of time consists in the realizing of this scheme 
 which lies open to a superior intelligence. Here again, 
 then, all is given, all is previsible. " Teleology thus 
 understood is merely a mechanical theory a rebours." 
 
 According to the later views of teleology, however, 
 " each living being realizes a plan immanent in its 
 substance." This is immanent or internal teleology. 
 The living being realizes the end of its existence when 
 all its activities are harmoniously co-ordinated. Bergson 
 thinks that even on this view the principle of external 
 teleology is implicit, for each organism is itself made 
 up of elements which are themselves organisms, and 
 the activity of each of these elementary organisms is 
 subordinated to the life of the whole, or greater organ- 
 ism. In other words, the activity of each small or 
 elementary organism is determined by its function in 
 the whole. His own position is that " if there is 
 teleology in the world of life, it embraces the entire 
 life in one indivisible grasp." 1 The bearing of this on 
 individual freedom may be noted in passing. So long 
 as the individual remains a distinct personality his 
 activity must be regarded as necessarily subordinated 
 to the activity of the whole. It is only when he loses 
 his existence as an individual, and enters into the 
 embrace of that teleology which includes life in its 
 entirety in one indivisible grasp, that he becomes free. 
 
 l £.C. p. 47(Eng. Tr. p. 46).
 
 TELEOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS 97 
 
 It may well be questioned whether this does not imply 
 the complete annihilation of human freedom. 
 
 The important point for present consideration is that 
 in either of the doctrines of teleology just outlined the 
 implication is that all is given, present, past, and future, 
 and all so-called activity is simply the realizing of a deter- 
 mined plan. In the one case, the whole universe gradually 
 realizes a plan which may be predicted, which exists 
 in the mind of a supreme intelligence : in the other, 
 each organism within the whole realizes the plan of 
 the whole, which, again, is previsible. On either view, 
 intelligence maintains itself on the strictly mechanical 
 level, and fails to interpret what is essential in the 
 transmutation of forms of life, for evolution means 
 growth, and growth implies imprevisibility. In life, 
 time is not, as the intelligence supposes it to be, an 
 independent variable— the time of Newton, for example. 
 It is history, and history never repeats itself. Such or 
 such an aspect which intelligence has abstracted and 
 fixed may appear to re-present itself, but history in its 
 concreteness never recurs, never in the case of the 
 individual, and certainly never in the progress of the 
 universe as a whole. Its future is, then, entirely hidden ; 
 it cannot in any sense be said to be realizing a pro- 
 gramme. Even a super-human intelligence could not 
 foresee its progress, for intelligence, in its generation of 
 conceptual knowledge, is " always pre-occupied to know 
 under what ancient rubric it will catalogue any new 
 object whatsoever." If this be so, and if teleological 
 concepts, in common with all others, be basally 
 mechanical, it follows that if life consists in creative 
 evolution {i.e. of a succession of absolutely heteroge- 
 neous, quite disparate, qualitative changes) intelligence, 
 in following its natural procedure, has always failed to 
 interpret life, and will always do so. It has utilized,
 
 98 LIMITATION OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 and will continue to utilize, only its old framework, 
 whereas each moment of life means the evolution of 
 something new. The fundamental question is : Is 
 this procedure simply a bad habit, or is intelligence 
 bound to the mechanical method of interpretation ? 
 
 This question leads to the second main consideration, 
 viz., that the form which intelligence has had to assume 
 in order to fulfil its function precludes the possibility of 
 a conceptual grasp of living activity. Its powerlessness 
 does not lie in the fact that it has habituated itself to 
 a certain method of procedure. It is inherent in its 
 nature. Intelligence has, in fact, been deposited by life 
 on its march ; it has been condensed from a greater 
 whole ; it is the contraction of a wider faculty of knowing. 
 If this be so, then it follows that life cannot be compre- 
 hended in its ultimate nature by that which, as a part, 
 is to some extent its negation. " If, in evolving in the 
 direction of the vertebrates in general, of man and of 
 intelligence in particular, life has had to abandon on 
 the way many elements incompatible with this particular 
 mode of organization, and to entrust them to other lines 
 of development, we must seek the totality of these 
 elements and blend them with intelligence proper in 
 order to grasp the true nature of the vital activity. 
 We shall no doubt be helped by the fringe of confused 
 intuition which surrounds our distinct, i.e. intellectual, 
 representation. What can this useless fringe be, indeed, 
 if not that part of the evolving principle which has not 
 shrunk to the peculiar form of our organization, but has 
 settled around it, unasked for, unwanted ? It is there, 
 accordingly, that we must look for hints to expand the 
 intellectual form of our thought ; we shall derive thence 
 the impetus necessary to lift us above ourselves." 1 We 
 have already followed the contraction of spirit into 
 
 l£.C. p. 53 (Eng. Tr. p. 52).
 
 CONCEPTUAL EXPLANATIONS 99 
 
 intelligence in the case of the individual : the task 
 now lies before us of studying its emergence in the 
 evolution of the human species. 
 
 But before we essay to do this it must be clearly 
 demonstrated that a mechanical theory of life — using 
 the word " mechanical " in its widest sense, as applic- 
 able to any theory which can be furnished by intelligence 
 in its natural movement — does not present an adequate 
 explanation of the evolutionary process. It is not 
 enough to show that intelligence, in its most perfect 
 production, gives a mechanical representation of reality. 
 The existence of a reality which is non-mechanical in 
 nature and so quite beyond the reach of intelligence 
 must, at least, be indicated. Of course the ultimate 
 court of appeal as to the existence of this reality must 
 be the intuition, but a careful study of the evolutionary 
 process from an empirical point of view may disclose 
 the necessity of postulating a factor in development 
 which differs in nature from the mechanical factors, 
 while it might still be left to intuition to discover the 
 characteristics of this non-mechanical reality. Bergson 
 faces this task. He sets out from the supposition that 
 " a purely mechanical theory would be refutable, and 
 teleology, in the special sense in which we understand 
 it, demonstrable in one aspect, if it could be established 
 that life constructs certain identical mechanisms by dis- 
 similar means on divergent lines of evolution. The 
 force of the proof would, moreover, be proportional to 
 the degree of separation of the lines of evolution chosen, 
 and the degree of complexity of the similar structures 
 which one finds on them." * 
 
 It is generally urged as an explanation of this fact 
 that the formation of identical mechanisms is due to 
 adaptation to environment, and the mode of the process 
 
 *E.C. p. 59 (Eng. Tr. p. 57).
 
 ioo A TEST CASE 
 
 of adaptation has been stated in various ways. Accord- 
 ing to the Darwinian theory, adaptation consists in the 
 elimination of the unadapted or unfit. A variation 
 comes in, and, if the animal in which it appears has an 
 environment which does not favour it, that animal is 
 gradually eliminated. Thus the action of external en- 
 vironment in directing the course of evolution is purely 
 negative. According to another theory, which is associ- 
 ated with the name of Eimer, adaptation is due " to the 
 positive influence of external conditions which have 
 modelled the organism on their own form. It is by 
 the similarity of the cause that the similarity of the 
 effect will be explained." 1 In its strict form, so far as 
 any meaning can be attached to this as an explanation, 
 the conditions of life are a kind of mould into which 
 life or living matter is gradually forced, and wherever 
 there is a similar mould a similar organism appears. 
 In this case life is acted upon ; it is itself passive. If, 
 however, life is regarded as active, then the statement 
 that matter or external conditions model the organism 
 on their own form loses all significance, for life, in its 
 activity, is then capable of creating for itself a form 
 appropriate to the conditions which are made for it, 
 capable of replying, by a calculated solution, to the 
 problem which the external conditions impose. 
 
 But, leaving aside general considerations, Bergson 
 takes an actual concrete example. " Here is the eye 
 of a vertebrate and beside it that of a mollusc such as 
 the common Pecten. The same essential parts, com- 
 posed of analogous elements, exist in both. The eye 
 of the Pecten exhibits a retina, a cornea, a lens, with 
 cellular construction like ours. . . . Whatever opinion 
 one may hold as to the origin of molluscs, it will be 
 agreed that they and the vertebrates had been separated 
 
 1 E.C. p. 62 (Eng. Tr. p. 60).
 
 DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS 101 
 
 from their common trunk long before the appearance 
 of an eye as complex as that of the Pecten. How, 
 then, is the analogy of structure to be explained ? " ] 
 
 In the first place, can this analogy be accounted for 
 on the Darwinian hypothesis of purely accidental varia- 
 tions ? The hypothesis takes two forms, according as 
 we regard variations as being gradual or sudden. On 
 Darwin's view, the general form of the evolution process 
 is that which is accomplished by " very slight variations, 
 which are accumulated by the effect of natural selec- 
 tion." 2 But according to a later theory, sudden varia- 
 tions are the general rule. This theory is associated 
 with the names of Bateson and Hugo de Vries. " A 
 new species, then, is constituted all at once, by the 
 simultaneous appearance of several new characters very 
 different from the old." 3 Now, whichever of these two 
 forms of the theory is accepted, the principle is the 
 same. New species are formed by variations, in the 
 one case sudden, in the other gradual. 
 
 The Darwinian hypothesis in its first form breaks 
 down completely. If the slight variation is not co- 
 ordinated with other necessary variations of the 
 organism, it will either hinder the development of 
 the organism or it will be insensible, and simply wait 
 until complementary variations occur. If it hinders 
 development, it is, ex Jiypothesi, eliminated. If it is 
 insensible, and so does not hinder development, it will 
 not prove of any advantage to the organism so long 
 as complementary variations are not produced. But 
 " how can it be supposed " (in the case of an eye, for 
 example) " that the same little variations, in number 
 incalculable, may be produced in the same order on 
 two independent lines of evolution, if they are purely 
 
 1 £.C. p. 68 (Eng. Tr. p. 66). % Ibid. {Ibid.). 
 
 3 Ibid. (Ibid.).
 
 102 DE VRIES' THEORY 
 
 accidental ? And how comes it that they have been 
 conserved by selection and accumulated on all sides in 
 precisely the same order, seeing that each of them, 
 taken apart, possesses no utility ? " x 
 
 The hypothesis of sudden variation presents equally 
 grave difficulties. If the evolution of the eye has taken 
 place in this manner, " how is it that all the parts of 
 the visual apparatus, in this sudden modification, remain 
 so well co-ordinated amongst themselves that the eye 
 continues to exercise its function ? " 2 Any variation 
 other than one of the slightest possible degree, unless it 
 were accompanied by the necessary co-ordinated varia- 
 tions, would hinder the functioning of the eye. If 
 sudden variation be admitted, it will be necessary to 
 suppose that all the needful co-ordinate changes will 
 simultaneously occur. But even if it is supposed that a 
 fortuitous combination of circumstances may have pro- 
 duced those complementary changes once, how, Bergson 
 pointedly asks, can it be contended that this combina- 
 tion will be repeated in the course of the history of a 
 species " in such a way as to give rise every time, all 
 at once, to new complications, marvellously co-ordinated 
 with one another, situated in the prolongation of earlier 
 complications ? How, above all, can it be supposed 
 that, by a series of simple ' accidents,' these sudden 
 variations should be produced, the same, in the same 
 order, implying, in each case, a perfect harmony of 
 more and more numerous and complex elements, on 
 two independent lines of evolution ? " 3 The difficulty 
 might be overcome by supposing that " a mysterious 
 principle intervenes in order to guard the interests of 
 the function," but this would involve the giving up of 
 the theory of purely " accidental " variation. This 
 
 1 E.C. p. 70 (Eng. Tr. p. 68). * Ibid, p. 71 (Eng. Tr. p. 69). 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 72 (Eng. Tr. p. 70).
 
 NEO-DARWINIAN THEORY 103 
 
 mysterious principle, whatever it might turn out to be, 
 is there producing the complementary changes neces- 
 sary if the function is to persist. 
 
 The theory of the accumulation of accidental varia- 
 tions breaks down in both its forms, if it be put forward 
 as an adequate explanation of the evolution process. 
 
 But does the hypothesis that variations are produced 
 by the direct action of external conditions afford any 
 explanation of the occurrence of such an organism as 
 the eye on these two diverging lines of evolution, that 
 of the mollusc and that of vertebrates ? According to 
 this theory, light has, in both lines of development, 
 acted directly, and has been able " to produce a con- 
 tinuous variation in a constant direction." " The 
 similarity of the two effects would in this case be 
 explained simply by the identity of the cause. The 
 more and more complex eye would be something like 
 the increasingly deep impression of light on a matter 
 which, because it is organized, possesses an aptitude, 
 sui generis, to receive it." l It is necessary to refer 
 here to the distinction already noted between two kinds 
 of adaptation. In the one case, the matter adapts itself to 
 an environment by simply allowing itself to be moulded 
 by that environment. Adaptation is here passive, and 
 purely mechanical. In the other case, the matter reacts 
 upon its environment, and in the circumstances issues 
 in a form by means of which the problem laid before it 
 can be solved — in this case, the matter is active. It would 
 seem that in the earlier stages of the evolution of the 
 eye the protoplasm received passively an impression 
 from light. But, Bergson holds, living matter appears 
 to have no other means of turning circumstances to 
 account than that of passively adapting itself to them 
 to begin with. " Life proceeds by insinuation." In 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 76 (Eng. Tr. pp. 73-74).
 
 104 NEO-DARWINIAN THEORY 
 
 the formation of the eye, however, life turns circum- 
 stances to account in a most complex manner. Not 
 merely is an organ produced which can function as a 
 seeing organ, but very precise relations are established 
 between this organ and the apparatus of locomotion. 
 " Our eye turns light to account in that it permits 
 us to utilize by movements of reaction the objects 
 which we see to be advantageous, to avoid those which 
 we see to be harmful." l Now, it will scarcely be 
 maintained that the influence of light has produced a 
 whole " nervous system, a muscular system, a bone 
 system, all of which, in the case of vertebrates, are in 
 continuity with the visual apparatus." The case for 
 the view which Bergson is examining becomes still 
 weaker when it is considered that the embryo of the 
 mollusc and that of the vertebrate are dissimilar in 
 their chemical composition. It would seem, indeed, as 
 if light, acting upon chemically different substances, had 
 produced the same effect in both cases. Further, 
 examination of the formation of an eye reveals the fact 
 that the same result is reached in the case of the 
 mollusc and the vertebrate respectively by entirely 
 different modes of evolutionary process. Bergson 
 maintains, in the light of these facts, that mere external 
 impressions are not adequate to explain the formation 
 of such an organ as the eye on diverging lines of 
 evolution. The convergence of efforts involved, the 
 complementary evolution of co-ordinate elements, is 
 inexplicable on any mechanical theory, whether it be 
 the Darwinian or neo-Darwinian, the theory of sudden 
 variations, or the theory of mechanical composition 
 between external and internal forces. 
 
 One other hypothesis remains, that of neo- 
 Lamarckism. According to this theory, the variation 
 lE.C. p. 78(Eng. Tr. p. 75
 
 NEO-LAMARCKIAN THEORY 105 
 
 which ends in producing a new species "arises from the 
 effort of the living being to adapt itself to the conditions 
 in which it must live. This effort may be only the 
 mechanical exercise of certain organs, mechanically 
 provoked by the pressure of external circumstances. 
 But it may also imply consciousness and will, and it is 
 in this last sense that one of the most eminent repre- 
 sentatives of the doctrine, the American naturalist Cope, 
 seems to understand it." 1 The appearance of identical 
 organs on diverging lines of evolution is explained by 
 the fact that " the same effort to turn the same 
 circumstances to account issues in the same result, 
 especially if the problem propounded by the external 
 circumstances is such as to admit of only one solution." 
 In what sense is the word " effort " to be taken ? 
 If the explanation is to be satisfactory it cannot be the 
 mere effort of exercise, as the neo-Lamarckians seem to 
 suppose. Such effort never produces complication of 
 organs ; it may increase the strength, but not the form 
 of an organ. But the evolution of an eye involves 
 complication upon complication, an enormous number 
 of them, and all marvellously co-ordinated. The effort 
 implied must be one much more profound and psychical 
 than that of physical exertion. This necessity becomes 
 pressing when the cause of " regularly hereditary 
 variations " is considered. Use in the lifetime of an 
 individual may perfect in some degree the visual organ, 
 but will this make any difference to the descendant ? 
 Bergson holds that experience, observation of facts, 
 shows us that transmission of acquired characteristics, 
 is, if it occurs at all, the exception and not the rule. 
 " How can hereditary transmission be expected to 
 develop an organ such as the eye ? When one thinks 
 of the enormous number of variations, all pointing in 
 
 l E.C. pp. 83 and 84 (Eng. Tr. p. 81).
 
 io6 VALUE OF VARIOUS THEORIES 
 
 the same direction, which it is necessary to suppose 
 accumulated on one another in order to pass from the 
 pigmentary spot of the infusorium to the eye of the 
 mollusc and the vertebrate, one asks how heredity, such 
 as we observe it to be, could ever have determined this 
 heaping-up of differences, supposing that individual 
 efforts were able to produce each of them in particular. 
 In fact, neo-Lamarckism appears no more capable of 
 resolving the problem than do the other forms of 
 evolutionism." 1 
 
 But while each of these theories fails to give an 
 adequate explanation of an admitted fact, each of them, 
 nevertheless, contains a positive element of truth. 
 " The neo-Darwinians are probably right when they 
 teach that the essential causes of variation are 
 differences inherent in the germ of which the individual 
 is the bearer, and not the actions of this individual in 
 the course of its career." They seem to be wrong in 
 holding that the differences inherent in the germ are 
 purely accidental. This defect is remedied by those 
 who maintain the theory of sudden variations, and who 
 contend that the tendency to change is not accidental, 
 though the change itself might be. Eimer goes a step 
 in advance when he argues that the change is due to a 
 continuous variation in a definite direction. But the 
 members of this school are wrong when they maintain 
 that physical and chemical combinations of causes are 
 sufficient to secure this continuous variation in a 
 definite direction. A distinctly progressive step is made 
 when certain neo-Lamarckians have recourse to a cause 
 of psychical order. But even neo-Lamarckism is 
 insufficient as an explanation, for it confines this cause 
 to the conscious effort of the individual, and this effort 
 is not sufficient to explain the complex combinations 
 1 £. C. pp. 91 and 92 (Eng. Tr. p. 89).
 
 BERGSON'S THEORY 107 
 
 of complex organisms which appear in the course of 
 the evolution of, e.g., an eye. Besides, it rests 
 ultimately upon a theory of use-inheritance, or trans- 
 mission of acquired characters, which is verifiable in 
 only a very few exceptional cases. "A hereditary 
 change in a definite direction, which goes on accumu- 
 lating and compounding with itself in such a manner as 
 to construct an increasingly complicated machine, must, 
 without any doubt, be related to some species of effort, 
 but to a profounder effort than that of the individual — 
 an effort more independent of circumstances ; common 
 to the majority of the representatives of one and the 
 same species ; inherent in the germs which they carry 
 rather than in their own substance, and assured thereby 
 of being transmitted to their descendants." 1 
 
 Bergson thus leads up to, and finds the way clear for, 
 his own theory. He conceives it necessary to postulate 
 an " elan originel of life, passing from one generation of 
 germs to the following generation of germs by the 
 intermediation of developed organisms which form the 
 link of union between the germs." 2 On such an 
 hypothesis the fact of identical organs on diverging 
 lines of evolution may be explained. The eye appears 
 as an infinitely complicated structure with a simple 
 function. Both a mechanical theory and a teleological 
 theory — i.e. any theory of intelligence — seek to show 
 how the parts, in their almost infinite multiplicity, have 
 been added bit by bit, and co-ordinated. Bergson gives 
 up this project altogether, and maintains that this 
 multiplicity, far from somehow becoming organized, is 
 due entirely to our analysis. He substitutes the hypo- 
 thesis that the elan originel, finding itself opposed by 
 matter, makes an effort to overcome the obstacle, and 
 it does this by an indivisible act. The result is the 
 
 1 £.C. p. 95 (Eng. Tr., p. 92). 2 Ibid. (Ibid.).
 
 108 BERGSON'S THEORY 
 
 visual apparatus. 1 This act, because it is indivisible, 
 explains the fact that when we analyse the organized 
 visual apparatus, the order of the parts is found complete 
 and perfect. According to the greater or less intensity 
 of the elan, the eye constituted will be " the simple 
 pigmentary masses of an inferior organism, or the rudi- 
 mentary eye of a Serpula, or the already differentiated eye 
 of the Alciope, or the marvellously perfected eye of a 
 bird. But all these organs, of very unequal complication, 
 will necessarily present an equal co-ordination. That is 
 why the distant removal of two animal species from one 
 another does not make an essential difference. If, 
 on both sides, the progress towards vision has gone 
 equally far, the visual organ will be the same in both 
 cases, for the form of the organ merely expresses the 
 measure in which the exercise of the function has 
 been obtained." 2 
 
 An empirical study of the evolution process thus 
 reveals the inadequacy of a mechanical explanation of 
 that process, and leads Bergson to the postulate of a 
 factor, which is beyond the grasp of intelligence. 
 " This elan, keeping itself along the lines of evolution, 
 among which it is divided, is the primary cause of 
 variations, of those, at least, which are regularly trans- 
 mitted, which take on additions, which create new 
 species. As a rule, when species have begun to 
 diverge on setting out from a common source, they 
 accentuate their divergence in proportion as they 
 progress in their evolution. However, at definite points, 
 they might, and even must, evolve identically, if one 
 accepts the hypothesis of a common impetus." 3 
 
 The nature of this clan of life, inscrutable to intelli- 
 gence, is directly apprehended in an effort of sympathetic 
 
 1 V. E.C. pp. 102 and 103 (Eng. Tr. pp. 99-100). 
 
 2 E.C. p. 109 (Eng. Tr. p. 101). s Ibid. p. 95 (Eng. Tr. p. 93).
 
 ELAN AND INTUITION 109 
 
 insight or intuition. The philosopher must rid himself 
 of all retrospective vision, and so disentangle himself 
 from the intellectual categories. He must seek to live 
 the varying degrees of real it)' without reflecting, and 
 the feeling of the actual progress of living conditions a 
 direct knowledge of the clan, which is at the heart of 
 living things. " Our consciousness must detach itself 
 from that which has become, and attach itself to 
 that which is becoming. It is necessary that, by 
 turning and twisting on itself, the faculty of seeing 
 should become identified with the act of willing — a 
 painful effort, which we may make abruptly by doing 
 violence to our nature, but which we cannot maintain 
 beyond a few instants. In the free act, when we 
 contract all our being in order to impel it forward, we 
 have the more or less clear consciousness of motives 
 and mobile powers, and even, strictly speaking, of the 
 becoming by which they are organized into an act. 
 But the pure will, the current which traverses this 
 matter in communicating life to it, is something which 
 we feel with difficulty, of which, at most, we gain a 
 passing glimpse. Should we attempt to place ourselves 
 in it, be it for only an instant, even then it is but an 
 individual, fragmentary will which we apprehend. In 
 order to arrive at the principle of all life, as also of all 
 materiality, we should have to go much further. Is 
 this impossible ? No, certainly not ! The history of 
 philosophy bears witness that it is not. There is not 
 any lasting system which is not, in some at least of its 
 parts, vivified by the intuition." 1 In this way the 
 hypothesis of a psychical force suggested by an empirical 
 study of evolution is verified by intuition. There is, 
 then, a reality beyond the reach of intelligence, and the 
 degradation of this psychical reality into intelligence 
 1 E.C. pp. 258 and 259 (Eng. Tr. p. 251).
 
 no INTUITION OF MATTER 
 
 may be followed. But there is still one more prelimin- 
 ary step. The origin and nature of matter must be 
 dealt with, for intelligence has formed itself upon the 
 model of matter. 
 
 A speculative knowledge of matter can be arrived at 
 only by means of intuition. Such an intuition lies 
 de jure at the basis of our perceptual knowledge, for 
 perception, in its simplest form, is " pure " perception, 
 the " immediate and instantaneous intuition of matter " 
 which would be experienced by " an adult and formed 
 consciousness, but a consciousness confined to the 
 present, and absorbed, to the exclusion of all else, in 
 the task of moulding itself on the external object." 
 This " pure " perception is more nearly approximated 
 according as descent is made in the animal scale. In 
 the case of man it has become overlaid with memory 
 elements, with the result that the most direct perception 
 of a quality of matter is the compression, so to speak, of 
 an infinite number of material moments into one moment 
 of our consciousness. If, then, an immediate knowledge 
 of matter is to be acquired, the contribution of memory 
 to normal perception must somehow be eliminated. 
 
 In the next place, all mapping out of matter 
 into objects with clearly-defined contours is relative 
 to our faculty of perception. These objects, as distinct 
 bodies, have no existence in matter. They appear 
 only because that part of matter which does not 
 interest our needs, and, more generally, our functions, 
 is discarded in the process of perception, and the parts 
 of matter thus isolated by being severed from that 
 which continues them in all directions appear to the 
 percipient as definitely outlined bodies. But their 
 existence as bodies is due to a negation of matter 
 rather than to anything positive in themselves. Science, 
 in one of its movements at least, pushes still further
 
 CONCEPTS OF MATTER m 
 
 this artificial isolation begun by normal perception, for 
 it decomposes objects into molecules, atoms, or some- 
 thing else, which have no more reality than the objects 
 themselves. The artificial boundaries between object 
 and object must be removed if a pure disinterested 
 knowledge of matter is to be acquired. 
 
 But still another correction of our ordinary view of 
 matter is necessary. This follows as a natural conse- 
 quence from the previous correction. It is no longer 
 legitimate to speak of local changes of bodies, since 
 bodies do not exist. The movements which we inter- 
 pret as changes of place must be regarded as " indi- 
 visibles which occupy duration, suppose a 'before' 
 and an ' after ' (not merely a ' here ' and a ' there '), 
 and link together the successive moments of time by a 
 thread of variable quality which cannot be without 
 analogy to the continuity of our own consciousness." l 
 The fact of qualitative movement redeems the material 
 world from pure spatiality, and gives it duration, how- 
 ever feeble, so that from this point of view it must be 
 regarded as having a history, and must not be thought 
 to consist in a succession of instantaneous creations, 
 however nearly it may approximate to that. 
 
 If these corrections are made, the figure, magnitude, 
 and position of bodies melt away, and what remains is 
 described by one of Bergson's disciples as " a moving 
 continuity, a vortex of images which dissolve by 
 insensible degrees into each other." Further, the 
 sensible qualities assume their natural and uncondensed 
 nature, and " though not vanishing, are spread out and 
 diluted into an incomparably more divided duration." 
 By thus undoing what the faculty of perception has 
 done in the interests of bodily activity, by removing 
 the definite contours of isolated bodies or of molecules, 
 1 M. et J/, p. 226 (Eng. Tr. p. 268).
 
 ii2 INTUITION OF MATTER 
 
 by withdrawing the power of memory, which condenses 
 elementary movements into a solid mass which we 
 call a sensible quality, by restoring to movement its 
 real nature — i.e. by withdrawing attention from the 
 mathematical points through which we have conceived 
 it as passing, and regarding motion in its mobility, as 
 it is directly revealed to consciousness — by abstracting 
 from space (the schema of divisibility furnished by 
 intelligence in its practical function) and from homo- 
 geneous time (the abstract schema of succession in 
 general), we may gain a fleeting view of matter in its 
 absolute essence. This reminds one irresistibly of James' 
 " parturient mountain which delivered itself of a mouse." 
 If, however, it be remembered that such an intuition 
 is not to be gained in an arbitrary way, but has behind 
 it the travail of mind of whole generations of scientists, 
 and that what it is supposed to yield in this fleeting 
 view is really the scientific ideal of a material universe 
 which is continuous throughout, and in which there is 
 automatic and equal reaction of part on part, then the 
 apparent inadequacy of the end achieved to the effort 
 expended disappears. But, at the same time, the need 
 for an intuition also seems to disappear, the rational 
 synthesizing power of the scientific mind being the 
 only necessary presupposition of such knowledge of 
 matter. 
 
 The feature of the intuition of matter which is of 
 outstanding importance for our purpose is that matter 
 has duration, but duration so feeble that its existence 
 approximates to that which Descartes conceived the exist- 
 ence of the world of extension to be — an existence created 
 at every instant through the concourse of God. Matter 
 has not, however, reached this limit. Nor is it abso- 
 lutely extended. Its parts, though tending towards 
 mutual externality, completely reciprocal independence,
 
 INVERSE MOVEMENT OF SPIRIT 113 
 
 still exhibit reciprocity of action and reaction. Matter, 
 that is to say, approximates towards Descartes' res 
 extensa, but never becomes identical with it. Here 
 Bergson approaches very near to that monistic spiritual- 
 ism to which reference has already been made. Spirit is 
 identical with duration, and matter has duration, conse- 
 quently matter itself differs from spirit only in degree. 
 But since its duration is so much feebler than ours, 
 Bergson concludes that there is in the universe a move- 
 ment opposed to the evolution of spirit, the movement, 
 namely, towards space. This movement has already 
 been observed in the individual psychical life, where it 
 was seen that, when spirit is directed towards action on 
 matter, the true type of causality is found in the pro- 
 gress from pure spirit to juxtaposed images — i.e. in an 
 undoing of the progress of spirit. By intellectual sym- 
 pathy a similar movement towards disintegration may 
 be discerned in the universe at large. 
 
 The tendency of matter towards disintegration is 
 partially expressed in the second law of thermo-dyna- 
 mics — the most metaphysical, Bergson thinks, of all 
 physical laws — which, released from the mathematical 
 form which has been imposed upon it ab extra, expresses 
 essentially that " all physical changes have a tendency 
 to degrade themselves into heat, and heat itself tends to 
 be dissipated in a uniform manner amongst bodies." 
 That is to say, this law indicates the direction of the 
 movement of matter — towards a relative stability of 
 elementary changes which indefinitely repeat one an- 
 other. Matter is, then, " a flux rather than a thing," 
 but its flow is in the opposite direction to that of spirit. 
 The flux of spirit is creative evolution ; the movement 
 of matter is towards stability, towards a present which 
 is unceasingly renewed. 
 
 Further, creation of matter is quite conceivable. 
 
 H
 
 ii4 IDEA OF DISORDER 
 
 Bergson undertakes the analysis of the idea of disorder, 
 understood as an absence of order, with the purpose of 
 demonstrating that reality " can pass from tension to 
 extension, from freedom to mechanical necessity, by way 
 of inversion " ; that " the geometrical order has no need 
 of explanation, being purely and simply the suppression 
 of the inverse order"; and with that end in view he 
 considers it necessary to establish the fact that " sup- 
 pression is always a substitution, and is necessarily con- 
 ceived as such." The idea of disorder, as currently 
 accepted, expresses fundamentally the disappointment 
 of a mind which, when it seeks a certain kind of order 
 on certain occasions, does not find it. The mind 
 expects to discover a kind of order in which alone, for 
 the moment, it is interested. It does not meet with that 
 order, and it affirms that no order is to be discovered 
 there. But this is purely a practical assertion : for our 
 immediate purposes there is no order there. Theoreti- 
 cally, however, it may become necessary to admit that 
 there is some order, although it may be of a kind diffe- 
 rent from that which we expected to meet. In fact, 
 " the idea of disorder denotes the absence of a certain 
 order, but to the advantage of another (with which we 
 were not concerned) ; but as it is applied to each of the 
 two in turn, and as it even unceasingly goes and comes 
 between the two, we grasp it en route, or rather en /'air, 
 and we treat it as if it represented, no longer the 
 absence of indifferently the one or the other order, but 
 the absence of the two together — a thing which is 
 neither perceived nor conceived, a simple verbal entity." 1 
 There is no meaning, then, in saying that if order is 
 suppressed, disorder is substituted : all that one is war- 
 ranted in affirming is that if one kind of order disappears, 
 another is substituted. Bergson's position is that within 
 l JS.C. p. 242 (Eng. Tr. p. 234).
 
 CREATION OF MATTER 115 
 
 order there are two kinds of order which oppose one 
 another, and that the suppression of the one involves the 
 substitution of the other. But this is quite unconvincing 
 as an argument resting solely upon his analysis of the 
 idea of disorder. All that can be concluded from that 
 analysis is that order always exists in experience, so 
 that if one species of order is not present to conscious- 
 ness we may be sure that some other species is there — 
 not necessarily an order of an opposite kind to that 
 sought, but certainly one of either a higher or a lower 
 grade. In using the word " suppressed," Bergson is 
 foreclosing the question, for the matter to be decided is 
 whether the one kind of order is the suppression of the 
 other, or whether there are not degrees of reality, the 
 higher degree subsuming but not suppressing the lower, 
 the lower being, in such circumstances, a stage in the 
 ascent to the higher, and not the interruption of it. The 
 fact is that the conception of these two opposing ten- 
 dencies in the universe is reached on analogy with the 
 movements which Bergson has already observed in the 
 individual consciousness. The natural direction of mind 
 involves interpenetration of parts, continuous creation, 
 free activity, but as soon as this movement is inter- 
 rupted the opposing movement towards extension, 
 repetition, necessity, begins. This principle is projected 
 into the cosmic organism, and is found to make the 
 creation of matter conceivable. It is conceivable that 
 an interruption of the movement of the creative force 
 immanent in the universe may take place, and im- 
 mediately, ipso facto, the inverse movement towards 
 materiality is substituted. 
 
 It is possible, as we have seen, to gain by a painful 
 effort of intuition a fleeting vision of this " pure will " 
 or "consciousness" which communicates to us the impulse 
 to live and to endure. We may feel it acting, in a
 
 no CREATION OF MATTER 
 
 fragmentary, individualized, partially thwarted way, in 
 ourselves, on the occasion of our freest acts. The 
 artist may feel it operating in himself as his ideal 
 creations flash into consciousness, and the metaphysi- 
 cian may, by a supreme effort of concentration on the 
 productions of philosophers, receive the impulse which 
 vitalized their systems, and feel it stir within himself. 
 In each case, this "will " is felt to be a perpetual growth, 
 or being which continually adds to itself. Now, 
 imagine that a momentary addition to this cosmic will 
 becomes somehow interrupted, partially dissociated from 
 the onrush of its source. At that precise moment, 
 in virtue of that very interruption, the creation of a 
 material world takes place. 
 
 In giving an account of this flight of cosmic specula- 
 tion it is impossible to avoid metaphor. Bergson 
 cheerfully accepts the situation, and his fertile imagi- 
 nation revels in a wealth of symbolic expression. 1 It 
 is not necessary to reproduce these illustrations. We 
 have gone far enough to see what Bergson means 
 when he argues that the order in matter is the negation 
 of the " willed " order ; that the " physical is merely 
 the psychical inverted " ; that matter is, so to speak, 
 " ballasted with geometry" ; and that there is nothing 
 positive in the mathematical order towards which it 
 descends. 
 
 The problem which Bergson has faced in this account 
 of the nature and creation of matter may be connected 
 with that which Fichte encountered at the crucial stage 
 of his thought. In developing one aspect of the thought 
 of Kant, Fichte reached the position that all reality is 
 the product of a fundamental {urspriinglicK) activity. 
 In self-consciousness, in the feeling of the activity of 
 the self, he discovered the clue to the nature of all 
 
 1 V. E.C. pp. 260-270 (Eng. Tr. pp. 249-259),
 
 BERGSON AND FICHTE 117 
 
 reality. I am, I exist, only as I act. But a difficulty 
 arises when the passage is attempted from the " I " as 
 active "subject" to the "not- 1" or "object" which 
 palpably limits the activity of the subject, and this 
 difficulty was never entirely overcome by Fichte, in 
 spite of his argument that the activity of the subject 
 demands, in order to release itself, an object which it 
 must overcome, and that, consequently, it is necessary 
 that it should produce a limiting reality. Fichte has 
 failed, and necessarily failed, to account for the first 
 Anstoss which might cause the development which 
 would issue in an objective world clearly differentiated 
 from the active " I," and in the emergence of pure 
 reason as an instrument of the activity of the ego. 
 Bergson has discovered the clue to the nature of reality 
 in a supra-personal activity, the essence of which is its 
 creative movement, but experience points to the limita- 
 tion of such a pure will. The difficulty is to account 
 for the origin of this limiting matter. Bergson, as we 
 have just seen, argues that it is but the inversion of the 
 free activity of supra-personal spirit, and that intelligent 
 personality has appeared in the course of the effort of 
 the spiritual power to re-assert itself, and overcome 
 the interruption which it has encountered. But the 
 supreme difficulty is to account for the primary in- 
 terruption. Why should the free activity ever have 
 become inverted ? Fichte argued from the fundamental 
 nature of the transcendental " I " to the necessity 
 of the production of a limiting objective world, but 
 even that line of argument is not open to Bergson, 
 and it will have to be considered at a later stage 
 whether this thought, when stripped of its metaphorical 
 garb, is not seen, at this point, to present insuperable 
 difficulties. 
 
 The desired point has now been reached at which
 
 n8 EVOLUTION OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 the evolution of intelligence in the race may be followed. 
 Imagine the original spiritual elan confronted by matter, 
 an obstacle which it must overcome if it is to follow 
 its natural direction. It is almost held in equilibrium 
 by the opposing tendency, but it is necessary to imagine 
 that it has a slight advantage. How will it proceed to 
 follow up this advantage, and overcome the obstacle 
 which matter places before it? An empirical study of 
 the evolution process shows that spirit has " compelled 
 matter into organization, but its movement has thereby 
 been both infinitely retarded and infinitely divided. 
 On the one hand, in fact, consciousness has had to fall 
 asleep, like the chrysalis in the cocoon where it is pre- 
 paring its wings ; and on the other hand, the numerous 
 tendencies which it embraced have been distributed 
 amongst divergent series of organisms, which, moreover, 
 have externalized those tendencies in movements rather 
 than internalized them in representations. In the 
 course of this evolution, while some slept more and 
 more deeply, others became more completely awake, 
 and the torpor of the former was useful to the activity 
 of the latter. But the awaking might be accomplished 
 in two different ways. Life, i.e. consciousness, launched 
 through matter, fixed its attention either on its own move- 
 ment or on the matter through which it passed. It was 
 thus orientated either in the direction of intuition or in 
 that of intelligence. . . . Consciousness determining itself 
 in intelligence, i.e. concentrating itself, to begin with, on 
 matter, seems thus to become externalized in relation 
 to itself: but just because it adapts itself to outside 
 objects, it succeeds in circulating amongst them, in 
 avoiding the barriers which they oppose to it, in inde- 
 finitely enlarging its domain." 1 
 
 It is very necessary to understand Bergson here. 
 
 1 E.C. pp. 197-198 (Eng. Tr. p. 192).
 
 SPIRIT OPPOSED TO MATTER 119 
 
 Thought, he claims, is an activity, a movement. He 
 means precisely what he says. This psychical force at 
 the basis of the evolution of life is an activity. It may 
 be conscious activity, or it may be unconscious activity. 
 Bergson emphasizes the aspect of activity, and does not 
 here, at any rate, concern himself much about its con- 
 sciousness or unconsciousness. Now when, as we have 
 supposed, this activity is met by an activity of opposite 
 nature, there may be a kind of compromise, as in the 
 case of plants ; or the activity which is thought, or will, 
 or freedom, or the elan of life, may gradually overcome 
 the activity which is matter, or materiality, or move- 
 ment towards perfect equilibrium, or necessity. An 
 organism is formed, a modus vivendi between the two 
 activities. To begin with, the activity which is medi- 
 ated through the organism may be scarcely more than 
 automatic, as in the case of the amoeba. But as an 
 ascent is made in the scale of living beings, involving a 
 growing conquest of spirit over matter, action becomes 
 chosen, free, and finally clearly conscious. The physio- 
 logical condition of free activity, of the free passage of 
 the elan of life, is found in the sensori-motor nervous 
 system, with its in-leading roads or canals (afferent 
 nerves), its out-leading roads or canals (efferent nerves), 
 and the cross-roads, so to speak, between the two, the 
 sensorial centres. The in-leading and the out-leading 
 roads canalize an activity or movement which would 
 otherwise be diffused, and the existence of the cross- 
 roads makes possible a choice of direction for the 
 activity. With this possibility of choice consciousness 
 appears. 
 
 The organism, is, then, a real reservoir of indeter- 
 mination. "If we agree to describe as the 'sensori- 
 motor nervous system,' the cerebro-spinal nervous 
 system, together with the sensorial apparatus in which
 
 120 WAYS OF CONQUERING MATTER 
 
 it is prolonged, and the locomotor muscles which it 
 governs, it might be said that a superior organism is 
 essentially constituted by a sensori-motor nervous 
 system installed in a digestive, respiratory, circulatory, 
 secretive, etc., apparatus, whose business it is to repair, 
 cleanse, and protect it, to create with it a constant 
 internal medium, finally, and above all, to pass on to 
 it potential energy which will be converted into energy 
 of locomotion." 1 As the nervous system develops, 
 the more free does the activity of the animal become, 
 and the more fully is the determination of the opposing 
 activity, that of matter, surmounted. But the free- 
 dom which the organism conditions is not absolute ; 
 the contrary movement manifests itself persistently. 
 " Our freedom, in the very movements by means of 
 which it declares itself, creates nascent habits which 
 would stifle it, if it did not renew itself by constant 
 effort. Automatism lies in ambush for it." 2 
 
 It must be distinctly borne in mind that at this 
 stage we are dealing merely with psychical activity, 
 and that all movement is, on Bergson's view, psychical 
 in nature. Further, this psychical activity is con- 
 ceived of as striving to obtain certain things from 
 brute matter. It is, besides, an activity limited in 
 its power. We have seen that in its action upon 
 matter it has produced an organism. Now it has 
 choice between two ways of continuing its conquest 
 over matter. It may do so immediately, by creating 
 an organized instrument with which to work, or it 
 may do so mediately, in an organism which, although 
 it does not possess naturally the required instrument, 
 will itself manufacture it by fashioning inorganic 
 matter to its needs. It appears to have made the 
 former choice in the line of development which ends 
 
 'E.C. p. 136 (Eng. Tr. p. 131). * Ibid. p. 138 (Eng. Tr. p. 134).
 
