The Christian Faith Under Modern Searchlights

by William Hallock Johnson

4. Creative evolution is the antithesis of mechanical evolution. Bergson protests that the conception of mechanism as applied to life is inadequate, because (1) it is artificial, growing out of our habits of controlling matter. It is an instrument of the intelligence, not giving us an insight into life, which we must gain rather in intuition, the higher faculty in Bergson's system. A mechanical representation of nature is always a "representation necessarily artificial and symbolic."[154] (2) Mechanical conceptions are inapplicable to living beings, because of the irreversibility of the movements of living forms; and (3) the mechanical theory is negatived by the facts of the psychophysical connection. "The hypothesis of an equivalence between the psychical state and the cerebral state implies a veritable absurdity, as we tried to prove in a former work."[155] No mechanical theory and no theory of accidental variations, whether insensible or abrupt, can account for the production of so complex an organ as the eye.[156]

His critique of other theories prepares the way for Bergson's own view that the forms of living beings are due to an original vital impulsion, not in the single organism, but in life as a whole, seeking, without foresight of the result, to overcome the downward tendency of matter.

Bergson's suggested via media between creationism and evolutionism, his rejection of a theory of chance variations, and his vigorous polemic against mechanism, all seem to prepare the way for a spiritualistic philosophy. It is true that the land of the spirit has not yet been explored, but Bergson, as one writer expresses it, has at least thrown a bridge across the chasm between the material and the spiritual. While his "Creative Evolution" has been placed upon the Index, we must remember that he himself claims that this work and those that preceded it have resulted in the conceptions of liberty, of spirit and of creation. "From all this," as he says, "we derive a clear idea of a free and creating God, producing matter and life at once, whose creative effort is continued, in a vital direction, by the evolution of species and the construction of human personalities."[157]

The point in Bergson's system which seems least in harmony with theistic belief is his criticism and rejection of finalism. Bergson fears that the temporal series will be swallowed up in the "dark backward and abysm of time," or rather of eternity. The finalism of a foreseen end means with him fatalism, fixity, with no play for freedom, and a reality in time only of a secondary order. Again, in opposition to finalism he urges the variety of living forms. Could the end of all the varied history be merely the production of man? This cannot be proved, because everywhere we see in nature contingency and variety, and apparent cross-purposes if purpose at all. There is no single line of evolution leading up to man. Some fossil forms from remote periods show exactly the same structure as living forms to-day. Further, the vital impulse striving towards freedom meets with obstacles, and failure and arrest are manifest in the lethargy of vegetables and the mechanical reflexes of animals, if these are viewed with reference to the assumed end of the creation of man. The only finalism which Bergson will admit is that of a push towards freedom in virtue of an original vital impulse, blindly and often vainly seeking to overcome the movement of matter towards necessity. It is a vis a tergo happening at last to issue, without any foresight of the result, in the appearance of man.

It is not clear, however, that Bergson has been able to dispose of finalism, or to find some conception between it and the theory of chance which he rejects. The disc of a talking machine, to one not familiar with it, with its spiral lines broken in a haphazard way, would seem to exclude purpose; but when it is properly adjusted the voice of a Melba or a Caruso can be heard. So there may be some standpoint from which the bewildering variety of nature will reveal some unitary purpose. It may be, to use the figure of the artist, that the purpose is not solely the production of man, but that the variety and beauty of the natural world is an expression of the joy of the Creative Artist in his work. The purpose may be more comprehensive, and the fact that all natural history does not plainly lead to the production of man is not in itself a proof that man was not the intended consummation of the process.

It is noteworthy that Bergson, a master in the use of illustration, cannot find any exact illustration of the kind of evolution he wishes to describe. He compares the course of evolution to a road, leading to a city, but hastens to add that, for evolution, the end of the road is not seen.[158] He says again that "if one wished to express himself in terms of finality, it must be said that consciousness ... has sought an issue in the double direction of instinct and intelligence. It has not found it in instinct and it has not obtained it upon the side of intelligence, except by a sudden leap from animal to man. So that, in the last analysis, man would be the raison d' être of the entire organization of life upon our planet."[159] He adds again, however, that this would be but a manner of speaking, and that there is nothing in reality but a certain current of existence and an antagonistic current, whence all the evolution of life. Once more it will be asked, how is this sudden leap, so tremendous in its consequences, to be conceived? Is it a leap in the dark, like the leap of a fish from the water into a rowboat? Is man thus only a happy accident? Or must we see in the vital impulse, or behind it, some real instrumentality of guidance? If the original current of life is wholly blind and purposeless, it would arrive nowhere, or else its arrival at humanity would be as much the result of chance as if it were due to a fortuitous collocation of atoms.

But let us return to Bergson's favourite and beautiful figure of the artist. The effort to objectify the ideal, and to put it in concrete form in words or upon canvas, is said to be precious though painful. It is precious and more precious than the work it results in, "because, thanks to it, we have drawn from ourselves not only all there was there, but more than was there: we have raised ourselves above ourselves."[160]

Is the Divine Artist subject to this kind of evolution? In moments of creative activity does He thus avail Himself of a "plus-power" in the universe, to use Emerson's expression, and does He thus, like the human artist, raise Himself above Himself? If so, we must think of God as altogether such a one as we are, rather than as the source and ground of being and the life and light of men. Such a deity is rather to be identified with the stream of life than with the Ultimate lying behind both life and matter. The Divine Artist, so conceived, would lack the clearness of human prevision of ends, and would be of a relatively lower order of endowment. The striving of the vital impulse without foresight of an end is of an infra-human rather than a super-human kind; for even a "complete and perfect humanity," Bergson says, "would be that in which these two forms of conscious activity [intuition and intelligence] attain their full development."[161]

A recent critic has said that while Bergson has removed the mechanical obstacles to liberty he has not discovered the spiritual conditions requisite for it, and that "he has, most unintentionally, brought us back, in this anti-Finalism, to that Naturalism which he has so successfully resisted when it masqueraded as a sheer Mechanism."[162] There can be no doubt that the spirit of his philosophy is one of progress, and that the tendency of his thought is spiritualistic; his élan vital is an élan en avant, and his God (if one be admitted in his system) is a God of hope. But the questions will still arise whether the vital impulse means for society a destructive radicalism or a constructive renewal; whether, in its ethical aspect, it means a will-to-live no matter what happens to any one else, or a will-to-live-better; and whether it will eventually be transformed into a pessimistic resignation or transmuted into spiritual aspiration.