A New Philosophy

by Edouard Le Roy

III.

The main lines and general perspective of Mr Bergson's philosophy now perhaps begin to appear. Certainly I am the first to feel how powerless a slender resume really is to translate all its wealth and all its strength.

At least I wish I could have contributed to making its movement, and what I may call its rhythm, clearer to perception. It is from the books of the master himself that a more complete revelation must be sought. And the few words which I am still going to add as conclusion are only intended to sketch the principal consequences of the doctrine, and allow its distant reach to be seen.

The evolution of life would be a very simple and easy thing to understand if it were fulfilled along one single trajectory and followed a straight path. "But we are here dealing with a shell which has immediately burst into fragments, which, being themselves species of shells, have again burst into fragments destined to burst again, and so on for a very long time." ("Creative Evolution", page 107.) It is, in fact, the property of a tendency to develop itself in the expansion which analyses it. As for the causes of this dispersion into kingdoms, then into species, and finally into individuals, we can distinguish two series: the resistance which matter opposes to the current of life sent through it, and the explosive force—due to an unstable equilibrium of tendencies—carried by the vital impulse within itself. Both unite in making the thrust of life divide in more and more diverging but complementary directions, each emphasising some distinct aspect of its original wealth. Mr Bergson confines himself to the branches of the first order—plant, animal, and man. And in the course of a minute and searching discussion he shows us the characteristics of these lines in the moods or qualities signified by the three words—torpor, instinct, and intelligence: the vegetable kingdom constructing and storing explosives which the animal expends, and man creating a nervous system for himself which permits him to convert the expense into analysis. Let us leave aside, as we must, the many suggestive views scattered lavishly about, the many flashes of light which fall on all faces of the problem, and let us confine ourselves to seeing how we get a theory of knowledge from this doctrine. There we have yet another proof of the striking and fertile originality of the new philosophy.

More than one objection has been brought against Mr Bergson on this head. That is quite natural: how could such a novelty be exactly understood at once? It is also very desirable; it is the demands for enlightenment which lead a doctrine to full consciousness of itself, to precision and perfection. But we must be afraid of false objections, those which arise from an obstinate translation of the new philosophy into an old language steeped in a different metaphysic. With what has Mr Bergson been reproached? With misunderstanding reason, with ruining positive science, with being caught in the illusion of getting knowledge otherwise than by intelligence, or of thinking otherwise than by thought; in short, of falling into a vicious circle by making intellectualism turn round upon itself. Not one of these reproaches has any foundation.

Let us begin by a few preliminary remarks to clear the ground. First of all, there is one ridiculous objection which I quote only to record. I mean that which suspects at the bottom of the theories which we are going to discuss some dark background, some prepossession of irrational mysticism. On the contrary, the truth is, we have here perhaps better than anywhere, the spectacle of pure thought face to face with things. But it is a complete thought, not thought reduced to some partial functions, but sufficiently sure of its critical power to sacrifice none of its resources. Here, we may say, really is the genuine positivism, which reinstates all spiritual reality. It does not in any way lead to a misunderstanding or depreciation of science. Even where contingency and relativity are most visible in it, in the domain of inert matter, Mr Bergson goes so far as to say that physical science touches an absolute. It is true that it touches this absolute rather than sees it. More particularly it perceives all its reactions on a system of representative forms which it presents to it, and observes the effect on the veil of theory with which it envelops it. At certain moments, all the same, the veil becomes almost transparent. And in any case the scholar's thought guesses and grazes reality in the curve drawn by the succession of its increasing syntheses. But there are two orders of science. Formerly it was from the mathematician that we borrowed the ideal of evidence. Hence came the inclination always to seek the most certain knowledge from the most abstract side. The temptation was to make a kind of less severe and rigorous mathematics of biology itself. Now if such a method suits the study of inert matter because in a manner geometrical, so much so that our knowledge of it thus acquired is more incomplete than inexact, this is not at all the case for the things of life. Here, if we were to conduct scientific research always in the same grooves and according to the same formulae, we should immediately encounter symbolism and relativity. For life is progress, whilst the geometrical method is commensurable only with things. Mr Bergson is aware of this; and his rare merit has been to disengage specific originality from biology, while elevating it to a typical and standard science.

But let us come to the heart of the problem. What was Kant's point of departure in the theory of knowledge? In seeking to define the structure of the mind according to the traces of itself which it must have left in its works, and in proceeding by a reflective analysis ascending from a fact to its conditions, he could only regard intelligence as a thing made, a fixed system of categories and principles.

Mr Bergson adopts an inverse attitude. Intelligence is a product of evolution: we see it slowly and uninterruptedly constructed along a line which rises through the vertebrates to man. Such a point of view is the only one which conforms to the real nature of things, and the actual conditions of reality; the more we think of it, the more we perceive that the theory of knowledge and the theory of life are bound up with one another. Now what do we conclude from this point of view? Life, considered in the direction of "knowledge," evolves on two diverging lines which at first are confused, then gradually separate, and finally end in two opposed forms of organisation, intelligence and instinct. Several contrary potentialities interpenetrated at their common source, but of this source each of these kinds of activity preserves or rather accentuates only one tendency; and it will be easy to mark its dual character.

Instinct is sympathy; it has no clear consciousness of itself; it does not know how to reflect; it is hardly capable of varying its steps; but it operates with incomparable certainty because it remains lodged in things, in communion with their rhythm and with inner feeling of them. The history of animals in this respect supplies many remarkable examples which Mr Bergson analyses and discusses in detail. As much might be said of the work which produces a living body, and of the effort which presides over its growth, maintenance, and functions. Take a natural philosopher who has long breathed the atmosphere of the laboratory, who has by long practice acquired what we call "experience"; he has a kind of intimate feeling for his instruments, their resources, their movements, their working tendencies; he perceives them as extensions of himself; he possesses them as groups of habitual actions, thus discoursing by manipulations as easily and spontaneously as others discourse in calculation. Doubtless that is only an image; but transpose it and generalise it, and it will help you to understand the kind of action which divines instinct. But intelligence is something quite different. We are talking, of course, of the analytic and synthetic intelligence which we use in our acts of current thought, which works throughout our daily action and forms the fundamental thread of our scientific operations. I need not here go back to the criticism of its ordinary proceedings. But I must now note the service which suits them, the domain in which they apply and are valid, and what they teach us thereby about the meaning, reach, and natural task of intelligence.

Whilst instinct vibrates in sympathetic harmony with life, it is about inert matter that intelligence is granted; it is a rider to our faculty of action; it triumphs in geometry; it feels at home among the objects in which our industry finds its supports and its tools. In a word, "our logic is primarily the logic of solids." (Preface to "Creative Evolution".) But if we enter the vital order its incompetence is manifestly apparent.