 HOMO FABER 121 
 
 in the insects, and the latter in that which has termi- 
 nated in man. In the case of the insects, the organism 
 has a variable, sometimes considerable, number of 
 appendices, each of which has its special form of 
 motor activity. The activity of the organism of the 
 insect is but a continuation of the activity which has 
 produced the organism. This activity Bergson calls 
 instinct. In the case of vertebrates, on the other 
 hand, the activity " has been concentrated on two 
 pairs of members, and these organs accomplish functions 
 which depend much less completely on their form. 
 The independence becomes complete with man, whose 
 hand may execute any work whatever." 1 Man, of 
 all the members of the animal kingdom, is the most 
 inadequately furnished with direct natural means of 
 protecting himself against his enemies, against cold 
 and hunger. This insufficiency, Bergson says, acquires, 
 when we attempt to decipher it, the value of a pre- 
 historic document. It is the definite dismissal which 
 instinct receives from another from of psychical 
 activity — that which issues in works of construction, 
 and which he terms intelligence. From this point 
 of view, man might more fittingly be called Homo 
 Faber than Homo Sapiens. " Instinct (in its essential 
 nature) is a faculty of utilizing and even of constructing 
 organized instruments. Intelligence (in its essential 
 nature) is the faculty of constructing and employing 
 unorganized instruments." 2 These two, instinctive 
 activity and intelligent activity — or immediate activity 
 and mediate activity — represent two divergent solutions 
 of the problem which presented itself to the original 
 psychical activity in its action upon matter. The 
 problem was " to create with matter, which is necessity 
 itself, an instrument of liberty ; to construct a machine 
 1 £.C. p. 144 (Eng. Tr. p. 140). * Ibid. p. 152 (Eng. Tr. p. 146).
 
 122 SPECIES OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 which would triumph over the mechanical, and to make 
 use of the determinism of nature in order to break 
 through the meshes of the net which it had spread." 1 
 To achieve this conquest it was necessary that the 
 psychical activity should, for the most part, adapt 
 itself to the habits of matter, and concentrate all its 
 attention on them ; in short, that it should determine 
 itself more specifically in intelligence. 
 
 But it is as a faculty of knowledge that we are accus- 
 tomed to regard intelligence and perhaps instinct also. 
 Bergson says, however, that knowledge and action are 
 here two aspects of one and the same faculty. Know- 
 ledge is simply conscious activity. Before proceeding to 
 elucidate the point, it might be well to dwell for a 
 moment on the aspect of psychical activity which we 
 above deliberately set aside— that of consciousness. 
 Bergson distinguishes between two species of uncon- 
 sciousness — that which consists in a no consciousnes s 
 and that which results from an annulled consciousness. 
 " No-consciousness and annulled-consciousness are both 
 equal to zero ; but the first zero expresses that there is 
 nothing ; the second, that one has to deal with two 
 equal quantities of contrary direction which balance and 
 neutralize each other. The unconsciousness of a falling 
 stone is a no-consciousness ; the stone has no feeling of 
 its fall. Is it the same with the unconsciousness of the 
 instinct in the extreme cases in which instinct is uncon- 
 scious ? When we accomplish mechanically a habitual 
 action, when the somnambulist acts automatically in his 
 dream, the unconsciousness may be absolute ; but it 
 is because, this time, the representation of the act is 
 held in check by the execution of the act itself, which 
 is so perfectly similar to the representation and fits so 
 exactly into it, that consciousness can no longer burst 
 l £.C. p. 286 (Eng. Tr. p. 278).
 
 ACTED KNOWLEDGE 123 
 
 forth. The representation is obstructed by the action. 
 The proof of this is, that if the accomplishment of the 
 action is arrested or hindered by an obstacle, conscious- 
 ness may arise. It was present, then, but neutralized 
 by the action which fulfilled the representation. The 
 obstacle has created nothing positive ; it has simply 
 created a void, it has caused an obstruction. The 
 inadequateness of the act to the representation is 
 precisely what we call consciousness. If one were to 
 examine this point thoroughly, one would find that 
 consciousness is the light immanent in the zone of 
 possible action or potential activity which surrounds the 
 action effectively accomplished by the living being. It 
 signifies hesitation or choice. When many actions, 
 equally possible, are outlined, without any real action 
 taking place, consciousness is intense. When the real 
 action is the only possible action, consciousness becomes 
 annulled consciousness. Representation and knowledge 
 do not less exist in the latter case, if it be established 
 that one finds there a totality of systematized move- 
 ments, the last of which is already prefigured in the 
 first, and that consciousness would, besides, gush out if 
 an obstacle were encountered." 1 
 
 There is a distinction to be made, then, between 
 unconscious, acted knowledge, and conscious, thought 
 knowledge. This distinction occurs again and again in 
 Bergson's thought. Bearing in mind this idea that 
 knowledge is fundamentally activity, let us now return 
 to the point upon which we were engaged — viz. that 
 knowledge and action are but two aspects of the same 
 faculty. We have seen that instinct is the faculty of 
 making use of an organized instrument which simply 
 continues its own activity. Its activity implies the 
 potential or unconscious knowledge of the instrument 
 1 E.C. pp. 156 and 157 (Eng. Tr. p. 151).
 
 I2 4 STRUCTURE OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 and of the object to which it is applied. It has the 
 innate, unconscious knowledge of a thing. It acts 
 this knowledge. But intelligence, with which we are 
 more particularly concerned for the present, is " the 
 faculty of constructing unorganized, i.e. artificial, instru- 
 ments. If, through it, nature fails to endow the living 
 being with the instrument which will serve it, she does 
 so in order that the living being may, according to 
 circumstances, vary its method of construction. The 
 essential function of the intelligence will then be to 
 distinguish " (either by acted or conscious knowledge) 
 " in any circumstances whatsoever, the means of getting 
 out of a difficulty. It will seek what may serve it best, 
 i.e. whatever will fit precisely into the proposed frame- 
 work. It will bear essentially on the relations between 
 the given situation and the means of utilizing it. It 
 will possess, then, an innate tendency to establish 
 relations. This tendency implies the natural knowledge 
 of certain very general relations, veritable stuff, which 
 the activity peculiar to such intelligence will fashion 
 into more particular relations." l These general relations 
 which intelligence, regarded as an activity, naturally 
 employs, are, e.g., relations of equivalent to equivalent ; 
 of contained to containing ; of cause to effect — all of 
 which may possibly be subsumed under the one form 
 or conception, space. Intelligence may not have con- 
 scious knowledge of these relations, but it has, Bergson 
 would say, implicit, unconscious knowledge of them. 
 They are regulative principles of the activity of an 
 intelligent being. It acts these principles. The activity 
 of all intelligent beings, i.e. of all the vertebrates, is 
 regulated by them, and man most particularly, in his 
 manufacturing activity, proceeds upon these general 
 relations, which, upon reflection, appear to him as 
 i£.C. p. 163 (Eng. Tr. p. 159).
 
 NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE 125 
 
 necessarily true. These fundamental conceptions or 
 principles may also be regarded as constituting the 
 framework of an ideal material or spatial world. 
 
 Bergson does not mean here what Spencer would 
 have us believe — that the psychical activity has had 
 imprinted upon it, as a result of its contact with matter, 
 the general characteristics of matter. His position is 
 that the psychical activity which threads its way 
 through matter has chosen to adopt the form of matter, 
 to insinuate itself into matter, in order that it might 
 ultimately conquer that with which it has, so to speak, 
 ingratiated itself. It is, Bergson says, life looking 
 backwards, fascinated by the contemplation of inert 
 matter ; externalizing itself in action, as the thought 
 of the somnambulist is externalized in action ; adopt- 
 ing in principle, so as to direct in fact, the procedure 
 of unorganized nature. 
 
 Since in its action upon matter this psychical activity 
 which we call intelligence has to choose again and 
 again the place and the time at which it will construct 
 an organized instrument, the knowledge implied in this 
 activity will be more and more thought and conscious, 
 rather than acted and unconscious. The consciousness 
 of matter will first arise in the perception of things, 
 and later, when intellect speculates (as a luxury, 
 because it possesses a surplus of force of which to 
 dispose), it will, assisted by language, become con- 
 scious of its own activity — not in the perception of 
 things, but in the representation of the acts by which 
 spirit, as intelligence, fixes itself upon things. The 
 intelligence, however, follows the habits which it has 
 contracted in its dealing with matter, and it represents 
 its own activity under the form of discontinuity, in clear 
 and distinct concepts. " The concepts are, in fact, 
 external to one another as well as to objects in space.
 
 126 FUNCTION OF INTELLIGENCE 
 
 And they have the same stability as the objects on the 
 model of which they have been created. They con- 
 stitute, reunited, an ' intelligible world,' which resembles, 
 in its essential characteristics, the world of solids, but 
 the elements of which are lighter, more diaphanous, 
 more easily handled by the intelligence than the pure 
 and simple images of concrete things." l They are mere 
 symbols. In manipulating these symbols, the intelli- 
 gence follows certain rules, which, when systematized, 
 constitute our logic. " As these symbols are derived 
 from the consideration of solids, as the rules of the 
 composition of these symbols amongst themselves 
 scarcely do more than translate the most general 
 relations between solids, our logic triumphs in the 
 science which takes the solidity of bodies as its object, 
 i.e. in geometry. Logic and geometry reciprocally 
 engender one another." 2 
 
 This sketch of the development of life into intelli- 
 gence, has had as its aim to show that intelligence is 
 an activity, primarily directed upon matter, temporarily 
 inverted in order that it might, ultimately, pursue its 
 course of freedom ; that it endeavours to construct 
 unorganized instruments by juxtaposing part to part in 
 certain relations to each other ; that it is constructed 
 to this end, being reciprocal to matter ; and, finally, 
 to suggest that if it deals with creative psychical 
 activity it does so only symbolically. 
 
 To sum up : if intelligence be regarded from the 
 point of view of action, and no longer as a speculative 
 faculty, it has for its primary object the unorganized 
 solid. It represents clearly only the discontinuous ; 
 it substitutes for real movement juxtaposed points 
 which constitute a practical equivalent of the real 
 movement ; it attaches itself to the stable and immov- 
 
 l £.C. p. 174 (Eng. Tr. p. 169). *lbid. (Ibid.),
 
 ADAPTATION OF INTELLIGENCE 127 
 
 able ; it is characterized by an unlimited power of 
 decomposing according to any law whatever, and of 
 recomposing into any system whatever. Finally, it is 
 inherently incapable of representing as they are life and 
 consciousness, and when it, developed as it has been for 
 action upon matter, transports itself into the domain of 
 speculation, the knowledge which it furnishes will be 
 merely symbolic. Traces of instinct remain in the 
 most fully developed intelligence, stray intuitions of 
 life and consciousness come to all, but these are 
 immediately intellectualized and forced into the frame- 
 work of a faculty constructed to enclose the inert and 
 dead. 
 
 Thus the evolution of intelligence in the history of 
 the race is exactly similar to the intellectual develop- 
 ment of each individual within the whole. In the case 
 of human individuals, spirit is materialized and intellect 
 appears in order that chosen, free action may be 
 achieved by the organized body. Intellect is simply a 
 stage of spirit in the progress of free activity. In the 
 case of the larger organism the originally undivided 
 psychical impulse has adapted itself to matter in the 
 manner which has just been observed, in order that, 
 ultimately, its conquest over matter may be secured, 
 and its free activity released. Matter does not 
 determine the form of intelligence, as Spencer would 
 have us believe, neither does the intelligence impose its 
 form upon matter, as Kant argued, nor have matter and 
 intelligence been regulated upon one another by some 
 pre-established harmony, as Leibnitz contended, but 
 " intelligence and matter have been progressively 
 adapted to one another, and have ended in a common 
 form." Spirit has, so to speak, voluntarily, purpose- 
 fully, and cunningly adopted the form of matter. But 
 its temporary degradation has been real and thorough,
 
 128 INTELLIGENCE AND SPACE 
 
 Neither the order in matter nor the form of the 
 human intelligence has anything positive in it. Both 
 are due to a similar interruption of a similar activity. 
 The order of a rationalized, coherent system of thought 
 is simply the order of nature introduced into spirit, and 
 the order in matter is nothing else than intelligence. 
 Spirit can discover and overcome the order in matter 
 only by means of its own degradation into matter or 
 intelligence, only by stooping to conquer. 
 
 It may pertinently be asked why, if intelligence has 
 thus adapted itself to matter, an intuition of matter 
 is necessary at all. Further, if spirit, in becoming 
 intelligence, has adopted the rhythm of matter, and if 
 matter, as it actually exists, has not reached the utmost 
 limit to which it is moving, then the difference between 
 matter and spirit is not a difference in kind but one of 
 degree, and since intelligence is capable of knowing 
 spirit in its lowest degree {i.e. matter as it actually 
 exists) it does not seem necessary to postulate, even for 
 the knowledge of spirit, a faculty of another kind than 
 intelligence, for intelligence, by its contractions and 
 expansions, could sympathize with reality in all its 
 degrees. Bergson's reply would be that, in a sense, 
 intelligence has " out-Heroded Herod." Once put in 
 the way of descent by its contact with matter, it out- 
 strips matter itself, and, in the form of the geometrical 
 intelligence, it has actually completed the movement 
 and reached the limit towards which matter only tends. 
 Intelligence aims at securing the most perfect insertion 
 of our body into its material environment; it is 
 essentially constructed for action. In action, it is the 
 end to be achieved on which we fix our attention. The 
 procedure of intelligence is saltatory, as opposed to 
 that of pure cognition, which, according to James' 
 familiar term, is "ambulatory." In its normal course,
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND SPACE 129 
 
 intelligence leaps across intervals from a terminus a quo 
 to a terminus ad quern, and the conceived empty 
 medium is space. " In order that our activity may 
 leap from an act to an act, it is necessary that matter 
 should pass from a state to a state, for it is only by the 
 insertion of a result into a state of the material world 
 that action can be accomplished." 1 The material 
 world does not present itself immediately to us as so 
 many isolated states, but intelligence, in its practical 
 procedure, supplies a medium in which it regards 
 matter as spread out, and since it views matter as par- 
 taking of the nature of this space, it can now divide it 
 into any number of parts whatever. " The perceiving 
 mind marks out divisions in the continuity of the 
 extended, simply following the suggestions of our 
 requirements and the needs of practical life. But in 
 order to divide the real in this way, we must first 
 persuade ourselves that the real is divisible at will. We 
 must, then, spread beneath the continuity of sensible 
 qualities, i.e. beneath concrete extensity, a net whose 
 meshes may be altered to any shape whatsoever, and 
 become as small as we please. This substratum which 
 is merely conceived, this wholly ideal diagram of 
 arbitrary and indefinite indivisibility, is homogeneous 
 space." 2 In a word, the practical function of intelligence 
 has impelled it to complete the movement towards 
 dissolution, immobility, homogeneity, which matter has 
 partially accomplished. This fact colours all the 
 subsequent work of intelligence. Perception, e.g., does 
 not carve reality where the joints are. Its divisions are 
 arbitrary; they are too precise, "always subordinated 
 to practical exigencies, and consequently always subject 
 
 *E.C. p. 324 (Eng. Tr. p. 316). 
 
 2 M. et M. p. 234 (Eng. Tr. p. 278). V. also E.C. pp. 220-221 (Eng. 
 Tr. pp. 211-14). 
 
 I
 
 130 LAWS OF NATURE 
 
 to revision." " Science, which aspires to take a 
 mathematical form, accentuates unnecessarily the 
 spatiality of matter : its diagrams are, as a rule, too 
 precise, and require continual re-shaping." l Laws in 
 mathematical form will never be perfectly applicable 
 to matter. 
 
 But, it may still be said, there are laws of nature 
 other than those which appear in strictly mathematical 
 form ; may not these express the nature of matter in its 
 concreteness ? The essence of Bergson's reply to this 
 is that all such laws are the result of a fragmentary 
 view of the universe. " No one of these, taken separ- 
 ately, has any objective reality. It is the work of a 
 scientist who has considered things from a certain point 
 of view, isolated certain variables, applied certain con- 
 ventional units of measurement." 2 Again : " It would 
 be necessary, in order that a scientific theory should be 
 definitive, that the mind should embrace en bloc the 
 totality of things, and place them in exact relation the 
 one to the other : but, in reality, we are obliged to put 
 the problems one by one, in terms which are conse- 
 quently provisional, so that the solution of each problem 
 will need to be indefinitely corrected by the solution 
 which will be given of the subsequent problems, and 
 science, in its ensemble, is relative to the contingent 
 order in which the problems have successively been 
 stated." 3 In other words, all such laws are true only 
 at a certain level of scientific knowledge, true of the 
 part of the universe which has come within developing 
 human experience, and so, in a sense, only provisionally 
 true. They are, of necessity, more or less conventional. 
 " A law in mathematical form (and all laws of positive 
 science are basally mathematical) expresses that a cer- 
 
 1 E.C. p. 225 (Eng. Tr. p. 218). 2 Ibid. p. 237 (Eng. Tr. p. 230). 
 
 s Ibid. p. 225 (Eng. Tr. p. 218).
 
 LAWS OF NATURE 131 
 
 tain magnitude is a function of one or other variables 
 conveniently chosen. Now, the choice of variable magni- 
 tudes, the distribution of nature into objects or into 
 facts, involves something contingent and conventional." x 
 It would be absurd to imagine that nature measures or 
 counts as physics "measures, counts, and relates 'quan- 
 titative ' variations to one another in order to obtain 
 laws." That is to say, so long as thought follows the 
 windings of nature in its qualitative changes, it does 
 not pause to measure, for nature never does that. This 
 may be expressed otherwise, from a different point of 
 view, by saying that quantitative considerations, and 
 quantitative proofs of inferences or inductions which 
 have been made, are, in a sense, imposed from without, 
 and the quantitative law is a very inadequate and con- 
 tingent expression of the nature of concrete reality. 
 Thus positive science, fragmentary and conventional, 
 requires to be completed by intuition, which rises above 
 the conventional, seeks to enter into the continuity and 
 mobility even of matter, and attempts to know reality 
 as it is for itself, and not as it appears to a dissecting 
 and isolating intelligence, although on account of the 
 tendency of matter towards complete spatialization the 
 progress of positive science, taken as a whole, means its 
 approximation to the intuition of inert matter. 2 
 
 Although intelligence has been " detached," " concen- 
 trated," " condensed " from a vaster reality, its separation 
 from its fount has not been complete. " Round con- 
 ceptual thought there subsists an indistinct fringe which 
 
 1 E. C. p. 248 (Eng. Tr. p. 242). 
 
 2 Note. — For the sake of clearness, I have kept to the main outline of 
 the nature and creation of matter, the evolution of intelligence, and the 
 relation of the intellectual to the intuitional interpretation of matter. As 
 soon as one passes from such a general statement to more detailed con- 
 sideration, numerous difficulties present themselves, and these will have to 
 be considered in a succeeding chapter.
 
 132 CONQUEST OF MATTER 
 
 recalls its origin." We have seen that the study of the 
 evolution of life confirms Bergson in his conception of 
 an original clan of life, psychical in character, which, in 
 its effort to graft indetermination on matter, has chosen 
 two divergent ways, one of which led to its concentra- 
 tion into intelligence, the other to its realization in 
 instinct. In the direction of intelligence this original 
 force adopted what we have called the mediate method 
 of the conquest of matter, which consisted in the con- 
 struction of an organism like that of the human being, 
 which can in time construct from inorganic nature 
 artificial tools, implements, or machines. But there is 
 another way in which the victory may be won, and that 
 is by the construction of an organism perfectly self- 
 complete, quite adequate for its activity, without the need 
 of any artificial construction. This we might call the 
 immediate method. The tools or machines which the 
 organism requires in the interests of life form part of 
 the organism itself. " Corresponding to this instrument 
 there is an instinct which knows how to make use of it. 
 There is no doubt that all instincts consist, from this 
 point of view, in a natural faculty of utilizing an innate 
 mechanism." x It is necessary here again to note that 
 Bergson is dealing with instinct as it sets out from the 
 original elan, and is considering it in its essential feature. 
 It is an ideal instinct with which he is dealing, not 
 instinct as it appears to us, mingled as it often is with 
 intelligence. Now, an ideal instinct is the acted know- 
 ledge of an innate mechanism, or it is the faculty of 
 utilizing or even of constructing an organized instru- 
 ment. It is the continuation of the activity which 
 raised matter to organization. 
 
 If we recur to Bergson's view of consciousness as 
 appearing only when the action is not adequate to the 
 
 l E.C. p. 151 (Eng. Tr. p. 146).
 
 INSTINCT AND ACTION 133 
 
 representation, it becomes clear that instinctive action 
 tends to be unconscious action, for " in cases where the 
 instrument to be handled is organized by nature, the 
 result to be obtained willed by nature, a feeble part is 
 left to choice. The consciousness inherent in the repre- 
 sentation will then be counter-balanced, in proportion 
 as it tends to disengage itself, by the accomplishment 
 of the act identical with the representation, which 
 becomes a counterpoise to it." * If instinct embraces 
 knowledge at all, it is acted knowledge, and tends to be 
 unconscious. " Knowledge, if knowledge there be, is 
 implicit only. It is externalized in precise lines of 
 action instead of being internalized in consciousness " — 
 i.e. in the awareness of its activity. Thus, in the line of 
 evolution upon which instinct appears, consciousness 
 does not escape. It is still imprisoned by matter. 
 
 But if this acted knowledge could become thought 
 knowledge, what would be the nature of that know- 
 ledge ? There would be no outlining of possible 
 action ; there would be the consciousness of real 
 action, of the psychical force in its organizing activity, 
 and of an object in its reality. " The conduct of the 
 insects outlines the representation of determined things, 2 
 existing or producing themselves in precise points of 
 space and of time, which the insect knows without 
 having learned them." Observation of the instinctive 
 action of insects seems to confirm the thought that they 
 act a definite knowledge of determined objects. An 
 interesting example of this is furnished by Bergson in 
 the case of the Sitaris, a small beetle, which deposits its 
 eggs at the entrance of a subterranean passage dug out 
 by a kind of bee. The larva of the Sitaris, after a long 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 157 (Eng. Tr. p. 152). 
 
 2 Note. — By "things" Bergson evidently means individual organisms, not 
 isolated objects.
 
 134 INSTINCT AND INTUITION 
 
 wait, clings to the male bee on its emergence from the 
 passage, and remains attached to it until the nuptial 
 flight. It then seizes the opportunity of transferring 
 itself to the female bee, and waits quietly till she lays 
 her eggs. It then leaps on the egg, which serves to 
 support it in the honey, and, in the course of a few 
 days, devours it. Then, installed on the shell, it under- 
 goes its first metamorphosis. Organized now for 
 floating on the honey, it consumes this stock of nour- 
 ishment, becomes a nymph and finally a perfect insect. 
 It appears to act throughout as if it had a knowledge 
 of the definite movement of definite things. If, then, 
 this action could become conscious action, could be- 
 come knowledge, it would be a knowledge of objects in 
 their fulness. It would be knowledge of what we 
 usually call the "matter" of knowledge. It would be 
 "cram-full." "If the consciousness which sleeps in it 
 were to awake ; if it were internalized in knowledge 
 instead of being externalized in action, if we were able 
 to interrogate it and it could reply, it would deliver up 
 to us the most profound secrets of life, for it only 
 continues the work by which life organizes matter." * 
 Instinct is sympathy. If it could become disinterested, 
 i.e. if it could be freed from its practical aspect in its 
 entanglement with physiological life ; if it could become 
 conscious of itself, i.e., once more, if it could withdraw 
 itself from externalization in action, and dive back into 
 itself; if, finally, it could enlarge its object indefinitely, 
 it would become intuition, and one who attained it 
 would, in the very effort, be led to the heart of psychical 
 movement. 
 
 Bergson combats most strenuously the view held by 
 most biologists that instinct and intelligence have 
 appeared along one line of evolution — that the progress 
 
 l E.C. p. i79(Eng. Tr. p. 174)-
 
 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 135 
 
 has been through sensibility and instinct to intelligence; 
 and he is no less strongly opposed to the view that 
 instinct is a degraded intelligence. He argues vigorously 
 that the facts of biology themselves go to confirm his 
 theory that instinct and intelligence have appeared in 
 their developed forms on two divergent lines of evolu- 
 tion ; that each represents an attempted solution of one 
 and the same problem, the conquest of mind over 
 matter; that they are the development of two elements, 
 which, to begin with, interpenetrated in the original 
 generative force immanent in all life. They are thus 
 complementary, yet opposed faculties. Intelligence is 
 concerned with the form of matter ; instinct with the 
 activity of life. " Intelligence applies itself to all 
 things, but it remains outside them, and it never 
 perceives anything more of a profound cause than 
 its diffusion into effects placed side by side." 1 The 
 insect with its instinct " grasps what is doubtlessly 
 only a very small part of a thing, just that which 
 interests it ; but it grasps it from within, not by a 
 process of knowledge, but by an intuition {lived rather 
 than represented) which, without any doubt, resembles 
 what in us is called divining sympathy. 
 
 In spite of the fact that the natural tendency of 
 human intelligence is towards a universal mathematic 
 which manifests itself, in philosophy, in its aim at a 
 coherent system of definite concepts, and in science, 
 in a progress towards deduction, and in spite of the 
 fact that its representation is increasingly symbolic as 
 the ascent is made through the successive spheres of 
 biology, ethics, and psychology, man is not compelled 
 to admit that his knowledge of reality must remain at 
 the symbolic level, that it is impossible for him to rise 
 to the truly speculative point of view, that he must be 
 
 1 Ibid. p. 190 (Eng. Tr. 185).
 
 136 INTUITION AND METAPHYSIC 
 
 ever mocked by antinomies which he is incompetent to 
 slay, and haunted by the ghost of an unknown and 
 unknowable reality which yet startles his impotent 
 mind. He is not pure intelligence ; he is not " in 
 entire forgetfulness " of the source whence he, as an 
 intelligent being, sprang. There pulses in him, though 
 feebly enough at times, the will which created him and 
 which surges through innumerable worlds. Let him 
 resist the distractions of matter, which has hypnotized 
 his spirit ; let him get back into this will, listen to it, 
 feel it — the antinomies will disappear, and he will feel 
 himself living the life of the world-will, for he has 
 placed himself at the heart of the world-progress, 
 the cosmic life, the universal will. We are, all of us, 
 as human, artisans by nature, but we are also, as super- 
 human, artists, to a greater or less extent. Fugitive 
 instincts, fleeting direct visions of reality in its inward- 
 ness, appear through the turmoil and the din of the 
 artisan work in which contact with matter has involved 
 spirit — let us develop these, and our vision of life 
 becomes clear and full. 
 
 Metaphysic has, then, a definite task. The taunt of 
 its incapacity to progress is groundless, and it may 
 fulfil its end without losing touch, as it has so often 
 been accused of doing, with experience. In regard to 
 matter, it will seek to grasp the qualitative aspects of 
 which a practical intelligence has failed to take account, 
 and for a fragmentary representation it will seek to 
 substitute a view of the whole. But its greatest achieve- 
 ments will lie in the spheres of biology, ethics, and 
 psychology. Here it will substitute a concrete know- 
 ledge for the symbolic representations which positive 
 science has supplied. It will, in an indefinite series of 
 intuitions, gain a sympathetic insight into the "extra 
 intellectual " matter of knowledge. " Coinciding with
 
 INTUITION AND INTELLIGENCE 137 
 
 this matter, adopting the same rhythm and the same 
 movement, could not consciousness, by two efforts of 
 inverse direction, by alternately exalting and humbling 
 itself, seize from within and no longer perceive 
 from without the forms of reality, body and mind ? " 
 It is utterly impossible, it is true, to express this 
 intuitional knowledge in the form of subject and predi- 
 cate ; it must remain predicateless knowledge. Its 
 transmission from person to person can be achieved 
 only by suggestion, by a series of concrete images 
 which gradually induce an attitude of such a kind on 
 the part of the hearer that he approaches to the verge 
 of intuition. 
 
 If, now, the attempt be made to state definitely and 
 without metaphor the relation between intuition and a 
 conceptual representation of the reality intuited, a 
 difficulty arises, due partly to a want of definiteness in 
 Bergson's statement of his thought. There are several 
 conceivable relations. Firstly, it might be thought that 
 immediacy is reached at the end of conceptualization ; 
 secondly, that the initial act of knowledge is an im- 
 mediate grasp, out of which conceptual knowledge 
 develops, but in which it existed in germ from the 
 beginning, and that, therefore, the conceptual represen- 
 tation is in no way foreign to the immediate knowledge. 
 In both the preceding cases immediate knowledge is 
 an ideal limit, never reached in its purity within 
 experience. Thirdly, it may be conceived that the 
 intuitionally grasped reality is utterly formless, and 
 that knowledge arises through the imposition of order 
 by an intelligence furnished with a definite system of 
 categories ; or, finally, that the intuition of reality and 
 the conceptual representation of it are arrived at by 
 two processes of knowledge, each of which is the 
 inverse of the other. The study of Bergson's work
 
 138 VAGUENESS OF THOUGHT 
 
 has pointed towards the last as the alternative which 
 he adopts. He definitely rejects the third possibility. 
 There are passages, however, which, if taken apart, 
 would lead one to the belief that he accepts both of 
 the first two alternatives, which, of course, are not 
 mutually exclusive, but each of which is certainly 
 incompatible with the final alternative, the one which 
 he, in consistency with the main line of his thought, 
 ought to maintain. For example, such a passage as the 
 following from the Introduction a la Mctaphysique seems 
 to indicate that the concepts which he mentions are a 
 partial development in thought of the nature of dura- 
 tion, given in an immediate intuition : " If I replace 
 myself in duration by an effort of intuition, I perceive 
 immediately how it is unity, multiplicity, and many 
 other things besides." Again, when he argues that an 
 intuition is achieved only when the totality of observa- 
 tions and experiences gathered up by positive science is 
 surveyed, this points to the view that the intuition is 
 the perfection of conceptual knowledge, that, at least, it 
 is certainly not the inversion of it. 
 
 This vagueness arises partially, also, from the failure 
 to distinguish clearly and persistently between the rela- 
 tion of intelligence to the intuition of matter and to the 
 intuition of life respectively. The intuition of matter 
 and the conceptual system which the science of matter 
 furnishes, approximate, as we have seen, to each other, 
 while the intuition of life and the representation of it 
 which intelligence gives are related as the reality to its 
 negation. 
 
 This uncertainty is not removed when the part 
 played by dialectic in this empirical intuitional meta- 
 physic is considered. Dialectic, it is held, is necessary 
 in order to " put the intuition to the proof," and also 
 in order that " the intuition may be refracted into
 
 GENERAL TENDENCIES 139 
 
 concepts and propagated to other men." This asser- 
 tion is followed, two lines lower down on the page, by 
 the statement that the course of dialectic and that of 
 intuition are " in contrary directions." These two 
 statements are difficult of reconciliation, for it is 
 impossible to see how dialectic can put to the proof 
 that which it, in the very process, destroys ; and it is 
 equally impossible to comprehend how a refracted 
 intuition may be propagated through concepts to other 
 men, if refraction into concepts means annihilation. 
 A similar difficulty occurs when those passages in 
 which Bergson speaks of intelligence as implicit in the 
 original elan are set side by side with those in which it 
 is treated as the negation of that elan. 
 
 His thought, however, in its general tendencies, 
 demands adherence to the view already formulated — viz. 
 that intelligence and intuition should be regarded as 
 faculties of knowledge which are opposed, yet comple- 
 mentary to each other, intelligence throwing light on 
 the structure of matter, and intuition revealing the 
 nature of life and consciousness ; the one placing us in 
 sympathy with a movement of ascent, the other with 
 one of descent, and the two together enabling us to 
 ransack the universe and discover its deepest secrets. 
 Mystery disappears ; faith is swallowed up ©£ knowledge. 
 
 This exposition may be brought to a close with an 
 account of the evolution of life in our solar system, 
 which appears to be the true one, if it be agreed that 
 the physiological and mental life of man are due to a 
 limitation of the original clan by the opposing move- 
 ment which has been termed matter ; if it be agreed 
 that the motor power of evolution is consciousness, in 
 the concrete signification which Bergson attaches to the 
 central activity of the individual consciousness, and that 
 all the external manifestations of life are the struggle of
 
 140 EVOLUTION OF LIFE 
 
 this consciousness to overcome the opposing movement 
 of matter. Essentially free, this motor principle seeks to 
 annul the movement of matter towards mere repetition 
 and necessity. In accomplishing its task, it has had to 
 divide, and move in divergent directions, and in only 
 one of these has it attained to the constitution of an 
 individual capable of free action. Man alone is free, 
 and he is free because of the 'marvellous complexity 
 of his brain. The spiritual force has organized a 
 sensori-motor nervous system, the progress of which 
 consisted in a simultaneous development of automatic 
 and of voluntary activity, i.e. freedom has been achieved 
 through mechanism. " In the case of the animal, the 
 motor mechanisms which the brain succeeds in setting 
 up — in other words, the habits which its will contracts 
 — have no other object and effect than to accomplish 
 the movements outlined in those habits, stored up in 
 those mechanisms. But in the case of man, the motor 
 habit may have a second result, out of proportion with 
 the first. It can hold in check other motor habits, and 
 thereby, by conquering automatism, set consciousness 
 free." 1 Throughout the whole struggle for freedom 
 life has proceeded upon a definite principle. In all its 
 stages it has been an attempt, first, to procure for itself 
 a store of energy ; second, to dispense this store, by the 
 interposition of the supplest possible matter, in variable 
 and unforeseen directions, at the end of which are free 
 actions. The plant stores up energy by separating the 
 carbon from carbonic acid ; the animal consumes this 
 stored-up energy, and sets it free in sudden gushes, 
 which are automatic, or nearly so, in the lower ani- 
 mals, but occur when and how he will in the case 
 of man. 
 
 In the second place, an essential characteristic of the 
 
 l E.C. p. 199 (Eng. Tr. p. 193).
 
 EVOLUTION OF LIFE 141 
 
 evolution of life is development in the double direction 
 of individuation and association. Life is psychical in 
 nature, and, as such, is a confused multiplicity of inter- 
 penetrating tendencies. It is a multiple unity, or a 
 unified multiplicity. Its contact with matter operates 
 the separation of tendencies in a way similar to that 
 which has already been observed in the spatialization of 
 spirit in the interests of bodily activity. If life developed 
 exclusively in the direction of multiplicity, that would 
 mean its spatialization and its consequent destruction. 
 An extreme individualism, at any stage, is not in 
 accordance with the fundamental evolution of life ; but 
 neither is an extreme form of association, in which 
 individualities would disappear. In the middle state, 
 in which man and all living things exist, the balance 
 must be struck between the two. The choice of 
 multiplicity or unity by spirit will never be definite and 
 determined ; " it will leap from the one to the other." 
 If it is divided amongst a number of individuals, it is 
 still the one elan, the one consciousness, which courses 
 through all these individuals, and it overcomes matter 
 only by perfecting a multiplicity of individual organisms. 
 " Everywhere the tendency to become individual is 
 combated, and at the same time completed by an 
 antagonistic and complementary tendency to associate, 
 as if the multiple unity of life, drawn in the direction 
 of multiplicity, made as great an effort as possible to 
 bend back upon itself. A part is no sooner detached 
 than it tends to become reunited, if not to all the rest, to 
 that at least which is nearest to it. Therefore in the 
 whole domain of life there is a balance between indivi- 
 duation and association. Individuals are juxtaposed 
 in a society, but the society, formed with difficulty, 
 would fain dissolve the juxtaposed individuals in a new 
 organism, and become itself an individual which can,
 
 142 EVOLUTION OF LIFE 
 
 in its turn, form an integral part of a new association." 1 
 This is an interesting metaphysical explanation of the 
 alternations which history presents between a swing 
 towards communism and one towards individualism. 
 
 In the third place, the evolution of life towards 
 reflective intelligence is essential. In man, and in man 
 alone, consciousness is free. We may say, then, that man 
 is the end of evolution. This must not be taken to imply 
 that a definite programme has been followed, but that in 
 man the freedom which consciousness had lost by its 
 contact with matter has been most completely regained. 
 In the course of this evolution consciousness has been 
 compelled to abandon part of itself. It has conserved 
 intelligence, primarily. Man is essentially intelligence : 
 it was necessary that he should be so if he were to gain 
 the conquest over matter. A complete and perfect 
 humanity would be one in which intelligence was 
 supplemented by intuition, in which these two forces 
 found full development, and according to Bergson's 
 conception the philosopher will be the nearest approach 
 to the perfect man. He conquers matter, not by 
 ignoring it, but by patiently deciphering its meaning, 
 and as the order in matter is intelligence, it was neces- 
 sary that the psychical force should develop into 
 intelligence if through knowledge of matter it was to 
 overcome it. 
 
 Finally, the contingent elements in the evolution of 
 life are apparent. In the first place, the forms of 
 life adopted or rather created are contingent. There 
 was no necessity that consciousness should choose the 
 carbon of the carbonic acid as the form of energy 
 which it should store up in the organized plant. 
 " What was essential was that it should store up some 
 solar energy. But instead of demanding that the sun 
 
 1 E.C. p. 281 (Eng. Tr. p. 273).
 
 EVOLUTION OF LIFE 143 
 
 should separate from one another, for example, atoms 
 of oxygen and carbon, it could have selected other 
 chemical elements, which would then have had to be 
 associated or dissociated by quite different physical 
 means." 1 In that case, the chemistry of organized 
 bodies would have been radically different from what 
 it actually is. It is quite likely that " life manifests 
 itself in other planets, in other solar systems also, 
 in forms of which we have not any idea, under 
 physical conditions which appear, from the point of 
 view of our physiology, to be utterly repugnant to 
 life." 2 Indeed, Bergson goes so far as to say that 
 it is not necessary that life should be concentrated 
 and made precise in properly determined organs at 
 all. " It is conceivable that energy may be placed 
 in reserve, and then dispensed on variable lines coursing 
 through a matter which is not yet solidified." 
 
 In the second place, the proportion of intuition to 
 intelligence in the mental structure of the human 
 species is contingent. " Between the perfect humanity 
 and ours one may conceive many possible inter- 
 mediaries, corresponding to all the degrees imaginable 
 of the intelligence and the intuition. That is the 
 part of contingence in the mental structure of our 
 species. Another solution might have issued in a 
 humanity which was either more intelligent still, or 
 more intuitive." 3 
 
 In the third place, the physique and the morality 
 of man are contingent. " 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, then, the current of life had 
 been divided otherwise, we should have been, in 
 
 1 E.C. p. 277 (Eng. Tr. p. 269). 2 Ibid. p. 278 (Eng. Tr. p. 271). 
 
 3 Ibid, p. 290 (Eng. Tr. p. 282).
 
 144 UNITY OF COSMIC SPIRIT 
 
 physique and in morality, very different from what 
 we are." 1 
 
 The great fact to be strongly emphasized is that the 
 consciousness, a split-off part of which energizes at 
 the heart of all life in our solar system, is essentially 
 free. If you call it God, then God is perfect free- 
 dom, incessant creation, and in so far as we are free 
 we are divine. We may be aware of this free activity, 
 first, in ourselves, and second, by an act of sympathetic 
 insight, in all life about us. Then " we no longer feel 
 ourselves isolated in humanity; humanity no longer 
 seems to us isolated in nature which it dominates. 
 As the smallest grain of dust is interconnected with 
 our entire solar system, carried with it in this un- 
 divided movement of descent which is materiality 
 itself, so all organized beings, from the first beginnings 
 of life to the time in which we live, and in all places 
 as in all times, do but render visible to the eye a 
 single impulsion, the inverse of the movement of 
 matter, and, in itself, indivisible. All living beings 
 hold together, and all yield to the same formidable 
 impetus. The animal finds its point of support in 
 the plant, man bestrides animality, and humanity in 
 its entirety, in space and in time, is one immense 
 army which gallops on every side of us, before and 
 behind us, in a sweeping charge capable of overcoming 
 all resistance, and of clearing many obstacles, per- 
 haps even death itself." 2 
 
 1 /i.C. p. 288 (Eng. Tr. p. 280). 
 
 "Ibid. pp. 293 and 294 (Eng. Tr. pp. 285 and 286).
 
 PART II 
 CRITICISM
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE NATURE, FUNCTION, AND GENESIS OF 
 INTELLIGENCE 
 
 We have Bergson's thought now before us in some 
 detail. The task remains of estimating its value, and 
 of offering a criticism of its results. But before 
 proceeding to undertake that one may notice the 
 remarkable diversity of judgments which have been 
 passed upon the thought of this most interesting 
 philosopher. To take just a few instances : Hermann, 
 Graf Keyserling, in Germany, considers that Bergson's 
 philosophy " is perhaps the most original production 
 since the days of Immanuel Kant," and that it belongs 
 to that small part of the work of our epoch which will 
 survive. Lord Haldane states that what is essential in 
 his thought may be found in the first volume of 
 Schopenhauer's Die Welt ah Will und Vorstellnng. 
 Professor Bosanquet, speaking of Bergson's first book, 
 Les Donnees Immcdiates de la Conscience, holds that 
 " we are watching the rise of a new agnosticism." The 
 delight with which James, who had hitherto found no 
 rest for the sole of his foot, embraced Bergson's method, 
 and avowed himself an ardent disciple, is an interesting 
 piece of romance in the too unromantic history of 
 modern philosophy. In his own country Bergson has 
 much honour in certain quarters, but is cautiously
 
 148 DIVERSITY OF JUDGMENTS 
 
 watched and openly opposed in others. The older 
 idealists, as, for example, Fouillee, adopt a decidedly 
 critical attitude towards him, Fouillee holding that his 
 philosophy must, by a natural development, issue in 
 scepticism and nihilism. Many, however, of the 
 younger generation, notably Le Roy and Wilbois, 
 follow him with all the enthusiasm of disciples. Con- 
 cerning his influence on the younger generation in 
 France who have come under his sway, one professor 
 says : " A certain number of young men yield to the 
 charm of the style and the ingenuity of the thought, 
 and become devoted followers. They generally have 
 a certain disdain for positive science. For them, as for 
 their master, philosophy commences where science 
 leaves off. Science has a very limited domain. It 
 is confined to disengaging from the given that which 
 is geometrically and mechanically representable. It 
 substitutes for the real an abstract and fictitious con- 
 struction which has a great practical interest, but which 
 is scarcely entitled to be called knowledge of the real. 
 They are indifferent to it. It is good for manu- 
 facturers, doctors, and engineers, but it is altogether 
 uninteresting to philosophers. The world of conscious- 
 ness escapes science entirely. Psychological facts may 
 be lived, but cannot be scientifically known." It is 
 interesting to note this, for it is entirely opposed to the 
 spirit, and remote from the intention of Bergson's own 
 thought. One of his chief aims is to establish science 
 and metaphysic on stable, though independent bases. 
 The variety of opinion concerning this new philosophy 
 indicates one thing at least — that it is important enough 
 to arouse great interest in diverse quarters, and that it 
 will have to be reckoned with in all attempts at 
 philosophical construction in, at least, the immediate 
 future.
 
 HISTORICAL RELATIONS 149 
 
 In its historical relations, Bergson's thought is most 
 closely connected with the romantic development in 
 Germany in the nineteenth century, and more parti- 
 cularly with the thought of Schelling, who, it will be 
 remembered, attempted to grasp, by an intuition which 
 transcended intelligence, the inner nature of Being and 
 the progressive outgoings from it of subordinate 
 qualitative forms of reality. The influence of this 
 school seems to have reached him through M. Felix 
 Ravaisson-Molliern, who came into contact with Schell- 
 ing in Munich. The leading ideas in Bergson's thought 
 are foreshadowed in the work of Ravaisson, and Bergson 
 writes of him with the admiration and enthusiasm of a 
 disciple. But Bergson is no " mere trader on other 
 men's premisses." His method is largely his own, and 
 we may treat his philosophy as the product of an 
 independent thinker. He develops his central thesis 
 with a freshness and vigour of thought and a facility of 
 expression which force upon us the conviction that we 
 are in the presence of an original, keenly analytic, 
 speculative mind, as well as a brilliant litterateur. 
 
 At the same time, Bergson's thought may be regarded 
 as the expression of a movement which is making itself 
 felt throughout Continental and British philosophy. 
 The prevalence of the tendency to set definite limits to 
 the range of conceptual knowledge, if not to disparage 
 the intelligence altogether as a faculty capable of 
 achieving metaphysical knowledge of reality, cannot be 
 denied. If one takes such names as those of Nietzsche, 
 Paulsen, Eucken, Windelband, Poincare, Boutroux, 
 James, Bradley, Pringle-Pattison and Bergson, and if 
 one realizes that, though they represent very varying 
 systems of thought, yet they all manifest this tendency 
 in a more or less pronounced degree, one will recognize 
 the far-reaching character of the movement. Within
 
 150 TENDENCY OF THE AGE 
 
 the sphere of philosophy itself it may be traced partly, 
 at any rate, to a revolt against the view that the nature 
 of being may be exhausted in the knowledge of it 
 which the human mind can gain ; partly to the failure 
 of naturalism in its attempt to explain all experience on 
 one level, so to speak, and that the mechanical ; partly 
 also to the influence of the development of the science 
 of psychology, by means of which the concreteness and 
 activity of the mind have been brought into prominence. 
 The growth of the science of biology, dominated by the 
 principle of evolution, has emphasized a tendency in a 
 similar direction. But it may also be regarded as the 
 reflection in philosophy of a more general phenomenon. 
 The present age is characterized by a wonderful expan- 
 sion of life in all directions — in commerce, in invention, 
 in the more general realization and the development of 
 the social organism. In short, we are witnessing a 
 remarkable growth of the consciousness of the activity 
 of life in its individual and collective form. Emphasis 
 has shifted from knowing and being to doing. It is not 
 strange that we should find this spirit reflected in philo- 
 sophy, since " every philosophy is a reflection of the 
 spirit of its time," and that the ultimate meaning of the 
 universe should be sought in terms of life, activity, will, 
 while the intellect should come to be regarded as the 
 pilot which guides life to its final end and purpose, and 
 as capable of attaining to a knowledge of reality only 
 in so far as the practical activity of our " middle " state 
 requires it, or of furnishing us with such a diagrammatic 
 representation of the universe in which we live and 
 move and have our being as will enable us to live 
 more fully, to move effectively, and to realize the 
 essence of our being, which is free activity. 
 
 But philosophy must always be concerned with the 
 knowledge of life — above all, of human life — its origin,
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND LIFE 151 
 
 its nature, and its destiny. It needs no philosophy to 
 prove the fact either of knowledge or of life. The 
 question which faces the speculative thinker in an age 
 such as the present is this : May philosophers lay claim 
 to any special kind of insight into the nature of the fact 
 of life, or must they yield to the claims made by those 
 dominated most powerfully by the practical spirit of the 
 age, and recognize that the philosopher is a by-product, 
 of little or no account in determining the final issue of 
 things ; that, living apart from the main stream of being, 
 he luxuriates in utilizing for speculative purposes the 
 faculty with which he is endowed so that he may secure 
 the most perfect adaptation of his body to his material 
 environment ? These alternatives seem to have pre- 
 sented themselves to Bergson's mind, and he unhesitat- 
 ingly identifies himself with the first. He surrenders 
 reason to the exclusive use of practical man, but he 
 boldly asserts the possibility of developing a hitherto 
 almost latent faculty, by means of which the meta- 
 physician, untrammelled by pragmatic ends, may gain a 
 purely disinterested knowledge of reality. A third 
 alternative, however, suggests itself, which it is well, in a 
 critical analysis of Bergson's thought, to bear in mind. 
 Without admitting the extreme limitations which a 
 thorough-going pragmatic view of reason imposes upon 
 it, the philosopher may cheerfully accept the obvious 
 incompleteness of our finite, still developing, human 
 state ; patiently wait upon his evolving experience ; 
 critically elucidate, by careful reflection, the fundamental 
 elements in that experience ; note the possible expan- 
 sion to which experience points ; and, with his feet upon 
 a firm basis of tried and proved knowledge, boldly ven- 
 ture into the future with the courage and hopefulness of 
 a rationally grounded faith. 
 
 If it be needful to grant the limitations of our know-
 
 152 CONCEPTUAL CONSTRUCTION 
 
 ledge, to admit that the most perfect s)'stem of human 
 thought, when it is fairly regarded, is seen to afford 
 only a diagrammatic representation of the universe, and 
 that no other representation is possible, the question 
 still remains : What is the relation of this diagrammatic 
 representation to that immediate experience which is 
 with the pragmatists a flux of sensation, and with 
 Bergson a direct intuition, an experience of which it is 
 the conceptual interpretation ? Is it a true development 
 in knowledge of what is immediately experienced ? Is 
 it a fully-articulated system of coherent judgments, 
 due to the combined processes of differentiation and 
 integration, which constitutes for us actual know- 
 ledge of an actually articulated system immediately, 
 though confusedly, apprehended in inner and outer 
 perception ? Or is it simply a conceptual scaffolding, 
 or a mere set of ideal instruments which enable us to 
 make our way about in the reality in which we are 
 immersed, but which cannot be said to express the 
 nature of that reality ? 
 
 Bergson, in one movement of his thought, identifies 
 himself with the pragmatists to this extent that he 
 regards all conceptual representations as contingent to 
 our human state, and not as expressing the nature of 
 reality. He appears to make an exception in the case 
 of mathematical laws. The existence, the reality, of 
 these conceptual constructions is undoubted ; that 
 they are man-made, peculiar to the human state, does 
 not tell us anything, one way or the other, as to their 
 objective validity or reality. All knowledge which is 
 achieved by men must be, in a sense, man-made. 
 Further, the system of knowledge which they constitute 
 is a system of human knowledge, knowledge for us, but 
 it is incompetent for any one to assert, on that account, 
 that it is symbolic or inadequate, unless it is possible for
 
 IMMEDIATE APPREHENSION 153 
 
 him to gain, in knowledge, a higher point of view than that 
 of the human. Only if this be possible can a vantage 
 ground be secured from which the inherent limitations of 
 the conceptual structure may, with any meaning, be 
 asserted. From this higher standpoint the achieve- 
 ments of science may possibly be judged symbolic, 
 knowledge of surfaces, merely man-made. But the 
 conditions must be fulfilled, the higher point of view 
 must be actually attainable, before one can be entitled 
 to condemn the knowledge which we have. It is 
 fatuous for those who, like Bradley, hold a theory of 
 the Absolute, to reject the conceptual knowledge which 
 we have of reality, part at least of which is gathered 
 up in our systems of scientific knowledge, because it is 
 not knowledge from the point of view of the Absolute. 
 These thinkers have not shown that we can assume 
 such a point of view, that we can stand off from our 
 own capacity of knowing, and pass judgment on its 
 validity. James seems to have fallen into the same 
 error in his persistent condemnation of conceptual 
 knowledge, because it does not tell us what makes 
 reality go. He is guilty of the error of those whom he 
 is much concerned to refute. He brands as incompetent 
 the knowledge which we have, because it is not some 
 other kind of knowledge which, in the nature of things, 
 it would seem we cannot have ; he forswears intellectual 
 knowledge because it does not tell us how that which 
 we know, our faculty of knowledge included, came to 
 get made. Bradley and James, curiously enough, are 
 found ultimately to be faced by the same difficulty. 
 Neither of them has been able to transcend the point 
 of view of the knowledge which they yet decry, with 
 many defamatory epithets, as giving us mere appearance 
 or as negating the inner nature of reality. 
 
 Bergson, however, seeks to avoid this error — with
 
 154 QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED 
 
 what amount of success it remains to be seen. He 
 holds that knowledge by means of concepts is inade- 
 quate, but he maintains that it is possible to transcend 
 the human point of view. " In the living mobility of 
 things the understanding applies itself to marking out 
 real or virtual stations ; it notes departures and arrivals 
 — that is all that matters to the thought of man in so 
 far as it is simply human. It is more than human to 
 grasp what happens in the interval. But pJiilosophy 
 must be an effort to transcend the human condition? 
 This assertion of the possibility of transcending what is 
 usually regarded as the human point of view is the 
 main distinguishing feature of Bergson's philosophy. 
 If his contention be true, if an intuitive grasp of reality 
 be possible, then the above criticism levelled at James 
 and the holders of the theory of the Absolute is entirely 
 beside the mark if directed towards Bergson. The 
 ultimate points to be decided are : 
 
 (i) Has Bergson justified the limitation of strictly 
 
 human knowledge to the sphere of the 
 
 mechanical ? 
 
 (2) Has he made out a case for the possibility of 
 
 intuition ? 
 
 (3) Have the applications which he has attempted 
 
 to make given us a knowledge of any reality 
 
 which falls entirely outside the limits of the 
 
 grasp of intellectual knowledge ? 
 
 The criticism which follows will move round these 
 
 three questions, since they bear on the essential points 
 
 towards which Bergson's thought is directed. In the 
 
 present chapter, the assumption that what is usually 
 
 called the faculty of human knowledge is in reality a 
 
 faculty the end of which is not knowledge, but action, 
 
 will be examined. The consequent contraction of the 
 
 limits within which intelligence must confine itself, and
 
 LIMITATIONS OF INTELLECT 155 
 
 Bergson's attempt to show how intelligence has been 
 condensed from a vaster reality — first, in the develop- 
 ment of the race, second, in the life of the individual, 
 will be considered. In a succeeding chapter, the 
 positive part of Bergson's philosophy — the intuition as 
 a faculty of knowledge, and its relation to intelligence 
 — will demand attention. 
 
 Apart altogether from the possibility of an intuition, 
 the need of it will become apparent only if the limita- 
 tions of intellectual knowledge are admitted, and a 
 great part of Bergson's work is directed to showing not 
 only that such limitations must be admitted, but also 
 how they have been brought about. It is necessary 
 then, first of all, to be clear as to the positive worth 
 which Bergson attaches to intellectual knowledge. 
 We shall then be the better able to understand its 
 limitations. He draws a unique distinction between 
 " concepts " and " mathematical relations." The differ- 
 ence is not one of degree ; the " mathematical relation " 
 or "law" is not a refinement of the remaining "concepts"; 
 it differs from them in kind. " Concepts aid science, 
 but they are, for it, only provisional diagrammatic 
 representations." The ultimate aim of science is to 
 attain to the statement of mathematical relations, 
 constant relations between varying magnitudes, and 
 such laws, though utterly foreign to the nature of life 
 and consciousness, are neither provisional nor symbolic 
 in the sphere of matter, for geometry is immanent in 
 matter. Bergson puts his imprimatur upon the ex- 
 position of his theory of the concept given by James in 
 A Pluralistic Universe, and so it may be permissible to 
 quote from that work. " We need a stable scheme of 
 concepts, stably related with one another, to lay hold 
 of our experiences and to co-ordinate them withal. . . . 
 But all these abstract concepts are as flowers gathered,
 
 156 JAMES ON CONCEPTS 
 
 they are only moments dipped out from the stream of 
 time, snapshots taken, as by a kinetoscopic camera, at a 
 life that in its original becoming is continuous. Useful 
 as they are as samples of the garden, or to re-enter the 
 stream with, or to insert in our revolving lantern, they 
 have no value but these practical values." " The 
 conceptual method is a transformation which the flux 
 of life undergoes at our hands in the interests of practice 
 essentially, and only subordinately in the interests of 
 theory." " Instead of being interpreters of reality, 
 concepts negate the inwardness of reality altogether." 
 " What we do, in fact, is to harness tip reality in our 
 conceptual systems in order to drive it better." " The 
 original and still surviving function of our intellectual 
 life is to guide us to the practical adaptation of our 
 expectancies and activities." Further quotations are 
 unnecessary to indicate that for Bergson, as for James, 
 concepts, as distinguished from mathematical laws, are 
 all provisional, diagrammatic, symbolic. They negate 
 the nature of reality, in whatever sphere they may be 
 applied. Ostensibly interpreters of life, they are really 
 forms applied ab extra to something which is quite 
 foreign to them ; they may express the nature of matter 
 in so far as it interests the needs of the body, but that 
 expression is always fragmentary, provisional, contin- 
 gent ; what we know of matter in our conceptual 
 representation of it is matter as it is for us, and not 
 matter as it is for itself. Concepts are, at the best, 
 mere footholds to enable us to pass to the higher point 
 of view, that of intuitive knowledge of matter, or as 
 Bergson (paradoxically enough !) holds, of life. 
 
 Mathematical laws, on the other hand, are immanent 
 in matter, and intelligence, " which tends naturally to 
 geometry," is perfectly at its ease in the domain of inert 
 matter. This is what Bergson must have in mind in
 
 MATHEMATICAL LAWS 157 
 
 all those passages in which he speaks of the success of 
 physical science. " We construct a science sufficiently 
 representative of reality," for matter " is extended in 
 space " ; even though " it is not absolutely extended." 
 Although concepts such as mass, energy, ether, atoms, 
 " negate," in James' phrase, " the inwardness of reality," 
 mathematical relations express the absolute nature of 
 matter. " The space of our geometry and the spatiality 
 of things are mutually engendered by the reciprocal 
 action and reaction of two terms which are the same in 
 essence, but which proceed in inverse directions." Again, 
 when Bergson says that " physics, in its general form, 
 touches the Absolute," it is not quite clear whether he 
 has in mind the concrete representation of a more 
 and more articulated world which physical science has 
 achieved and is gradually perfecting, or the system of 
 mathematical relations in which the laws of this system 
 are ideally expressed. But if the consistency of his 
 thought is to be preserved, he must have in view 
 physics as it expresses its results in mathematical laws, 
 and not the concepts of physics, while by the Absolute 
 he must mean an ideal matter which has freed itself 
 from duration. The foundation of this view with regard 
 to the reality of mathematical laws lies in the view 
 indicated above — the view that " progressively, intelli- 
 gence and matter are adapted to one another so as to 
 be arrested finally in a common form." 
 
 The sphere of intellect is thus marked out. It 
 speaks the truth when it expresses the nature of per- 
 ceived matter in mathematical laws, and only then. It 
 speaks in mere symbols whenever it predicates in con- 
 ceptual terms. It cannot say anything whatsoever about 
 change — physical, physiological, or psychical. If it 
 does attempt to express the nature of these, it speaks 
 in symbols. Not only that. The intrusion of the
 
 158 SPHERE OF INTELLECT 
 
 practical intellect into the sphere of speculation is 
 responsible for many of the "difficulties hitherto inherent 
 in all metaphysic, the antinomies which it raises, the 
 contradictions into which it falls, the division into 
 antagonistic schools, and the irreducible oppositions 
 between systems." 
 
 Bergson's argument in support of the view of the limited 
 sphere of valid application of the intelligence may be 
 considered in its various stages of development. Intel- 
 ligence is the faculty of action, and not of disinterested 
 knowledge, and its function is to secure " the perfect 
 insertion of our body into its environment, to represent 
 the relations between external things — in short, to think 
 matter." Again — " The essential function of intelligence 
 is to prepare our action on things, to foresee the favour- 
 able or unfavourable events which might follow on a 
 given situation. It isolates, then, instinctively, in a 
 given situation, that which resembles the already known; 
 it seeks the same in order to be able to apply its prin- 
 ciple that the same produces the same. The irreducible 
 and irreversible elements in the successive moments of 
 a history will escape it." In Bergson's hands the form 
 of intelligence turns out to be space, and all its concepts 
 are fundamentally spatial. By its means mathematical 
 relations are apprehended, and these are constitutive 
 elements of matter. In his earliest published works 
 Bergson does not bring this argument into pro- 
 minence. In the Essai, for example, intelligence is 
 rather assumed to be limited to spatial representations. 
 Consideration of the argument concerning time is 
 sufficient to confirm this. The conceptions of space 
 and time are, he argues, fundamentally identical ; as 
 pure concepts they are not to be differentiated. The 
 assumption is that, because the scientific intelligence 
 has, in its attempts to measure time, been compelled
 
 FORM AND FUNCTION 159 
 
 to treat it as not different from space, therefore 
 the human intelligence is incapable of conceiving it 
 as different from space, i.e. the human intelligence 
 is identical with the intelligence of the mathematico- 
 physicist. This is a pure assumption, which will have 
 to reckon with the undoubted fact that human reason is 
 capable, without transcending its limitations, of judging 
 that the scope of the scientific intelligence is limited to 
 the mechanical and quantitative, and that it does not 
 embrace the whole of reality within its explanations. 
 This objection need not be pressed at the present stage. 
 But it must be noted that to expose the fact that the 
 scientific intelligence does not deal with time without 
 spatializing it is not to prove that the human intelli- 
 gence is incapable of conceiving time, but simply to 
 indicate that reality or experience cannot be forced 
 without remainder into the concepts which the scientist, 
 so long as he confines himself to mathematics and pure 
 physics, finds it necessary to utilize. A further step on 
 Bergson's part is inevitable. He must give some ground 
 for the assumption which he has made, and, following 
 up the suggestion that the spatialization of spirit takes 
 place in the interests of social and biological utility, he 
 puts forward the argument with which we are now con- 
 cerned, viz. that this form of the intelligence, this narrow 
 view of the reach of intellectual concepts, is not arbi- 
 trarily assumed. The nature of intelligence, as such, 
 follows from its function, which is to know matter 
 practically. Its form may be deduced from its function. 
 The cogency of this argument depends upon the 
 assumption that the function may be determined apart 
 from a knowledge of the form. Or, to put the same 
 truth in a less general way, the argument depends upon 
 the assumption that the action of human beings de- 
 mands only a mechanical or superficial view of the
 
 160 ASSUMPTION INVOLVED 
 
 universe, that the needs of man, which the intelligence 
 has evolved to satisfy, are to be met by a knowledge of 
 matter. Now, this assumption, both in its general and 
 in its more particular form, is utterly unwarranted. In 
 the first place, far from it being true that the form 
 of intelligence may be deduced from its function, the 
 function of intelligence reveals itself in its form. The 
 inherent nature of intelligence comes to light as it 
 grows, as it extends its sphere of work, and in that 
 very extension manifests its hitherto hidden possibilities. 
 It is not within the sphere of physical science alone 
 that intelligence has achieved its triumphs. It has, 
 under the guidance of the concepts of purpose, of good, 
 and of beauty, the meaning of which is as clear to it 
 as the concepts of space and of quantity, constructed 
 systems of ethics and art and religion. These, the most 
 highly treasured possessions of the human mind, belong 
 to man in his present limited middle state ; they have 
 appeared only with the dawn of a truly rational ex- 
 perience, and the development of the rational faculties 
 has not excluded them from experience, but purified 
 and exalted them. The true function of reason is dis- 
 cernible only when human experience in its entirety — 
 not merely the experience of the positive scientist — is 
 critically examined, and the form is elucidated. Bergson 
 himself, in his criticism of Kant, incidentally refutes the 
 argument which supports his own position here. One 
 of the fundamental initial mistakes made by Kant in 
 his dissection of the human understanding was that he 
 put the problem in such a way that the solution was 
 prejudiced from the very beginning. Now, the essential 
 part of this criticism may be directed against Bergson 
 himself. Kant assumed a certain function of mind — 
 the mathematico-physical function. He assumed, that 
 is to say, the possibility of mathematics and pure
 
 FORM AND FUNCTION 161 
 
 physics, and as a result of this assumption the " form " 
 of the mind was determined, and the sphere of know- 
 ledge delimited from that of faith. Bergson explicitly 
 says that the form of the mind may be deduced from 
 its function, and limits that function to the knowledge 
 of matter. Both are equally wrong. It must be frankly 
 admitted that Bergson seeks to show that the form of 
 intelligence may be established by actually watching its 
 genesis, and that argument will occupy us later on. 
 What I am concerned to refute at present is the argu- 
 ment that the legitimate operations of intelligence are 
 to be pre-determined by the assumption that it has a 
 definite function. The form of intelligence, as well as 
 its function, can be determined only by a critical ex- 
 amination of experience in the individual and in the 
 accumulated mass of the experience of the race as it 
 exists in our systems of thought, our moral codes, and 
 our traditions, that is to say, by reflection upon its 
 functioning. 
 
 But in the second place, one could believe that 
 intelligence is an instrument of human life, and yet feel 
 bound to dispute the argument, based on this admission, 
 that its function is limited to knowing matter, for that 
 argument rests upon another assumption, viz. that the 
 needs of man demand for their most perfect satisfaction 
 only a knowledge of matter — and that assumption 
 cannot for one moment be allowed. If we regard 
 man as merely a body, and thought as directed solely, 
 or even primarily, towards the continuance of this 
 body in existence as a centre of indetermination, to- 
 wards the prevention of its destruction by external 
 forces working for dissolution and decay, then the 
 assumption that thought will know only matter has 
 some plausibility. But this is to degrade man to the 
 level of the brute. Indeed, it might quite well be 
 
 L
 
 162 INTELLECT AND HUMAN NEEDS 
 
 argued that the activities, the interests, the needs of 
 man, as man, require for their satisfaction something 
 more than a knowledge of matter, and that the instru- 
 ment of thought which is to be an adequate one for 
 such a being must rise above the mechanical level. 
 What constitutes him man in distinction from the 
 lower creation is indicated in his rational nature, with 
 the appearance of which moral, aesthetic, and religious 
 needs are contemporaneous. These are his supreme 
 needs. 
 
 " What is he but a brute, whose flesh has soul to suit, 
 Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play ? " 
 
 Man, as man, experiences the stress of demands more 
 urgent than those of his body. Without of necessity 
 despising his body, he has frequently felt that it was a 
 clog, a " muddy vesture " grossly closing in his spirit, and 
 at times standing between him and the satisfaction of 
 his highest needs, needs which he clearly conceives. 
 He is often willing to sacrifice his body in his enthusi- 
 asm for the achievement of ends which his reason 
 prescribes to him as worthy of all his efforts. Most 
 perfect insertion of his body into its environment is a 
 need, but a very subsidiary one for man at his best. It 
 is the " chief end " of the animal. Bergson would say 
 that these higher needs are met by the insight given by 
 the faculty of intuition, which throws " a flickering and 
 feeble light " on our inner nature, on our place in the 
 world, on God, and on our eternal destiny. But the 
 question is just to know if reason itself is not adequate 
 to our guidance as men, and my contention at this 
 point is that its inadequacy can be demonstrated only by 
 an examination of its capacities as they are manifested 
 in a truly human experience, and that if we are going 
 to attempt to deduce the form of human reason from
 
 INTELLECT A BLIND GUIDE 163 
 
 its function, then we have no right arbitrarily to limit 
 that function. We are in duty bound, when seeking 
 the function of the human reason, to treat man as 
 human, and not merely as a bodily organism with a 
 guiding mind attached to it, whose sole, or even whose 
 primary function is to secure its most perfect adaptation 
 to its material environment. That contention remains 
 unaffected by any appeal to the intuition — in fact, it 
 does not require such an appeal. 
 
 But even if we regard man on the lower level, it 
 does not follow that there is any a priori presumption 
 in favour of the view that the intelligence which guides 
 the body's activity must assume the form which 
 Bergson attributes to the human intelligence. The 
 biological and economic welfare of man surely demands 
 for its achievement as accurate knowledge of time or 
 duration as of space. The world in which the organism 
 has to pursue its life is, on Bergson's own showing, an 
 " enduring " universe. Even matter, though it is ex- 
 tended, is not wholly extended ; though it is moving 
 towards space, is not quite spatialized ; though it is 
 tending to be entirely quantitative, still retains some of 
 its quality. It is surely essential to the continuance 
 and well-being of the organism that its guiding spirit 
 should know the material world as it is, and not con- 
 ceive it as an ideal homogeneous plenum in which 
 only an intelligence whose form was space could move 
 with certain step. From Bergson's own point of view, 
 it would seem that consideration of the function of 
 intelligence, even if it affords any a priori clue to the 
 nature of its form, goes to support the presumption 
 that human reason will achieve conceptions other than 
 those of space or quantity. It is surely not by present- 
 ing a distorted view of matter that the mind will best 
 secure the most perfect adaptation of the body to its
 
 1 64 PARADOXICAL CONCLUSION 
 
 environment. Yet in the first chapter of Matiere et 
 Mcmoire it is argued that in perceiving matter we do 
 distort it. We isolate in thought bodies which are not 
 really isolated, and so carve out a reality which consists 
 in a whole of interacting parts. That, which on any 
 theory of perception may have to be admitted, since 
 all attention is selective and all perception partial, 
 is not all, for though our perception of the sensible 
 qualities is more nearly true, it is not quite true. 
 Our memory condenses in thought that which is 
 infinitely diluted in matter. In developed perception 
 the contributions of memory are substituted for the 
 immediate or "pure" perception. In representing 
 movement intelligence immobilizes it, and gives us a 
 series of dots, of stopping-places. " Whether it is a 
 question of qualitative movement or of evolutive 
 movement or of extensive movement, the mind is so 
 constructed as to take stable views of instability." In 
 fact, " whether it is a question of thinking, becoming, or 
 of expressing it, or even of perceiving it, we scarcely 
 do more than set in motion a kind of internal cine- 
 matograph." Now, Bergson's statement regarding the 
 connection between this form of the intelligence and its 
 function seems impossible of acceptance. It surely 
 cannot be urged with any show of reason that a mind- 
 constructed representation of the world which differs 
 from the world as it is will serve the interests of the 
 body better than an immediate and accurate, as far as it 
 goes, or, to use Bergson's word, an " intuitive " knowledge 
 of the material world. The body has not to insert itself 
 into the universe which the intelligence constructs, but 
 into the universe as it is, so that we seem to be led 
 to the paradoxical conclusion that the intuitive grasp 
 of matter is, a priori, to be preferred to the intellectual 
 view of it because the former is more useful, although
 
 FUNCTION OF INTELLECT 165 
 
 the latter has been evolved the better to secure the 
 insertion of the body into its environment. " Fluid 
 concepts " which follow reality in all its windings would 
 be much more useful for the guidance of a body 
 plunged in that reality than concepts which to some 
 extent misrepresent reality. Has the elan of life made 
 a mistake in degrading itself into this intelligence 
 which misrepresents the actual material universe in 
 which we are called upon to live ? 
 
 But further, since an individual is, as a mere indivi- 
 dual {i.e. apart from the social organism of which he 
 forms a member) an abstraction, since his biological 
 activity is conditioned by the life and character of the 
 other members of society, it seems a priori likely that 
 the faculty of knowledge which will secure his most 
 perfect activity in his concrete surroundings is one 
 which will give him an insight into the life and activity 
 of other individuals. Here, again, then, we are led to 
 the same disconcerting conclusion as before. Intuition 
 is more useful than intelligence as Bergson conceives it. 
 
 It will be agreed, I think, that when Bergson pro- 
 poses to deduce the form of intelligence from its 
 function, he has set out from a too limited view of that 
 function. No one will dispute the fact that one very 
 important part of the work of intelligence is to know 
 matter, and that in order to know it, to be capable of 
 interrogating it, we must bring to our investigation 
 certain conceptions or categories. But that must not 
 arbitrarily be assumed to be the sole function of the 
 rational mind. That function in its growing complete- 
 ness is seen only in what it actually does, in its most 
 perfect work. We cannot say beforehand what its 
 function or its form will be. We possess the power of 
 reflection, and in the exercise of that power we can 
 critically examine our experience, being very careful
 
 1 66 KANT AND BERGSON 
 
 to omit no factor, and on the completion of our 
 examination or criticism the true function of in- 
 telligence is clear. 
 
 Kant was right when he insisted on this critical 
 method and sought, in the Critique of Pure Reason, to 
 lay bare the framework, so to speak, of the faculty of 
 knowledge. His fatal error lay in a priori restricting 
 the limits of knowledge. From the very beginning he 
 was confined to the revelation of mechanical categories, 
 for he had omitted from experience the patent facts of 
 morality and purpose, and thus condemned experience 
 to remain always on the same level as that of physics 
 and mathematics. His magnificent attempt to re- 
 instate the elements which he had omitted led him to 
 violate the critical method which he had himself estab- 
 lished, and issued in the fatal irreducible division between 
 the pure and the practical reason. Now, there is a 
 similar line of procedure in one movement of Bergson's 
 thought. He seems to accept Kant's restriction of the 
 limits of possible rational experience, for although he 
 does not accept his view of a raw material given with- 
 out form to sense, but rather regards the spatial order 
 as, in a manner, immanent in the perception, he limits 
 the function of thought to the purely mechanical sphere. 
 But is it not clear that by initially limiting the function 
 of thought Bergson is pre-determining its " form"? The 
 apparent advance on Kant here is that Bergson seeks 
 to connect the form of intelligence with its function 
 as an instrument of life. Kant had also, iiidirectly, 
 connected the form of intelligence with its function. 
 When he was in search of an idea by which the system 
 of categories might be determined and under which it 
 might be comprised, he saw that understanding is the 
 faculty of judgment, that judgment is the function of 
 the understanding — i.e. the different kinds of judgments
 
 KANT AND BERGSON 167 
 
 express the different ways in which the understanding 
 acts. If a complete classification of judgments can be 
 found, then the different modes of unifying experience 
 are revealed in it, and a complete system of categories 
 may be formulated. The next step in Kant's procedure 
 involves his artificial limitation of the functions of the 
 understanding. Since he ascribed absolute certitude 
 and perfection to the system of judgments which the 
 formal logic of his time supplied, he adopted this 
 classification as furnishing a clue to the system of 
 categories, instead of setting out from the functioning 
 unity and showing how all the unifying conceptions 
 spring out of this unity. An exhaustive classification 
 of functions of unity is attainable, not by an appeal to 
 any particular science, such as logic or mathematics, 
 or physics, but by the reflective analysis of the 
 functioning unity itself. Bergson, in the belief that the 
 function of intelligence is not judgment but action, 
 seeks, as we have seen, to show that its form will be 
 adapted to that of matter, upon which it has to act. 
 But this is an arbitrary limitation. In seeking to 
 arrive at a complete knowledge of the nature of intelli- 
 gence, we make a false step when we set out from 
 presuppositions of any kind which will, ab initio, restrict 
 its activity or its nature. Experience, or better, the 
 experiencing consciousness, can be our only guide here. 
 Strictly speaking, you cannot separate form and 
 function. The one cannot be deduced from the other ; 
 each is, in a certain sense, the other, for the form is 
 revealed in the progressively perfect functioning, and 
 the function is clearly understood only when the form 
 is displayed to the inner vision of reflective thought. 
 
 But Bergson will deny that the narrow view of the 
 function of the intelligence is arbitrarily assumed. He 
 will, in the first place, justify it by pointing to the
 
 1 68 PROOFS OF FUNCTION 
 
 results of his hypothesis ; he will point to the anti- 
 nomies which are laid by following out the restrictions 
 which would limit the function of intelligence to action 
 primarily rather than to thought. The presupposition 
 that perception has a practical and not a speculative 
 interest leads to the settlement of the differences 
 between realism and idealism; the presupposition that 
 intelligence is limited to mechanical categories leads to 
 the solution of the antinomy which the assertion of 
 human freedom raises, and so on. But this appeal 
 will have weight only with those who are discontented 
 at the appearance of these antinomies within experience. 
 It will count for little with others who, convinced of 
 the necessary limitations which our finite humanity 
 imposes upon our thought, see in these antinomies, not 
 the indication of a radical defect in thought as thought, 
 nor of a misuse of thought, but a necessary feature of 
 man's incomplete knowledge. For such thinkers the 
 antinomies are not inexplicable; indeed their explanation 
 is found, not by transcending human experience, but by 
 setting out from its limitations as an indubitable datum. 
 In the next place, Bergson attempts to justify his 
 view of the function of intelligence by an appeal to the 
 results of a critical study of the process of evolution 
 which he has made in LEvolution Creatrice, and he 
 claims to have shown that intelligence has emerged as 
 a faculty of action, and how it has done so. Its func- 
 tion is, therefore, explained and proved, no longer 
 assumed. Further, he will say, intelligence has achieved 
 its greatest work, found itself most perfectly at home, 
 in physical science, and an analysis of the results 
 of scientific investigation in their utmost refinement 
 reveals only mechanical categories — space and mechani- 
 cal causation. From " the point of view of common- 
 sense " the " portion of the material world to which
 
 CRITICISM OF FIRST PROOF 169 
 
 our intelligence is specially adapted " is quite clear. 
 The "unorganized solid," the "discontinuous," the 
 " immobile," spatialized matter — these are the realities 
 with which it feels itself most at home. " There is 
 one point on which everybody agrees, that is, that 
 intelligence feels itself most at its ease in the presence 
 of unorganized matter." Finally, Bergson will reply, 
 we may actually, from the higher point of view of 
 intuition, place ourselves in a " consciousness " which 
 " transcends " intelligence, and may see how the intelli- 
 gence which guides our being is formed by " a kind 
 of local solidification " of a " fluid " reality. " The 
 intelligence, reabsorbed in its principle, will live 
 a rebours its own genesis," and the form in intelligence 
 and the order in matter will be seen to be the same. 
 This is the crux of Bergson's whole position, and will 
 later on demand our careful attention. 
 
 The second of these arguments may be at once set 
 aside, for it does not justify any wider conclusion than 
 that the most exact, stable, and coherent system of 
 knowledge is that which has been reared upon the 
 mechanical categories which positive science has brought 
 into requisition. The success of intelligence in one 
 department of experience, however, must not be used to 
 prove its utter incapacity in any other sphere. 
 
 The first and third arguments are of supreme im- 
 portance, and attention must now be directed to the 
 first. Let us admit the value of Bergson's patient and 
 brilliant study of the process of evolution in the first 
 two chapters of V Evolution Creatricc ; let us admit 
 that he has established the position that the facts of 
 evolution demand for their adequate explanation the 
 admission of factors other than mechanical, that, when 
 we have pushed our scrutiny of the mechanism of life 
 to its utmost limits, we are very far indeed from com-
 
 170 EMPIRICAL STUDY 
 
 plete satisfaction of the mental demands for a full 
 understanding of living processes. Let us admit to the 
 full the utter insufficiency of mechanical principles for 
 the comprehensive exposition of biological facts, and the 
 patent bareness of attempted mechanical explanations of 
 the manifestations of conscious activity. Let us admit, 
 in order to meet Bergson here, that his study of the 
 evolutive process has indicated the necessity of postu- 
 lating a psychical force which provides, or is itself, the 
 d)mamic of the progress from lower to higher forms of 
 organic life. In the face of all these admissions, it still 
 seems to me that it is to the critical study of our own 
 experience in all its degrees or in all its directions that 
 we are to look for the inner structure of that psychical 
 force. Its nature cannot be determined by an empirical 
 study of the process of evolution. At the most, all 
 that such a study can do is to explain existing facts, 
 and if a thorough-going analysis of our experience, an 
 experience which includes a knowledge of the process 
 of evolution, issues in a certain view of the nature and 
 function of intelligence a philosophy based on a study 
 of the development of life in the evolutive process must 
 explain, if possible, the growth of such an intelligence : 
 it must not, under any conditions, be allowed to explain 
 it away. 
 
 Bergson's examination of the evolutive process does 
 nothing more than lead to the hypothesis of a psychical 
 force at the basis of development. He has done much 
 to show that life is, to use Huxley's phrase, the cause 
 of organization and not its product ; he has emphasized 
 the need of postulating something more for the under- 
 standing of life than the play of merely mechanical 
 factors, and has given a weighty form to the argument 
 that the knowledge of the interplay of particles of 
 matter, however minutely analysed, does not exhaust
 
 RESTRICTION OF FUNCTION 171 
 
 the nature of the organic world as it presents itself to 
 us in the course of experience. Such a knowledge 
 does not of itself give us any idea, for example, of 
 adaptation or purpose. But at the end of Bergson's 
 examination of the evolutive process he is left with an 
 hypothesis of a " psychical " force. And this hypothesis 
 must remain that of " a something, I know not what," 
 until it is interpreted in terms of its highest expression, 
 i.e. the conscious reflective activity of human beings, 
 who, as self-conscious, are the highest type that we 
 know of individuals. It is here that the clue to the 
 meaning of evolution is to be discovered, and here 
 alone. It must be admitted that life is wider than 
 intelligence, but, when it is a knowledge of life that is 
 in question, it is surely the case that the two terms 
 known life and rationally known life denote an entirely 
 identical reality. The word " rational " is here used in 
 its widest meaning. By " rational " knowledge we may 
 understand that which is constituted by all the concepts 
 which intelligence is capable of formulating. It is 
 just this, of course, which Bergson denies. For him, 
 rationally known life is an expression which cannot be 
 allowed. Rationally known life equals zero. The 
 only knowledge of life which we possess is " intuitive," 
 " divined." 
 
 The ultimate source of our knowledge of life is, 
 however, for Bergson, too, the nature of the self. The 
 inner nature of the self is felt in a free act, when " we 
 contract all our being in order to hurl it forward." We 
 then have the consciousness of " the becoming " by 
 which the " motives and movements " are " organized 
 into an act." But we can obtain a glimpse of pure 
 will, which is the principle of all life, as also of all 
 materiality, only by profound study of philosophy. It 
 appears, then, that it is to the history of thought rather
 
 172 AN UNEXPLAINED REMAINDER 
 
 than to the process of organic evolution that we must, 
 in the last resort, turn, if we arc to gain intuitive know- 
 ledge of life. This confirms the argument previously 
 advanced that the empirical study of evolution leaves 
 Bergson with an hypothesis of a something which 
 is inexplicable in mechanical terms, an unexplained 
 remainder, so that when he says that he " divines " some- 
 thing beneath the external appearance, his language 
 can only be taken as metaphorical, and as conveying 
 nothing positive. This is clear, besides, from some of 
 Bergson's expressions towards the end of the chapter. 
 " The evolution of life, looked at from this point of 
 view, takes a more precise meaning, although we cannot 
 subsume it under an actual idea." "It is as if a. large 
 current of consciousness had penetrated into matter." 
 " The facts which we have just passed in review suggest 
 the idea of connecting life with consciousness itself or 
 perhaps with something which resembles it." 
 
 But in spite of this, the empirical study of evolution 
 is of great importance in Bergson's mind, for his theory 
 of knowledge depends on his metaphysic, and his meta- 
 physic, in turn, receives large support from the empirical 
 study of evolution. " The problem of knowledge " is 
 one with " the problem of metaphysic," and " both 
 depend upon experience." " On the one hand, if the 
 intelligence follows the direction of matter, and the 
 intuition that of life, it will be necessary to compress 
 both so as to extract from them the quintessence of 
 their object. Metaphysic will then be suspended from 
 the theory of knowledge. But on the other hand, if 
 consciousness is thus divided into intuition and intelli- 
 gence, it is by the necessity of adapting itself to matter, 
 and also, at the same time, of following the current of 
 life. The division of consciousness into two would then 
 be due to the double form of the real, and the theory of
 
 AN UNEXPLAINED REMAINDER 173 
 
 knowledge ought to be dependent upon metaphysic. 
 As a matter of fact, each of these two researches leads 
 to the other : they form a circle, and the circle can have 
 for centre only the empirical study of evolution." 
 Indeed, the empirical study of evolution is undertaken 
 in order to show that the spiritual force in man is at 
 once intelligence and intuition, that life, i.e. conscious- 
 ness directed through matter, took two directions. It 
 either fixed its attention on its own peculiar movement, 
 and so was orientated in the direction of intuition, 
 though compelled to issue in instinct ; or it fixed its 
 attention on the matter through which it passed, and so 
 was orientated in the direction of intelligence. But 
 which faculty is it that undertakes the empirical study 
 of evolution ? If intelligence, it is absolutely certain, 
 on Bergson's premisses, that it will grasp nothing more 
 of the meaning of life than what can be expressed in 
 purely mechanical categories. And it does not appear 
 how any study of evolution by means of intelligence, 
 however extended and however complicated the study 
 might be, would ever lead the mind to the grasp of a 
 reality which differs in nature from intelligence. Yet it 
 must be intelligence which undertakes the empirical 
 study of evolution. At the end of his investigations 
 into evolution, as we have already seen, Bergson is left 
 with a mere hypothesis of an ungraspable something, 
 which assumes meaning only when we interpret it in 
 terms of the nature of the psychical force which we 
 know directly in our own consciousness. The empirical 
 study of evolution throws no new light on the nature of 
 that psychical force. 
 
 Bergson, however, maintains that it does. He 
 founds upon his study of evolution a distinction be- 
 tween two forms of knowledge — instinct and intelligence 
 ■ — which are " opposed," " radically different " ways of
 
 174 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 
 
 knowing, but which, nevertheless, are " complementary " 
 the one of the other. Let us examine his procedure 
 in the establishment of this difference. He places the 
 date of man's appearance upon the earth at the time 
 when the first weapons, the first implements, were 
 fashioned, and starting out from the conception of man 
 as Homo Fader, he proceeds to show how the psychical 
 cause of the organization of the human organism has 
 developed into intelligence, in the narrow sense in 
 which he himself understands it. His account of this 
 development is intensely interesting, and it would be 
 absurd to deny that intelligence has been developed or 
 brought to its present state of perfection under the 
 pressure of those needs of man which arise out of 
 the relation of his organism to the material world 
 which surrounds it. Bergson has made very clear how 
 close the connection is between mechanical invention 
 and the perfecting of mechanical thought. " The intel- 
 ligently constructed instrument," he says, " reacts upon 
 the nature of the being who has fashioned it, for in 
 calling a new function into exercise it confers on him, 
 so to speak, a richer organization, being an artificial 
 organ which prolongs the natural organism. For each 
 need which it satisfies it creates a new need, and so, 
 instead of closing, as instinct does, the circle of action 
 in which the animal tends to move automatically, it 
 opens to this activity an indefinite field into which it 
 pushes it further and further and makes it more and more 
 free." 1 Further, Bergson has made clear the kind of 
 regulative principles which thought would probably 
 develop in its process of knowing matter. Or, as he 
 puts it : " The intelligence naturally makes use of 
 relations of equivalent to equivalent, of contained to 
 containing, of cause to effect, etc. ... In whatsoever 
 
 1 £.C. p. 153 (Eng. Tr. p. 148).
 
 LIMITATION OF PROOF 175 
 
 manner one effects the analysis of thought, one will 
 always reach one or several general categories, of 
 which the mind has an innate knowledge, since it 
 makes a natural use of them." 1 All this is good. 
 But what, precisely, is its value ? First of all, it 
 should be noted that there is no actual divining, no 
 effort of intuition in it. Nothing more is required 
 for Bergson's procedure here than the ordinary exercise 
 of ordinary powers of observation, intelligence, and 
 hypothesis. All that Bergson has done is to take 
 a certain conception of the nature of intelligence, to 
 regard the intelligence as, in its skeleton, a set of 
 forms, or simply as one form, and to attempt to 
 show how intelligence, thus viewed, has evolved 
 from a greater reality. He has shown that in man, 
 regarded as an animal organism endued with the 
 power of constructing instruments out of matter, 
 the spiritual force will develop into intelligence, under- 
 stood as Bergson wishes it to be understood. Let 
 us suppose that he has established his position. He 
 has assumed man as an animal organism merely, 
 and it is this assumption, here again, which gives 
 validity to his conclusion. But man, at however low 
 a stage we place him, exhibits a sense of duty, and 
 we might quite legitimately date the appearance of 
 man on the earth from the day when a being possessed 
 of that sense came upon the scene. If we were to 
 begin from that point of view, we could, without 
 doing violence to Bergson's argument, the validity 
 of which may be admitted within its limits, show 
 that the faculty of knowledge would be more than 
 a merely mechanical intelligence. Let us admit that 
 the faculty of judgment arises out of " functional 
 situations." These, in the case of human beings, 
 
 l E.C. p. 161 (Eng. Tr. p. 156).
 
 176 INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE 
 
 demand not merely a knowledge of matter, but of 
 life and spirit, if they are to be met successfully. 
 We might, then, admit that " the essential function 
 of the intelligence is to distinguish, in given circum- 
 stances, the means of getting out of a difficulty," 
 and yet hold that the escape from the difficulty would 
 demand a knowledge of natures akin to our own, 
 and of living beings. Consequently one cannot regard 
 Bergson as having proved, from an empirical study 
 of evolution, that the human mind is incapable of 
 knowing anything but the spatial. The being whom 
 he assumes, of whose mind he traces the development, 
 is a mere abstraction, and his conclusion is so far 
 short of the complete truth. It may be true that he 
 has thrown some light on the development of one 
 aspect of the human intelligence — the mechanical 
 aspect — but he has not, in any sense, shown that 
 this aspect exhausts the nature of the human faculty 
 of knowledge. 
 
 But, it may further be asked, does not the contrast 
 which Bergson makes between instinct and intelli- 
 gence compel us to recognize the essential limits 
 of intelligence ? Bergson's position here is that a 
 finite elan, psychical in nature (hypothetical, be it 
 observed, at this stage in his thought), has been " im- 
 pelled through matter," which moves in an opposite 
 direction. " Instinct and intelligence represent two 
 equally admirable divergent solutions " of the pro- 
 blem which offered itself to this psychical force, viz. 
 how to overcome the necessity of matter. Intelligence, 
 as we have seen, fixes its attention upon the matter 
 against which it struggles, and insinuates itself, so to 
 speak, into matter, thereby adopting its form. In- 
 stinct, on the contrary, " moulds itself on the form 
 of life." " Instinct proceeds organically." The whole
 
 WAYS OF KNOWING 177 
 
 point of Bergson's distinction lies in the fact that he 
 contrasts instinct and intelligence as faculties of know- 
 ledge, not merely as faculties of action. He holds, 
 it is true, that they are opposed ways of acting on 
 inert matter. But he does not stop there. He goes on 
 to establish, on the basis of these different methods of 
 action, two different kinds of knowing. Now, it seems 
 unquestionably incompetent to contrast instinct and 
 intelligence as two different kinds of knowledge. It is 
 doubtful if the epithet knowledge be applicable to in- 
 stinct at all. We are perfectly justified in describing 
 certain forms of behaviour as " instinctive " behaviour, 
 but when it comes to be a question of the knowledge, if 
 any, involved in this behaviour, we cannot contrast it 
 with our own way of knowing, for it is only in terms of 
 our own knowledge that we can interpret the apparent 
 knowledge implied in this " instinctive " behaviour. We 
 cannot help being anthropomorphic here. Professor 
 Stout argues, I think convincingly, that there is no 
 special form of psychical activity which requires to be 
 distinguished by the technical term " instinct." " If the 
 term is to have a distinctive and useful meaning it must 
 refer, directly, not to a form of psychical process, but to 
 a purely biological adaptation comparable to the pre- 
 arrangement of structure and functions which in human 
 beings subserves the digestion of food." Of course, within 
 the sphere of biological adaptation certain differentia of 
 instinctive adaptation may be insisted upon, such as the 
 presence of" conative impulse," of " unity and continuity 
 of attention." M'Dougall and Lloycl Morgan are in 
 agreement with Stout here. The curious fact is that 
 Bergson's own argument gives weight to the above con- 
 tention. " The most essential of the primary instincts 
 are really vital processes." He compares each bee in 
 the swarm to a cell in a living body, and says : " The 
 
 M
 
 178 IDEA OF CONSCIOUSNESS 
 
 instinct which animates the bee blends with the force by 
 which the cell is animated, or merely prolongs it. In 
 extreme cases like this, it coincides with the work of 
 organization." 
 
 Further, Bergson argues, instinct is orientated towards 
 unconsciousness, so that if you attribute knowledge to 
 instinct it must be, in so far as instinctive, unconscious 
 knowledge. Bergson does not hesitate to claim that 
 there may be such knowledge. Knowledge is said to be 
 acted and " unconscious " in the case of instinct ; it is 
 spoken of as " virtual," " implicit," " slumbering." Con- 
 scious knowledge is regarded as differing in degree 
 rather than in kind from unconscious or acted know- 
 ledge. It is in this connection that the quite original 
 and striking distinction between two kinds of uncon- 
 sciousness is introduced. Now this contention for a 
 merely relative distinction between unconscious and 
 conscious knowledge harbours confusion by overlooking 
 the fundamental characteristic of thought, and is intro- 
 duced only to buttress up a preconceived theory. 
 Thought, so far as we know it, is always the thought 
 of a subject, and the inseparable quality of a think- 
 ing subject is consciousness. Bergson speaks of 
 consciousness as " a light immanent in the zone of 
 possible actions or virtual activity," but this is a 
 metaphor, and one that misleads. Consciousness is 
 not a concrete something which has an independent 
 existence of its own ; it is, taken by itself, a mere 
 abstraction ; it is a quality, an attribute of a thinking 
 subject, and we know no thinking subject which does 
 not possess this attribute, just as, inversely, we can 
 form no clear idea of consciousness which is not an 
 attribute of a thinking subject. Bergson's example 
 of an annulled consciousness is unconvincing. In 
 somnambulistic action the subject is unconscious to
 
 ACTION NOT THOUGHT 179 
 
 begin with, so that we can scarcely speak of the 
 representation in this case as " being obstructed by 
 action." There is no evidence that there was, or is, 
 any representation in the case. The hypothesis is 
 quite intelligible that the conditions of sleep-walking 
 are all to be found in the body itself. Again, in the 
 case of action when the subject is awake, as soon as an 
 action becomes automatic there is no longer any question 
 of knowledge at all— it is merely a case of mechanical 
 response to stimulus. An idea or representation does 
 not enter as a link into the chain of events at all. Nor 
 can we truthfully say here that consciousness is annulled. 
 Thought is set free for activity in some other direction, 
 and consciousness will invariably be found to accompany 
 this activity. In any case, it seems wholly devoid of 
 meaning to speak of " annulled " consciousness in the 
 case of instinct, for there is no evidence to show that 
 consciousness has ever emerged in instinctive action as 
 such — a fact which, indeed, Bergson's whole argument 
 goes to establish. We surely cannot speak with any 
 show of intelligence of the annulling of that which we 
 have no reason to believe ever existed. We must 
 insist on the fundamental distinction between instinc- 
 tive action, which, as such, is unconscious, and action 
 which involves consciousness and all that that implies, 
 viz. awareness of an object, activity of will, and experi- 
 ence of feeling. Instinctive action, when regarded 
 merely as action, lacks all the characteristics which 
 mark knowledge, and nothing but confusion of thought 
 can arise from the refusal to make a fundamental 
 distinction between the two. So long as we keep on 
 the plane of action there is not the least discernible 
 difference between instinctive behaviour and the process 
 of digestion. 
 
 When we leave the plane of action and enquire into
 
 
 180 INSTINCTIVE ACTION 
 
 the knowledge implied in instinctive behaviour, we find 
 that instinct is always marked by consciousness, and 
 therefore by intelligence. If this be so, the instinctive 
 action, in which, Bergson holds, the idea is obstructed 
 by the action, is then a mere ideal limit ; it is reached 
 by the elimination of something, and what is left out is 
 the consciousness part, the knowledge part, of the whole. 
 Now, this is just what has happened. Instinctive action 
 is always action of an individual organism, which, as 
 such, is, in Bergson's own phrase, " a centre of in- 
 determination," and the action of which, consequently, 
 implies choice, which in turn involves conscious percep- 
 tion, however elementary, feelings of preference, however 
 vaguely felt, and awareness, however dim, of its own 
 activity. Bergson extrudes these facts from the sphere 
 of instinctive behaviour, and then proceeds to give the 
 name of knowledge — " acted," " virtual," " implicit," 
 " slumbering " knowledge, it is true — to the resultant 
 abstraction. This action, it is necessary to insist, is a 
 mere abstraction, and, as such, admits of a complete 
 explanation in mechanical terms, just as the action of 
 the human body, when abstracted from the conscious 
 purposes which it serves, as well as from those purposes 
 in the service of which it has come to assume the 
 particular form which it now exhibits, may be explained 
 in terms of physics. 
 
 An empirical study of what we call instinctive action 
 reveals the presence of two factors— first, a definitely 
 constituted nervous system which is inherited, and so 
 constituted that the organism behaves in a definite way 
 in particular circumstances ; and second, indications 
 from which we conclude that the animal has a rudi- 
 mentary " discernment " which is akin to our intelligence. 
 In the words of Professor Stout : Animals, in their 
 instinctive actions, " apparently wait, watch, are on the
 
 INSTINCTIVE ACTION 181 
 
 alert. They also behave as if they appreciated a 
 "difference between relative success and failure, trying 
 again when they do not succeed at first, and varying 
 their procedure so far as it is felt as unsuccessful." In 
 other words, animals which act instinctively are capable 
 of profiting by experience in an intelligent way. And 
 Stout argues that this fact of " intelligent alteration of 
 behaviour " can be accounted for only on the supposition 
 that " the original experience must be more or less 
 intelligent." Now, the first-mentioned factor in instinc- 
 tive action, the inherited nervous constitution, has been 
 produced through a series of purposive actions performed 
 by organisms in which intelligence and will have been 
 incipiently present throughout, a series which embraces 
 an indefinite multitude of individual organisms. In 
 this sense, we may heartily agree with Bergson that a 
 psychical force is the organizing cause of the organism 
 which acts instinctively. But the nature of this organ- 
 izing cause remains entirely hypothetical, until it is 
 interpreted in terms of its highest manifestation in 
 the reflective consciousness. The " empirical study of 
 evolution " does not, then, demand that we should 
 admit two different ways of knowing — by means of 
 intelligence, on the one hand, and by means of a faculty 
 akin to instinct, on the other. 
 
 There is just one more point upon which we may 
 touch in connection with the distinction between instinct 
 and intelligence. Bergson emphasizes the fact that 
 while intelligence deals with the outsides of things, and 
 is incompetent to know life, instinct penetrates by 
 sympathy (in the etymological sense of the word) to 
 the inner flux of reality. Between the Sphex\ e.g., and 
 its victim, there is this sympathy, which instructs it 
 from within, so to speak, upon the vulnerability of the 
 grub. But, unfortunately for Bergson's theory, the
 
 1 82 INTELLIGENT ACTION 
 
 accuracy of the knowledge of the Sphex in the example 
 chosen has been questioned and disproved. The same 
 criticism is relevant to most of the examples selected. 
 Surely a moment's reflection is sufficient to convince us 
 that the knowledge which intelligent man has gained 
 of the life of other species, as well as of his own life, 
 surpasses infinitely in accuracy and extent that which 
 the most wonderful instinctive action presupposes. 
 The action of the Sitaris is wonderful only when it is 
 considered as the action of the Sitaris. If you could 
 imagine that insect as endowed with an intelligence as 
 highly developed as that of man the wonder would 
 melt away. Further, these examples are two-edged. 
 The action of the Sitaris, for example, seems to display 
 a great amount of foresight. This is awkward for 
 Bergson's argument, for prediction is possible only by 
 means of intelligence, and intelligence predicts only by 
 losing sight of all that is characteristic of life or duration. 
 This argument is set out in detail in Chapter III. of the 
 Essai. But if " the conduct of the insect outlines the 
 representation of determined things which exist or are 
 being produced in precise points of space and time," 
 does not this point to the fact that the knowledge 
 implicit in instinctive behaviour is of the same nature 
 as that of intelligent beings ? Here again, then, we are 
 forced towards the conclusion that the empirical study 
 of evolution, apart from the transportation of a meta- 
 physical theory, into the domain of science, does not 
 afford any direct support for Bergson's view that there 
 are two distinct and opposed ways of knowing. 
 
 If the complete nature of our own mental life (which, 
 I imagine Bergson would admit, must always remain 
 the point of departure in our attempts at the explana- 
 tion of all manifestations of life) is taken account of as 
 it reveals itself to beings such as we, beings endowed
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND LIFE 183 
 
 with the power of reflection, it will be no longer neces- 
 sary to postulate as a principle of metaphysical ex- 
 planation a blind " will to live," as Schopenhauer has 
 done, Nietzsche's equally blind Will zur A/ac/it, or 
 Bergson's " vital instinct." If we regard conscious 
 human activity as that which Fouillee calls la volonte 
 de conscience, that in which ideas are " forces," in which 
 " there is nothing inactive, nothing which is a pure 
 reflex, an epiphenomenon, a powerless and lifeless 
 shadow ; in which, on the contrary, all is causing and 
 caused, in which everything enters as an integral and 
 influential factor in a ' becoming ' where the being at 
 once assumes consciousness of itself and direction of 
 itself ; " if we cease to regard the intelligence as a 
 diagrammatic schema, a fixed mould or form, or an 
 apparatus like a cinematographic camera which is a 
 mere abstraction, and not the intelligence of any living 
 being ; if we consider the characteristics of rational 
 thought, as it reveals itself in the actual course of 
 experience, there will be no need to distinguish sharply 
 between instinct and intelligence, or between intelli- 
 gence and will, to suppose " a confused fringe of 
 intuition " surrounding our faculty of clear thinking. 
 Intelligence is what it, in its concrete living progress, 
 reveals itself to reflection to be. Self-conscious life is 
 the highest manifestation of life which we know, and 
 the highest which we can know. All the other forms 
 of life, then, which we are capable of knowing, must of 
 necessity be known in terms of our own self-conscious 
 life. As Professor Caldwell puts it : " Thought is not 
 outside things, but latent in them. My thought comes 
 out of my organic consciousness, and my organic con- 
 sciousness comes out of the organic life of the world as 
 a whole ; so that my thought, when I am healthy, is a 
 quasi focus or internalization of the life of that world,
 
 1 84 GROUND OF DISTINCTION 
 
 and valuable, therefore, as a kind of epitome of reality." 1 
 The same truth is at the basis of a German thinker's 
 utterance that " the criticism of knowledge is Biology." 2 
 Bergson, it will be said, admits all or most of this : 
 it is the very centre of his system. His aim is to 
 establish knowledge as " an integral part of reality." 
 Admitted ; but all that it is necessary to show at this 
 stage is that the spectacle of evolution, when "empiri- 
 cally studied," does not " suggest a certain conception 
 of knowledge and also a certain conception of meta- 
 physic which reciprocally imply each other." The 
 empirical study of evolution " suggests " merely the 
 necessity of interpreting the world from a higher point 
 of view than the mechanical. That interpretation may 
 be achieved, within the limits which our humanity 
 imposes upon us, by taking as our principle of explana- 
 tion the highest manifestation of life which is available 
 for us, namely, self-consciousness. Further, and this is 
 the crucial point, if we take this principle of explanation 
 in its concrete fulness, there is no necessity to split it 
 up, as Bergson does, into two distinct opposing parts — 
 intelligence, which is essentially a fixed " form," and 
 will or duration, which is pure activity. This cleaving 
 of our faculty of knowledge is not suggested by an 
 intelligent scrutiny of the evolution process. The fact 
 which is supposed to suggest the Bergsonian meta- 
 physic and theory of knowledge is the distinction which 
 he makes between instinct and intelligence. Far, how- 
 ever, from suggesting a certain metaphysic and a certain 
 theory of knowledge which reciprocally imply each 
 other, this distinction is itself suggested by Bergson's 
 peculiar metaphysical view of life and matter, and his 
 
 1 Schopenhauer' 's System in its Philosophical Significance (Caldwell), 
 p. 124. 
 
 2 Prolegomena zur Natur-philosophie (Hermann Graf Keyserling), p. 76.
 
 GENESIS OF INTELLIGENCE 185 
 
 theory of knowledge, according to which intuition and 
 intelligence are two opposed ways of knowing. In 
 these circumstances, the conclusion is justified that the 
 narrow view of reason taken by Bergson, and his oppo- 
 sition of it to intuition, do not receive any support from 
 a scientific study of the process of evolution. 
 
 The question must now be faced as to whether this 
 narrow view of reason is adequately supported by 
 Bergson's original account of the ideal genesis of intelli- 
 gence. This is the crux of this part of his philosophy. 
 The account appears in Chapter III. of L Evolution 
 Creatrice, but it was adumbrated in the Essai, when the 
 contrast was drawn between the spatialized, " refracted," 
 "solidified" self "with well-defined states" and the 
 " inner self" in which succeeding each other means melt- 
 ing into one another and forming an organic whole. The 
 soul actually becomes solidified through the action upon 
 the body of external objects, and under the necessities 
 of language. The living ideas become lifeless and 
 impersonal, are set side by side in a void, so to speak, 
 an empty ego, which, when analysed, turns out to be 
 the form of space. This thought is developed in the 
 later work, and it is to it that we may first confine our 
 attention. 
 
 The problem which Bergson sets before himself here 
 is no less than to " engender intelligence, by setting out 
 from the ' consciousness ' which envelops it " ; actually 
 to live the degradation from pure spirit, which is extra- 
 spatial, to spatiality, and so to bring to birth the form 
 of intelligence. This seems a sufficiently difficult enter- 
 prise ; but we are invited not only " to replace our 
 being in our will," but to go a step further and replace 
 " our will itself in the impulsion which it prolongs," and 
 to live over again the genesis of matter. Bergson's 
 position here with regard to the creation of matter has
 
 1 86 DIFFICULTIES OF THEORY 
 
 been already stated in detail. When we remove the 
 metaphors in which his thought is swaddled, and seek 
 to arrive at the meaning which underlies them, the 
 theory might be generally stated thus : If we call the 
 original principle of the universe God, and if we under- 
 stand that He is incessant life, action, freedom, then we 
 may conceive a momentary interruption taking place in 
 His creative activity, and this interruption, which would 
 be the same as the inversion of the creative current, 
 would constitute the birth of a material world. It 
 would become split off, so to speak (it is difficult to 
 avoid the use of metaphors here), and, as it is separated 
 from its principle, it immediately begins its degradation 
 towards space. But it is opposed by that remnant of 
 the original impulsion which strives within it. Thus, in 
 our material world, and probably in every material 
 world, we find two movements. " Life is a movement ; 
 materiality is the inverse movement, and each of these 
 two movements is simple, the matter which forms a 
 world being one undivided flux, and undivided, too, the 
 life which courses through it and carves out in it living 
 beings." As we have just seen, matter, if it were un- 
 opposed, would regress into homogeneous space, but it 
 never entirely reaches the end of its movement. 
 
 Now, this theory appears to bristle with difficulties. 
 There seems to be no reason at all why this original 
 pure creative activity should ever be interrupted ; and 
 even if it does throw out so many jets, is there any 
 reason to believe that these jets should at once begin 
 to " fall " ? There seems to be every reason why they 
 should continue their free activity — their essential nature, 
 their whole nature, in fact, is freedom. The analogy of 
 creation in our world does not help us here, for divisions 
 take place in the vital current, as Bergson himself has 
 argued, owing to the opposition of matter, and the
 
 FURTHER DIFFICULTIES 187 
 
 existence of matter must not be assumed as a factor in 
 its own genesis. Further, what precisely does Bergson 
 mean when he says that matter is a movement the 
 direction of which is opposed to that of life ? Does he 
 mean that life and matter have started from a common 
 point, and that, while life ascends from that point, 
 matter descends from it? If so, it is difficult to see 
 how they will ever come to oppose one another. Does 
 he mean that one is a movement towards disintegration, 
 while the other is a movement towards more perfect 
 organization ? Then any two stages will differ merely 
 in degree, and it will be impossible to deny definitely 
 that there is only a single movement, which may be 
 turned towards one extreme or the other, we cannot 
 tell which. The truth is that this is an interesting and 
 ingenious cosmic speculation, but our line becomes too 
 short to fathom the depths in which we find ourselves 
 long before we are able to enter into the Divine Mind 
 and live with Him the creation of a world. 
 
 But the difficulties connected with the theory of 
 matter must be pushed further. Matter, Bergson says, 
 has not reached the end of its natural movement. 
 This can only mean that it has not ceased to " dure," 
 that it is still making history, even though its creative 
 power is decreasing. This, I take it, is what Bergson 
 means when he says that " analysis resolves matter into 
 elementary vibrations, of which the shortest are of very 
 feeble duration, almost, but not completely, vanishing." * 
 Now, in Mature et Menwire, he speaks of matter, after 
 the manner of Descartes, as " a present which is always 
 beginning again," an " incessant repetition of the past," 
 as " subject to necessity," as " unfolding a series of 
 moments, each of which is the equivalent of the succeed- 
 ing moment and may be deduced from it." We find 
 1 E.C. p. 219 (Eng. Tr. p. 212).
 
 1 88 FAILURE OF METHOD 
 
 him, however, contrasting, in the passage quoted above 
 from V Evolution Creatrice, matter as it actually reveals 
 itself with " an existence consisting in an unceasingly 
 recommencing present." The contradiction here in- 
 volved is manifest. Finally, " the order in matter is 
 intelligence," and intelligence is implicitly contained in 
 the original creative force ; yet matter is the movement 
 opposed to the life movement — in fact, the order in matter, 
 the " automatic " order, appears only through the nega- 
 tion of the " willed " order. One is forced to the 
 conclusion that Bergson has no clear idea of matter, or, 
 if he has, he has not made his meaning plain. 
 
 It is very important for the coherence of the results 
 of the application of his method that we should be certain 
 on the point, and it is just here that we are disappointed. 
 The extent of this disappointment will be clear when 
 we have sought to bring to birth the categories of 
 intelligence. The guiding principle here is that " action 
 breaks the circle " in which any criticism of the faculty 
 of knowledge encloses us. If this meant only that 
 reflection cannot be prior to action, we might unhesi- 
 tatingly adopt it, but it means more than that. In the 
 action of which Bergson speaks we are supposed to 
 " transcend intelligence," to pass beyond reflection, to 
 rise above " conceptual thought " and enter into the 
 "indistinct fringe" which surrounds it. It is necessary 
 " to push intelligence beyond itself by means of an act 
 of will." This effort " introduces us into something 
 vaster," in which " pure understanding has got carved 
 out," and " from which it has had to detach itself." 
 Thought thus passes beyond itself, and we enter into a 
 sphere where cognition and will are identical, where 
 there is no longer any separation between that which 
 knows and that which is known. We achieve this 
 when, in acting freely, we replunge into the vital
 
 INTELLECTUAL WORK 189 
 
 current, when we become an indivisible and freely 
 acting will. If, from this upper limit, we now pass, by 
 relaxation of the will, towards the extremely opposite 
 limit, memory and will are more and more eliminated, 
 and at the end, our mental life (if life it could be called) 
 would consist in the continued repetition of a single 
 plane of inert mental states, which would be " perfectly 
 external " to one another, and the reciprocal independ- 
 ence of which would be complete. At this limit the 
 self would be entirely spatialized. In this way we 
 should have brought space to birth in our consciousness. 
 This materialization of the self has been followed in 
 some detail in the first and second chapters of this book. 
 Now, it must be admitted that all intellectual process, 
 i.e. all conceptual thought, implies the development of 
 difference within the psychical content which may be 
 regarded as the ultimate subject of all predication, and, 
 at first sight, it might seem as if Bergson's account of 
 the differentiation of pure duration, which takes place 
 on occasion of perception or conception, is an attempt 
 to give a psychological account of this delicate mental 
 process, that is to say, to follow the movement of 
 mind in its act of forming judgments. But the article 
 on E Effort Intellectuel dissipates such a notion. In 
 this essay Bergson examines separately the various 
 species of intellectual work, the effort of memory, the 
 effort of intellection in general — meaning by that the 
 effort which we exert in the attempt to comprehend 
 and to interpret — and finally the effort of creative 
 imagination or invention which he considers the highest 
 species of intellectual effort. After a brilliant examina- 
 tion of these various species of mental work, he con- 
 cludes that " intellectual work consists in leading one 
 and the same representation along different planes of 
 
 consciousness in a direction which goes from the abstract 
 
 >
 
 190 THEORY OF JUDGMENT 
 
 to the concrete, from the diagrammatic represen- 
 tation to the image." Or again : " There is mental 
 effort only where there are intellectual elements in 
 process of organization." Thus Bergson is able, he 
 thinks, "to explain the effort of the intelligence without 
 setting out from the intelligence itself, by a certain 
 composition or a certain interference of intellectual 
 elements amongst themselves." It is clear that intel- 
 lectual effort is not to be identified with judgment here. 
 The term " judgment " is not mentioned, and further, 
 the explanation brings into requisition no more than 
 the contents of spirit and the movements of the bod)'. 
 One can scarcely speak of judgment when the judging 
 intelligence has been explicitly excluded. The con- 
 sciousness of effort is the feeling of interplay between 
 mental states, and who or what feels the effort Bergson 
 does not say. 
 
 It is a pity that Bergson has not attempted to show 
 the distinction and the relation between this fact o^ 
 intellectual effort and what is ordinarily called the act 
 of judgment. In no part of his work has he dealt 
 with the fact of judgment. By implication judgment 
 is treated as if it were the act of imposing an empty 
 universal clearly held before the mind on a perception 
 into the formation of which judgment has not yet 
 entered. Thought, as ordinarily understood, he asserts, 
 is " going from concepts to things." 
 
 In the absence of any treatment of judgment by 
 Bergson, there can be no reason for retreating from the 
 position that the primary fact of knowledge is judg- 
 ment, introduction of difference, and that judgment is 
 not the bringing together of two ideas which have lain 
 loose and separate, or of a perception and a concept. 
 Judgment is the act by means of which evolution of 
 percept and concept takes place contemporaneously
 
 JUDGMENT AND DIFFERENCE 191 
 
 within knowledge. Take, for example, the simple judg- 
 ment " the bird flies." We have not first the idea of a 
 bird and the idea of flight, which we afterwards con- 
 nect in a judgment. The initial fact is our awareness 
 of the concrete something which becomes an object 
 of knowledge only when through the introduction of 
 difference we are in a position to make some such 
 statement as " the bird flies " — i.e. the object of percep- 
 tion becomes defined in knowledge by the predication 
 of the attribute of flight. Until this differentiation 
 is made, we have no knowledge of the object beyond 
 the awareness of its existence (which also involves judg- 
 ment in its differentiation from the self). Judgment is 
 the very act of bringing knowledge to birth. It is at 
 the same time, in a sense, the bringing of reality to 
 birth, for reality exists for us only when it comes 
 within the scope of our judgment. In a very real 
 sense there is for us no existence without knowledge, a 
 fact which is implied in the statement that there is 
 for us no subject without a predicate. Now in this 
 evolution of knowledge the predicate or conceptual 
 element is not brought to the thing from without. 
 It is evolved from within ; it is the thing in one of its 
 aspects. Where man can make no judgment, he can 
 have no knowledge. 
 
 In the Prolegomena Kant makes a distinction between 
 Erfahrimgsurteile (judgments of experience) and 
 Wahrnehynungsurteile (judgments of perception), and he 
 understands by the former empirical judgments in so 
 far as they have objective validity, by the latter empiri- 
 cal judgments which are merely subjectively valid. In 
 judgments of perception there is merely a succession of 
 ideas, as for example in the successive ideas " the sun 
 shining on a stone," " the stone becoming hot " ; in 
 judgments of experience there is a universally valid
 
 192 KANT AND LAURIE 
 
 connection asserted in a world of universally valid 
 connections, as for example in the judgment "the sun 
 heats the stone." In the second case, the categories 
 are brought into play ; in the first case, not. Now, 
 while the distinction, as stated by Kant, is not free from 
 objection, while he is not warranted in calling judgments 
 of perception judgments at all, it indicates an important 
 difference between two planes of mind which has been 
 made clear in Professor S. S. Laurie's distinction 
 between the " attuent " consciousness of the animal and 
 the rational consciousness of man, and the consequent 
 distinction between " recepts " and percepts. On the 
 level of the " attuent " consciousness images of objects 
 are reflected, as it were, in the consciousness which 
 passively receives them ; on the level of rational con- 
 sciousness there is always judgment — conceptions from 
 an integral part of the percepts. It may not be 
 necessary to admit a purely receptive stage even in the 
 animal consciousness, however nearl)' this limit may be 
 approached in the lower stages of animal life. It may 
 be necessary to insist that a purposeful, unifying con- 
 sciousness acts in the formation of the vaguest idea, 
 even in the life of the animal in which thought makes 
 its closest approach to pure feeling. But behind the 
 distinction made by Kant and Laurie respectively, there 
 is a very real difference which must be insisted on — 
 the difference between association of ideas, which, we 
 might almost say, is the normal procedure of the mind 
 of the animal, and that of reasoning, which is the 
 evolution of knowledge, incipient only in the animal 
 consciousness, but fully developed in the mind of man. 
 On the association level, Kant rightly contends we are 
 not on the plane of knowledge at all ; the ideas on this 
 level are a deposit of the rational activity of mind. It 
 is not amongst these that reason moves ; its activity is
 
 NATURE OF JUDGMENT 193 
 
 always the evolution of universal objective connections 
 in a world of abiding objects. As Kant expresses it : 
 " Judgments of experience always demand, over and 
 above the image of sensible perception, certain concep- 
 tions originally produced in the understanding, which 
 make them objectively valid? 1 If this be so, then in 
 every movement of rational thought, in every judgment, 
 one or other of the categories is implied, and conse- 
 quently the unity of consciousness from which they 
 spring. 
 
 If this view of judgment and a unity of consciousness 
 as essential to knowledge be correct, it is difficult to 
 see how Bergson's account of the degradation of spirit 
 into intelligence can be accepted. For what does this 
 spatialization of the self and concomitant emergence 
 of the intelligence mean? It involves the postulate 
 that the more complete the descent from pure spirit, 
 and the nearer the approach to pure space, the more 
 perfect is the intelligence. Now the characteristic of 
 space is mutual externality, reciprocal independence 
 of parts, consequently the characteristics of spatialized 
 consciousness must be the same, i.e. intelligence finds 
 its perfect realization on the association level, a level 
 on which, as we have seen, rational activity has no 
 place, which is, indeed, a mechanical deposit of such 
 activity. But there can be no doubt concerning 
 Bergson's position here. The intellectual self, he 
 argues in the Essai, is an outer crust of juxtaposed 
 elements which have been externalized in biological and 
 social interests. This thesis is developed in Matiere et 
 Memoire, where the process of externalization is followed 
 
 1 Erfahriiiigsiirteilt ei-fordem jederzeit, fiber die Vorslellung der sinnlichen 
 Anschauung, noch besoiidere im Verstande ursprunglich erzeugte Begriffe, 
 welche es eben machen, dass das Erfakrnngsurteil objectiv giiltig ist. 
 Kant, Prolegomena, § 1 8. 
 
 N
 
 194 DISAPPEARANCE OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 in detail. It reaches its climax in the third chapter 
 of L Evolution Creatrice, in which the progressive 
 adaptation of intelligence to matter is pursued. 
 
 The underlying motive of Bergson's thought in this 
 direction is one to which reference has already been 
 made, viz. the principle that the mind must become that 
 which it knows. But if the preceding analysis of the act 
 of knowledge be correct, then the essential feature of 
 knowledge demands the direct contradiction of this 
 principle. Knowledge is not identical with being, 
 whether this be denominated activity, becoming, or im- 
 mutability. Any attempt to identify the two leads to 
 the darkness of Spinozism. Knowledge, at whatever 
 stage we come upon it, is invariably knowledge of 
 something. I, conscious of something — that expresses 
 the supreme relation beyond which human knowledge 
 is not found. Knowledge is that relation ; remove 
 either term, and you destroy the relation — i.e. you 
 destroy knowledge. 
 
 On Bergson's supposition, we set out from pure 
 activity, having elevated ourselves beyond ourselves 
 to a point at which knowledge and activity coincide. 
 We pass, in our descent, through the phases of what 
 is ordinarily called knowledge, in which subject and 
 object are differentiated ; in which the degree of con- 
 sciousness is determined by the proportion of the 
 " virtual activity " of the subject to his " real activity " ; 
 in which our knowledge is, and must be, purely con- 
 ceptual. Finally, at the opposite limit, having degraded 
 ourselves beneath ourselves, we reach a point at which 
 subject and object again coincide, and we actually are 
 matter, and, at the extremest limit of all, pure space. 
 But at each of these limits knowledge would disappear. 
 At the higher limit the object disappears ; all predicates 
 sink back into the subject. At the lower limit the
 
 INTUITION OF SPACE 195 
 
 subject vanishes, dissipated into predications which 
 nobody makes. At either limit knowledge is trans- 
 cended in a mystical act. 
 
 It is the lower limit with which, at present, we are 
 concerned. Let us, in order to meet Bergson here, 
 grant for the moment that a self has begun this 
 regression towards space. It is surely obvious that as 
 will and memory, and, with these, judgment, are pro- 
 gressively eliminated, knowledge just as progressively 
 vanishes, and that if they were to become zero, at that 
 very moment consciousness would disappear. 
 
 " Absolute passivity " would involve absolute uncon- 
 sciousness. If this regression ever entirely took place, 
 / should not see the bringing to birth of space, for in 
 the process / should disappear. Bergson is, in fact, 
 dealing here simply with a limiting conception. 
 Possessed of the idea of space, a self may imagine 
 the content of its consciousness gradually spreading 
 itself out on a level plane, but the self, as well as the 
 psychical " states," is a necessary factor, and this self, 
 as an organic whole possessed of, amongst others, the 
 guiding conception of space, may mechanize or spatialize 
 its own so-called content without thereby itself becom- 
 ing materialized, without " descending in the direction 
 of space." That would happen only if we were com- 
 pelled to identify the psychical " states " of the self 
 with the self itself, that is, if we were compelled to 
 admit that the self may be analysed, without remainder, 
 into its contents. 
 
 If, now, we connect the account of the genesis of the 
 intellectual form with the account of the genesis of 
 matter, grave difficulties arise. It has already been 
 pointed out that, according to Bergson's view in 
 L' Evolution Crcatrice, "matter is extended without being 
 absolutely extended," that there is interaction between
 
 196 INTELLECT OUTRUNS MATTER 
 
 all its parts. It follows that if the inversion of the 
 same movement has created at once the intellectuality 
 of mind and the materiality of things, it is difficult to 
 see why, in the case of mind, intellectuality should 
 assume the extreme form of space, whereas matter 
 never becomes entirely spatialized. They do not, after 
 all, " reach at last a common form." Bergson himself 
 seems to recognize this. " Our perception," he says, 
 " performs a dissection of matter which is always too 
 precise, always subordinated to the needs of action, and 
 consequently always in need of revision. Our science, 
 which aspires to assume a mathematical form, unduly 
 accentuates the spatiality of matter." One is puzzled, 
 in the light of this utterance, at finding such an 
 expression as that which occurs only two pages 
 further on : " Physics comprehends its role when it 
 pushes matter in the direction of spatiality." 
 
 But let us keep to the main point. How is it that 
 intellectuality has assumed such an extreme form ? We 
 are told that " the mind prolongs to its end — i.e. to 
 homogeneous space — the movement constitutive of 
 materiality." Matter, we are told again, suggests to 
 mind the more distinct representation of space. Matter 
 gives to spirit the impetus towards space, but mind, 
 once set on the way, outruns matter itself, and reaches, 
 in representation, the goal to which matter aspires but 
 never completely attains — i.e. pure space. But why 
 should mind be so eager to go on to reach this 
 spatialized form? One would have thought that its 
 inherent nature would make it a most unwilling rival of 
 matter in this respect. But suppose that it does go on, 
 will it, by its process of repeated subdivision of the 
 parts of matter, ever arrive at the conception of space 
 as "an empty and homogeneous medium, infinite and 
 infinitely divisible"? I do not think so. Space is
 
 TRUTH OF MATHEMATICS 197 
 
 continuous throughout, and it is difficult to understand 
 how a process of division, no matter how far it may be 
 continued, will ever generate the idea of a continuous 
 whole. It would leave us, at the best, with an infinite 
 number of co-existing points. Further, a perfectly 
 homogeneous medium without quality has no peculiar 
 right to the name of space. It is, if it be anything, 
 pure quantity. Space has qualities or properties of its 
 own. It has, for example, three dimensions. Then, 
 again, the conception of space as infinite requires some 
 explanation. The mind's contact with matter would 
 not generate in it the idea of infinite space, for there 
 is no reason to regard matter as infinite. Bergson is 
 here met by a difficulty similar to that which Locke 
 encountered in the same connection, and he appeals, 
 like Locke, to the imagination. 
 
 Once more, it becomes very difficult indeed to see 
 how it can be maintained that mathematics " touches 
 the absolute," and why mathematical laws or relations 
 should be exalted above all other concepts. There is 
 an order, "approximately mathematical, immanent in 
 matter." " Laws mathematical in form can never be 
 applied completely to matter; for that matter would have 
 to be pure space, and to separate itself from duration." 
 " One cannot insist too much on the artificial element 
 in the mathematical form of a physical law, and, 
 consequently, in our scientific knowledge of things." 
 " Mathematics in general represents simply the direction 
 in which matter refalls." These passages are quite in 
 harmony with the view that matter has not reached the 
 end of its movement, and they go to support the 
 position which was adopted in the earlier works — viz. 
 that mathematical knowledge is relative to our faculty 
 of action, and has not any speculative value. It is 
 rather disconcerting, then, to be told that mathematics
 
 198 TRUTH OF MATHEMATICS 
 
 is a " veritable means of contact " with the Absolute. 
 For purely speculative knowledge is not " approximate " 
 or " artificial," or " conventional " in the least degree. 
 This is the whole point of Bergson's philosophy. The 
 difficulty here is not entirely removed by the expres- 
 sive metaphor that " matter is ballasted, so to speak, 
 with geometry." In the mouth of most idealistic 
 philosophers this would mean that space is an insepar- 
 able aspect of all matter, organized and unorganized, 
 and that mathematics is true of that aspect, and 
 so is an abstract or hypothetical science. But for 
 Bergson this interpretation is not available. Space is 
 immanent in matter only in the sense that matter 
 tends towards space as an ideal limit, so that mathe- 
 matical science, after all, is not true of matter as it 
 exists nozv. It is practically, approximately, symbolically 
 true, and so cannot be " metaphysical " knowledge. 
 The difficulty is increased when we remember that 
 physical science, taken in its entirety, tends to approach 
 the view of matter which is gained by means of 
 intuition. " Science," Bergson says, " by an even more 
 complete demonstration of the reciprocal action of all 
 material points upon each other, returns, in spite of 
 appearances, to the idea of a universal continuity. 
 Science and consciousness are in fundamental agree- 
 ment, provided that we regard consciousness in its 
 most immediate data, and science in its remotest 
 aspirations." The sole inadequacy of the physical 
 sciences lies in their incompleteness ; they cannot 
 " embrace en bloc the totality of things, and place them 
 exactly in their relations to each other." Now, of 
 which matter are we to understand Bergson to be 
 speaking here? Is it the matter which has not yet 
 " separated itself from duration " ; or is it of matter 
 conceived as havincr reached the end of its movement ?
 
 FAILURE OF THEORY 199 
 
 If it is the former, then intelligence is capable of 
 revealing the nature of duration, quality, and move- 
 ment, and the necessity for an intuition disappears. 
 If it is the latter, then we are back in the previous 
 difficulty that this is merely an ideal matter, and 
 scientific knowledge cannot be regarded as absolute 
 knowledge even of matter. 
 
 Finally, Bergson says that intelligence, which he 
 compares to a solid kernel, is not radically different 
 from the fluid which surrounds it, but all his proof of 
 the genesis of the intelligence goes to show that the 
 order in matter, and so in intelligence, is, to use his 
 own words, the " suppression," the " inversion," the 
 " interruption " of the order in life, and that matter and 
 life, and, consequently, intelligence and intuition, are 
 two opposed movements. Bergson's ingenious theory 
 of the ideal genesis of matter and of intelligence seems 
 to raise more difficulties than it solves. 
 
 It was of supreme importance that Bergson should 
 establish his position here, for it is the climax of his 
 latest book, and in addition, the narrow view which he 
 takes of reason was on its trial. So many unsolved 
 difficulties beset his thought in this connection that we 
 may conclude that he has not succeeded in establishing 
 the conclusion that the form of intellectual knowledge 
 is to be identified with space, or that it even tends 
 towards such an identification. 
 
 It is not enough to have attempted to show that the 
 arguments which Bergson has adduced are insufficient 
 to warrant the limitations which he has placed upon 
 the nature of intelligence. It is further necessary to 
 see how he was led to what we have argued to be an 
 illegitimate restriction of the province of reason. The 
 clue to his narrowing of reason's powers is to be found 
 in his acceptance of the view of the " form " of know-
 
 200 INTELLECT AND INTUITION 
 
 ledge which Kant expounded in the Critique of Pure 
 Reason. Kant had asked : " How is mathematics 
 possible ? " and " How is physics possible ? " and his 
 own reply was that we impose on reality a certain 
 order which we find again in our mathematical and 
 physical investigations. We impose the form of 
 space on a given raw material, and we further take 
 it up into the forms of the categories. The form 
 of understanding must be of a certain nature 
 if the physical science of Kant's day was to be 
 explained. For Kant, the intelligence was primarily 
 a faculty of establishing relations, and those relations 
 were all mechanical. As Bergson himself puts it, 
 " intelligence imposed its form on matter." Now, 
 Bergson accepts the Kantian view of intelligence as a 
 " form," while he seeks to avoid, as we have seen, the 
 difficulties in Kant's position which arose from his 
 illicit assumption of things-in-themselves, and from his 
 untenable view that intelligence imposes its order on a 
 formless matter. For Bergson, the " form " of intelli- 
 gence and the order in matter arise in precisely the 
 same way. 
 
 It is significant that in the years of Bergson's 
 studentship the " official doctrine " in the University 
 of Paris was " Kantism," which was summed up in 
 the following propositions : 
 
 (i) There is no kind of knowledge other than 
 scientific knowledge. 
 
 (2) There is no means of knowledge other than 
 intelligence. 
 Bergson, while accepting the limitation of intelligence 
 here implied, denies each of these propositions. There 
 is, he avers, a kind of knowledge other than scientific 
 knowledge — that is, metaphysical knowledge ; and 
 there is a means of knowledge other than intelligence —
 
 INTELLECT AND INTUITION 201 
 
 intuition. There is nothing here to indicate that 
 Bergson refuses to accept the Kantian view of intelli- 
 gence, in essence, at least. In fact, we find him speak- 
 ing of the moulds {cadres), anterior to all experience, 
 in which our experience conies to insert itself. And 
 again he speaks of intelligence as " only a form with- 
 out matter," and of the " purely formal character of 
 the intelligence." Intelligent beings possess " natural 
 knowledge of very general relations, veritable stuff 
 which the action peculiar to each intelligence will 
 cut into more particular relations." This " form " of 
 which he speaks is not the form of the " inner," 
 "living," "qualitative," "dynamic" self which endures. 
 It belongs to the " outer," " social," " solidified," " static " 
 self, the spatial projection of the inner being. 
 
 In the Essai, Bergson characterizes the sharp dis- 
 tinction made by Kant " between the matter of con- 
 sciousness and its form, between the homogeneous 
 and the heterogeneous," as " this vital distinction." 
 " We have," he says again, " assumed the existence 
 of a homogeneous space, and, with Kant, distinguished 
 this space from the matter which fills it. With him, 
 we have admitted that homogeneous space is a form 
 of our sensibility." He speaks of " the intuition, or 
 rather the conception of an empty, homogeneous 
 medium," and, finally, of " a principle of differentiation 
 other than that of qualitative differentiation, and, 
 therefore, a reality with no quality." One result, in- 
 deed, of the Essai is that Bergson gets rid of the 
 distinction which Kant made between the forms of 
 space and time, and leaves us with a sensibility 
 possessing only the form of space. In Maticre et 
 Mcmoire this thought is developed, and space is re- 
 garded " not as a property of things," but as " a 
 diagrammatic design of our eventual action on matter."
 
 202 BERGSON AND KANT 
 
 It is not a form of knowledge, not "an essential con- 
 dition of our faculty of knowing reality," not a " form 
 of contemplation," but a form of action, a wholly 
 ideal diagram of arbitrary and infinite divisibility, 
 which we " throw beneath the continuity of sensible 
 qualities, i.e. beneath concrete extensity." Kant had 
 paid dearly for the necessity which he attributed to 
 his forms of sensibility and categories of understanding 
 as the contributions of mind to the concrete whole 
 of knowledge. He had to purchase this necessary 
 contribution at the price of the knowableness of both 
 matter and spirit. Bergson sees this clearly, and 
 he seeks to avoid the necessity of making this fatal 
 bargain by : 
 
 (i) Regarding space as a form " introduced into the 
 real with a view to action and not with a 
 view to knowledge," and 
 
 (2) Regarding space as immanent in matter, and 
 so not foreign to the form of perception. 
 On Bergson's theory, then, the ordinary faculty of 
 knowledge, if it may be called so at all, distorts the 
 real, but it does so in the interests of action. " Amor- 
 phous and inert space " is, then, the form of knowledge, 
 in the sense that it is " the symbol of fixity and infinite 
 divisibility " which we " thrust into extensity," not in 
 order to know matter, but to act upon it. Its necessity 
 is a practical necessity ; it is not a necessary condition 
 of our pure speculative knowledge of things ; it is not 
 necessary in the sense that it is given " to begin with, as 
 the necessary condition of what comes to abide in it" ; 
 it is necessary only in the sense that it is " like an in- 
 finitely fine network which we stretch beneath material 
 continuity in order to make ourselves masters of it, to 
 decompose it according to the plan of our activities and 
 needs."
 
 INTELLECT A FORM 203 
 
 Up to this point, Bergson has accepted the Kantian 
 view of space as a form of our ordinary faculty of know- 
 ledge, or of the faculty of scientific knowledge, but he 
 has sought to escape the relativism or phenomenalism 
 of the Kantian standpoint, not by questioning the view 
 that space is contributed by the mind to a non-spatial 
 " sensuous manifold," a chaos or mere multiplicity of 
 unconnected impressions ; not by asking whether space 
 may be an essential aspect of reality, discerned by us 
 but not contributed, but by holding that, although space 
 is contributed by us to reality, and so more or less per- 
 verts our knowledge of reality, it is contributed in our 
 practical capacity. We may, he considers, and must, 
 transcend this practical point of view in pure knowledge. 
 The essential point for the present purpose is that space, 
 apart from the question of its " vital " or " speculative " 
 value, is a form or diagrammatic design which has exist- 
 ence only in our minds. 
 
 In U Evolution Creatrice this position is still further 
 emphasized, and at the same time some advance in 
 thought takes place. As, in the Essai, the form of time 
 (as a homogeneous medium) was absorbed into the form 
 of space, so, in L Evolution Creatrice, all the categories of 
 the understanding are subsumed under the one — space, 
 and space becomes the single inexorable condition of 
 knowledge by means of intelligence. We have just seen 
 that space is a necessary condition of our perception of 
 things, and here the whole trend of Bergson's thought is 
 towards the identification of the form of knowledge with 
 space. It is true that he defines the form as the totality 
 of the relations which are established in the " matter " 
 which is given by the faculties of perception in the 
 brute state. These relations are established so as to 
 constitute a systematic knowledge. But it becomes 
 clear that the supreme category is that of space. All
 
 204 INTELLIGENCE AND SPACE 
 
 the other so-called categories are provisional " conceptual 
 directions of thought," somehow beaten out in the pro- 
 cess of experience. It was pointed out earlier that he 
 distinguishes between concepts and mathematical rela- 
 tions, and ascribes an absolute value to the latter. For 
 Kant, intelligence, in Bergson's expressive phrase, 
 " bathes in an atmosphere of spatiality." The same 
 might be truthfully said of Bergson's own position, the 
 only difference being that he seeks to account for the 
 spatiality of intelligence. Physics is successful in 
 explaining the nature of matter when it makes its 
 explanation in mathematical laws. All the operations 
 of our intelligence tend towards geometry as the goal at 
 which they find their perfect achievement. " It is a 
 latent geometry, immanent in our representation of 
 space, which is the great spring of our intelligence and 
 makes it go. Our intelligence tends naturally to space 
 and mathematics." 
 
 We have already seen that, according to Bergson, 
 induction and deduction depend for their validity upon 
 a pure spatial intuition. Our inductions are certain in 
 the exact proportion in which we sink the qualitative 
 differences in the homogeneity of the space which 
 subtends them, so that geometry is the ideal limit of 
 our inductions as well as of our deductions. The 
 concept of causation is not a necessary principle except 
 in a mathematical form. The relation of external 
 causability in physical science is " purely mathematical." 
 In the closing chapters of U Evolution Cre'atrice, Bergson 
 argues, in his usual illuminating and suggestive style, 
 that the Greek Philosophy of Ideas, developed through 
 Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, represents the natural 
 development of a metaphysic constructed by intelligence 
 unaided and that this development illustrates the 
 inherently cinematographic nature of the intelligence
 
 INTELLIGENCE AND SPACE 205 
 
 which mechanizes or spatializes the real. Further, in 
 the Introduction a la Mctaphysique, he contrasts the 
 method of " analysis " with that of intuition, and em- 
 phasizes the view that science, which proceeds by 
 analysis, always goes "from concepts to things." "If 
 science," he says, " is wholly a work of analysis or of 
 conceptual representation ... if it aims at being an 
 immense mat hematic, a single system of relations which 
 imprisons the totality of the real in a net which it 
 throws out before it, it becomes knowledge purely 
 relative to the human understanding." He recognizes 
 quite clearly that the science which Kant had in mind 
 in his Critique of Pure Reason was " this kind of uni- 
 versal mathematic" and he holds that modern science, 
 in so far as it is the work of pure intelligence, does tend 
 to such a system. The universal mathematic, he says 
 further, is what the world of ideas becomes when one 
 supposes that the Idea consists in a relation or law. 
 If we correlate all these statements, it becomes quite 
 clear that space, for Bergson, is the form of intelligence, 
 and if its task were completely achieved it would pre- 
 sent reality to us as a single system of mathematical 
 relations. 
 
 Now, one would have thought that the history of 
 modern thought had made it plain that such an abstrac- 
 tion should be relegated without hesitation to the 
 rubbish-heap of useless philosophical hypostatizations. 
 In itself it is the intelligence of no one ; it is a mere 
 skeleton, and the world of reality which it would reveal 
 to us would, in itself, be a valley of dry bones. If we 
 set out from the view that the faculty of knowing is 
 this skeleton, it is inevitable that difficulties will arise 
 and confront us. In the first place, the consciousness 
 which we have of ourselves as energizing, active beings, 
 will compel us to supplement this mere framework of a
 
 206 INTELLIGENCE AS A FORM 
 
 self, and this can be done only by the reinstatement of 
 the will which has been initially left out. But in the 
 nature of the case it will be impossible to fuse together 
 these two disparate parts of the self; so that we shall 
 have a self irreparably divided into a static intelligence 
 on the one hand and a pure activity on the other. 
 This is just what has happened in Bergson's case. He 
 has, to begin with, set intelligence as a faculty of 
 knowing (in the interests of action, it is true) over 
 against reality. It is fixed and determined, a mere 
 form. Then, underneath this inert framework of a self 
 he has conceived another self, about which the only 
 clear thing we can say is that it " becomes," that it is 
 " duration," " pure activity." So that we have in the 
 one being or person, these two contrary parts — two 
 opposed selves, or at best one self which oscillates 
 between two opposed forms, an intelligence-self on the 
 one hand, a purely active self on the other. This 
 primary division or rather opposition within the self 
 inevitably works its way into the whole of the world 
 which we know. Matter is opposed to spirit — they move 
 in two contrary directions. Space is opposed to dura- 
 tion, as the absolutely homogeneous to the absolutely 
 heterogeneous. Science is opposed to metaphysics — 
 they are two different ways of knowing. The initial 
 cleaving of the self into two is due to the illegitimate 
 abstraction of one aspect of the concrete mental life, 
 and the subsequent attempt to remedy the omission by 
 the erection into independent reality of another aspect of 
 that life. 
 
 This could have been avoided by recognizing the fact 
 that the form of intelligence is an abstraction, and that 
 the will is likewise an abstraction. The concrete fact is 
 the organic self, the highest type of organism which we 
 know. The will is the energizing of this rational
 
 APPARENT ADVANCE 207 
 
 organism, and the form of intelligence expresses its 
 fundamental modes of activity. The existence of this 
 self consists in its activity, and in the so-called form 
 there is really nothing inert, for though these funda- 
 mental relations or principles or categories are permanent 
 elements in the structure of mind, their permanence 
 does not imply inertness ; if they ceased to be active 
 factors in the development of knowledge their perma- 
 nence would cease; they would disappear. Further, it 
 is only in so far as they are abstract elements that 
 their permanence can be regarded as that of monotonous 
 changelessness. In the actual functioning of the self 
 these principles realize themselves in an incessantly 
 varying multiplicity of particular concrete cases. From 
 this point of view the opposition between the permanent 
 and the active element of mind disappears, and the 
 opposition between the changeless and the becoming 
 aspect of the universe as a whole, which is expressed 
 in the contrast of space with time, of matter with spirit, 
 also loses its force. 
 
 It has already been mentioned that in L Evolution 
 Creatrice there was an apparent advance which at first 
 seems to lead us beyond the position that intelligence 
 is a form and intellectual knowledge merely formal. 
 That advance is suggested by the open avowal of the 
 possibility of gaining metaphysical knowledge, a "grasp 
 of contact with the absolute," by means of intelligence 
 alone. In the earlier books the intelligence, with its 
 form of space, is generally presented as a deformer 
 of reality. This aspect of intelligence has, to say 
 the least, the greater emphasis given to it, and there 
 is little, if any, suggestion that mathematical know- 
 ledge is " absolute " knowledge. This is the general 
 view of Matiere et Memoire. Intelligence " disarticu- 
 lates," " disfigures," " disorganizes " matter ; the intellect,
 
 208 APPARENT ADVANCE 
 
 " enslaved to certain necessities of bodily life, has not 
 followed the internal lines of the structure of things." 
 Many other passages might be quoted, all of which 
 rather lay stress on the fact that the knowledge, 
 even of matter, with which intelligence furnishes 
 us is relative to the contingencies of action. In 
 V Evolution Crcatrice, however, the emphasis seems to 
 fall on the thought that " action cannot move in the 
 unreal," that matter " tends towards spatiality," is 
 " ballasted," so to speak, with geometry, that " the 
 same movement which issues in the determination of 
 the mind in intelligence, i.e. in distinct concepts, leads 
 matter to become separated into objects clearly external 
 to one another," that "an identical process has had to 
 carve out matter and intelligence at the same time, in 
 a stuff which contains them both," and that there is an 
 evident accord between them. Emphasis is laid on the 
 approximation of intellectual knowledge of matter to 
 the intuition of it. It becomes clearer here that the 
 mathematical and physical sciences " tend to reveal 
 reality in itself, absolute reality," and "become relative, or 
 rather symbolic, when, in physico-chemistry, they invade 
 the problems of life and consciousness." The only defect 
 of physical science is that it has to " fragmentate 
 matter" and "put the problems one by one." In other 
 words, it cannot view the whole all at once. But the 
 point emphasized is that " provided one considers only 
 the general form of physics, and not the detail of its 
 realization, one may say of it that it touches the 
 absolute," and that the externality and relativity of 
 our knowledge is replaced by an insight into the inner 
 heart of being itself " through the combined and progres- 
 sive development of science and philosophy." 
 
 This more fully developed view seems most hopeful, 
 and, when it is at first clearly perceived, exercises a
 
 APPARENT ADVANCE 209 
 
 good deal of fascination on the mind. Without Kant's 
 postulate of " things-in-themselves," full value appears 
 to be given to scientific knowledge on the one hand, 
 and a sphere reserved for metaphysic on the other — a 
 consummation devoutly to be wished ! Intelligence 
 takes us to the being of " brute matter," and intuition 
 reveals to us in a flash, or in a series of flashes, the 
 inner heart of life and consciousness. But, when the 
 first spell is broken, and, in " a sifting humour," we begin 
 to ask what this really means, we find that the advance 
 is merely apparent. The existence of two forms of the 
 " absolute " is implied, and these are known in two 
 different ways. There " is a certain current of existence, 
 and a current antagonistic to it " ; there are two corre- 
 sponding absolute forms of knowledge — pure intelligence 
 on the one hand, and pure intuition on the other. 
 The point to be emphasized is that these are ideal 
 limits. If matter were to reach the end of its move- 
 ments, mathematics would be a grasp of the absolute ; 
 if spirit were perfectly to conquer necessity, we, as 
 spirit, should have to make no effort to instal ourselves 
 at the heart of life, for we should live freedom, and feel 
 ourselves doing so. In either case we should transcend 
 the human point of view. So that when it is said that 
 intelligence can bring us into contact with the absolute, 
 it cannot be the intelligence of the middle state to 
 which reference is made, for Bergson condemns the 
 concepts into which we, as human beings, are compelled 
 to articulate our experience if we are to know, as 
 " relative," " symbolic," " mere provisional diagrammatic 
 representations," as giving us only " a practical equiva- 
 lent of the real." They are merely instruments, foot- 
 holds in our descent to mathematics, which, as it is 
 perfected, approximates to the intuition of matter. It 
 thus becomes evident that the supposed advance is not 
 
 o
 
 210 IMPLICIT SCEPTICISM 
 
 real. It is only as intelligence rids itself of every 
 concept and confines itself to the pure form of space 
 that its approximation to intuition, and, consequently, 
 its grasp of the absolute, comes about. The formal 
 nature of intellectual knowledge is here once more 
 strongly emphasized. 
 
 The same conclusion emerges when an examination 
 is made of the statement that physics, if we consider 
 only its general form, and not the detail of its realiza- 
 tion, touches the absolute. The absolute here cannot 
 mean the qualitative universe which science has pro- 
 gressively articulated into a concrete system, for that 
 would imply that the concepts through which our 
 experience of nature is systematized represent actual 
 articulations in nature, and this is contrary to Bergson's 
 doctrine of the concept. It is only mathematical 
 relations which attain to this validity. Therefore, 
 when Bergson speaks of the general form of physics, he 
 must have in mind the system of mathematical equations 
 to which the laws of positive science are being reduced, 
 and these are arrived at when intelligence leaves all the 
 categories behind it and " bathes in spatiality." 
 
 It now becomes evident why some have maintained 
 that we are watching, in the elaboration of Bergson's 
 philosophy, the development of scepticism. At one 
 extremity, knowledge of reality becomes purely formal ; 
 at the other, it becomes entirely inarticulate, for no 
 predication can be made. As we have already seen, it is 
 not open to Bergson to take the way of ordinary idealism, 
 and to regard mathematics as a hypothetical science, 
 dealing with ideal elements. Instead, he is logically 
 driven to the startling conclusion, suggested in fragmen- 
 tary sentences which seem to indicate the underlying 
 impulsion, that mathematical knowledge is not true — it 
 would be true only if matter reached the climax of its
 
 IMPLICIT SCEPTICISM 211 
 
 development, or rather, disintegration. All avenues of 
 knowledge appear to be closed. The glory of our 
 humanity has departed. In so far as human, must we 
 resign ourselves to the melancholy fact : Ignoramus et 
 ignoralriuius} Because we are what we are, we cannot 
 know ; if we are to know, we must become what we are 
 not, and what, it may well be argued, we cannot be ? 
 If we are to know " brute " matter, we must be " brute " 
 matter. If we are to know pure spirit, we must be 
 pure spirit. And because we are neither " brute " 
 matter nor pure spirit, we can know neither the one 
 nor the other. This merely mocks the consummation 
 of our impotence, and Bergson has no such end in 
 view. He has the highest regard for the human 
 intelligence, understood (as he understands it) as a 
 useful instrument in the activity of life, and as a possible 
 preliminary to metaphysical knowledge. All that 
 will redeem us from this complete scepticism, however, 
 is the clear proof that intuition can supply the place 
 within knowledge of the powerless intelligence, which, 
 while seeking to safeguard it, Bergson has suppressed. 
 That proof must now be considered.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE NEED AND VALUE OF THE INTUITION OF 
 TIME, MATTER AND FREEDOM 
 
 BERGSON applies the method of intuition, in the first 
 place, to the life of the self, and, as we have seen, he 
 arrives at a theory of time which is the centre of all his 
 thought, for in lived time or psychical duration he finds 
 the very " stuff" of existence. The Essai is, in a sense, 
 the most important of all his works. Indeed, U Evolu- 
 tion Creatrice is but the Essai " writ large," that is to 
 say, it is an account of the life of the universe inter- 
 preted in terms of the life of the individual self; and 
 Matiere et Memoire is largely a development of the 
 distinction made in Chapter II. of the Essai between 
 the inner soul — pure spirit — and the outer, or spatialized 
 self. The conception of time elaborated in this work 
 demands, then, our special attention. 
 
 Analysis shows that Bergson, throughout his argu- 
 ment, has in view three ideas : 
 
 First : Space conceived as an empty, homogeneous 
 
 medium. 
 Second: Time as the pure succession which our 
 
 conscious states assume when our self lets 
 
 itself " live." 
 Third: Time as a homogeneous medium in which 
 
 we make distinctions and in which we count
 
 IDEA OF SPACE 213 
 
 — the time of reflective consciousness as it is 
 postulated in mechanics. 
 His contention is that the third idea is a spurious con- 
 cept, the origin of which may be explained. It is due 
 to an interchange of elements taking place between 
 pure space and pure duration, to the " trespassing of 
 the idea of space upon pure consciousness." It is " the 
 extensive symbol of true duration," a " fourth dimension 
 of space," the ghost of space haunting the reflective 
 consciousness. 
 
 Let us consider first the ideas of space and duration 
 respectively, and next the process by which pure dura- 
 tion becomes spatialized time. Space, as we have 
 already seen, is accepted as a form which is to be 
 distinguished from the matter which fills it. Space is 
 " a reality " as solid as sensations themselves, although 
 of a different order. It is " an empty, homogeneous 
 medium " ; "a reality with no quality " — it is " self- 
 sufficient," "existing without qualities of bodies." It is 
 homogeneous, and "homogeneity consists in the absence 
 of every quality." In this qualityless, homogeneous 
 medium there is, of course, neither duration nor real 
 succession. But what precisely does this mean? It 
 means that what we call successive states of the material 
 world conceived of as existing in this homogeneous 
 medium are not successive ; they are simply repetitions. 
 The material world repeats its past. It exists in an 
 eternal now in which it indefinitely dies and is reborn. 
 In the material world there is relative position of points, 
 simultaneity of parts. " Outside ourselves we should 
 find only space, and consequently nothing but simul- 
 taneities, of which we could not even say that they 
 are objectively successive, since succession can only be 
 thought through comparing the present with the past." 
 " We observe outside us at a given moment a whole
 
 214 QUALITY OF SPACE 
 
 system of simultaneous positions ; of the simultaneities 
 which preceded them nothing remains." The moments 
 of the material world " do not succeed each other except 
 for a consciousness which keeps them in mind." To 
 put this as simply as possible — in a purely mechanical 
 system, or in matter considered as an independently 
 existing reality, there would be no difference between 
 past, present, and future. If it could present itself in its 
 entirety, at any moment, to a consciousness, it would 
 be the same as it always has been, and not in any way 
 different from what it ever will be. In such a system there 
 is no accumulation, no duration — time counts for nothing. 
 This account of space and of the existence in space 
 of a material world which does not endure lends itself 
 to criticism in two respects. First : Is not a self- 
 sufficient homogeneous medium, from which all quality 
 is absent, an impossible conception ? Can we conceive 
 a reality with no quality ? But second, if it be 
 imagined as independently existing, there can be no 
 reason for calling it space rather than anything else. 
 In a pure, independently existing, homogeneous medium 
 the distinction between " here " and " there " would 
 disappear, along with all other qualitative distinctions. 
 In the words of Professor Ward, " There is no here and 
 there, no east and west in pure space. Its thorough- 
 going relativity constitutes it an absolute ; it is absol- 
 utely relative — a system of relations without a funda- 
 mentum relationis, and so a non-entity." We know 
 space only in relation to external objects. Considered 
 objectively, it is always a certain kind of order in 
 objects : considered subjectively, it is merely a point of 
 view from which we order our experience. The 
 objects of our experience are such that they respond to 
 our questions from this point of view, and the order 
 which emerges in them is spatial order.
 
 QUALITY OF SPACE 215 
 
 It is true that by a process of abstraction we may 
 think away all qualities of the external world except its 
 spatial properties. But what we then have is an ideal 
 space ; the spatial or extensive quality still remains as a 
 quality of the material world. Within this ideal space, 
 as such, which is the space of geometry, there is no 
 "here" qualitatively different from a " not here." In 
 such space points may be imagined which have no other 
 characteristic than that of position. Any one of them 
 can be arbitrarily taken as the starting-point, and the 
 only difference between any two would be a difference 
 of position relatively to each other. This merely empha- 
 sizes the ideality of space and the ultimate character of 
 spatial quality. 
 
 We cannot attribute a self-sufficient existence to this 
 ideal space, either as a " form of sensibility " or as an 
 objective medium. The course which seems to be sug- 
 gested, though perhaps not intentionally, by Kant in the 
 Transcendental Aesthetic may be followed, and space be 
 regarded as a ready-made " form " into which the raw 
 material of sense is run. But this does not fit in with 
 the facts which an analysis of experience reveals. In 
 human experience, to which attention must necessarily 
 be primarily confined, spatial order (as well as time 
 order) appears only contemporaneously with the emer- 
 gence of a concrete, at least partially systematized 
 nature. Man does not first of all parcel out a qualita- 
 tively indifferent material world into objects, to which 
 qualities are subsequently added. The spatial order 
 develops at the same time as the concrete qualitative 
 articulation. Consequently, although space and time 
 may be ultimate conditions of the possibility of the 
 experience of nature, they are known not merely as 
 conditions, but as conditions of experience, and they are 
 not conditions of experience in the sense that they
 
 216 A CONDITION OF EXPERIENCE 
 
 exist prior to experience. So far as space is concerned, 
 it is the condition of one level of experience in the 
 sense that if the spatial order on that level were to be 
 removed, one large section of knowledge would at the 
 same time disappear. This, however, does not warrant 
 the presupposition that the knowing mind is furnished 
 with an empty form which it causes to expand or 
 contract at will, and by means of which it carves out 
 objects with which intelligence may deal. Space (and 
 time) are not " these fixed diagrammatic representations 
 which, as an innate possession of our faculty of per- 
 ception, or according to an original " law " of the 
 same, impose themselves by force on our sensible idea 
 of things like a ready-made net, but these species of 
 order themselves first originate in the development of 
 the whole synthetic process in which "nature" becomes 
 for the " understanding " a structure. They do not, 
 however, arise as a subsequent result of the order of 
 nature, but as originally conditioning it in its regularity 
 as they themselves come to birth." l The starting- 
 point is the concrete experience, spatially, and in 
 other ways, ordered. We cannot get behind this ex- 
 perience to see how it originated, but reflection upon 
 its nature can show that without this spatial order our 
 experience would not be what it is. It would be less 
 ordered, and the conclusion is warranted that space is 
 
 1 In letztem Retracht sind also auch fiir Kant selbst Zeit und Raum 
 nicht jene festen Schemata, welcke, ah ein cingeborener Besitz unseres 
 Anschauungs-vermbgens, oder dock nach einem urspriinglichen " Gesetze" 
 desselben, wisercr sinnlichen Vorstellung der Dinge gleichwie ein voraus 
 feststehendes Gradnetz sick zwangweise aitflegen . . . sondern diese Ord- 
 inal gen selbst entstehen erst in der Entfaltung des ganzen synthetischen 
 Prozesses, in dent die "Natur" sic A dent " Versiande'" auferbazd ; 
 jedoch nicht als ein nachtragliches Ergcbnis der Naturordnung, sondern 
 in ihrer Gesetzmassigkeit sie urspriinglich mitbedingend. " Philosophic : 
 Ihr Problem und ihrc Probleme " (P. Natorp), pp. 59 and 60.
 
 BERGSON'S DUALISM 217 
 
 a necessary condition of human experience. We cannot, 
 however, go further, and assert that space existed prior 
 to experience, either in the human mind or as an inde- 
 pendent objective medium. This would demand that 
 we should take up a point of view outside or prior to 
 experience, a demand which has only to be stated to 
 be at once rejected as a call to do the impossible. As 
 soon as space is emptied of its qualitative content, it 
 becomes unreal, and the whole science of mathematics 
 which is based upon this abstraction must be admitted 
 to be hypothetical or ideal. 
 
 Bergson, however, does assume space as existing 
 " over against the living self." The difficulties which 
 he encountered in his attempt to show how this homo- 
 geneous medium originated as a form of intelligence 
 have already been pointed out. He endeavoured to 
 escape v he dualism of Kant by maintaining that the 
 spatiality of matter and the form of intelligence — i.e. 
 the spatiality of mind — have been progressively adapted 
 to one another. But this theory seems to raise more 
 difficulties than it solves, and I cannot see that Bergson 
 has got rid of this dualism. Even in Matiere et 
 Memoire, when, setting out from a frankly dualistic 
 position, he ends by making possible a union between 
 mind and matter, this consummation is achieved only 
 by an ambiguous treatment of matter. Matter is said 
 to repeat its past, and so, Bergson says, the essential 
 characteristic of spirit — i.e. the power of memory — is 
 not entirely foreign to matter. But it must be empha- 
 tically asserted, in the interests of clear thinking, 
 that repetition of the past is not to be identified, even 
 practically, with the accumulation of the past on the 
 present which goes on in the life of a mind. In fact, 
 it is just the disparateness between the two which is 
 emphasized in the Essai, when the opposition between
 
 218 SPACE AND TIME 
 
 duration and space is strongly asserted ; when it is 
 maintained that in the material world, at any moment, 
 nothing is left of the past — that " in pure space," 
 "outside the ego" there is " mutual externality without 
 succession." The whole difficulty arises from this 
 assumption of space as a self-sufficient homogeneous 
 medium, a form of sensibility — an assumption which 
 plays a most important part in the argument that 
 time and space, as ordinarily conceived, are not essen- 
 tially distinguishable. Having assumed the existence of 
 space as a homogeneous medium emptied of all quality, 
 Bergson goes on to argue that there cannot be two 
 forms of the homogeneous distinguishable from one 
 another. If Bergson's assumption be correct, his argu- 
 ment is inexpugnable. If time as mathematics con- 
 ceives it is a homogeneous medium from which all 
 quality has been eliminated, then there would seem to 
 be no ground for differentiating it from space, or, indeed, 
 from anything else. But certain questions present them- 
 selves at this point. Do we not begin to suspect that 
 neither the time nor the space of mathematics is real ? 
 Can there be one qualityless homogeneous medium, let 
 alone two? Why treat space and time in different 
 ways? In emptying each of all its "matter" have we 
 not deprived both of all reality ? As the distinction 
 between " here " and " not-here " disappeared in pure 
 space, so the distinction between " now " and " not-now " 
 sinks out of sight in pure time. The empty " form " 
 which is imagined to remain after all the " matter " has 
 been taken away is neither time nor space ; it is a non- 
 entity. Bergson calls it space, and conceives it as a 
 reality, and immediately his difficulties begin — difficul- 
 ties which persist throughout his whole philosophy. 
 The distinction which he draws between perceptual and 
 conceptual space is real and important, but a similar
 
 SPACE AND TIME 219 
 
 distinction between perceptual and conceptual time 
 might have saved much trouble. Why erect conceptual 
 space into an independent, self-sufficient reality? The 
 impossibility of doing the same with time and yet of 
 maintaining any difference between them should have 
 caused Bergson to re-examine his notion of space. 
 
 So long as thought remains on the conceptual level, 
 the characteristics of space and time, or, more precisely, 
 of the space order and the time order, are distinguish- 
 able and irreducible. These characteristics have already 
 been pointed out. When points are counted in time, 
 the counting is ordinal : a is the: first point, b the second, 
 c the third, and so on ; and when one point " is " all the 
 others " are not " — some are not yet and some are no 
 longer. When points are counted in space, on the other 
 hand, the counting is numeral. It is one, two, three, and 
 so on, and the point which is " here " is not " there," and 
 the point which is " there " not " here," but both are 
 present simultaneously. Thus the spatial multiplicity 
 and the temporal multiplicity are distinct. Spatial 
 multiplicity means points, one beside or near another ; 
 temporal multiplicity means points, one before or after 
 another. Spatial multiplicity implies simultaneity ; 
 temporal multiplicity implies succession. " Points in 
 time," says Natorp, " succeed one another. When a 
 ' next ' enters, the last must give way, while in space all 
 points stand together, and not only do they not displace 
 one another, but they support one another." He points 
 out, further, that externality of point to point has a 
 different signification in the case of time and space 
 respectively. In time — not measured time, but time as 
 it is most simply apprehended — the movement from one 
 point to another is possible in only one direction ; the 
 temporal externality of one point to another is realized 
 by a progress from one to another. One was, another
 
 220 LIMITS OF BERGSON'S PROOF 
 
 is ; second excludes first. In spatial externality, on the 
 other hand, the points are reciprocally external to one 
 another. Not one of them is the first, not one of them 
 successive. All are ; two includes one. If the idea of 
 a first, a second, etc., be introduced into the manifold of 
 space, at once a time consideration comes in, and con- 
 versely, if a reciprocal externality is represented in the 
 time series, then the series at once loses its temporal 
 significance, and becomes spatial. All attempts at the 
 measurement of time issue in this latter result. (Bergson 
 has rightly emphasized this.) 
 
 Now, if it be admitted that the temporal conception 
 of reality can be differentiated from the spatial concep- 
 tion, acceptance of the proof which Bergson has offered 
 in support of his argument that all attempts to measure 
 time involve its spatialization would not demand the 
 admission that the human intelligence is incapable of 
 conceiving time as distinct from space. The proof must 
 be kept within its limits. Its significance for philosophy 
 is its indication of the abstract nature of the results of 
 positive science. 
 
 Bergson, however, proceeds upon the assumption that 
 his proof includes a demonstration of the inability of the 
 human mind to conceive a temporal order as distinct 
 from a spatial. The simple fact that, so far as the 
 points counted are concerned, the possibility of numeral 
 counting does not include that of ordinal counting, 
 should make one pause at this juncture. 
 
 But, in addition, it may be seen how Bergson has 
 been led to disregard the real limits of his proof. It 
 was said above that so long as we keep to the con- 
 ceptual level the characteristics of the spatial and the 
 time order respectively are distinguishable and irre- 
 ducible. Those characteristics have been pointed out. 
 Now Bergson, when dealing with space, proceeds to
 
 SPATIALIZATION OF KNOWLEDGE 221 
 
 empty it by abstraction of all its content, and attempts 
 to represent the empty form which remains — attempts, 
 one might say, to image a concept. But since that 
 which gave it colour and distinctness has been 
 eliminated, the form which is imagined to survive will 
 be identical in every case in which this operation has 
 been performed. It will be pure homogeneity. But 
 for us the identity will be one of nonentity. Instead, 
 however, of recognizing this, Bergson gives to this 
 empty form, this pure homogeneity, the name of space, 
 and in his subsequent arguments it is, consciously or 
 unconsciously, endowed with the properties of space. 
 The result is that whatever be the starting-place in 
 intellectual experience, the point reached by regression 
 is invariably the same. Empty sufficiently the content 
 of any concrete fact of intellectual experience, and you 
 arrive, not at the annihilation of knowledge, but at a 
 conceptual form which is fundamentally spatial. Time, 
 causality, teleology, are all, as intellectual concepts, im- 
 pure; space is the basis of them all. So too are all the 
 subordinate concepts which are beaten out in daily 
 experience. Does not this wholesale spatialization of 
 knowledge arise, not from an ineradicable propensity of 
 intellect, but from Bergson's initial error of giving the 
 name of space to that colourless, qualityless something 
 which is imagined to remain, when, in reality, knowledge 
 has moved towards self-destruction by eviscerating 
 concrete experience of all its qualitative content ? Has 
 it not its foundation in the fact that he has, from the 
 outset, confused spatiality with " pure," i.e. qualityless, 
 homogeneity? And cannot one see how once this 
 mistake has been made, space and time, matter and 
 spirit, come to be contrasted as the purely homogeneous 
 with the entirely heterogeneous ? 
 
 In a very real sense space and time have reality
 
 222 ARGUMENT BREAKS DOWN 
 
 only in virtue of the matter which, we say, in popular 
 language, " fills " them, and, when we abstract from this 
 " matter," the hypothetical or ideal reality which 
 remains is, in neither instance, a homogeneous medium 
 utterly devoid of quality. In the one case we have an 
 ideal space, with the qualities of space, homogeneous in 
 all its parts, it is true. But it is extensive, and there- 
 fore qualitative, homogeneity. In the other case there 
 is an ideal time, possessing the properties of time, 
 which are distinguished from those of space — again 
 homogeneous throughout, but the homogeneity is that of 
 succession or flow. The measurement of time may 
 demand its translation into space, but this does not 
 imply the identity of time and space. Space is one 
 point of view from which the human mind interprets or 
 orders experience; time is another. The order which 
 emerges is distinct in each case, and the one order 
 cannot be resolved into the other. 
 
 Bergson's argument seems to break down here. It 
 might be urged that when he speaks of space as 
 utterly devoid of quality he means that space is an 
 extensive homogeneous medium. But if this is his real 
 meaning the argument loses its point, for it hinges on 
 the impossibility of there being more than one homo- 
 geneous medium. 
 ^At the very beginning of his philosophy, then, 
 Bergson has omitted from consideration the distinctive 
 features of time and space (following here, no doubt, the 
 procedure suggested by mechanics and a mathematical 
 philosophy) and has called the neutral form which 
 remains space — the pure space of geometry, absolute 
 and immobile. Over against this he has placed a 
 reality which has nothing of this immobility. This 
 reality he denominates time or duration. Hence the 
 dualism which runs through his thought. He has first
 
 SUCCESSION 223 
 
 isolated from concrete reality the aspect of permanence 
 or homogeneity, and has erected that into a self- 
 sufficient existent reality. The next step was to treat 
 in the same way the appearance which reality presents 
 when its spatial characteristic disappears, and to call 
 this fluid mass, from which all permanence and 
 homogeneity is abstracted, time. 
 
 But before proceeding to examine the intuition of 
 duration, we may note another feature which is promi- 
 nent at the beginning of Bergson's thought, and which 
 occurs again and again throughout his later work. It 
 is the tendency to make no essential distinction between 
 succession and the conditions of consciousness of succes- 
 sion, between time and the conditions of consciousness 
 of time. For example, he says : " Succession exists 
 only for a conscious spectator who keeps the past in 
 mind." Again : " Each of the so-called successive 
 states of the external world exists alone ; their multi- 
 plicity is real only for a consciousness. . . ." And 
 once more : "In space we find simultaneities which, 
 without succeeding, are distinguished from one another 
 in the sense that one has ceased to exist when the 
 other appears." In all these cases, Bergson has in view 
 a distinction between what we might call dynamic 
 succession and mere successive repetition. The distinc- 
 tion is a real and important one, but it is not, as 
 Bergson seems to suppose, a distinction between succes- 
 sion and something from which that feature is excluded 
 — between a reality which exists in time and one which 
 does not exist in time. It is a distinction within 
 succession, within time. Both exist in time, although 
 one persists the same throughout, and a hypothetical 
 mind which should be confined to experience of such 
 reality might never rise to the conception of change or 
 of time ; while the other changes in time, and the mind,
 
 224 SUCCESSION 
 
 in experiencing this change, whether within itself or 
 externally to it, would develop for the first time the 
 conception of time. The thought suggested by the 
 passages quoted is that, because for a static material 
 world existence does not involve change, therefore the 
 material world does not actually exist in time — it exists 
 in an eternal now. If, however, we grant the existence 
 of such a world, all that we are warranted in saying is 
 that if we could conceive a consciousness similar in its 
 existence to this static material world, the knowledge 
 of succession would never arise in it. Such a conscious- 
 ness would be condemned to an ever-renewed present. 
 But though memory is a necessary condition of a know- 
 ledge of succession, it does not follow at all that memory 
 is a necessary condition of the existence of succession. 
 If we are ever to grasp the course of time, no matter 
 whether we attach to time the meaning which Bergson 
 gives to it or not, it will be admitted by all that the 
 mind must have the power of keeping hold of the past 
 and presenting it along with the present in one moment 
 of consciousness, i.e. of grasping the fact of change. 
 This is the condition of our knowledge of time ; it is 
 not by any means necessary to the existence of time. 
 Take the example given by Bergson, that of the 
 position of the hand and the pendulum of a clock. At 
 any one moment there is only a single position of the 
 pendulum simultaneous with a single position of the 
 hand. Suppose we hold before the mind two different 
 simultaneities, two relatively different positions of the 
 hand and the pendulum, must we say that the suc- 
 cession between these two relatively different simul- 
 taneities "exists only for a conscious spectator " ? It 
 is perceived, certainly, only by a conscious spectator ; 
 how . it would appear if it could see itself, or how it 
 would appear if presented to a mind deprived of
 
 TIME DISTINCT FROM SPACE 225 
 
 memory, and so without a consciousness of time, we 
 cannot say, for in either case we should have to step 
 outside knowledge. We cannot help perceiving it 
 under the condition of time. Not only so, but the 
 two sets of simultaneities have more meaning when we 
 are able to affirm that they are " first " and second," 
 that they succeed each other {i.e. when they are viewed 
 under the form of time), than they would have were 
 our knowledge confined to the apprehension of them as 
 only spatially related. For us they appear as suc- 
 cessive even though we know quite well that only one 
 of them is actual at any one moment. That this is so 
 is indicated by Bergson's inability to express himself 
 save in terms of time. " There is outside us," he says, 
 " mutual externality, since the present oscillation is 
 radically distinct from the previous oscillation." Again : 
 " In space there are simultaneities which, without 
 succeeding, are distinguished from one another in the 
 sense that one has ceased to exist when the other 
 appears." This is not a mere matter of words. There 
 is a real distinction, unerringly apprehended by the mind, 
 between the simultaneous positions of the objects in 
 space which present themselves at any one moment, and 
 two sets of these simultaneities, one of which is known 
 to be actually present, while the other is known to exist 
 no longer. Further, even if an object exists in the sense 
 of persisting, the statement that it persists implies more 
 knowledge than the bare assertion that it exists, if we 
 could go no further than that would imply. But we 
 cannot stop there. For us, in relation to our mind — 
 and in thought the relation of the mind to the facts is 
 the important thing — the snapshots of the external 
 world present themselves as successive, and we have no 
 ground for saying that succession exists only for a 
 conscious spectator, if thereby we mean to imply (as 
 
 p
 
 226 INTUITION OF TIME 
 
 Bergson seems to do) that we can assert anything 
 about reality except as it exists for such a spectator. 
 The view which implies that reality exists for itself in 
 another way from that in which it exists for us is 
 essentially identical with Kant's position that things 
 exist for themselves in a way different from our per- 
 ception of them. In either case, the assertion could be 
 justified only if we were able to step outside of know- 
 ledge, and become the object itself. Real change may 
 be the condition of the development of our conscious- 
 ness of time, but we have no right to affirm that, there- 
 fore, real change is identical with time. 
 
 An intuition of time, then, is not necessary, if the 
 inability of intelligence to arrive at a conception of 
 time which can be differentiated from space be urged 
 as the basis of that necessity. We must now ask — 
 " Does the intuition of time add anything to the stock 
 of human knowledge ? " 
 
 To begin with, it should be noted that Bergson 
 asserts that the knowledge or intuition of pure duration 
 is not to be gained simply by thinking away the 
 differences which present themselves amongst our states 
 of mind, thus reducing them to a colourless mass. The 
 intuition may involve the negation of conceptual know- 
 ledge, but it is only as a positive act is substituted 
 that the intuition takes place and Spinozism is shunned. 
 Further, a special power of deep introspection is 
 necessary if we are to take advantage of the rare 
 moments of possible insight. 
 
 It is in the free act that duration is felt in its 
 purity, and it manifests itself there as just the extreme 
 opposite of space. Space is pure homogeneity ; 
 duration is pure heterogeneity. Space is qualityless ; 
 duration is entirely qualitative. Space is immobility ; 
 duration is becoming. In space there is mutual ex-
 
 INTUITION A REGRESS 227 
 
 ternality without succession ; in pure duration there 
 is succession without mutual externality. " It 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 state." 
 Bergson justly lays emphasis upon an aspect of the 
 conscious life which has been, in the past, too much 
 neglected — the aspect of its activity. States of con- 
 sciousness, as living states, are not inert ; they form 
 an organic, growing whole. This fact finds very 
 clear expression in M. A. Fouillee's work, La Psyclwlogie 
 des Idees-Forces, in which he develops the thesis that 
 every fact of consciousness is idea, in so far as in- 
 volving some kind of discernment, and is a. force in so 
 far as involving some kind of preference. The peculi- 
 arity of Bergson's position is that he identifies this 
 mass of idea-forces with time. Time is identified 
 with the life of a freely active being, and the real 
 nature of pure duration is felt only in the moment 
 of free activity when all our past converges towards 
 a present act. Bergson's theory is not that the con- 
 sciousness of an accumulated experience is the germ 
 out of which the concept of time is developed. The 
 life of the self is duration, and any attempt to con- 
 ceptualize it issues in its mutilation. The distinction 
 is fundamental for him between the duration in which 
 we see ourselves acting and the duration in which we 
 act. The duration in which we act is lived time ; 
 the duration in which we see ourselves acting is con- 
 ceptual, i.e. spatialized time. 
 
 This identification is not, within knowledge, a pro- 
 gressive, but a retrograde step, by which knowledge 
 of time vanishes within a sort of quicksand of feeling. 
 When one attempts to gain any clear idea of what 
 duration is for thought, one is directed to the region
 
 228 DESCRIPTION OF DURATION 
 
 of metaphor and negation. " Duration is a qualitative 
 multiplicity with no likeness to number ; an organic 
 evolution which is yet not an increasing quantity ; 
 a pure heterogeneity in which there are no distinct 
 qualities. In a word, the moments of inner duration 
 are not external to one another." It is a " confused " 
 multiplicity ; it is " inexpressible " ; " language cannot 
 get hold of it " ; " the deep-seated conscious states 
 have no relation to quantity " ; " we cannot tell whether 
 they are one or several " ; there is " nothing homo- 
 geneous " in it ; it is a multiplicity " without relation 
 to number or space." This array of negative state- 
 ments produces the feeling of entering a dark cavern, 
 in which the lights of knowledge are one by one ex- 
 tinguished. If we turn now to the metaphors, not 
 much more light is afforded, for these are all gathered 
 from an experience into which space has already in- 
 truded. Duration is compared to a melody in which 
 the notes melt into one another, but here of course 
 the notes need to be apprehended separately as well 
 as in synthesis. It is compared to a living being 
 whose parts, although distinct, permeate one another 
 because they are so closely connected. The states 
 of the inner self melt into one another like the crystals 
 of a snowflake at the touch of a finger. It is a 
 wholly dynamic process, not unlike the purely quali- 
 tative way in which an anvil, if it could feel, would 
 realize a series of blows from a hammer. All these 
 metaphors confirm the impression made by the negative 
 description of duration — the impression that this dura- 
 tion is something which lies beyond the limits of 
 knowledge as we ordinarily understand it, that it is 
 something lived and felt rather than thought. 
 
 When we come to the positive statements concerning 
 it, this impression becomes conviction. Pure duration
 
 UNDIFFERENTIATED FLUX 229 
 
 is the form which the succession of our conscious 
 states assume when our ego lets itself live. It is an 
 interconnection and organization of elements such as 
 would be felt by a being who was ever the same and 
 ever changing, and who had no idea of space. It is pure 
 quality, pure heterogeneity, becoming, mutual inter- 
 penetration. It is the imperceptible organizing of 
 states of consciousness into a whole. Now, pure 
 quality, pure heterogeneity, pure becoming, are com- 
 pletely outside the limits of ordinary thought. And 
 Bergson does not hold that they are to be grasped by 
 thought : they are lived and felt. You cannot predi- 
 cate anything of them without mutilating them. This 
 felt activity, this felt fluent mass of pure heterogeneity, 
 is the ultimate subject of all predication, but no predica- 
 tion can be made of it without introducing difference 
 into it and thereby distorting it. 
 
 Now let us suppose, for the moment, that we can 
 leave ordinary knowledge behind us, and, entering into 
 ourselves, live this life of pure activity, and feel ourselves 
 living it. Why should we call this felt activity time ? 
 Surely the essence of the knowledge of time is the 
 distinction between past, present, and future, and it is 
 perfectly clear that these distinctions cannot exist 
 except for a kind of thought which involves difference. 
 There is no reason why this fluent mass should be 
 called time rather than anything else. In fact, there is 
 every reason why, on Bergson's view, no predication at 
 all can be made of it. For a self which has the power 
 of reflection, the accumulation of experience, the con- 
 sciousness, so to speak, of the ever-increasing burden 
 which we carry with us, may be seen, some would hold, 
 to be the germ out of which the conception of time 
 develops. But this mass itself is an ideal objective 
 existence, which we may call time if we please, but
 
 230 A MINIMUM OF COGNITION 
 
 which we may, with equal fitness, designate in many- 
 other ways besides. In any case, we express its nature 
 only partially, and as soon as we attach a predicate to 
 it we represent it to ourselves as object, and so are 
 immediately transported into the realm of discursive 
 thought. But no appeal to this ideal stage of know- 
 ledge, in which differentiation between the knower and 
 the known is conceived as transcended or as not having 
 taken place, can give us any help at all in forming our 
 conception of time. 
 
 In this endeavour to grasp immediately, without the 
 apparatus of judgment, conception, and reasoning, what 
 has happened ? Cognition has been progressively 
 minimized, and the substitution of an undifferentiated 
 flux has been made. In a state of feeling, cognition is 
 at a minimum, and if a state of pure feeling were 
 attainable, cognition would vanish. In fact, the 
 approach to an intuition of duration would involve a 
 descent towards the mental life of the amoeba. To 
 reply that this is not so, since consciousness is much 
 feebler in the case of such a being than with man, is 
 beside the point, for clearness of consciousness means 
 clearness of conceptual articulation, primacy of cogni- 
 tion, and, as articulation becomes blurred in proportion 
 as cognition surrenders its supremacy to life or un- 
 reflective activity, consciousness, pari passu, is enfeebled. 
 You cannot retain the degree, or strength, or vividness 
 of human consciousness while letting go the clearness 
 of human knowledge. You cannot switch on its clear 
 light to the unreflective psychical content of the animal, 
 nor yet to the imagined unreflective progress of the 
 deepest psychical human life, from which conceptual 
 difference has been eliminated. The feeling of pure 
 duration is, in fact, with a different name, Bradley's 
 undifferentiated feeling, and with Professor G. Dawes
 
 A MINIMUM OF COGNITION 231 
 
 Hicks (who is writing here in connection with Bradley's 
 view of feeling) one may say that " an original sensu- 
 ous a-n-eipov, psychical in character, which in some 
 mysterious way is felt, and out of which, through 
 articulation, knowledge of intelligible fact emerges, is 
 a notion which I have vainly struggled to grasp : it 
 strikes me rather as a conundrum than as the solution 
 of a problem." Bergson points us for a feeling of pure 
 duration to the land of dreams, in which we have a 
 " confused instinct " of it, and he directs us to the 
 animal consciousness. But it is obvious that in each 
 of these instances we are regressing from our standpoint 
 of intellectual knowledge. A state of confused feeling 
 may be conceived as the ideal limit of such a regres- 
 sion, and we may picture in imagination the life of an 
 animal very low down in the scale as a continuum of 
 confused feeling in which the differentiation, if any 
 there be, between subject and object and between 
 moment and moment is very vague. In such a regres- 
 sion all distinctions, that of time included, sink out of 
 view. The end, in which all differentiation would be 
 lost, is never attained by us, at any rate. For us there 
 is always feeling, presentation or object, and volition, 
 however indistinctly they may be present to conscious- 
 ness. The three are inextricably intertwined, and the 
 disappearance of any one involves the disappearance of 
 all. There is no escape from the difficulties connected 
 with the idea of time by way of this cavern of confused 
 feeling of multiplicity and heterogeneity. We rather 
 feel that we are losing our bearings altogether, that our 
 minds are going from us, and that time and space, we 
 and all things, are engulfed in the darkness of impene- 
 trable night. 
 
 Examination of one of the features of psychical 
 duration upon which great emphasis is laid— that of
 
 232 IDEA OF INTERPENETRATION 
 
 interpenetration of parts — will show that the idea of 
 pure duration is not to be grasped by letting go all 
 conceptual differentiation. The personal consciousness 
 is the highest type of organism, and, as such, exhibits 
 the most perfect interpenetration of parts. In an 
 organism the parts are not each perfect and self- 
 complete ; they are parts only so long as they live in 
 the whole. It is only when the nature of the whole is 
 grasped that the full meaning of the parts is clear, and 
 the nature of the whole cannot be apprehended by 
 a separate study of the parts, for the parts of an active 
 whole are essentially different from the parts of a 
 mechanism such as a watch. The organism is more 
 than an aggregate of parts. If the nature of any organ- 
 ism is to be understood, we must pass beyond that 
 stage of thought in which the mechanical categories 
 alone are necessary. Both Bergson and Kant have 
 emphasized this fact, and placed it almost beyond dis- 
 pute. But the passage to this higher level does not 
 exclude the mechanical interpretation : it gives it new 
 meaning. Our knowledge of a living organism is not 
 less, but more, when we are able to differentiate its 
 parts and to state their chemical constitution. It is 
 not by letting go this knowledge and stepping into 
 another department of knowledge which excludes con- 
 cepts that we shall perfect our knowledge of the organ- 
 ism, but by regarding this mechanical interpretation 
 under a higher idea, that of purpose or end. We know 
 an organism truly only as we know the parts which 
 we have isolated not merely as parts, but as parts 
 functioning in the activity of the individual as a whole. 
 Similarly, Bergson is indubitably right when he argues 
 that the psychologist can, at the best, present a mechani- 
 cal reconstruction of the self, the most perfect type of 
 organism, by aggregating the parts which he has isolated.
 
 IDEA OF INTERPENETRATION 233 
 
 He is likewise right when he emphasizes the fact that 
 the most ingenious combination of concepts of unity, 
 multiplicity, etc., can never lead to a grasp of the nature 
 of the self. They are. but aspects, and their combina- 
 tion may issue in the image of a motionless ghost, never 
 in a living, active, colourful self. The aspects which the 
 psychologist isolates are truly known when they are 
 known as elements of a functioning self, or, if Bergson's 
 expression be used, when they interpenetrate. But 
 surely it will not be denied that the knowledge involved 
 in the statement that in the self there are elements 
 which interpenetrate is greater than if one refused to 
 introduce difference at all into the concrete living 
 physical content. Yet you cannot speak of inter- 
 penetrating parts without first thinking of parts. It 
 would certainly be a mistake to remain at the level of 
 considering merely parts or aspects ; the parts are 
 understood only when they are regarded as parts of a 
 purposeful organism, i.e. in the case of the psychical 
 organism, only when they are seen to be factors of a 
 judgment of some kind, which in its turn is an activity 
 of conscious mind in pursuit of an end which is, ulti- 
 mately, its own self-realization. The same truth may 
 be put in another way by saying that psychology must 
 be supplemented by a theory of knowledge in which all 
 the judgments or functions of unity are shown to have 
 their source in a self-conscious soul or subject. But the 
 first stage, the psychological, is an important one, and 
 when the ascent is made to the second stage, knowledge 
 of the self is capable of greater perfection according as 
 the analysis on the lower level has been more perfect. 
 
 If, then, Bergson is to speak of interpenetration of 
 parts in any but an entirely metaphorical sense, he 
 ought to recognize that the introduction of difference 
 or articulation is not a negation of knowledge, but the
 
 234 A LIMITATIVE CONCEPTION 
 
 realization of it, the differences being grasped in an 
 increasingly higher unity ; that the ideal of knowledge 
 is not abolition, but exhaustiveness of predication ; that 
 it is by the multiplication of predicates that knowledge 
 becomes "stuffed and full." If he uses the term inter- 
 penetration of parts in an entirely metaphorical sense, 
 and if all the predicates which are attached to pure 
 duration are to be understood in a similar way, then he 
 condemns us to an utterly predicateless knowledge, 
 which is a contradiction in terms. The type of know- 
 ledge is the judgment — unity in difference ; the type 
 of reality is the individual — again unity in difference ; 
 and the supreme type of both knowledge and reality 
 is furnished immediately to us in self-consciousness — 
 here again is unity in difference. Not dead identity, 
 not pure heterogeneity, but the simultaneous develop- 
 ment of unity and difference — that is the ideal of the 
 knowing subject, the ideal of knowledge and of life. 
 What kind of knowledge a consciousness capable of 
 comprehending immediately and exhaustively the nature 
 of reality would have, we have no means of knowing, 
 but we may safely say that such an immediate grasp 
 would involve, not the annihilation of our incomplete 
 knowledge, but its perfecting. 
 
 Apart from any general argument, however, it may 
 be shown from Bergson's own works that this idea of 
 pure duration is "a limitative conception, essentially 
 unrealizable within experience." In Matiere et Me moire 
 the central principle of the whole thesis is that " con- 
 sciousness is the characteristic note of the present, that 
 is to say, of the actually lived, in short, of the active, 
 and that which does not act may cease to belong to 
 consciousness without thereby ceasing to exist in some 
 manner." Again, in UEvolution Crc'atrice we are told 
 that consciousness is the light immanent in the zone of
 
 UNCONSCIOUSNESS 235 
 
 virtual or possible action. What bearing has this view 
 of consciousness upon the problem with which we are 
 dealing ? 
 
 Put simply, Bergson's thought here comes to this — 
 that we are conscious only so long as we are being 
 summoned to action, and that, when the representa- 
 tion is adequate to the action, or when there is no 
 solicitation to action, consciousness disappears. In 
 other words, there is consciousness only when there 
 is choice, and when there is choice we are already 
 at the intelligence stage. In the case of pure dura- 
 tion there can be no question of choice, since choice 
 arises only in the event of an interruption, of a 
 pause for guidance. We are not, then, conscious of 
 our inner duration as such, but only as interrupted, 
 i.e. we are conscious only of the life which unfolds in 
 space, the life lived in contact with the external world, 
 which includes other organisms akin to our own body. 
 We are conscious of the contents of the self only 
 when they have become to some extent externalized, 
 socialized, differentiated, intelligized. The " pure " 
 memory is a " vague nebulosity," but it is already on 
 the way to become part of a concrete perception, and 
 it is only because it is on that way that it has become 
 even so much as a " vague nebulosity." Until it 
 became incipiently externalized, it remained in the 
 shadow of the unconscious. If, then, there is such a 
 thing as pure duration, it never, on Bergson's own 
 showing, comes within the sphere of consciousness. It 
 is incompetent to reply that once having become con- 
 scious, man may cease to exercise his intelligence, and 
 yet continue to utilize the light of consciousness in an 
 intuition, for this argument implies that an attribute 
 can exist apart from that of which it is an attribute. 
 Consciousness is an attribute of intelligent subjects or
 
 236 INTUITION OF MATTER 
 
 individuals, and with the disappearance of these 
 individuals consciousness, too, vanishes. 
 
 The conclusion appears to be inevitable that the 
 notion of pure duration is a passage a la limite, never 
 realized within experience. The attempt to realize it 
 seems to demand that we should step outside of con- 
 sciousness. It is significant in this connection that 
 Bergson speaks, in L Evolution Creatrice, of the supreme 
 effort of intuition as supra-conscious, and again, the 
 metaphysician is urged, if he is to place himself at 
 such an exalted point as to be able to observe the 
 genesis of intelligence, to take the risk, and action will 
 break the circle in which knowledge encloses us. But 
 it can scarcely be maintained that if knowledge were to 
 be swallowed up in supra-conscious action, any gain 
 would accrue to knowledge — rather the reverse ! 
 
 Consideration of the intuition of matter, a timeless 
 reality at the opposite extreme from pure duration, 
 leads to a similar conclusion. In the Essai, Bergson 
 assumes throughout that outside us there is space, in 
 which there is externality without succession. " Inert 
 matter," he tells us, " does not seem to endure, or to 
 preserve any trace of past time." Again : " To put 
 duration in space is really to contradict oneself, and 
 place succession within simultaneity." In IJ Intro- 
 duction a la Metaphysique we are conceived to 
 "transcend ourselves" in an effort of intuition in which 
 we " proceed to an infinitely diluted duration. . . . 
 At the limit would be the pure homogeneous, nothing 
 but repetition, by which we shall define materiality." 
 In Matiere et Mc'moire, matter is defined as " a present 
 which is always beginning again " ; it " repeats the 
 past unceasingly." In L' 'Evolution Creatrice, an attempt 
 is made to show how spirit descends towards this time- 
 less existence. It is true that Bergson admits that we
 
 PURE PERCEPTION 237 
 
 never fall into the absolute passivity involved in the 
 extremity of this movement, but even the relative 
 passivity, the achievement of which he regards as a 
 necessary condition of an intuition of matter, has 
 carried us far towards the complete annihilation of 
 knowledge. If this intuition were attainable, it would 
 be an intuition which nobody had, since the supposed 
 intuiting self would have disappeared, diffused into the 
 being of the matter which it is conceived of as knowing. 
 An analysis of sense- perception reveals as one 
 element a direct grasp of reality. This is to be 
 considered, however, not as an isolated stage in the 
 development of sense-perception, but rather as a factor 
 in a concrete perception which always contains in 
 addition representative or ideal elements. This con- 
 crete fact must be our starting-point. The fact of 
 knowledge has come about, but, until it has become a 
 fact, we do not know. We cannot set out from a 
 pure, impersonal, unconscious perception and watch the 
 genesis of the concrete fact of conscious perception, for 
 such an attempt implies the assumption that knowledge 
 exists before it exists ! The so-called pure perception 
 of matter is arrived at by the gradual elimination of the 
 ideal elements, but this involves the progressive eradica- 
 tion of judgment, which, in turn, implies the annihilation 
 of knowledge. Such a pure perception would be 
 approached in the case of the most inferior living being, 
 in the life of which knowledge is at a minimum. But 
 even in such an extreme case the limit is never reached. 
 The external world of the lowest living being is the 
 external world as it is for it ; it is the world as it 
 presents itself to an individual mind, however undefined 
 the individual and however vague the presentation. If 
 it were necessary to admit that there is a stage in the 
 scale of sentient life at which a " pure " perception
 
 238 INTUITION OF MATTER 
 
 takes place, it might still be maintained that the point 
 reached was not that of knowledge, but of action. But 
 such an admission is not necessary, as indeed Bergson 
 himself indicates, for in the humblest sentient being 
 there is discernment, however vague, choice, however 
 incipient. It is its consciousness as a purposive unit 
 which " discerns " the external object. Bergson may, 
 and does, maintain that by an effort of intuition we can 
 descend below the level of individuality, and " touch," 
 " penetrate," " live," the reality of matter. But if such 
 a feat were possible, the point of view of knowledge 
 would at the same time be lost, for we should descend 
 below the level of the humblest sentient being. We 
 cannot retain the light of consciousness and at the same 
 time live the existence of matter. 
 
 Here again, then, the conclusion forces itself upon us 
 that the pure intuition of matter is a limitative con- 
 ception. To say that matter as we know it persists, 
 essentially the same, in time, is perfectly intelligible. 
 It is impossible, however, for us to conceive timeless 
 reality, for we who know exist in time. What the 
 existence of matter may be for itself is a speculation 
 which has no meaning for us. We should cease to be, 
 in the effort necessary to know matter in that way. 
 
 The intuition of time makes no real addition to 
 knowledge, nor does the intuition of matter. Indeed, 
 both involve the abdication of the point of view of 
 knowledge. Even if it were necessary to admit that an 
 intuition of pure time is possible, likewise an intuition 
 of matter, and that they are what Bergson attempts to 
 state them to be, the difficulties connected with his 
 theory of time would not be at an end, for there seems 
 to be no path by which one might travel from this 
 morass of heterogeneity to the barren desert of quality- 
 less homogeneity into which Bergson has resolved space
 
 DURATION AND SPACE 239 
 
 — from a timeless reality to a reality which is all time, 
 or vice versa. Bergson says more than once that pure 
 duration has no relation to quantity, number, or space. 
 How then is the passage from the one to the other to 
 take place ? Bergson holds that there is a symbolical 
 representation of duration, which consists in the mixture 
 of the idea of a homogeneous medium borrowed from 
 space and the idea of succession borrowed from pure 
 duration. " There is," he says, " a real space, without 
 duration . . . and a real duration, the heterogeneous 
 moments of which penetrate one another. . . . The com- 
 parison of these two realities gives rise to a symbolical 
 representation of duration derived from space." But, in 
 the first place, it must be asked : does this intermixture 
 take place within the life-history of the individual ? If 
 so, then it is necessary to presuppose that each indivi- 
 dual mind has an intuition of the two extremes and 
 allows them afterwards to become intermingled — a 
 supposition which, from the nature of the intuition, is 
 impossible. If the osmosis takes place in the race the 
 difficulty is only pushed back a step. In the second 
 place, it must be affirmed that comparison is possible 
 only when there is a common quality, and pure space 
 and pure time are entirely disparate. 
 
 Bergson, however, brings in a connecting link, simul- 
 taneity, which, he says, is the intersection of the two. 
 Now, it is sufficiently obvious that the consciousness of the 
 simultaneity of two objects or events implies already the 
 idea of time in some form. There is an irreducible differ- 
 ence between "here" and "now," and simultaneity implies 
 not only relative position in space — a time-element 
 enters in also. The points under consideration occupy 
 that relative position now. There is an essential difference 
 between the consciousness of the side-by-side-ness of two 
 points and the side-by-side-ness of two points plus the
 
 240 DURATION AND SPACE 
 
 consciousness that they are side by side now. Further, 
 consciousness of the present involves also consciousness 
 of past and future ; " now " has meaning only as related 
 to " not-now." This consciousness of simultaneity is, 
 then, the fact to be explained, for it already involves 
 consciousness of time. Appeal to a vague metaphor 
 will not help us here. To say that an exchange takes 
 place, very similar to what physicists call the pheno- 
 menon of end-osmosis, explains nothing. When Bergson 
 gives an example to illustrate how the exchange is 
 effected, he seems to be landed in hopeless confusion. 
 The example is well known. I follow with my eyes on 
 the dial of a clock the movement of the hand which 
 corresponds to the oscillations of the pendulum. Out- 
 side me in space there is never more than a single 
 position of the hand and the pendulum ; within me 
 there is the process of pure duration. Now, when 
 Bergson goes on to describe the exchange between these 
 two through which the idea of homogeneous time is 
 generated, he presupposes throughout the time which 
 he is seeking to explain. He speaks, for example, 
 of an oscillation of the pendulum which occurs at the 
 same time as a phase of the inner life. 
 
 The fact is that Bergson appears, in his explanation 
 of conceptual time, to be carried away by the force of 
 his metaphor, and he has failed to realize the difference 
 between knowledge and action. He speaks as if the 
 contents of mind could intermingle like physical sub- 
 stances, and gives a minimum of attention to the fact 
 that within the sphere of thought action takes place 
 only along the lines of judgment. The content of mind 
 — or, if that expression be objected to, the ultimate 
 subject of all predication — is one. The progress of 
 knowledge is the development of articulation within it, 
 and that progress is accomplished in a definite manner,
 
 DIFFERENTIA OF TIME 241 
 
 viz. by a series of judgments. Bergson has not revealed 
 the acts of judgment by which duration and space are 
 combined so as to form time. Nor can he do so, since 
 he has initially fixed a great gulf between time and 
 space in such a way that if any judgments are possible 
 in regard to time, they are utterly foreign to space, and 
 vice versa. If these realities are so entirely distinct as 
 Bergson makes them, then it is only by a tour de force 
 that they can be amalgamated. * 
 
 This impasse suggests that something has escaped 
 Bergson in his analysis. The fact which he has over- 
 looked is the actual differentia of time from space. 
 Pure time and pure space, as already pointed out, are 
 alike ideals without any independent reality. If they 
 are to have any reality they must be considered in 
 connection with their " contents." Now, when I repre- 
 sent a number of events which I have experienced, 
 these events are arranged side by side in one moment 
 of time, which is, of course, a more or less abstract 
 representation. It is an abstract representation of each 
 event itself, and much, if not all, of what actually 
 occurred in the intervals is left out. It may possibly 
 happen that I range the events, or the mere outline of 
 the events, along an abstract line. If anyone could 
 look into my mind he might say that these events were 
 only spatially related, but for me, as my mind sees 
 them, they are related as successive. They co-exist in 
 one state of consciousness, it is true. That is a neces- 
 sary condition of the knowledge of any relation between 
 them. But I conceive them in that moment under the 
 relation of time, i.e. I conceive them in such a way 
 that I think of the first as having disappeared when the 
 second comes into existence, and so on. I think them 
 as successive. Whatever else has been abstracted, that 
 element of succession remains, and we know exactly 
 
 Q
 
 242 DIFFERENTIA OF TIME 
 
 what it means. If we begin by assuming a perfectly 
 qualityless medium in which events or objects are set 
 side by side, then it may be difficult for one who stands 
 off from them, so to speak, to confer on these events 
 that which will make them appear to be successive. 
 But we do not begin with such a medium. We set out 
 from concrete experience, and by a process of abstrac- 
 tion we represent isolated events as successive. We 
 stop there ; thercis no qualityless homogeneous medium 
 either thought of or implied. As M. Fouillee says : " It is 
 by pure abstraction and fiction that we represent time 
 as a ' medium ' in which events are displayed. Time 
 does not enclose things like a frame ; it is simply the 
 indefinite succession of real or possible successions. 
 The relative homogeneity which we introduce into it 
 arises from the fact that we abstract everything save 
 the fact of succession itself, and consequently the 
 transition between past, present, and future.'' Bergson 
 has omitted this element at the beginning of his 
 analysis of time. (One cannot deny that mathematicians 
 have done the same.) He has identified time with 
 space, and then when he wishes to restore that which 
 he has omitted, the way is closed. 
 
 The peculiarity of time is that past, present, and 
 future are " held in solution." Therein consists its 
 reality. We are able to grasp evetits external to us, 
 and the perception of an event is the perception of 
 past, present, and future in the one act of synthesis. We 
 grasp the event as a whole, and under the guidance of 
 the idea of time the mind can by analysis discern past, 
 present, and future elements in it. These fall apart, so 
 to speak, on reflection, but they were immanent in it 
 from the beginning. We do not perceive first one 
 immobile object, then another immobile object, and after- 
 wards set them side by side in a medium either of
 
 KNOWLEDGE OF TIME 243 
 
 time or of space. We directly apprehend the event, 
 the activity, and by abstraction or analysis or articula- 
 tion we come to see that it has the elements of past 
 and present within it, as well as an indication of some- 
 thing which is not yet. The past, the present, and the 
 future co-exist in consciousness. That has to be admitted, 
 but the essential point is that they are known as past, 
 present, and future, and not merely as juxtaposed — 
 — that is, they are known under their time aspect, and 
 not under their space aspect only. In the one moment 
 of consciousness we have " the present memory of the 
 past " and " the present prevision of the future," but 
 within that moment of consciousness past, present, and 
 future are conceived, not as co-existing, but as successive. 
 In any investigation into the nature of time that must 
 be our starting-point. If we are confined to begin with 
 to the perception of just one object at a time, and if no 
 differentiation were possible within that object, it is 
 impossible to see how the conception of time or suc- 
 cession, either " within us " or " without us," could ever 
 arise. If we are to have any conception of time order 
 we must be capable of holding more than one element 
 in consciousness. These elements must co-exist in con- 
 sciousness. But co-existence in consciousness, though 
 a condition of experience of temporal order, does not 
 necessarily imply consciousness of that order. Bergson 
 has brought this clearly before our minds. If they are 
 to be temporally regarded, the elements that co-exist 
 in the one moment of consciousness must be perceived 
 as distinguishable and irreversible phases of a continuous 
 change. In other words, we must perceive change 
 directly, primarily. This is just what happens. We 
 do primarily perceive change (whether internal or 
 external change does not now call to be considered), 
 and in the change perceived the time order is immanent,
 
 244 INTUITION OF TIME 
 
 Psychology may show how this time order comes to be 
 clearly discerned by us. There is no need to suppose 
 that we set out with an intuition of an empty form, a 
 " pure " form, as Kant would say, which exists inde- 
 pendently of all sensible experience. The capacity of 
 perceiving change, which must be admitted, implies an 
 incipient knowledge of time, akin to the vague know- 
 ledge of space which has been called " extensity." 
 Psychologists may show how this vague knowledge 
 grows in clearness through the appetitive or motor 
 activity of the subject, but they must set out from this 
 primitive awareness of time. Looked at in this way, 
 time becomes a point of view, different from space, from 
 which, from the very beginning, we seek to interpret 
 reality, and reality turns out to be such that an inter- 
 pretation can take place — an order of succession reveals 
 itself in the universe of our experience, as well as an 
 order of co-existence. Under the form of time we are 
 able to interpret the world of our experiences as more 
 and more an orderly system of continuous change. 
 From this point of view, time is seen to be a universal 
 condition of all our knowledge, present from the 
 beginning, and seen to be necessary as soon as it is 
 revealed to the reflective consciousness. It is only by 
 transcending human experience that a timeless know- 
 ledge can be imagined as even possible. 
 
 There is no apparent gain to knowledge in the 
 identification of time with the creative progress of 
 reality. At the best, it leaves the mind in a state 
 of interrogation as to the nature of that progress, 
 and this interrogation can be answered only by the 
 articulation which the intellect can present by means 
 of a series of judgments. The choice lies between 
 that systematic, though admittedly incomplete, body 
 of knowledge which embraces the truth of physical
 
 BERGSON'S PROCEDURE 245 
 
 science, psychology, ethics, philosophy, and religion, 
 so far as the human mind has been able to grasp 
 reality in its varying degrees and aspects, and a 
 metaphysic which is condemned to symbolical ex- 
 pression. 
 
 The explanation of Bergson's procedure seems to 
 be that indicated in the previous chapter. He has 
 started from the living self, which exhibits two aspects. 
 It is active, it grows, it lives by a continual process 
 of creation or self-regeneration. In the words of 
 Professor Muirhead : "In saying subject we say self, 
 in saying self we say free creator." That is one 
 essential characteristic of the self, which, since Kant's 
 time, has been overlooked or at least minimized in 
 some quarters. But there is another, equally essential. 
 It remains fundamentally identical. It is the one self 
 which persists throughout all its changes. The self- 
 conscious life embodies these two forms of existence. 
 Bergson has isolated these opposite but inseparable 
 aspects of the living self, pushed them to their extreme 
 limit, and imagined that they can have an independent 
 existence. Thus he has arrived at the thought of 
 a permanent, unchanging homogeneous plenum, from 
 which all activity and creation are banished, on the 
 one hand, and on the other at pure duration, pure 
 heterogeneity, pure creative activity, from which all 
 identity has disappeared. At both extremities the 
 concrete, living, active self has vanished — knowledge 
 is swallowed up in a form of being which is an 
 object without a subject or a subject without an object. 
 At the one extremity it is refracted into the multi- 
 tudinous points of a homogeneous space which is 
 eternally and changelessly self-identical ; at the other 
 it sinks back into the undifferentiated liquid lapse 
 which is pure duration.
 
 246 INTUITION OF FREEDOM 
 
 This conclusion is confirmed when we consider 
 Bergson's treatment of the problem of freedom. There 
 is much in this treatment which will meet with hearty 
 acceptance in most quarters worth considering. For 
 example, his determined resistance of all attempts to 
 mechanize freedom is in line with the best traditions 
 of idealism. His consideration of the controversy 
 between the determinists and free-will advocates is 
 a most admirable piece of brilliant analysis. But his 
 final word on freedom is unsatisfactory. It is a true 
 but not a new doctrine that a free act is one of which 
 " the self alone is the author," one " which expresses 
 the whole of the self," that " it is the whole soul which 
 gives rise to the free decision," that " the act will be 
 so much the freer the more the dynamic series with 
 which it is connected tends to be the fundamental 
 self," and that " we are free when our acts spring 
 from our whole personality, when they express it, 
 when they have that indefinable resemblance to it 
 which one sometimes finds between the artist and his 
 work." The whole question of the philosophy of free- 
 dom, however, lies in the conception of the nature of 
 this soul, this fundamental self. There can be no 
 doubt as to what this self is for Bergson. It is the 
 heterogeneous multiplicity of states of consciousness 
 which permeate one another. The free decision is 
 the progress of this inner duration. Some of his 
 most characteristic expressions in this regard may 
 appropriately be recalled. " The deep-seated self which 
 ponders and decides, which grows hot and blazes up, 
 is a self whose states and changes permeate one 
 another." It is a "self in which succeeding each 
 other means melting into one another to form an 
 organic whole." It is " an organized and living in- 
 telligence." " In the depths of the self, below this
 
 INTUITION OF FREEDOM 247 
 
 most reasonable pondering over most reasonable pieces 
 of advice, something else was going on — a gradual 
 heating and a sudden boiling over of feelings and 
 ideas, not unperceived but rather unnoticed." To 
 act freely is to live the life of this inner self, to " get 
 back into pure duration." Such moments of free 
 activity are rare, exceptional, and, indeed, we can 
 never render ourselves absolutely free. There is no 
 intelligible sense in which we can say that causality 
 applies to our free activity, for " the law of causality 
 binds the same effects to the same causes," and so 
 finds no point of application in pure duration, for 
 every successive phase of the progress here is hetero 
 geneous, new, and original. " A cause cannot repeat 
 its effect here, since it will never repeat itself." " The 
 relation of the free action to the state from which 
 it issues cannot be expressed by a law, since this 
 psychic state is unique of its kind, and unable ever 
 to occur again." For a similar reason, a free act is 
 wholly imprevisible. Finally, free activity does not 
 spring from motives. " It is at the great and solemn 
 crisis, 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." Occasionally, in fact, in all cases 
 of really free action — " we decide without any reason, 
 and perhaps, even, against every reason. But in 
 certain cases that is the best of reasons." The con- 
 clusion is that we can live freedom, but immediately 
 we begin to say anything about it we spatialize it, and 
 raise insoluble puzzles. This looks like thorough-going 
 scepticism, the despair of reason with itself. 
 
 This pure activity has already been argued to be 
 essentially unrealizable in experience. That argument
 
 248 ESSENTIAL FACTOR OMITTED 
 
 need not be recapitulated. But if free activity is to be 
 identified with the progress of pure duration, and thus 
 placed beyond determination by thought, no reason can 
 be alleged why this activity should be termed free or 
 spontaneous, any more than why it should be termed 
 time. One may be in thorough agreement with Bergson 
 in the view that freedom consists in activity, and in 
 an activity which passes beyond the limits of logical 
 reasoning — in other words, that feeling and will have 
 characteristics of their own which forbid their resolution 
 into cognition. But the opposite tendency to resolve 
 the self-conscious subject into feeling-accompanied 
 activity must be strenuously resisted. It is that 
 tendency which we find in Schopenhauer to regard the 
 " known self as nothing " and the willing self only as 
 real. That way lies scepticism. 
 
 In Bergson's account of freedom one essential factor 
 is omitted. He speaks continually of the self, and of 
 the personal tinge which all free actions have, but the 
 essence of the human self has escaped his notice. His 
 account of freedom has been criticized as logically 
 implying the position that an animal is more truly free 
 than rational and reasoning mail, and there is some 
 point in the criticism. Many of the expressions which 
 he employs, " heating," for example, and " blazing up," 
 " boiling over of feelings," especially since these are 
 contrasted with " pondering," " deciding," and " reason- 
 ing," suggest the activity of the brute prompted by 
 appetite or fury, or that activity of man which has its 
 source in his appetitive passions. But the criticism 
 may be pushed even further than that. Bergson says 
 that " the free action agrees with the whole of our most 
 intimate feelings, thoughts, and aspirations, with that 
 particular conception of life which is the equivalent of 
 all our past experience — in a word, with our personal
 
 ESSENTIAL FACTOR OMITTED 249 
 
 idea of happiness and honour." This is a profound 
 truth, expressed in Bergson's peculiarly vivid style. But 
 the word which haunts one in all such passages is " our." 
 How has this experience become "ours"? In what 
 sense is there an " I " ? How has the organization of 
 these states taken place ? Our past experience enters 
 into our present in the shape of ideas which give 
 our character a certain bent by establishing a per- 
 manent motive ; which are, in a sense, living things with 
 hands and feet. But how was that past experience 
 acquired, how was the permanent motive formed, in the 
 case of rational beings ? Our character, as Bergson 
 says, is altering imperceptibly every day, and these new 
 acquisitions are blended with our self, not merely 
 grafted on to it. But what is the condition of the 
 admission of an idea into the very fibre of our psychical 
 life ? No satisfactory answer to these questions can be 
 found in the expression of Bergson's thought. He 
 draws attention to the fact that certain ideas " are not 
 incorporated in the fluid mass of our conscious states," 
 that " many float on the surface like dead leaves on the 
 water of a pond," that " it is by no means the case that 
 all conscious states blend with one another as raindrops 
 with the water of a lake." But he has not pursued the 
 question as to what constitutes the passport of an idea 
 into the active life of the soul. In one place he speaks 
 of those feelings and ideas which never blend perfectly 
 with the whole mass of the self as being " the result of 
 an improperly assimilated education, an education which 
 appeals to the memory rather than the judgment." Now, 
 if Bergson had pursued the thought here suggested, 
 he would surely have found himself compelled to alter 
 considerably his account of the self as pure duration, 
 while at the same time he would, perhaps, have removed 
 a decided defect in his treatment of human freedom.
 
 250 JUDGING SELF SUPREME 
 
 For does not the admission that any idea which is to 
 become an integral factor in the life of the self must 
 appear, in the last resort, before the bar of & judging 
 self, involve the further admission that this self which 
 "decides," "ponders," "reasons," "judges," is elevated 
 above the self which is described as " heating " and 
 " boiling over," whose essence is revealed in pure 
 memory ; whose existence is the continuous life of a 
 memory which pushes the past into the present, in an 
 activity other than that of judgment and reasoning ? 
 He would have seen that what he has called pure dura- 
 tion is only one aspect of the existence of a self-conscious 
 rational subject, of whom memory is a function. 
 
 This admission must, however, be made. No idea 
 becomes truly mine until it has come into relation with 
 me as a judging self. Every idea which enters vitally 
 into my progressive life must receive its passport from 
 my self. In that aspect of the conscious life with which 
 we are now directly concerned, no idea becomes active 
 until it is judged as good. An idea may be present to 
 consciousness as an object which I contemplate and 
 examine as an assayer might examine a specimen of 
 ore, but in that case it remains quite inert ; it is, in a 
 sense, external to me. But let me judge it as good, and 
 immediately it "quivers with life," it has become an 
 integral part of me. Consequently it immediately 
 tends to pass into action — either mental or bodily 
 action — thereby gaining a " vital and causal " value, 
 and acquiring the personal tinge of feeling which it 
 derives from being mine, and by which I identify it as 
 mine. Bergson, speaking of the beliefs to which we 
 most strongly adhere, says that, in a certain sense, we 
 have adopted them without any reason, and that what 
 makes them valuable in our eyes is that they match the 
 colours of all our other ideas. They do match the colours
 
 JUDGING SELF NOT INERT 251 
 
 of all our other ideas, but — and this is the vital point — 
 that is only because we, as self-conscious subjects, have 
 judged these beliefs as good in the light of an end 
 which is for us the supreme end, to the realization of 
 which all our activity is directed. It is not strictly true 
 to say that we have adopted them without any reason. 
 They have become our beliefs because we have, ex- 
 plicitly or implicitly, attributed to them the predicate 
 " good." The whole dynamic content of my conscious- 
 ness has become " content " only because it has been 
 distilled through the alembic of a self-conscious /. 
 
 It may not be clear how an idea conditions bodily 
 acts and determines physical behaviour, but that is not 
 the crucial point of the problem concerning freedom, for, 
 so long as attention is confined to bodily behaviour, one 
 would hardly be so bold as to say that man is free. Nor 
 is it possible to vindicate human freedom on psycho- 
 logical grounds, i.e. by an attempt to follow the trans- 
 lation of an idea into bodily activity. The fact of 
 freedom must be grounded in the nature of the original 
 activity of the self. Kant saw this clearly. " If," he 
 says, " we could investigate thoroughly all the phenomena 
 of his (i.e. man's) choice, there would be no single human 
 action which we could not prophesy with certainty, and 
 recognize as necessarily arising from its preceding con- 
 ditions. In respect of this empirical character there is 
 thus no freedom? x 
 
 The self above referred to is not " amorphous," 
 " indifferent," " immutable," " a colourless substratum." 
 It is a reality whose existence consists in activity, and 
 whose nature reveals itself in reflection. This view of 
 the self is well expressed by a distinguished colleague 
 of Bergson's. " The consciousness which is apprehended 
 in reflection is not something empty and inert, a simple 
 
 1 Critik der Reinen Vemunft (Kant). Ed. Hartenstein, p. 380.
 
 252 JUDGING SELF CREATIVE 
 
 ' form.' It is, on the contrary, something full of con- 
 crete determination. It has a living content. In the 
 second place, it is never perceived in the state of repose, 
 of equilibrium, and of indifference. It is change, and 
 perpetual aspiration to new changes — not to modifica- 
 tions which come to it from external sources without 
 its concurrence, but to modifications of which the 
 subject, through its ideas or feelings, is the operator or 
 the co-operator. In the third place, the end of the 
 changes which are accomplished in consciousness is not 
 outside consciousness itself; it consists just in the 
 conservation and the growth of all the functions of 
 the conscious life." This is a more concrete and in- 
 telligible self than that which is described as pure 
 becoming. It is an organism of conceptual elements, 
 not empty forms, but active, living universals, more 
 and more differentiated, and yet unified with increasing 
 completeness by the original activity of the self, accord- 
 ing to principles which reveal themselves as funda- 
 mental in its structure. The activity of this organic 
 self is tinged with feeling which marks its activity 
 as personal. 
 
 From this point of view we may find ourselves in 
 agreement with Bergson when he says that for a con- 
 scious being to exist consists in changing, to change in 
 growing, to grow in indefinitely creating itself. But 
 we go further. We throw the stress on itself, and we 
 say that the existence of the self consists not merely 
 in creating, but also in recreating. The conscious 
 life is not merely a mass of interpenetrating states 
 passing imperceptibly to a heterogeneous state which 
 contains the previous states and something more 
 besides ; it is primarily and fundamentally a self whose 
 very existence consists in this re-creation of itself 
 which, we may say, takes place in the practical judg-
 
 JUDGING SELF NEGLECTED 253 
 
 merit (however vague it may be, and whatever form it 
 may take) that life is unconditionally good, and in the 
 activity, mental or bodily, which immediately follows 
 upon that judgment. In this way the two fundamental 
 characteristics of the self may be preserved, its self- 
 identity or permanence and its diversity or continual 
 change ; while at the same time a basis for freedom is 
 found in this ego which refers its acts to itself as subject 
 and as cause, and which more fully knows itself to be 
 a free responsible agent in proportion as it becomes 
 present, in reflection, to and for itself. 
 
 Now, it is just this " I " of which Bergson takes no 
 account. His self is a heterogeneous succession of 
 states, but the supreme condition of there being these 
 " organized " and " living " states at all is omitted. For 
 him, individual selves are balloon-like things filled with 
 memory ideas in a state of greater or less condensation. 
 These are affixed to bodies, which form the point, or 
 outlet, so to speak. The personalizing agent which 
 draws these condensed ideas out of the current of 
 duration is the body, and the permanent element in 
 the conscious life of such an individual self is conceived, 
 in Spinozistic fashion, to be the idea of the body. If 
 this be true, then it becomes evident that the fact and 
 guarantee of freedom must be searched for elsewhere 
 than in the activity of such a self. Kant sought 
 beyond the "empirical" self in the "intelligible" self 
 for this guarantee, and Bergson is compelled to a 
 similar procedure. In Maticre et Memoire and, to a fuller 
 extent, in the essay entitled V Effort Intellectuel, the 
 effort which takes place within this individualized self 
 is examined, and turns out to be an insinuation of 
 spirit into matter. In order to become aware of free 
 activity Bergson must rise above the human self and 
 enter into an elan which is, if not strictly external to
 
 254 ANNIHILATION OF FREEDOM 
 
 the individual self, at least supra-personal. In plain 
 language, this means that the nearer the approach is 
 made to the ideal of freedom, the less human does the 
 activity become, the more individuality is lost sight of, 
 and at the extreme limit personality would entirely 
 disappear in unhindered, undetermined activity, which 
 is not yours or mine, but that of the cosmic elan. That 
 this is the upshot of Bergson's treatment of freedom is 
 confirmed when it is remembered that, as already 
 explained in Chapter I., the body, consciousness, intelli- 
 gence, memory, are all means to an end, the free 
 passage of the psychical impulsion. Now, any theory 
 which involves the consideration of man as other than 
 an end in himself is inimical to human freedom. Indeed 
 such a theory cuts away the foundation of morality 
 altogether. If human freedom is to be established, 
 that can be achieved only when it is shown that man 
 has a self-originating power of self-perpetuation. This 
 is one of the thought-treasures which Kant has be- 
 queathed to us, and which is the basis of all true 
 religion, the central fact of the teaching of the great 
 Galilean. Kant formulates his categorical imperative 
 thus : " Behave always in such a way as to treat 
 humanity, in thy own person as well as in that of 
 every other, at all times as an end, never merely as 
 a means." 
 
 Bergson speaks in L 'Evolution Cre'atrice of our 
 placing our will in the impulsion which it prolongs. If 
 that could be done, our freedom would lie in the self- 
 originating, self-determining act by which we sank our 
 wills in this all-comprehending will. But we should 
 thereby commit moral suicide. The most that we can 
 do if we are to preserve our souls alive is to bring our 
 wills into harmony with this wider will. The alternate 
 course implies that we become a means, a channel. If
 
 KANT AND FREEDOM 255 
 
 we keep to the strictly ethical level the same truth 
 manifests itself. The ideal society is not one in which 
 all the individuals yield to "a formidable impulsion," 
 but one in which the personal aim of each individual is 
 harmonious with that of every other. Not community 
 of purpose even, but harmony of purposes — that is the 
 condition of an ideal state. Not subordination, but 
 harmonious development of personalities, is the end to 
 be achieved. " Be a person and respect other persons " 
 — only on such conditions is morality possible. It is 
 no explanation of human freedom, but rather its denial, 
 to affirm that freedom is attained in an act by which, if 
 that is possible, we transcend the individual human state. 
 Kant found it necessary to describe freedom as 
 noumenal. He counselled men to act "as if" they 
 were free, and to treat other men from this point of 
 view, but freedom was for him merely a standpoint. It 
 was not a fact which ever comes within human 
 experience. To phenomenalize it was to destroy it, for 
 the law of mechanical causation of means and end is a 
 universal and necessary condition of all experience of 
 phenomena. He sought to save freedom — this was the 
 goal of all his thinking — by his distinction between 
 understanding and reason, between categories and 
 ideas, between the phenomenal and the noumenal, 
 between "two kinds of world, two kinds of reality, two 
 kinds of action." By confining the sphere of applica- 
 tion of the categories, he made way for the possibility 
 of freedom. The empirical person is, like all 
 phenomena, subject to the law of mechanical causation. 
 But, on the other hand, the " intelligible " character is 
 " not the law of our causality, of the causality of 
 experience. This indicates the necessity of succession. 
 The intelligible law indicates the necessity of quite 
 another kind of causality; it is a law for the causality of
 
 256 KANT AND BERGSON 
 
 noumena; but these are 'points of view.' Thus the 
 intelligible character, the law of thinking, will exhibit a 
 causality which is not characterized by the establish- 
 ment of the sequence of cause and effect, but which can 
 realize itself only in the regulative arrrangement of 
 events." 1 Freedom, then, belongs to the intelligible 
 character, to the homo noumenon. It cannot be grasped; 
 it is a regulative maxim, a transcendental idea. " The 
 freedom of the intelligible character . . . signifies the 
 spontaneous, original choice, accomplished outside of 
 time, of the homo noumenon." 2 The activity of the 
 empirical person, which falls entirely within experience, 
 is to be ascribed to a " character " which lies entirely 
 beyond experience, the behaviour of which cannot 
 begin in time, nor be subject to any of the conditions 
 of time-experience. We may say that, but not what, 
 freedom is. Now, Bergson's claim amounts to this, viz. 
 that it is possible to grasp this noumenal freedom, 
 which Kant regarded merely as a " standpoint," a 
 " maxim," an " idea." It is possible, according to 
 Bergson, as we saw in Chapter I., to instal oneself in 
 this free activity, and then to follow the passage from 
 free or "intelligible" to empirical activity. In this pro- 
 cess of translation he finds the type of true causality. 
 
 If the choice lay between Kant's position and that of 
 Bergson, I should feel compelled to ally myself with 
 Kant, for there is a true sense in which the subjective 
 function in which freedom lies is ungraspable in 
 thought, as we usually understand that term, and the 
 starting-point of Bergson's " true " causal progress is 
 essentially unrealizable within experience. 
 
 In the first place, as it has already been pointed out, 
 the flux which is asserted to be freedom is arrived at 
 by a negation of thought, by an elimination of the per- 
 
 1 Kants Begriindung dcr Ethik (Cohen), p. 245. -Ibid. p. 126.
 
 BERGSON AND HERBART 257 
 
 manent and the systematic, and what remains is a 
 sliding mass of ideas and feelings akin to Herbart's 
 mobility of Vorstellungen. " Our household animals," 
 says Herbart, " play as the insect cannot. The 
 human child plays and imagines infinitely more : and 
 herein is displayed that mobility, that ease in changing 
 objects which we straight away, without any reference 
 to morality, recognized as a real approach to freedom." 
 But Kant has, in the Critique of Practical Reason, pro- 
 vided in advance the refutation of such a conception of 
 freedom, which he characterizes as " fundamentally not 
 a whit better than the freedom of a roasting-spit." He 
 says, " with regard to that freedom which must be con- 
 sidered as the ground of all moral laws ... it is 
 immaterial whether natural causality is defined through 
 motives which lie in the subject or which are external 
 to him. In the first case, it does not matter whether 
 this causality is necessary through instinct or through 
 rationally thought-out motives, if these determining 
 ideas . . . have indeed the ground of their existence 
 in time, and that too in previous conditions, and these 
 again in preceding ones, and so on. For, however 
 inward these motives may be, whether they have 
 a psychological and not a mechanical causation — i.e. 
 whether they bring forth action through ideas and 
 not through bodily movement — yet they are always 
 motives of the causality of a being so far as his exist- 
 ence is conditionable in time, therefore so far as his 
 existence is necessitated by past time. These con- 
 ditions, then, if the subject is to act, are no longer in 
 his power, and thus though certainly leading him to 
 psychological freedom (if this word be taken to signify 
 a merely inner connection of the ideas of the soul), still 
 bring him under the necessary laws of nature." 1 
 
 1 Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Kant), ed. Rosenkrantz, p. 227. 
 
 R
 
 258 REPRESENTATION OF WILL 
 
 In the second place, and this is of primary import- 
 ance, the starting-point of Bergson's " true causal " 
 process is incapable of being grasped within experience. 
 Kant may have been wrong in thrusting freedom into 
 the noumenal sphere, but he was right in so far as his 
 argument implies that will cannot be made an object of 
 knowledge. Bergson himself says that the pure becom- 
 ing which in the causal process becomes differentiated 
 is essentially incapable of being fixed under the regard 
 of consciousness, and Dwelshauvers, whose thought is 
 in many respects closely akin to that of Bergson, says : 
 " The apperceptive unity, the unifying activity, is never 
 fixed for consciousness in a representation or in a 
 concept ; it is not fully conscious. Reflection may 
 afterwards evolve the meaning of it, by analysis of 
 the data of consciousness. ... It is an activity more 
 profound and direct than discursive thought, because it 
 is more unified, its parts interpenetrate more." 1 Again: 
 " The intuition deals with the spiritual act itself. It is 
 necessarily inseparable from emotivity, consequently it 
 is, from the point of view of classical psychology, 
 confused. We may say that it is condemned to remain 
 confused, and that it is impossible to render it clear, 
 to translate it into an objective representation, to con- 
 ceptualize it. This would be to annihilate it." 2 This 
 last sentence puts the matter admirably in a nutshell. 
 The same thought is elaborated by Professor A. S. 
 Pringle-Pattison when he argues that " it must be for 
 ever impossible to phenomenalize an action ; we cannot 
 objectify the subjective function as such." 3 Knowledge 
 of will never becomes identical with will. 
 
 If the nature of the cognitive act which has been 
 argued for at an earlier stage in this work be admitted, 
 
 1 La Synthese Mentale (Dwelshauvers), p. 38. 2 Ibid. p. 41. 
 
 3 Man's Place in the Cosmos (A. S. Pringle-Pattison), p. 80.
 
 FEELING, COGNITION, INSTINCT 259 
 
 if the subject-object relation is the supreme relation of 
 cognition, it is clear that there is a point at which the 
 limits of human cognition must be fixed. The subjec- 
 tive function, as such, cannot be cognized in the ordinary 
 sense, for it would have to become an object, and so 
 would be no longer subject. Knowledge is always know- 
 ledge of something. But is not this exactly in line with 
 Bergson's argument? It is, so far, but at this point 
 Bergson introduces another kind of knowledge, which is 
 substituted for knowledge through judgments. It is this 
 step which cannot be permitted, for it involves the iden- 
 tification of cognition and feeling or of cognition and will. 
 Cognition involves the subject-object relation. Feel- 
 ing, as such, is purely subjective, and thus can never 
 become cognitive. Feeling is primarily the immediate 
 awareness of the functioning of the self or of will. It 
 must not be imagined that feeling exists apart from 
 cognition. Feeling, cognition, and will are inextricably 
 intertwined, mutually dependent in human experience. 
 But feeling, in the purest state which we can imagine, 
 is already " a note of interrogation," which is answered 
 immediately, however vaguely, by the self, functioning 
 in thought. It may be said that existence is imme- 
 diately given in feeling, but the judgment of existence 
 implies cognition, and cognition implies functional 
 activity. These are distinguishable elements in 
 experience, and no one of them can be resolved into 
 the other. Feeling is a continuous stimulus to cogni- 
 tion and will, and with the development of knowledge 
 it shows no tendency to resolve itself into cognition. 
 Cognition is always designed to fulfil some purpose — 
 it may be further knowledge ; it may be a purpose 
 which lies beyond knowledge itself. Here again the 
 purposive activity is not to be identified with the 
 cognitive process. It is, so to speak, the striving which
 
 26o FEELING, COGNITION, INSTINCT 
 
 includes that process. The progress of cognition is from 
 problem to problem, but these problems present them- 
 selves to persons who feel and who are dominated by 
 purposes. 
 
 The abstract independence of each aspect of spirit may 
 be emphasized from another point of view. In so far 
 as cognitive, the self is not personal, for the categories 
 of the understanding which are conceived to form the 
 fundamental groundwork of the self may be considered as 
 also the fundamental groundwork of the universe. It is 
 only when the sphere of will and intelligence is entered 
 that individuality is encountered. It is true that, bear- 
 ing in mind Kant's distinction between Menschkeit 
 (humanity) and Mensch (individual men), we must 
 admit that ultimately the purposes of the individual 
 and those of humanity as a whole are identical, that 
 " if the individual constructs a world for himself, this 
 world cannot, in the last resort, remain for itself, it 
 must itself be ranged under one last law with every- 
 thing else, the law of universality. It does not thereby 
 lose its selfhood, but, as a matter of fact, gains it for 
 the first time." * Nevertheless the individual rises to 
 the conception of an end which embraces a society, 
 however narrow or however extensive, only through his 
 capacity to conceive himself as an individual, i.e. as 
 an end in himself. Thus the will is a condition of 
 personality. Feeling, however, is entirely subjective, 
 and may be considered the most emphatically indi- 
 vidualizing of all. Because man is a feeling and 
 willing subject he is in a degree impervious to other 
 selves. There is a point at which community ceases, 
 and the experience becomes mine — peculiarly, exclu- 
 sively mine. What does this imply but that " the 
 subjective function as such " can never become an 
 
 1 Philosophic, I hr Problem und Hire Problemc (Natorp), p. 104.
 
 KNOWLEDGE OF FREEDOM 261 
 
 object of presentation, and, further, that knowledge is 
 not to be identified with living, which involves in addi- 
 tion feeling and will ? 
 
 Does the choice lie, then, between Bergson's in- 
 tuition and Kant's noumenal freedom? Not neces- 
 sarily. These are in reality fundamentally identical, 
 since the intuition implies the elimination of knowledge. 
 Possibly the clue to a satisfactory solution is suggested 
 by that acute thinker Berkeley. " There can," he says, 
 " be no idea formed of soul or spirit : for all ideas 
 whatever being passive and inert cannot represent unto 
 us, by way of image or likeness, that which acts." 
 Bergson and Kant are both in agreement with Berkeley 
 up to this point. But Berkeley proceeds: "Such is 
 the nature of spirit, or that which acts, that it cannot 
 be of itself perceived, but only by the effects which it 
 produceth." * Our being may, does indeed, consist in 
 evolving, in willing, in organic effort. Professor Ward 
 says somewhere : " We are, being active." This is true, 
 whether the activity be regarded from the cognitive 
 or volitional point of view. But Berkeley states an 
 equally undeniable truth when he asserts that we know 
 the nature of that which acts " only by the effects 
 which it produceth." Cognition does not exhaust the 
 nature of that which acts. Feeling and will are equally 
 essential aspects of experience. We have immediate 
 certainty of existence in feeling and activity, or better, 
 in felt activity, but what that activity is, what the 
 nature of existence is, is known only in cognition. 
 We knozv that we are free, not because we are expert 
 psychologists, or because we are aware of an internal 
 heating and blazing up which no amount of reasoning 
 can stem, or of an impulsion which courses through 
 us ; not because at any stage the act of knowledge is 
 
 1 Principles of Human Knowledge (Berkeley), § 27.
 
 262 KNOWLEDGE OF FREEDOM 
 
 identical with the generative act of reality ; but because 
 we discover that we are capable of ideals which are 
 peculiarly our own, not imposed on us from without, 
 but originating in us as uncaused causes ; because we 
 are " autonomous " ; because the conviction of duty is 
 indubitable. These facts lie open to consciousness. 
 They proclaim our freedom and form the groundwork 
 of morality, and they all fall within the sphere of intel- 
 ligent comprehension. It is not necessary to suppose 
 that freedom is an inference. Free activity is immedi- 
 ately grasped in feeling, but its nature does become 
 transparent in knowledge in the effects which it 
 produces. One result of the subjective function is the 
 process of knowing, which is logical throughout; another 
 is action according to motives. All that we know of 
 the function of the self is in these results, but the open 
 facts of purposive action, with the consciousness of 
 responsibility ; the glow of satisfaction which we have 
 on the occasion of acts in which we truly realize 
 ourselves, and the pain of remorse which we feel when 
 we fall below our self-constituted ideal, are enough to 
 vindicate our essential freedom. On the other hand, 
 the feeling of activity which is an implicate of all our 
 experience as free beings, and upon which Bergson 
 rightly lays such stress, never, as such, becomes an 
 object of cognition. Cognition never passes over into 
 feeling or into undetermined, felt activity. Feeling, in 
 itself, is absolutely inarticulate until it is determined in 
 cognition, and cannot, therefore, itself be substituted as 
 a separate kind of knowledge. It is rather the promise 
 and the potency of knowledge, as well as a stimulus to 
 further knowledge. But knowledge, it must be repeated, 
 is always knowledge of existence, whether it be of the 
 existence of the subject or of the object ; it never 
 becomes identical with the subject or with the object.
 
 NOT HUMAN FREEDOM 263 
 
 Knowledge as distinct from being, cognition as distinct 
 from feeling and will, involve judgment, and judgment 
 involves difference and determination. 
 
 If Bergson holds that, as a psychologist, he can per- 
 form so violent an effort of abstraction as to feel the 
 fluid, fleeting passage of duration, the activity of will as 
 such, then, with all due deference to his wonderful skill 
 in psychological analysis, it may be submitted that he 
 is mistaken. If he remains conscious of anything at 
 all at this stage of abstraction, it might with a fair 
 degree of plausibility be maintained that he feels, to use 
 his own phrase, " an inquietude of the body." In this 
 obscure region such a delicate shade of distinction can- 
 not be discerned as that between a " movement of 
 mental states or mental oscillations " and their harmon- 
 iques sensoridles. Our light at this point is much too 
 feeble to enable us to gain any knowledge of such 
 extremely fine differentiations within this " indistinct," 
 " unstable fringe " of feeling which loses itself in night. 
 As we descend from the human level, experience be- 
 comes progressively less cognitive, and approaches 
 more closely to the vague flow of organic sensations 
 which a drowsy animal before a fire may be supposed 
 to feel. If, on the other hand, we imagine ourselves 
 rising above our human mode of cognition, then we 
 must needs conceive that at the extremity we should 
 " see God and die," for in the moment of supreme 
 intuition we should cease to exist as men. In neither 
 case should we have knowledge of human freedom. 
 
 Bergson's treatment of activity guided by motives is 
 incomplete and unsatisfactory. He does not definitely 
 discuss the character of a motive, but incidentally it 
 appears that he has in his mind three possible con- 
 ceptions of its nature. First, a motive may be regarded 
 as a force acting upon the mind and impelling it to a
 
 264 NATURE OF MOTIVES 
 
 definite line of action. Second, a motive may be only 
 a rearrangement of past ideas which the mind projects 
 into the future, the realization of which consequently 
 involves no evolution, no creation of anything new. 
 Third, a motive may be the adumbration or prefiguring 
 of future activity, a kind of forward look by which we 
 become vaguely aware of that into which the present is 
 about to develop. 
 
 It does not require great consideration to show that 
 not any one of these ideas is satisfactory. The first 
 may be set aside, for reasons which Bergson himself 
 suggests. The second and third are not the outcome 
 of an accurate analysis of experience. A critical ex- 
 amination of mind leads to a distinction between 
 judgments concerning what is and judgments concern- 
 ing what ought to be, between sein and sollen. So far 
 as knowledge is concerned, it is the one organ which 
 knows throughout, but the matter, so to speak, of 
 judgment, differs in the two cases respectively. In the 
 second class of judgments " the object is thought as 
 something yet to be produced." This is not a question 
 of possibility or of theorj' ; it is a question of fact. 
 The mind is able to present itself to itself as something 
 which it has not yet been, yet which it is aware it 
 ought to become, and which it may strive to become. 
 It may be said, then, that the ultimate motive is to be 
 found within the effort after self-perpetuation, develop- 
 ment and j perfection of being, and of course this 
 development and perfection lies in the future. But 
 the point to be emphasized is that the essential element 
 in human motives to continued action is the conscious- 
 ness of a perfection but partially attained, of an intel- 
 lectual, moral, spiritual experience which, as yet 
 incompletely harmonized, is conceived of as attaining 
 to greater, and, finally, complete harmony. In most
 
 NATURE OF MOTIVES 265 
 
 cases this ideal does not come into clear consciousness ; 
 it is generally only implicit. But it reveals itself to 
 reflective thought, and, once grasped, it is seen to have 
 been active throughout. At every stage in man's 
 mental history there has been a more or less cleat- 
 consciousness of himself being something other than 
 he at the moment is and which he knows he ought to 
 be. Under the guidance of the ultimate " end " — his 
 self-perfection — the individual, in the particular circum- 
 stances in which he finds himself, faced by various 
 possibilities of action, presents to himself an idea of 
 himself as being at a more advanced stage in the 
 attainment of his "end." He identifies himself with 
 the idea, which immediately becomes dynamic and has 
 for its ally the whole force of the willing personality. 
 All the way his reach has exceeded his grasp, but he 
 has not been ignorant of that at which he has grasped. 
 It is to be observed that this supreme motive is not 
 a rearrangement of past ideas. It is the individual's 
 continually renewed conception of himself as something 
 new. In its realization of this conception the personality 
 certainly evolves and passes into something new, some- 
 thing which never existed before — not new in the sense 
 that the personality has been entirely metamorphosed 
 into something quite heterogeneous, but in the sense 
 that some progress has been made by the same person- 
 ality towards the supreme end. The conception has 
 passed from the sphere of sollen to that of sein. It is 
 true that the nature of the supreme end reveals itself 
 ever more fully as we follow on to pursue it, but, as 
 stated above, reflection shows that it has been active 
 throughout. From this point of view it would be easy 
 to pass to a wider teleology, which reveals itself not 
 only in the individual, but in history, and throughout 
 the universe — a teleology which would escape the stric-
 
 266 TWO VIEWS OF CAUSALITY 
 
 tures which Bergson has made upon the conception of 
 teleology in general. 
 
 Further, such a conception of motives is separated 
 by an immense gulf from that idea according to which 
 a motive is a prefiguring or adumbration of that which 
 we are possibly about to become. The notion of 
 " ought " is an implicate of the former conception ; that 
 notion would lose all significance in the case of the 
 latter. This is an important point, for it bears upon a 
 fact which has already been emphasized, viz. the con- 
 tinual tendency of the intuition of freedom to become 
 identical with the felt lapse of undefined ideas which 
 one might conceive the life of the animal to be. The 
 lower the descent is made in the animal scale the more 
 nearly is this state realized — the vague anticipation of 
 a possible future. Thus, through the consideration of 
 Bergson's treatment of motives, further confirmation is 
 given to the argument that in the intuition of freedom 
 knowledge of freedom is at a minimum. 
 
 We are now in a position to consider Bergson's 
 account of causation, and the relation of that principle 
 to the fact of freedom, and this consideration may 
 furnish further proof that the intuition of freedom 
 demands the extinction of cognition. Few will be so 
 bold as to attempt to controvert his general conclusion 
 that the principle of mechanical causality cannot be 
 used to disprove human freedom. Kant has bequeathed 
 this thought to us, and Bergson has emphasized its 
 truth. But while this position demands full recogni- 
 tion, the process by which it has been reached is not 
 beyond criticism. 
 
 In Bergson's work there are two distinct views with 
 regard to the principle of causality. In the first place, 
 he deals with the principle of mechanical causation as 
 the law of regular succession of phenomena, and the
 
 CAUSALITY AND FREEDOM 267 
 
 point upon which he lays the greatest stress is that 
 according to this law the same causes produce the same 
 effects, and that if causality, as a necessary principle, is 
 to have any meaning, causes must be capable of re- 
 appearing, " identical elementary conditions " must repeat 
 themselves. Looked at in this way, the principle of 
 causality is a necessary relation in the sense that it 
 asymptotically approaches the principle of identity, the 
 " absolute law of our consciousness." But the principle 
 of causality, he goes on to say, can never, in so far as it 
 is supposed to bind the future to the present, take the 
 form of a necessary relation, " for the successive moments 
 of real time are not bound up with one another, and no 
 effort of logic zuill succeed in proving that what has been 
 zuill be or continue to be, that the same antecedents will 
 give rise to identical consequents." (If this statement is 
 intended to contain alternatives, there is much doubt as 
 to their equivalence.) On this view, then, the principle 
 of causality as a necessary principle would be applicable 
 only in a world such as Bergson's material world, in 
 which the past is repeated in the present ; it would not 
 be strictly applicable in a world of change, of real suc- 
 cession, a world in which time actually counted ; and it 
 would lose all meaning if we sought to apply it to the 
 facts of inner consciousness, of pure duration, for " a 
 deep-seated inner cause produces its effect once for all, 
 and will never reproduce it." 
 
 I have already expressed my hearty concurrence with 
 Bergson's general position that the law of mechanical 
 causation can never be used as a means of disproving 
 human freedom, that, indeed, the ordinary application of 
 this principle, as such, cannot take place within the 
 domain of human activity without the mutilation of the 
 facts to which it is sought to apply it. The relation 
 between motives and volitions, and between an exertion
 
 268 CAUSALITY AND CHANGE 
 
 of force and the act that springs from it, is essentially 
 different from the relation between causes and effects 
 throughout nature considered from the mechanical level. 
 The real differentia of actions determined by motives is 
 that here there is conscious anticipation of an end to be 
 attained, and if we look at nature from the mechanical 
 point of view we cannot say that there is anything like 
 this in the physical world. But this is the vital point to 
 be explained in any attempt to account for free activity, 
 and its explanation demands the introduction of a prin- 
 ciple higher than that of strictly mechanical causation. 
 If we mechanize free activity we eliminate the essential 
 factor. While this is so, it is necessary to add that far 
 too much stress is laid by Bergson on the necessity of 
 repetition if meaning is to be ascribed to causation. The 
 principle of causation is the law of change in the uni- 
 verse, in so far as that comes within our experience, and 
 it primarily and fundamentally asserts that every event, 
 every change, comes out of something — it must, we say, 
 have a cause. In this sense, the law of cause and effect 
 is the ground of induction. In scientific research the 
 investigator seeks to arrive at a point at which he can 
 say that either the event under consideration has no 
 cause, has come out of nothing, or else a certain set of 
 conditions, which he has isolated, is its cause. The first 
 alternative is rejected as contradicting the fundamental 
 law of causation, and the second alternative being 
 adopted, we have at once a causal law which is universally 
 true. The essential point to be noted is that before the 
 category of causation can come into play at all there 
 must be the experience of succession, of change. This 
 experience is given in sense perception, and is the hint, 
 so to speak, which suggests the application of the cate- 
 gory of causation. We seek to discover in it a causal 
 connection. We do not set out from two isolated
 
 CAUSALITY AND IDENTITY 
 
 269 
 
 objects which He " loose and separate," but from a con- 
 crete fact, which develops, falls apart in the progress of 
 thought into cause and effect which are grasped as 
 differences in a unity. In experience of a purely static 
 world, then, the principle of causality, even mechanically 
 considered, could have no place. The clue for its appli- 
 cation would never be forthcoming, and, consequently, 
 it would never reveal itself in experience of such a 
 world. 
 
 Bergson's view that the essence of causation is that 
 the same produces the same, or that if causation is to 
 have any meaning it must be true that what has been 
 will be or continue to be, is not justified. On the con- 
 trary, the nearer we approach to mere repetition the 
 more entirely does causation lose its significance. Un- 
 changed recurrence is destructive of comprehension by 
 means of the principle of causation, for in such repetition 
 there is nothing which demands the use of that principle 
 for its comprehension. 
 
 The principle of causation would not lose its signifi- 
 cance even if sets of conditions did not repeat themselves ; 
 it would cease only to have practical value. As Professor 
 Bosanquet says : " Everything must be followed by 
 something — must be continued by something on every 
 side, and, between any two somethings within a unity 
 there must be a determinate inter-connection presented 
 by the content of that unity. I repeat, the co?isideration 
 that every such inter-connection might be received as unique, 
 the repetition of it being excluded by the individuality of 
 the zvhole, does not in any way militate against its character 
 of a universal law. On the contrary, such uniqueness 
 is the true characteristic of all that is universal, a 
 character which the commonplace conception of abstract 
 generalization tends to obscure." 1 In another place the 
 
 1 British Association Address,
 
 270 CAUSALITY AND IDENTITY 
 
 same thinker declares : " Causation does not depend 
 upon mere repetition of conditions. Everywhere intelli- 
 gence lies in the tracking of the universal which is 
 continuity through difference, essentially creative and 
 not dependent on an unchanged recurrence." ' This 
 truth is similarly expressed by Fouillee. " The principle 
 of causality does not consist, as some imagine that it 
 does, in saying simply that the same causes produce the 
 same effects, but in saying that any effect whatever, even 
 if it be unique in the world and sui generis, without 
 anything identical appearing before or after it, is bound 
 to a whole of reasons or of causes which determine it 
 such as it is at the present moment." 2 But Bergson clings 
 to his contention that the form of intelligence is essentially 
 identical with the form of space. Hence his position 
 that causation, as it becomes more intelligible, necessarily 
 approaches the principle of identity. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the law of causation carries us 
 away from the bare principle of identity. Elaboration 
 of causal laws means development of differences, or 
 rather development of a richer unity through differ- 
 ences. It is not a bare unity. It is unity in infinitely 
 variable differences. The true causal interpretation of 
 the universe is not the establishing of sequences between 
 objects or events which lie loose and separate, but, as 
 Bosanquet says, the tracking of the universal, which 
 is unity through difference. The objects are only 
 objects as elements in this unity, and the interpretation 
 of the universe cannot make the remotest pretension to 
 completeness until it has tracked these universals. 
 
 Bergson has, indeed, over-mechanized the scientific 
 interpretation of the universe, and made the breach too 
 wide between mechanism and teleology. The truly 
 
 x International Journal of Ethics, Oct. 1910. 
 
 2 La Psychologic des Mies-forces (A. Fouillee, vol. ii. pp. 306-7).
 
 TRUE TYPE OF CAUSALITY 271 
 
 causal interpretation is implicitly, to some extent at 
 any rate, teleological. The true type of causality is to 
 be found in the causal activity of the self. It is here 
 that real activity is primarily encountered, and we have 
 already seen that our knowledge of that activity con- 
 sists in the cognition of an idea or motive or " end " 
 present and active throughout human life. This " end " 
 becomes transparent to knowledge in the particular 
 motives which guide our daily activity. Each of these 
 is an actively working idea. Now, our causal inter- 
 pretation of the universe is anthropomorphic through 
 and through, and consequently is, in a sense, implicitly 
 teleological. The tracking of universals is at bottom a 
 tracking of the meaning and design of the universe. 
 Of course the difference between actions achieved in 
 pursuit of an end consciously anticipated, and the 
 actions of the unorganized world, must not be mini- 
 mized. In the one case, the scientific investigator 
 does not know, at any rate he does not concern 
 himself about, the end which nature is fulfilling ; in 
 the other, we deliberately interpret our own activity 
 in the light of a consciously anticipated end. There 
 is an ethic of man, but not of nature, as the positive 
 scientist regards it. While we investigate nature as 
 it is, we investigate ourselves as we ought to be. 
 Nevertheless, the progressive elucidation of ourselves 
 as we are involves a progressive clearing of that 
 which we aim to be, an elaboration of the ideal 
 implicit in consciousness. The cause, that is to say, 
 can be clearly defined in knowledge only in the effect. 
 In the causal interpretation of nature, though confined 
 to an examination of nature as it is, we elucidate the 
 meaning of the end implicit in nature so far as it has 
 been achieved. Observe, then, the bearing of this 
 argument upon the problem of freedom. We agree
 
 2/2 ARGUMENT LARGELY TRUE 
 
 with Bergson and Kant that the principle of causality 
 does not contradict freedom, but we go further, and assert 
 that it derives its complete meaning from the con- 
 sciousness of activity on the part of free individuals. 
 Causality comes to its full meaning only within the 
 sphere of human activity. If that be so, freedom is 
 not the inscrutable thing which Bergson would have us 
 believe. Our way of knowing nature by means of 
 intelligence does not prohibit us from knowing any- 
 thing at all of our own activity. Indeed our knowledge 
 of nature is dependent, in the last resort, upon the fact 
 of our knowledge of our own activity as subjects. We 
 cannot " objectify the subjective function as such," but 
 we can and do comprehend that we are free causes, and 
 in the light of that comprehension we can attempt to 
 give an ethical interpretation of the world in addition 
 to a scientific, and the one does not exclude, but rather 
 completes the other. The possibility of that revelation 
 within knowledge of active universals, which appears in 
 the articulation of concrete nature which the physical 
 sciences have achieved and are achieving, is, in the last 
 resort, inextricably bound up with the possibility of 
 man's grasping, within knowledge, the meaning of the 
 activity of selves as free subjects. 
 
 There is a large element of truth in Bergson's 
 argument, taken as a whole. A mechanical interpreta- 
 tion of the universe in causal laws is, and for us must 
 always remain, inexhaustive. A universe which would 
 be capable of exhaustive explanation in causal laws 
 would be one which had completed its " end," and in 
 that case the developing human being in such a 
 universe would be an insoluble enigma. But the basis 
 for this assertion of the always-to-be-supplemented 
 mechanical explanation is to be found in the fact that 
 we know ourselves as aiming at an end which we will,
 
 SECOND VIEW OF CAUSATION 273 
 
 and which is not yet fully achieved. Consequently, we 
 realize the possibility of an ethical interpretation of 
 ourselves, and, further, will not be satisfied until the 
 universe as it is for us is interrogated from the ethical 
 point of view. That is to say, we rise to the concep- 
 tion of the inexhaustiveness of mechanical explanation 
 because we know ourselves as active in view of an 
 unfulfilled end, and when we interrogate nature from 
 the point of view of purpose — i.e. from an ethical point of 
 view — we discover that she has an answer to our ques- 
 tions. There is then no need to posit, with Kant, 
 " noumenal freedom," nor, with Bergson, intuited 
 freedom which is ungraspable in cognition as such. In 
 both cases freedom ceases to be an attribute of man as 
 he is, and the basis of ethics for man in his present 
 condition is removed. The fact of purposive action, the 
 fact of self-originated motives, the fact of duty, all lie 
 open to consciousness, and these constitute our know- 
 ledge of freedom. 
 
 We shall now pass to the second view of causation 
 which is involved in Bergson's thought. This concep- 
 tion is implied in Chapters II. and III. of Mature et 
 Memoire, suggested in the closing part of the Essai, and 
 more clearly stated in the article entitled LEffort 
 Intellectuel which appeared in the Revue Philosophique 
 for January, 1902. According to this view the true 
 meaning of causality is to be found in an idea inter- 
 mediate between the idea of efficient causation, or 
 causation by impulsion, and final causation, or causation 
 by attraction. Causal activity consists " in the gradual 
 passage from the less realized to the more realized, 
 from the intensive to the extensive, from a state of 
 reciprocal implication of parts to a state of juxtaposition 
 of these parts to one another." This is the guiding 
 idea of Bergson's theory of evolution as contained in 
 
 s
 
 274 SECOND VIEW OF CAUSATION 
 
 V Evolution Creatrice, in which, as we have seen, he 
 seeks to show that intelligence and instinct, for example, 
 though originally interpenetrating, have become differ- 
 entiated in the progress of evolution or true causality. 
 There he emphasizes the fact that this causal progress 
 is intermediate between a radical mechanism and a 
 radical teleology, although more nearly related to the 
 latter. 
 
 Let us examine this view of causality as it is applied 
 to the action of the individual. This process has been 
 followed in detail in Chapter I. The free decision is 
 supposed to take place outside the limits of all deter- 
 mination, in pure duration, the innermost life of the 
 self, but this free decision immediately tends to realize 
 itself, with us, in action on matter. It is the transla- 
 tion of the " idea," the innermost content of conscious- 
 ness, first into images and then into action, which 
 Bergson calls pure causality. He holds that in following 
 this process from the idea to the effort, and from the 
 effort to the act, we may set out by installing ourselves 
 in the idea — in the case of memory, in the " pure " 
 memory. This is not a hypothetical state, but is 
 actually realized in a violent effort of abstraction. It 
 is felt as " pure becoming." " Present and active though 
 it be in the process of the calling up of images, it is 
 effaced and disappears behind the images once they are 
 called up." It is " fleeting," " not to be fixed under the 
 regard of consciousness." It is "of the very essence of 
 fluidity and mobility." As soon as the process of 
 translation begins there is a vague, confused notion 
 of the end which is to be attained, a dim idea of a 
 future action conceived as realizable. This dim idea is 
 the only thing which in Bergson's thought corresponds 
 to a motive as ordinarily understood. If this be so, 
 then the volition is not determined by the motive ; the
 
 SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS VIEW 275 
 
 volition takes place in the depths of consciousness — or 
 rather, unconsciousness — is uncaused, undetermined, and 
 the so-called motive is a kind of prefiguring within 
 consciousness of the translation of this volition into 
 action. 
 
 It has already been argued that the starting-point of 
 such a causal process is only asymptotically approached 
 in experience. But when denuded of its metaphorical 
 dress, interpreted in intelligible terms, and disencum- 
 bered of the intuition and of that view of intelligence 
 which we have argued to be untenable, this theory pre- 
 sents the outline of an acceptable account of the 
 development of knowledge. The intuitional starting- 
 point may be replaced by that hypothetical mass of 
 feeling out of which knowledge seems to come — a 
 limitative conception never actually realized in human 
 experience, but which, one may imagine, is nearly 
 approached in the case of an animal, the consciousness 
 of which is elevated very little above the level of feel- 
 ing. Bergson should logically admit that consciousness 
 begins when this nebulous mass begins to condense. 
 Let us rather say that consciousness begins when 
 difference appears in this mass pregnant with know- 
 ledge, i.e. when cognition begins — in fact, let us say at 
 once that consciousness and cognition are coextensive. 
 Gradually, according to Bergson, this fluid mass of 
 interpenetrating parts becomes a multiplicity of juxta- 
 posed parts — images, he would say — inert objects, and 
 the spatial relation between these objects is intelligence. 
 Let us say, instead, that as the differentiation incident 
 to cognition, and developed through judgments, pro- 
 ceeds, objects, clusters capable of still greater*differenti- 
 ation, emerge on the field of vision. These objects are 
 incomplete individuals constructed on the pattern of 
 our own self, not pieces carved out of a homogeneous
 
 276 KNOWLEDGE AND LIFE 
 
 plenum. With progressive clearness we see them to be 
 related to other objects — spatially, it is true, but causally 
 also — and our knowledge of them increases with our 
 knowledge of these relations. The objects are seen to 
 be individual parts of a larger individual, members, so 
 to speak, of a larger organism. Thus there appears, 
 along with the differentiation, an increasingly complete 
 unity. The universals which are tracked are not 
 empty, inert, fundamentally spatial forms. They live 
 as organizing principles in particulars which are thus 
 constituted individuals. 
 
 This double development in the direction of a more 
 differentiated unity on the one hand and of a unity 
 persisting throughout these differences on the other is 
 the very genius of knowledge, as indeed it is the 
 characteristic of life. In the case of life, it is strongly 
 emphasized in those parts of U Evolution Crcatrice in 
 which Bergson affirms that development in the direction 
 of both individuality and association is an essential, 
 not a contingent feature of the evolution of life. Why 
 not recognize that it is also an essential characteristic 
 of the growth of knowledge ? Why insist that know- 
 ledge exhibits onl}' the one tendency, viz. that towards 
 disintegration ? 
 
 The reason is not far to seek. It is to be found in 
 Bergson's initial extrusion of all real activity from the 
 intelligent self. Reasons have already been given why 
 this procedure is unwarrantable. However, once he has 
 entered into this way, Bergson follows it resolutely, and 
 logically enough, seeks for real activity, for freedom, 
 outside the sphere of knowledge. Knowledge is 
 differentiation, disintegration, the temporary negation 
 of spiritual activity. It comes out of free activity, 
 prepares the way for free activity, but it is not itself 
 activity. But the implications of such a position must
 
 INTUITION AND KNOWLEDGE 277 
 
 be faced. If knowledge and activity are foreign to 
 each other, it is clear that activity can never be grasped 
 in knowledge, and Bergson's intuition of freedom makes 
 as little contribution to our knowledge as Kant's 
 noumenon. Both lie beyond the limits of possible 
 experience. Neither adds one iota to our knowledge. 
 To sum up : if the explanation of freedom is to be 
 found at all, it must be sought in the nature of the 
 self as such, not in any attempt to transcend the limits 
 of that self. Bergson is enthusiastic and eloquent when 
 he speaks of " the absolute reality of the person," of 
 the affirmation by consciousness of human liberty, of 
 the infinite gulf between the animals and man, of the 
 probable survival of the person after death. Like all 
 great metaphysicians, he makes us feel the vastness of 
 the universe in which we live, and the richness and 
 variety of the wider life in which we are partakers, but 
 it is in the inherent nature of ourselves as individual 
 persons capable of living a truly personal life that the 
 basis of the assurance of any immortality worthy of 
 the name is to be found. It is not meant by this to 
 deny that the hope of immortality finds its foundation 
 in trust in the nature of God, but the theistic faith has 
 its philosophic basis, in turn, on the knowledge of the 
 nature of our own self as it becomes transparent in 
 reflective thought. God may be perfect Freedom, an 
 ever-active Will ; it is not, however, in living the life of 
 God, but in living the life of man that we find and 
 realize our freedom, or even rise to the conception of 
 freedom. Indeed, we achieve the dim conception of 
 God's free activity only because we have discovered in 
 ourselves the power of self-originating action. Further, 
 the immortality which we seek is not a mystical 
 swooning into the life of God, but a perfect realization 
 of ourselves as unique individuals. We are not mere
 
 278 INTUITION OF FREEDOM 
 
 pulses in the life of God ; we are not merely, in 
 Bergson's picturesque phrase, " rivulets into which the 
 great stream of life has become divided," if by this 
 it is suggested that our free activity is to be found 
 beyond ourselves. It seems, however, that in order to 
 gain the intuition of freedom of which Bergson speaks 
 we would require to pass out of ourselves into the 
 larger life, and so lose our selves in that life. The 
 immortality which such a view of freedom suggests is 
 that of Nirvana. 
 
 This somewhat lengthy examination of the Essai, in 
 which the method of intuition is applied primarily to 
 the problem of the nature of the inner life, derives its 
 justification from the fact that it is a new method of 
 philosophy that is under review, and it seems desirable 
 to limit oneself to a consideration of the application of 
 that method in one crucial instance. So far as matter 
 is concerned, intelligence alone, as Bergson admits, is 
 progressively attaining to a more thorough knowledge 
 of it. The demand for an intuition of matter thus 
 seems to be superfluous, and therefore that intuition 
 has been only incidentally brought under review in the 
 preceding criticism. Finally, if the method is not 
 acceptable when we are dealing with the life of the 
 individual, then a fortiori it cannot be admitted when 
 we come to treat of the wider life of the universe.
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE VALUE OF THE 
 INTUITIVE METHOD
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 ESTIMATE OF THE VALUE OF THE INTUITIVE 
 METHOD 
 
 THE conclusions to which the preceding criticism has 
 led are, in the main, negative. I have attempted to 
 show that the view of intelligence which preponderates 
 in Bergson's works is not adequately supported ; to trace 
 the steps which led him towards this view ; and to 
 establish the position that the nature of intelligence is 
 not such as to require to be supplemented by intuition, 
 but simply by feeling and will. Criticism of the intui- 
 tion of time and that of freedom was directed to show 
 that they add nothing to the conceptions of these 
 realities which intelligence supplies ; that the so-called 
 intuition of time might, with as much justification, be 
 called succession or becoming, which signifies a back- 
 ward step in knowledge, the loss of a true distinction, 
 consequently a step towards confusedness ; that the 
 time intuited is best described by negatives ; that the 
 intuition of freedom is, if anything, that of "pure indeter- 
 mination, which has no more right to be qualified as 
 freedom than to be dominated chance " ; that it really 
 implies that if the psychologist or the philosopher can 
 say " here causes cease," he is entitled to add " here 
 commences freedom " ; that the intuition demands the 
 elimination of cognition altogether, and is of no more
 
 282 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 value for knowledge of human freedom than a noumenal 
 idea. 
 
 Some remarks are necessary, in conclusion, upon the 
 intuitive method in general. One prominent claim which 
 Bergson makes for his method is that it banishes the 
 insoluble contradictions and oppositions into which 
 intelligence leads us, " by causing the problems round 
 which the combat is sustained to disappear." Indeed 
 he goes on to say that " this power of the immediate, 
 I mean to say, its capacity for resolving oppositions by 
 suppressing problems, is the external mark by which 
 the true intuition of the immediate is recognized." 1 
 This claim reminds one of Kant's "as if." If the con- 
 clusions to which our criticism has led be admitted, it 
 must be acknowledged that this claim is too great, and 
 that the supposed solution of antinomies is illusory. 
 These antinomies rise within knowledge. They are 
 problems of reason, and it is no satisfaction to reason 
 to affirm that they can be solved by will or by life. 
 The only acceptable solution would be one which 
 rationally explained the emergence of these opposi- 
 tions ; and such an explanation is not impossible. 
 In a perfectly coherent, perfectly rounded-off system 
 of knowledge — the consummation, not the negation 
 of conceptual representation — it is conceivable that 
 these antinomies would disappear. They present them- 
 selves at a certain stage in knowledge, and are due 
 to the finiteness and imperfection of our human con- 
 dition. Their presence, thus capable of explanation, 
 need not throw complete discredit on the form of 
 knowledge. In any case the explanation of them 
 which implies a leap out of knowledge into something 
 which is not knowledge, whether it be the Kantian 
 
 1 " Vocabulaire philosophique " {Bull, de la Soc. Fr. de Phi!., Aout, 
 1908), P- 332-
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 283 
 
 noumenon or the Bergsonian intuition, is not one which 
 will satisfy reason, to which alone they present them- 
 selves as problems. 
 
 Considered generally, the intuitive method involves 
 the assumption that knowledge of reality as it is for 
 itself is different in kind from knowledge of reality as it 
 is for a knowing subject. The difference is not one of 
 degree. Further, reality as it is grasped by reason is 
 essentially different — except, perhaps, in the case of 
 matter — from reality as it is for itself. " The duration," 
 Bergson says, " in which we see ourselves acting " is 
 fundamentally different from " the duration in which we 
 act," and this line of cleavage runs throughout Bergson's 
 philosophy. But have we not here another version of 
 Kant's distinction between " phenomena " and " things- 
 in-themselves " ? Such a distinction, whether expressed 
 in the French or the German philosopher's way, is 
 unnecessary and unjustifiable. It is unnecessary be- 
 cause our knowledge of reality, though incomplete, is, 
 so far as it goes, accurate and valid. It is unjustifiable, 
 because, if reality has an existence for itself, we can 
 never know that that is so, much less know what the 
 nature of that existence is. Is there not a subtle con- 
 tradiction in the assertion that the knowledge of reality 
 demands our annihilation as intelligent subjects ? Let 
 it be admitted that life is not exhausted in knowledge, 
 and that one of the features of our human knowledge 
 is its capacity of infinite expansion : it by no means 
 follows that knowledge can or ought to be identified 
 with living, nor that its extension to infinity would 
 imply its identification with life. Knowledge has its 
 own characteristics, which must not be lost sight of. It 
 is reflection upon life, and involves in every case a 
 reference to the unity of self-consciousness. This refer- 
 ence to a self is the supreme relation ; in this relation
 
 284 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 the distinctive thing which we call knowledge consists. 
 It is always a self which knows and it always knows 
 something. There is no knowledge where there is no 
 polarization into subject and object. Reality known 
 must then be reality as it is for a subject, but there is 
 no ground for the affirmation that, because that is so, 
 reality as it is for itself differs, except in degree, from 
 reality as it is present in or to a finite mind. 
 
 Further, let it be admitted that knowledge appears 
 to come out of and melt into something which we 
 may term intuition. It does not follow that the con- 
 ceptual system which is found at all stages between 
 these two conceivable limits is essentially different from 
 what is given in feeling or from what is immediately 
 grasped in a perfectly articulated knowledge, such as 
 one may conceive that of God to be. It may legiti- 
 mately be affirmed that the conceptual representation 
 was implicit from the beginning, and that at the end 
 it would be perfectly transparent to consciousness, 
 having developed gradually in knowledge. In fact, 
 if relativism and scepticism are to be avoided this 
 seems to be the only tenable view, for, if the con- 
 ceptual representation was not implicit in the given 
 reality, it must have been imposed on it from without, 
 and we have, under such conditions, no ground for 
 the assertion that it is not quite foreign to reality ; 
 while, if the infinite development of the conceptual 
 representation led to its annihilation, we should have 
 to acknowledge that the form of human knowledge is 
 radically vicious, in which case we are on the straight 
 road to absolute scepticism. 
 
 Bergson's attempt to avoid relativism and scepticism 
 and yet to separate intelligence and intuition as two 
 kinds of knowledge, causes some ambiguity. This 
 ambiguity has already been commented upon, but, for
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 285 
 
 the sake of clearness, it may be recalled here. Some- 
 times Bergson indicates that the thought construction is, 
 though not an exhaustive, yet a true articulation of the 
 reality given in intuition. Thus he says : " If I replace 
 myself in duration by an effort of intuition, I perceive 
 immediately how it is unity, multiplicity, and many 
 other things besides." 1 Again, in L Evolution Creatricc, 
 he speaks of free acts which intelligence can resolve 
 indefinitely into intelligible elements without ever com- 
 pleting the analysis. In another place he says that 
 the elan vital escapes a study of this kind, both 
 because of its infinite richness and because of its 
 divisibility. Many more quotations in line with these 
 might be made ; but the general tendency of his 
 thought about concepts, which is also the view con- 
 sistent with his theory that intelligence is dominated 
 by the law of identity, is that concepts are empty 
 forms which are imposed on immediately given reality. 
 We are told that the intellect has a natural know- 
 ledge of certain very general relations which the 
 activity peculiar to each individual carves into more 
 particular relations : that the concepts of unity and 
 multiplicity, for example, are ready-made garments 
 which will suit Peter equally as well as Paul, because 
 they do not outline the form of either of them ; that to 
 analyse consists in expressing a thing in terms of 
 that which it is not ; that concepts are really symbols 
 which are substituted for the object which they sym- 
 bolize ; that the concept extracted from the object 
 has no weight, being nothing but the shadow of a 
 body ; that to think consists ordinarily in going from 
 concepts to things, and not from things to concepts ; 
 that to know a reality is, in the usual sense of the 
 word " know," to take concepts already made, to set 
 
 X I.M,
 
 286 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 them side by side, and to combine them together 
 until one obtains a practical equivalent of the real. 
 Bergson expressly identifies himself with James in the 
 view of the concept which the latter has presented 
 in A Pluralistic Universe. The thesis there put 
 forward is that concepts negate the inner nature of 
 reality altogether. In fact, this latter view is funda- 
 mental in Bergson's philosophy, and, if it be displaced 
 by the first view of the relation between intelligence 
 and intuition, a great deal that is claimed as peculiar 
 to the intuitive method is no longer so. 
 
 There can be no doubt that, in the first set of passages 
 quoted and in many others besides, Bergson emphasizes 
 a fact which needs to have stress laid upon it, especially 
 when some forms of idealism are kept before the mind. 
 His argument that, no matter how far the conceptual 
 construction is carried, it never exhausts the nature of 
 reality, is clear and unanswerable. It cannot be 
 doubted that, in James' words, " Reality, life, experi- 
 ence, concreteness, immediacy — use what words you 
 will — exceeds our logic, overflows and surrounds it." l 
 This fact has already, several times, been noted. 
 Reality is given, if it is known at all, in an immediate 
 perception or contact or feeling. Concepts without 
 percepts are empty. Abstracted from objects of per- 
 ception, inner or outer, they are indeed mere shadows 
 with no weight. But Bergson goes too far and involves 
 himself in difficulty when he argues that our thought 
 construction is a mere symbol of the immediately given 
 reality, and that concepts " negate the inwardness of 
 reality altogether." Percepts without concepts are 
 blind, but if the light within us be darkness how great 
 is that darkness. It is one thing to hold that con- 
 ceptual knowledge does not exhaust the nature of 
 
 1 A Pluralistic Universe (William James), p. 212.
 
 ;'i 
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 287 
 
 reality ; it is quite a different thing to contend that 
 concepts negate the nature of reality. The first posi- 
 tion is undoubtedly true ; the second is quite false. 
 According to this second view, concepts are abstract 
 ideas which have got beaten out somehow in the course 
 of experience, and which are applied from the outside 
 to a given reality, to which they are utterly foreign. If 
 that be so, then Bergson is faced with the whole 
 difficulty of the Kantian position in regard to the 
 relation between the categories and the raw material 
 which is the datum of sense. This consummation need 
 not surprise us, for, as already pointed out, Bergson adopts 
 Kant's position to this extent that he conceives intelli- 
 gence as a form. We saw him setting out with an 
 intelligence equipped with the form of space, a homo- 
 geneous and empty medium, which it throws beneath 
 reality, and we find him, later on, describing intelligence 
 as " a form without matter." The fact is that while : 
 Kant makes intelligence a faculty of knowledge, Berg- 
 son considers it as primarily an instrument of action, 
 and only secondarily as a faculty of knowledge. The 
 same difficulty, however, confronts both thinkers — What 
 is the clue in the nature of reality which demands the 
 elaboration of any concept, or of one concept rather 
 than another ? Why, for example, do we call one 
 observed sequence causal, and another simply a sequence, 
 or, from Bergson's point of view, act as though the 
 one were causal and the other not ? The only satis- 
 factory reply in both cases is that we discern certain 
 distinctions, which we may also be said to make in the 
 sense that these distinctions do not impress themselves 
 upon our mind as a passive recipient ; they are there 
 for us only through the activity of our discerning 
 intelligence, but they can be there for us only because 
 they were immanent in the given from the very
 
 288 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 beginning. If we proceed to disconnect these aspects 
 or abstracts from the given in which we have discerned 
 them, and to give them an independent reality, we are 
 on the wrong track. They have meaning and reality 
 only as aspects of that which is given. The concept is 
 the idea of an attribute particularized, not of a bare 
 attribute, which is, in fact, a bare nothing. Apart from 
 their individualization they are empty abstract ideas, 
 and if we seek to image them, they take some spatial 
 form. Time and space have for us no reality apart 
 from the succession of ideas in time and of material 
 things in space ; causation loses all its significance if we 
 attempt to consider it quite independently of particular 
 causes and effects. Berkeley has taught us this lesson. 
 If we recognize frankly the obvious finiteness of 
 our knowledge, omit all presuppositions as to the form 
 and nature of intelligence, clarify our thought on the 
 theory of the concept and on the characteristics of the 
 cognitive act, the way is open for a view of the relation 
 between the immediately given and our conceptual 
 construction or knowledge of it, which while it opens 
 out a boundless field for knowledge, escapes all the 
 difficulties necessarily encountered by every dualistic 
 theory because of its antithesis, in whatever form it 
 may be expressed, between sense and understanding. 
 The path is clear for a theory according to which 
 intelligence becomes, as well as a faculty of knowledge, 
 a genuinely efficacious instrument of life, because it does 
 reveal, however incompletely, the inwardness of reality 
 in all its degrees — the reality in which we are immersed 
 and which is given in inner and outer sense — and it 
 enables us not only " to find our way about " in that 
 reality, but to make it the vehicle of our activity, and 
 thus to develop our inmost nature as purposeful, 
 rational, individual agents.
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 289 
 
 As indicated above, there is no need to suppose that 
 the acceptance of a thorough-going theory of the 
 validity of knowledge carries with it the admission that 
 the nature of reality is or can be exhausted in cognition. 
 Feeling and will are undeniable aspects of our conscious- 
 ness, and must not be omitted in any attempt to 
 decipher the meaning of the universe. In addition, the 
 recognition of the finitude of human knowledge has 
 been frankly made. If we consider reality from the 
 point of view of space, or time, or causality, in each 
 case the progress of reconstruction is seen to be indefinite. 
 This proves, if any proof were needed, that our grasp 
 of reality in knowledge is finite and incomplete. The 
 limits within which knowledge moves are too evident 
 to be overlooked. Our knowledge is necessarily human. 
 That sounds trite, but it has needed emphasis again and 
 again in the history of speculation. Possessed of a 
 keen desire to pierce the mystery which surrounds us, 
 and which, when we are in certain moods, presses 
 heavily on our spirits, men have again and again 
 attempted to rid themselves of the limiting condition of 
 their humanity, but the history of such attempts has 
 made it clear that the apparent transcending of human 
 knowledge has been really an undoing of it. We cannot, 
 by any means, get rid, even if we so desire, of the finite- 
 ness of our present condition. Our mind staggers at the 
 thought of the possibility of omniscience. Such things 
 are too difficult for us. We are not, as Bergson says, the 
 vital current itself, nor can we ever become that, although 
 he suggests that we can when he invites us to place our 
 will in the vital impulsion which it prolongs. Nor, on 
 the other hand, do we ever approximate to the point of 
 view of the merely sentient animal. These are the two 
 limits within which knowledge moves. It appears to 
 come out of the immediate and it appears to go into 
 
 T
 
 2qo THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 the immediate, but what the immediate as such is we 
 cannot say. We do know, but in part ; there is always 
 more to know, but it is more of the same kind ; we see 
 puzzlingly, but, when the enigma is solved, it is invari- 
 ably along the main lines of reason. It is true that we 
 must put our problems " one by one," and although our 
 solution of each of them issues in a higher synthesis, 
 there is no indication that the synthesis will ever be 
 perfected. While the progress of science, for example, 
 makes our knowledge, from one point of view, more 
 deductive, since we arrive at a more comprehensively 
 unifying generalization, it sends us back questioningly 
 to the enigma, raising a multitude of new problems 
 which, in their turn, must be put " one by one." Reality, 
 as given in immediate experience, is, in Bergson's ex- 
 pressive phrase, " the gold piece of which we shall 
 never finish giving the change " in discursive thought. 
 
 But, while the limits of our knowledge are thus 
 openly recognized, care should be taken not to allow 
 its range to be limited over much, nor to sanction the 
 condemnation of knowledge in any department because 
 of its inexhaustiveness. Although our knowledge is, 
 and must be, phenomenal, yet it is true. It expresses 
 the reality of the universe for us, that is, incompletely, 
 but truly so far as it goes. When it is said that know- 
 ledge is phenomenal it must not be concluded that it is 
 not true of reality, for phenomena are real. The word 
 phenomena was chosen in order to draw attention to 
 the fact that our knowledge is not yet completed, not 
 that it is radically incompetent to grasp any degree of 
 reality. Again, when it is stated that knowledge 
 expresses the nature of the universe "for us," it is not to 
 be inferred that there is any other universe than that 
 which we know, but that we do not know the universe 
 in its entirety. The universe interpreted by reason is
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 291 
 
 the real universe truly interpreted. There is no other 
 universe than the one we know, and there is no other 
 knowledge, of a different kind, than human knowledge 
 — at least we cannot assert that there is. When, 
 within cognition, a higher standpoint is reached, the 
 knowledge gained on the lower levels is not thereby 
 excluded. From the higher point of view the know- 
 ledge is fuller, but not different. For example, the 
 teleological interpretation of an organism does not make 
 the anatomical or the physico-chemical account untrue, 
 it merely causes us to realize that each of these is 
 incomplete and that reality is richer than the mechanical 
 sciences reveal it to be. One thing seems certain : the 
 process of cognition will not be completed by discarding 
 the form of knowledge — and this is what is demanded 
 by the predominating view of the relation between 
 intuition and intelligence, the view that they are opposed, 
 though, ostensibly, complementary ways of knowing. 
 
 Let it be supposed, however, that the intuitive method, 
 as Bergson expounds it, is possible, and that it were 
 adopted by philosophers as a substitute for the critical 
 method of reflection, then philosophy would be com- 
 pelled either to remain for ever inarticulate, or, should it 
 seek and find utterance, to fall immediately into contra- 
 diction, or, finally, to clothe itself in metaphor and 
 symbol. 
 
 It would be foolish to deny that flashes of insight are 
 possible. The efflorescence of genius in human life, in 
 the departments alike of science, art, morality, and 
 religion, is there to testify to this higher power. The 
 genius in art, by his superior insight into the beauty 
 and inner harmony of the world, seizes, and expresses 
 more or less perfectly, an aspect which men of lesser 
 mould immediately feel to be a revelation of the heart 
 of reality — he strikes, so to speak, the chord of a 
 
 t 2
 
 292 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 universal sensation, and so brings humanity to a self- 
 realization immediately perceived as such. The genius 
 in morality, with his piercing vision, penetrates into the 
 moral order of the world, and his ideals exercise a 
 compelling force on all earnest spirits ; they need no 
 arguments to support them, but only clear presentation. 
 In following them we know that we are advancing 
 towards more complete self-realization. The meta- 
 physical genius rises to a higher point of view, from 
 which the universe may be interpreted in terms of 
 cognition, and his insight commends itself to us because 
 it enables us, in unifying our experience more com- 
 pletely, to realize ourselves more fully as intellectual 
 beings. These are the men who can say : 
 
 "... With an eye made quiet by the power 
 Of harmony and the deep power of joy, 
 We see into the life of things." 
 
 But for the attainment of such " intuitions " there is 
 no law. The wind bloweth where it listeth and we 
 hear the voice thereof, but cannot tell whence it 
 cometh. As Socrates said in regard to the poets, 
 they seem to achieve their work, not by wisdom but 
 by a " natural inspiration." The insight of the genius 
 is " inevitable," and the purer the genius the more 
 " inevitable " the work. We cannot analyse the steps 
 by which the intuition is secured, although we may 
 say, at least, that the process is not non-rational, since 
 there are laws of beauty and of goodness. But, since we 
 cannot analyse fully the act of genius, we are precluded 
 from making the intuition a method of philosophy. 
 Just as no strict following of scientific method will 
 beget genius when it is non-existent, so no rules 
 which can be laid down for metaphysical intuition can 
 create in him who obeys them the insight which Bergson
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 293 
 
 compares to that of the artist. Bergson himself affirms : 
 " To him who is not himself capable of giving to himself 
 the intuition of the duration constitutive of his being, 
 nothing will ever give it." Any method which is put 
 forward must be capable of being followed ; but the 
 very nature of the insight of genius prevents it from 
 being even stated as a method. 
 
 It may, however, be urged that Bergson does state 
 rules for the application of his method. He says, for 
 example, that the intuition may be gained after a long 
 companionship with the external manifestations of 
 reality, as these are systematized in the physical 
 sciences, and, again, that many different images bor- 
 rowed from very different orders of things may, by the 
 convergence of their action, direct consciousness to the 
 precise point at which a certain intuition is to be had. 
 But this suggests something very different from the 
 intuition of the artist. It suggests the genius of the 
 man of science, who, after synthesizing a great many 
 facts, flashes out an hypothesis which furnishes an ex- 
 planation of the facts observed and many more besides. 
 Scientific genius consists just in this power of rational 
 synthesis and the ability to formulate comprehensive 
 hypotheses. Let us pursue the examination of this 
 manner of regarding the metaphysical intuition. The 
 metaphysician " sets out from the totality of observations 
 and experience gathered up by positive science." " It is 
 not merely a question," Bergson goes on to say, " of 
 assimilating the salient facts ; it is necessary to accumu- 
 late and fuse together such an enormous mass of them 
 that one may be assured in this fusion of neutralizing, 
 by means of one another, all the preconceived and 
 undeveloped ideas which observers have deposited, un- 
 known to themselves, at the base of their observations. 
 Thus only is the crude materiality of the known facts
 
 294 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 disengaged." The metaphysical intuition thus gained is 
 not, as we have seen, the synthesis or resume of pre-exist- 
 ing knowledge. But neither is the hypothesis formu- 
 lated by a scientific genius or a vigorous thinker merely 
 a resume of the work of his predecessors, nor is the con- 
 cept which he supplies to link together the observed facts. 
 He elaborates something new. Whence came the extra- 
 ordinary synthetic and creative power which he exhibits 
 no one can say. One thing, at least, is certain, namely, 
 that the synthetic activity is not alogical. To be con- 
 vinced of this, one has only to consider that an hypo- 
 thesis as to laws passes into an accepted theory only 
 when the logical processes implicit in its formulation are 
 elaborated. The vigorously active mind, in an act of 
 subconscious synthesis, went through these processes at 
 a gallop, so to speak, while the more cautious, patient 
 mind would have had to walk slowly, step by step. 
 Nevertheless, the procedure in both cases is essentially 
 the same. It is at least not non-logical. What " makes 
 the mind go " is not presentable to thought ; still less is 
 it explicable why one mind " goes " much more strongly 
 than another. The one fact upon which we may insist 
 is that, once going, its procedure is logical throughout. 
 The fact of knowledge must be posited to begin with. 
 We cannot get behind it to see how it originated, but 
 once having originated it develops by judgment and 
 reasoning. 
 
 If the procedure of the scientific discoverer and the 
 intuitionist metaphysician are identical, as I have tried 
 to show, then the sharp distinction between intuition 
 and intelligence is broken down, and, should philosophy 
 decide to follow this new method, guided by the rules 
 which Bergson has laid down, then philosophy becomes 
 merged in science. The philosopher will be an expert 
 psychologist, mathematician, physicist, or biologist, or
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 295 
 
 better, he will be all these combined, besides being a 
 careful student of the history of metaphysic as it " lives 
 in the philosophers themselves." Indeed, in one of 
 Bergson's latest statements, he contemplates the possi- 
 bility of science " deciding, some day, to enter into the 
 way which philosophy will henceforth travel. When that 
 happens we can call science what scientific men to-day 
 call philosophy." l This fact is brought out strikingly 
 by M. Le Roy, a close follower of Bergson's method, in 
 an article entitled, Sur la Logique de f Invention. " What," 
 he asks, " is philosophy, if not the mind of invention 
 become conscious of its processes and its powers, the 
 mind of invention penetrated with a light which mani- 
 fests it to itself — briefly, reflected invention ? To seize 
 the principle of progress by which verification is effected 
 in the order of knowledge, realization in the order of 
 being, is the specific role and the peculiar office of 
 philosophy. Its aim is less to gain results than to arrive 
 at becoming gradually conscious of the secret force, the 
 interior power, of mind and of life." 2 He goes on to speak 
 of this interior power of mind and life as a dynamic, 
 impalpable mobility, a fleeing continuity of nuances har- 
 moniously blended. The philosopher, then, will have to 
 be a scientific inventor, as well as a skilled psychologist 
 who can, in a violent effort of abstraction, catch a 
 glimpse of this inner impulsion. 
 
 We come back now to the point from which this 
 argument set out. The difference between the scientist 
 and the philosopher seems to be that, while the philo- 
 sopher must remain dumb, or at the best inarticulate, 
 and his intuition ever unexpressed, the scientist will be 
 permitted to analyse his intuition as exhaustively as 
 
 1 Letter to Mr. H. Wildon Carr, published in Proceedings of Aristotelian 
 Society, 1909-1910. 
 
 2 Revue de Metaphysiquc et de Morale, 1905.
 
 296 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 he can, or as little symbolically as possible, and express 
 it in language, the language of reason. But surely 
 philosophy will have made a very bad bargain. The 
 advantage here is all on the side of the scientist. Both 
 have precisely the same experience, for, while the 
 philosopher is supposed to confine himself to the inner 
 experience and the scientist to the external reality 
 which is the object of his investigation, it has, never- 
 theless, to be remembered that in this act of invention 
 or intuition the distinction between subject and object 
 has vanished, and the act of knowledge coincides with 
 the generative act of reality. Bergson is much too 
 sanguine, then, when he predicts that science will one 
 day enter into the way which now the intuitionist 
 philosopher travels. It is too much to hope for that 
 science will ever abandon its clear and methodical, 
 though always-to-be-completed expression, its system- 
 atic construction, in order to take the path indicated by 
 a philosophy whose expression, since it discards intelli- 
 gence and the language of intelligence, must remain 
 metaphorical, symbolic, and confused. One may 
 predict, however, that, if philosophy is about to 
 adopt the method indicated by Bergson, we are on 
 the edge of the slough of scepticism, at the threshold 
 of a new era of philosophical agnosticism, similar to 
 that which followed, in some quarters, the philosophy 
 of Kant, and which Bergson would desire as little 
 as he. 
 
 Even if, however, philosophers do agree to adopt the 
 intuitive method, it seems that the last word in philoso- 
 phic discussion must still be uttered by reason. Indeed, 
 Bergson himself says : " There is not any durable system 
 which is not, in some at least of its parts, vivified by 
 the intuition. Dialectic is necessary to put intuition to 
 the test, necessary also in order that intuition should
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 297 
 
 break itself up into concepts and propagate itself to the 
 minds of other men. . . . Dialectic is what ensures the 
 agreement of our thought with itself. But through 
 dialectic — which is only a relaxation of intuition — many 
 different agreements are possible, while there is only 
 one truth." : This quotation makes a large admission, 
 and really yields much that I am concerned to claim, 
 for it restores reason to its supreme place as the faculty 
 of knowledge, not merely from a practical point of 
 view, but as the arbiter in speculation. The intuition 
 must submit itself, in the last resort, to intelligence, to 
 be " put to the proof," and the harmony of our thought 
 can be secured only when it is rationalized through and 
 through. This, then, is the final test of the truth of 
 intuition, not its power to lay antinomies, but its in- 
 herent rationality. Thus reason is supreme in philosophy 
 as in life. There is only one truth, as there is only one 
 reality. The one reality is God, and the one perfect 
 rounded-off truth is His, but we may confidently abide 
 by the faith, which an examination of the upward pro- 
 gress of knowledge suggests, that, though man can never 
 approach the point of view of God, the one Reality, 
 though more than, is not essentially different from 
 what we conceive Him to be, and that His knowledge, 
 though it " transcends " ours, is not of such a kind 
 as to exclude it, but to catch it up in an infinitely 
 wider vision. Meanwhile, for us, in speculation as in 
 practice, reason is, and must remain, the only trust- 
 worthy guide. 
 
 In the foregoing examination of Bergson's thought, 
 the dominant feature in his philosophy has received 
 emphasis and has been made the subject of criticism, 
 namely, the opposition between intuition and intellect. 
 
 l E.C. p. 259 (Eng. Tr. p. 251).
 
 298 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 This has, indeed, been regarded as fundamental in his 
 thought. At this stage, however, I wish to draw atten- 
 tion to the fact that there are many indications of a 
 revolt within Bergson's own mind against this opposition. 
 The ambiguity which is shown in his statements of the 
 relation between the immediate intuitive grasp and 
 the conceptual construction has more than once been 
 referred to in the preceding pages. But while this 
 tendency to treat intelligence as ideally something more 
 than bare identity is willingly and unreservedly recog- 
 nized, it must be insisted that reconsideration of the 
 nature of intelligence, under the guidance of the principle 
 that " to judge, whether immediately or mediately, is to 
 see the element of sameness in y and not independently of, 
 difference," would involve the letting-go of the greater 
 part of that which is claimed to be peculiar to the 
 method of intuition. It would lead directly to the 
 acknowledgment of the supremacy of intellect — not of 
 understanding as divorced from sensibility, but of the 
 faculty of knowledge in its entirety, which functions in 
 judgment, and expresses itself in the form of rela- 
 tion between subject and predicate. This would mean 
 the lesion of the nerve of intuition as a distinctive 
 method of philosophy, and the establishment of such 
 a method; as distinctive, is the avowed aim of Bergson's 
 thought. 
 
 The main problem which faces the mind, after a 
 study of the works of this great thinker, is whether it is 
 necessary to retain this opposition between two pro- 
 cedures of thought contrary in direction in order to find 
 room for the recognition of a fact which he, by his 
 brilliant thinking and writing, has done so much to 
 bring prominently into view — the fact that activity is 
 an essential feature of reality, not merely that indi- 
 viduals are active, but that the whole must be interpreted
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 299 
 
 in terms of activity. In the emphasis which he has 
 laid upon this fact the significance of Bergson's 
 philosophy for future thought lies. He protests con- 
 sistently and throughout against all forms of philosophy 
 which imply that all is given — a " block universe" to 
 which change is in the last resort foreign, which 
 stands over against the mind eternally the same, 
 waiting to be deciphered. For such a static whole he 
 substitutes a world which lies wholly open in the 
 direction of the future, a world which, as a whole, is 
 developing into something which it has not been and is 
 not yet. The differentia of the individual is its activity, 
 and the nature of the whole must be such as not to 
 exclude activity, growth, evolution — the essential 
 characteristic of reality in the highest grade which we 
 know. While the finite individual is not yet complete, 
 the whole is not yet complete. Without us it cannot 
 be perfect, and its very completion must include the 
 perfection of activity. Man, the most clearly defined 
 individual, is a member of the whole, and his perfection 
 does not lie in stagnation, cessation of activity. He 
 realizes himself now through action, and as eternity is 
 not the negation of time but its infinite extension, so 
 the perfection of activity is not its own annihilation. If 
 it could be regarded as an evanescent accident of his 
 individuality, activity would, of course, not have the 
 same significance for metaphysical construction; but 
 man is, being active; whatever else may be said to be 
 " mere appearance," activity is indubitably real. It is 
 the capacity of real action which erects man to in- 
 dividuality, and the ultimate whole cannot be less than 
 a perfect individual. 
 
 Does the recognition of all this and the insistence 
 upon it demand that we, as philosophers, should for- 
 swear reason and accept intuition as a substitute? I do
 
 3 oo THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 not think so. If individuality is to be our starting- 
 point in the interpretation of the universe, then the 
 highest form of individual which we know must be our 
 guide. No one will deny that personality is the 
 supreme type of individuality, and the ultimate nature 
 of personality is seen to be unity in difference, not unity 
 opposed to difference, but a unity which continues, per- 
 fects itself in difference. Every attempted explanation 
 or understanding of the whole must be dominated by 
 this supreme category of self-consciousness. It was just 
 now stated that personality is unity in difference, the one 
 in the many, and the whole will have to be understood 
 neither as an unchangeable self-identical unity nor as 
 an ununified many. Spinozistic undifferentiated " sub- 
 stance " and Bergsonian heterogeneous " becoming " are 
 both over-emphasized aspects of personality, the one of 
 its multiplicity, the other of its unity. If Hegelian 
 rationalism leads to a construction of the whole which 
 excludes the possibility of real activity in time, Bergson's 
 theory of becoming robs reality of all unity and reduces 
 it to a viscous mass of impermanence. If the cardinal 
 defect of Greek philosophy was, as Bergson urges, that, 
 setting out from ideas which exist in eternal sted- 
 fastness, it sought to pass by way of diminution to the 
 mobile, and thus made activity a negation, the main 
 fault of Bergson's philosophy is, that setting out from 
 pure activity, he seeks to pass by way of slowing down 
 to the immobile, and thus makes permanence a negation. 
 All these philosophic positions have been reached by 
 a series of oppositions, which are fundamentally identical, 
 the opposition of identity to diversity, of unity to 
 multiplicity, of permanence to activity. To all asser- 
 tions that such an opposition is demanded by thought, 
 that permanence excludes activity, unity multiplicity, 
 identity diversity, the one answer may be given. Self-
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 301 
 
 consciousness is the indubitable example of the union 
 of such apparent opposites. The self is ever becoming, 
 " still achieving, still pursuing " ; always manifesting 
 greater variety, yet always self- identical ; always 
 approaching to perfect unity. The whole is at least the 
 most perfect unity and yet most perfectly differentiated, 
 inexorably stedfast and self-dependent, yet active in 
 the highest degree. All forms of idealism which point 
 to an eternal and unchangeably complete whole which 
 somehow reproduces itself in finite minds must be set 
 aside, for the putative activity involved is merely 
 apparent. It is equally certain that that form of 
 idealism or spiritualism which presents the individual as 
 a rivulet in a stream of becoming, and which opens the 
 way to pluralism, is untenable, for the reality of individ- 
 uality is thereby endangered, and the only ground for 
 the assertion of real activity rendered insecure. The 
 only acceptable presentation of idealism is one which 
 will embody the element of truth contained in these two 
 forms. There is so much in the course of Bergson's 
 thought that is suggestive of such an idealism, that 
 many, I am sure, will look to him for a reconsideration 
 of the nature of intelligence-knowledge, which may 
 lead him to see that, in the actual life of reason, 
 concepts, whether in judgments or in deductive and 
 inductive reasonings, are " supple," not fixed, that they 
 are incomplete individuals, not empty forms. Thus 
 the light of his brilliant intellect would be thrown 
 more effectively than hitherto on the nature of the 
 whole. 
 
 Indications of the presence of the germ of such an 
 idealism within his thought are contained, for example, 
 in his recognition of the nature of the infinitesimal 
 calculus, in his obvious feeling after the conception of a 
 unity of direction of the psychical elan ; in his state-
 
 302 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 ment of the relation between associationism and individ- 
 ualism in the evolution of life ; in his determined 
 opposition to materialism, naturalism, and a too narrow 
 rationalism which would represent reality as exhausted 
 or exhaustible in cognition alone ; in his insistence that 
 life is too rich and too various to be imprisoned within 
 any finished logical construction of it which human 
 reason can project ; in his contention that " ideas " are 
 essentially dynamic ; in the repeated implication of the 
 principle that the nature of any effect cannot be grasped 
 by the conjunction of a number of elements, mechanically 
 grouped together as its cause, but that the full meaning 
 of the cause becomes apparent only in the effect ; in 
 the constant and emphatic stress which he lays upon 
 activity, creative activity, as the essence of the life of 
 man and the universe. 
 
 Such a reconsideration would, however, involve a 
 thorough-going change in the work which he has already 
 produced, and, with this work alone before me, I am 
 forced to the conclusion that, in his reaction against 
 rationalism or intellectualism, he has failed to give 
 sufficient value to an essential truth which Hegel has 
 bequeathed to us — namely, that in all man's thinking, 
 feeling, and willing, he thinks, feels, and wills as a 
 rational being. With keen metaphysical vision, Berg- 
 son sees an aspect of reality which has too frequently 
 escaped consideration in the course of the history of 
 speculative thought, but in his legitimate insistence 
 upon the reality of that which he sees, he has omitted to 
 take sufficiently into account that other aspect which 
 Hegel, above all, has emphasized, and his " Duration " 
 must be placed beside the absolute "One" of Plotinus, 
 and the "Infinite Substance" of Spinoza as an example 
 of the illegitimate passage from the apprehension of a 
 mere aspect to the assertion of its independent reality.
 
 ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 303 
 
 It is the hypostatization of the " subjective function 
 as such." 
 
 This consideration of Bergson's philosophy may be 
 brought to a close by applying to Bergson himself the 
 words, full of eloquence and admiration, which he used 
 concerning M. Felix Ravaisson-Mollien towards the 
 close of an address delivered before the members of the 
 Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques : " The 
 history of philosophy brings prominently before our 
 minds an unceasingly renewed effort of reflection which 
 labours to attenuate difficulties, to measure, with a 
 growing approximation, a reality incommensurable 
 with our thought. At intervals a soul arises which 
 seems to triumph over these complications 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. The language which it speaks when it 
 borrows the voice of philosophy is not comprehended 
 in the same way by everybody. Some judge it vague, 
 as indeed it is in its expression. Others feel it precise, 
 because they experience all that it suggests. To many 
 ears it bears only the echo of a past which has dis- 
 appeared ; but others apprehend in it, as in a dream, 
 the joyous chant of the future. The work of Ravaisson 
 will leave behind it, then, very diverse impressions, as 
 every philosophy must do which addresses itself to 
 feeling as much as to reason." The poet, the artist, the 
 seer, are the men who, more than the professional 
 philosophers, have preserved alive the inmost soul of 
 humanity, and their work may be addressed primarily 
 to the heart, but it is always to the heart of a rational 
 being, and the ultimate bar at which philosophy, poetry, 
 art, morality and religion must stand, when their truth 
 is to be judged of, is reason. Knowledge, in any of its
 
 304 THE INTUITIVE METHOD 
 
 degrees, is not and cannot without self-extinction 
 become identical with being ; it is being reflected in 
 and for a rational mind ; and philosophy is not life, but 
 the attempted interpretation of life by means of 
 reflective intelligence. 
 
 Glasgow: printed at the university press uv koubkt maclkhose and co. ltd.
 
 WORKS BY 
 PROFESSOR 
 
 HENRI BERGSON 
 
 ENGLISH 
 TRANSLATIONS 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
 
 Svo. i os. net 
 
 CREATIVE EVOLUTION 
 
 BY 
 
 PROF. HENRI BERGSON 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ARTHUR MITCHELL, Ph.D. 
 
 THE ATHENAEUM.— " M. Bergson is, of all the stars that 
 have in these latter days appeared in the philosophic firmament, the 
 only one whereto the first magnitude is accorded by almost universal 
 consent. Hence it was time that an English translation of his master- 
 piece, Evolution Criatrice, should be available for the benefit of those 
 who, by reason of their insularity, must perforce abstain from the 
 delight of appreciating a diction which is organically one with the 
 thought it enshrines. Though faced, however, with the impossible 
 task of reproducing a synthesis of outward form and inward meaning 
 as individual as that which unites body with soul, Mr. Mitchell has 
 nevertheless contrived a version which in its own way is both alive and 
 satisfying." 
 
 THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE. — "This book has all the 
 charm of style and manner, all the wide knowledge on the scientific as 
 well as on the philosophical side, which makes M. Bergson's books a 
 delight to the reader. It has also a poetical and imaginative back- 
 ground which no formal criticism can do justice to, and which eludes 
 us when we begin to criticise. For all these reasons this book is a 
 remarkable achievement, and Dr. Mitchell, the translator, has done it 
 full justice." 
 
 THE GUARDIAN. — "We are indebted to Dr. A. Mitchell for a 
 translation so good that we often forget we are not reading the original." 
 
 LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
 
 Extra Crown Svo. 3s. 6d. net 
 
 LAUGHTER 
 
 An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic 
 
 BY 
 
 PROF. HENRI BERGSON 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 CLOUDESLEY BRERETON, L. es L. (Paris), M.A. 
 and FRED ROTHWELL, B.A. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 This work has been revised in detail by the author himself, and the 
 present translation is the only authorised one. 
 
 It may be pointed out that the essay on Laughter originally appeared 
 in a series of three articles in one of the leading magazines in France, 
 the Revue de Paris. This will account for the relatively simple form of 
 the work and the comparative absence of technical terms. It will also 
 explain why the author has confined himself to exposing and illustrating 
 his novel theory of the comic without entering into a detailed discussion 
 of other explanations already in the field. He none the less indicates, 
 when discussing sundry examples, why the principal theories, to which 
 they have given rise, appear to him inadequate. To quote only a few, 
 one may mention those based on contrast, exaggeration, and degradation. 
 
 The book has been highly successful in France, where it is in its 
 seventh edition. It has been translated into Russian, Polish, and 
 Swedish. German and Hungarian translations are under preparation. 
 Its success is due partly to the novelty of the explanation offered of the 
 comic, and partly also to the fact that the author incidentally discusses 
 questions of still greater interest and importance. 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
 
 

 
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